Chapter 219: For All the Alices (4)

“Stop... Please, just give up now...”

Unknown's voice was small.

It sounded ready to break.

“Why...? Why are you doing this to me...?”

Her hand tore at her hair.

Her disheveled white hair resembled a pathetic heap of snow swept aside in winter.

Her breathing grew ragged for a moment, but the girl forced out uneven words.

“Just leave me alone...”

“Miss Allie.”

“A hundred times. Not once, not ten times, a hundred. You've died that many times.”

“Has it already been that many? Time really does fly.”

“Are you crazy...? Can't you feel pain, or something? Or do you actually enjoy this?”

“Well, if I could enjoy something like this, I might've been able to save you more easily, Miss Allie.”

“I don't need it! I told you to go away! I just want to disappear like this...!”

Her voice wanted to let go of everything.

Her red eyes trembled precariously.

“I want it to stop... Please, haven't I tried hard enough...? At least in the end, can't I do what I want? Can't I have things my way...?”

Unknown seemed to believe that was her true desire.

A child who had given up so often that she could no longer remember how not to.

The girl's prayer was learned resignation.

In other words, it was suicide, and habitual self-sacrifice.

“...I've done enough.”

Her hair, once like flower petals, had withered. Her bowed head alone resembled a white chrysanthemum.

She looked like an offering of mourning flowers laid before a child's portrait.

I fell silent before that memorial portrait.

Then I chose my words again and again.

Words that could paint colored leaves into that grass-like life without dishonoring it.

“Your little sister is waiting.”

“...”

Alice had cried a great deal.

She said she missed her, and that she was sorry.

“I think you felt the same way, Miss Allie.”

I could feel it through my skin.

This was a Deep World formed from Unknown's inner self.

Looking over the recreated scenery, I could see how deeply she felt the emptiness her little sister had left behind.

“Her traces are everywhere.”

Clumsy paper dolls.

Tiny scribbles on the isolation room floor.

Mysterious apple-flavored juice that sometimes came with their meals.

“So many things.”

Things her little sister had folded.

Things her little sister had written.

Things her little sister had liked.

A large part of Unknown's world was made up of her little sister.

Perhaps that was only natural.

“In that hellish laboratory, you must have been the only people each other could rely on. Your little sister was your world, Miss Allie. And you were surely her world too.”

“...”

The girl did not deny it.

I could not tell whether it was death or contemplation.

“That world of yours is waiting outside right now. Just like back then. Only for you.”

“...”

“Don't you want to see your little sister again, Miss Allie?”

“...Leave me alone. Don't shake me up anymore.”

“I refuse. I'll shake you up again and again, however many times it takes.”

At my open defiance of her resignation, Unknown raised her head and stared at me.

Even as I lay sprawled on the floor, I gave her a small smile.

“I made a promise, a long time ago, to someone precious to me.”

I slowly raised my hand.

I spread my index and middle fingers in a bold V sign.

Perhaps because I was so drained, my fingers hung limply despite the pose. It looked rather ridiculous.

-I love you. I love you, Muro.

-Just as your teacher loves you, I hope that one day you'll love someone too.

I was copying you.

Maybe this was how I loved people.

“I'm sorry. This is all I've ever seen and learned.”

“...”

Unknown looked as though she had no idea what I meant.

Regardless, I smiled.

“So, Miss Allie, you only need to say one thing.”

“What am I supposed to say...?”

“That you want to live.”

“...”

“After that, I'll take care of everything.”

It was a calm promise.

The girl gave no answer for a long while.

* * *

Several months had already passed since Viktor entered the isolation room.

He had gradually lost track of how many times he had died.

‘How many was it again...?’

It had surely repeated at least three hundred times.

The boy waited only for the girl's answer.

The condition for freeing this Deep World was for Allie to sincerely wish to live.

‘Even if she says she wants to live without meaning it, this place won't clear.’

The heart was harder to move than words.

It was deep and heavy, and sometimes could not be turned around at all.

“Huff, huff...”

Viktor was battered to pieces as always.

After the experiment ended, the researchers carelessly threw him beyond the isolation room door.

After he let out a few groans, Unknown, who had seemed restless somewhere nearby, hurried over to him.

“You...”

Her gaze wavered slightly.

Though she hesitated, she knelt down and examined Viktor.

“...Looks like it was your arm today.”

“I'm sorry. It's rather ugly.”

His right arm had been shredded to rags.

Unknown pulled a bandage from her clothes, as though she had prepared it beforehand.

It was impossible to know how much it would help, but if she wrapped it tightly, it should at least stop the bleeding.

“Phew... Thank you.”

“Why are you thanking me? You took even my share of the experiments for yourself...”

Complicated feelings overflowed in her voice.

The girl bit her lip hard.

“I told you to stop doing this...”

Since their last conversation, Unknown had slowly begun looking after Viktor.

It was a very different attitude from how she had tried to treat him like he did not exist.

Perhaps she had opened her heart a little.

But that feeling was closer to guilt than a will to live.

“Why...? Why are you so stubborn about pain with no meaning...?”

“Your hand is warm, Miss Allie.”

“Of course it is. You've had so much blood taken that you're cold.”

“I'm sorry, but may I hold your hand for a moment?”

“...Do as you like. Get a blanket first.”

Perhaps, despite being burned by the world so many times, she could not truly discard her kind heart.

Whenever Unknown saw the boy, her shoulders trembled as though she were trying to hide it.

Her delicate hand held Viktor's.

The lukewarm heat of her palm spread across his chilled skin.

“If you won't quit, at least let me take my share of the experiments.”

“No. I cannot let you suffer any more, Miss Allie.”

“Don't talk nonsense. I already spoke to Father.”

“I spoke with him today as well. He promised to raise the intensity of my experiments threefold in exchange for rejecting your proposal.”

“What? Are you out of your mind? You're already like this, and you want to increase the intensity even more? Those experiments are my share! They are not something you should bear!”

“You are mistaken, Miss Allie. No one should have to take a share like that. This was never something anyone should have endured.”

“Then you have no reason to take them either!”

“But you are in pain, Miss Allie.”

“You are too...!”

“You were like that too, weren't you? With your little sister. Even when you were afraid, overwhelmed, exhausted, and in pain, you tried to bear everything for her.”

“...”

“Even as you were rotting inside, you always pretended to be cheerful. You forced a smile in front of your little sister and whispered hopeful stories to her. Even like that, you wanted to protect her.”

“No, I just...”

“I wanted to understand those feelings. Even for your little sister, how could someone be so strong...? Even if it was only a dream, I wanted to understand your emotions and your heart. I thought only then would my words carry weight.”

“...So that's why you died? Nearly four hundred times?”

“Yes.”

“You're crazy... You're not normal...”

“Perhaps. They do say love is a form of madness.”

It was a shameless answer.

Allie lowered her head.

Even so, she struggled to carry the boy's ragged body over to the bed.

“I'm sorry...”

A few more days passed.

Viktor was lying sprawled on the isolation room floor as usual.

Unknown, who was tending to him nearby, suddenly asked an unexpected question.

“How is Liss doing outside?”

“Miss Alice?”

It was her first question about the outside world.

Even as she changed his bandages, her voice hesitated for a long while.

“She must have been alone outside the laboratory... In a world where even I had died, did she manage to live through that harsh world...?”

“As expected, you think of your little sister day and night.”

“She was everything to me. And she was such a small, weak little sister too...”

“I happened to prepare something. Rather than explain it, it would be better for you to see it yourself.”

“What?”

Unknown stopped moving at those incomprehensible words.

Then the boy's index finger touched her forehead.

Ding!

[You have previously cleared the phenomenon ‘Regret (SS-)’!]

[An Authority usable within the Deep World has activated.]

[You can now influence another's trauma through memory sharing, scene alteration, limited manipulation, and more.]

Immediately afterward, waves surged into the girl's mind.

They were all memories of Alice.

Beyond the scenes, she could see her little sister smiling brightly.

Unknown sat dazed for a long while, turning over each of those flooding memories one by one.

“...Liss.”

Then a warm trail ran down her cheek.

It was the first tear the girl had shed in the Deep World.