“Since when did you know?” Dante asked. “Everyone is being fooled.” He added a tail-end remark. As a phantasm that mimicked 99.9999% of Dante Hiakapo’s intelligence, memory, and way of thinking, he had to hear an answer regarding this anomalous situation.
It was the mindset of a person who had lived a whole life by running into problems. Otherwise, there was no way to live. There were no such things as problems that solved themselves. There was no happiness given for free.
“From the beginning.”
It was Eve’s answer. From the start. From when she was hospitalized with injuries from demonization and he came to visit her. Eve had known he was a fake Dante. And she also knew it was some sort of “gift” that Dante had made and sent for her sake.
“How on earth did you know that....”
When the phantasm Dante cocked his head and asked back, Eve shook her head. It meant, of course she knew.
“Glass Butterfly is illusion that touches the essence as much as one observes and understands. For someone other than Dante himself to recognize an illusion Dante made...... that’s a problem. Even if others caught on, at least you shouldn’t have.”
As he muttered, the phantasm Dante asked again, “Why did you pretend not to know?” Then Eve gave a surprisingly commonsense answer. “The human is busy....” It was the aftermath of an incident that could have toppled a nation, and Dante was at its center. Eve, in her own way, had been considerate.
But whenever it became hard to endure, she had decided to wait until she got her driver’s license.
“...The original Dante has gone on a long ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) journey. He will return someday.”
The phantasm’s answer betrayed her expectation. Eve knit her brows and tilted her head slightly. She did not want to hear that.
“Journey to where?”
“You don’t need to know that. He’ll be back before long.”
“......”
Eve shook her head. It meant, no.
“Where?”
She asked again. This time too the phantasm pretended not to know, and Eve asked again. “Where.” But no answer came back.
When a package doesn’t arrive at your house, you can wait. But when the wrapping doesn’t get opened right before your eyes, it makes your blood boil. So it was with Eve.
What’s more, the phantasm’s answer began to make her feel even more uneasy, because no matter how she thought about it, there was no reason Dante would have made it answer like that.
Seasons had already passed since the end of the Summerneken War, and now you could no longer see anyone searching for Dante on the news and such. Eve, who checked the TV all day at home, knew that.
Yet they were hiding it? A sudden unease swept Eve. In the past she would have just thought her heart felt strange, but now she knew it clearly in letters. This was [Anxiety]. She was feeling anxious.
“......”
After that Eve left the phantasm Dante and headed somewhere. To look in on the others.
She went to see Balmung, Glory, Kendreik, and so on, but there were only phantasms around them as well.
She even went to see that detestable Rebecca, but Rebecca, with a triumphant face, introduced the phantasm.
“Whatever. Buzz off.”
“......”
Eve turned on her heel.
Thus she barged this time into the professors’ manor, and Ran and Adele, meeting her after a long while, welcomed her. But such a welcome was not welcome.
“Where are you going, Eve?”
“Second floor.”
“No. The Professor is not here right now, and he hasn’t come here for quite some time. And you must not go up to the second floor.”
“......”
Even so, when Eve tried to search the house, Ran and Adele must have realized something and blocked her.
Eve was willing to brawl and tried to head for the second floor. Against that brutal strength, the two bounced away, and there was no Dante on the second floor.
Then Eve tried to search the basement next, but had to stop in front of Song Chien.
“Why are you like this, child.”
“......”
Shrring... Eve drew the holy sword from her waist. The sense of foreboding had now swollen until it choked breath. When she signed with her other hand, Ran understood.
“Where is the human?”
Emotion bleeds into the movements of sign. Eve’s fingertips trembled, and the motions were violent. It meant she was extremely agitated.
“...Song Chien.”
Ran stepped in and settled the situation. They would just tell her.
“Uh, uh....”
In the room, as they conversed through sign, Eve let out a sound of pain.
It was anger at not having known this until now. And despair at the words that no solution had been found.
So they headed to Dante’s house laboratory, expanded out from the second floor, and there lay the real Dante.
Eve froze as she was.
Being a former demon, she was sensitive to life and death. The real Dante was before her eyes. He was already nearly dead.
“......”
Beside him was a small plate-like thing, and the time was decreasing. The numbers [3, 12, 20, 47] were written, and 47 ticked down to 46, 45, 44.... Now Eve knew that it meant time.
“Yes. That’s correct. It is the remaining time of the life-support device. After that, the brain will begin to be destroyed little by little.”
It was Ran’s answer. Ironically, the thing that broke first was the most fatal.
As she sat there blankly on the floor, silence fell.
“......”
Eve had to do something.
“......?”
But she realized there was nothing she could do.
“......”
For this situation, Adele had thoroughly checked the bug that existed within herself and had indirectly asked several members of the faculty for help; Ran had asked the System⧉ for help; and Song Chien had asked the Constellations for help. Even so, they had found no answer. What, here, could Eve possibly do?
“................”
In this moment, she felt a fierce futility.
*
A day passed. Eve sat with her back against Dante’s glass chamber. And she found no answer. She tried thinking about ways to find an answer, but nothing came to mind.
For Eve, this was like a natural disaster. Like being unable to think of a way to solve an earthquake when one strikes.
“......”
And Ran and Adele already looked half resigned. Small wonder: they said they had been guarding this place in front of this spot since 100 days ago. Day by day they would have been letting go of the thread of hope little by little.
No, it wasn’t that they let go.
[ 2, 12, 35, 47 ]
The thread was snapping by itself.
*
[ 1, 12, 49, 10 ]
When another day had passed, Eve sat in front of the glass chamber without sleeping or eating.
Now she began to think she wanted to break the glass chamber.
Even if she knew that even so, Dante would not come back to life.
Her heart felt that way.
She had to do something. But there was nothing she could do.
Then Eve compulsively began to recall her memories with Dante. Starting from the most recent. For instance, how he had held her when she was turning demonic in the battle against Summerneken.
Dante had kept trying to calm her as her body kept trembling.
A memory of ribs sticking out like knives and stabbing into Dante.
Yet lips moving as if to say it was okay.
In the midst of a place where flames burst in the distance, monsters flew, and people fell, Dante had cared for her like that.
Then what was she?
Her resentful gaze turned to the plate.
[ 1, 00, 00, 03 ]
[ 1, 00, 00, 02 ]
[ 1, 00, 00, 01 ]
[ 1, 00, 00, 00 ]
[ 0, 23, 59, 59 ]
⋮
At last, a day broke.
“Uh, uh....”
Because she had learned language and letters, Eve now knew the exact words for her feelings.
“Ugh.......”
She felt like she was going to lose her mind.
*
[ 0, 12, 00, 41 ]
Now with less than twelve hours left, Song Chien, knowing what kind of person Eve was to Dante, had it so that only the two of them remained, and only Eve and the glass chamber remained in the lab. Eve clutched her head in anguish; there could be no such thing as this ending, like this, just like this.
Eve no longer even knew what she was thinking, what she was feeling.
Only a single line of moisture ran down Eve’s cheek.
This could not be.
This must not be.
She now knew exactly that she was a Hero. And she knew the world had been saved. That it had all begun from Dante’s hands and that she had helped bring it to completion. But if the world had to be like this, then it would have been better not to save it.
Eve knelt and put her head to the floor. Somewhere inside her chest felt like it would rip, and she had no sense at all of what she should do. She only felt like dying.
[ 0, 6, 00, 00 ]
Thus, even as Eve suffered alone, time heartlessly flowed.
[ 0, 3, 00, 00 ]
Down to three hours.
[ 0, 1, 00, 00 ]
Down to one hour.
[ 0, 00, 10, 02 ]
[ 0, 00, 10, 01 ]
[ 0, 00, 10, 00 ]
[ 0, 00, 09, 59 ]
⋮
At last, the final ten minutes.
......At a time like this when no one knew the answer.
Something moved beside the glass chamber.
Eve lifted her head and looked at it.
But her vision was blurred, soaked with tears. It certainly seemed like something had moved.
When she rubbed with the back of her hand, there was nothing there.
Maybe she just wanted to see something.
But the moment she lowered her eyes, something beside the glass chamber wriggled and moved again. What she had heard while talking with the human flashed across her mind.
There was a spirit that loved her meetings with the human very much, wasn’t there.......
It was a fellow that helped her a lot, and when together, she was told never to make eye contact.
So she stayed still and pretended not to know,
│
On the other side of the glass wall.
│)
It began to reveal itself.
│ㅇ)
It peeked its head up, then quickly ducked down.
│ㅅㅇ) !
│ㅇ)
│ㅇ) ...
│ㅅㅇ) thought it had been spotted....
Eve, with a mindset of clutching at straws, begged.
Please, help with something. Anything.
With that feeling, she only looked at the floor.
│ㅅㅇ) wants to announce something but is shy about stepping forward.
│ㅅㅇ) but thinks Dante must live. That would be more fun.
< Someone objects to that. >
│ㅁㅇ) !?
< It is │▽ㅇ). >
│ㅁㅇ) ....
│▽ㅇ) thinks Dante must die. That he should die and disappear, and only then many people will show truly entertaining reactions.
│▽ㅇ) lol
│▽ㅇ) lololololololol
< At that, the other spirits grow enraged. >
│▽ㅇ) ?
< │▽ㅇ) looks to the right. >
│▽ ㅇ) (ㅇㅅ(ㅇㅅㅇ(ㅇㅅ│
│▽ ㅇ) ...... (ㅇㅅ(ㅇㅅㅇ(ㅇㅅ│
< Kill that bastard. >
│) =3 (ㅇ(ㅇㅅ‘ㅇ(ㅇㅅ‘ㅇ) │
After the noisy interaction passed, someone cautiously poked their head out again.
│ㅂㅇ) announces that the download of [Ver2.1.5 Hiaka Academy rip version] has been completed.
< From now, we will lower this world’s version. In a place where the 『Curse of Being Forgotten』 does not yet exist and there are no bugs, please wake Dante. >
< Only you can do it. >
As Eve slowly read the letters,
suddenly.
The world flipped into darkness.
⋮
< Ver2.1.5... Hiaka Academy rip version (Subculture Character Collection Ver) >
⋮