Chapter 1748 - 243 - Akane and Tsubasa (1)

Note: We are now getting back to the main timeline.

Leon's POV

I felt like I had just been hit with a flood of old memories when I noticed the mole right on her shoulder.

It wasn't just the mole that caught my attention, either, because there were also a lot of scars scattered across her body. Some were faint, while others were much more noticeable, and looking at them made it pretty obvious that she had spent a long time fighting one battle after another.

Considering how badly she wanted to return to her own world, I suppose it made some sense that the place she came from might have been some kind of warzone that she had eventually become accustomed to.

But then another thought came to me.

If she really was Akane, wouldn't that mean her previous world was Earth?

If that was true, then what could have possibly happened to Earth for her to end up like this?

I kept staring at her while those questions ran through my head, but apparently, I wasn't nearly as subtle as I thought I was because she suddenly noticed me watching her.

The moment our eyes met, I immediately looked away.

Unfortunately, I was already too late.

Shredica had noticed me, and before I could even think about what to say, she moved toward me and drew her sword, placing the blade directly against my throat.

I slowly raised both of my arms, showing her that I wasn't planning to fight back or make any sudden moves.

"Take it easy," I told her.

"You..." she said while narrowing her eyes at me. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Nothing," I answered. "I was heading outside, but you're the one standing out here while taking your clothes off in the open. I don't think it's exactly my fault if I happened to see something."

She continued staring at me with an expression that made it very clear she wasn't buying my explanation.

"Do you really think I'm that stupid?" she asked. "You've been standing there watching me this entire time, so I don't believe for a second that you simply happened to see me by accident, especially when you didn't even look away once."

So she noticed that I hadn't looked away.

Well, that made sense, considering I hadn't exactly been trying very hard to hide it.

"Look, it wasn't my fault, okay?" I said. "Besides, the mole on your shoulder is actually really pretty."

The moment those words left my mouth, her expression changed.

She looked genuinely disgusted.

That expression immediately reminded me of Akane, especially because it was almost identical to the face she used to make whenever I told her that I thought the mole on her shoulder was pretty.

The similarity was way too obvious for me to simply ignore.

"Kuh... just get out of my sight," she said.

With that, she finally lowered her sword and released me.

I stepped away while trying to figure out what had just happened.

Did she realize something?

I honestly couldn't tell.

I didn't think Shredica currently had Akane's memories, at least not in any clear or conscious way. It was possible that whatever had happened to Akane had somehow turned her into Shredica, while her memories of her previous life had either disappeared completely or been buried somewhere deep inside her mind.

Yet those memories seemed to be coming back little by little.

The bigger question was whether I actually wanted to bring them back.

Would I really want to uncover the truth if doing so meant dragging myself back into everything connected to my previous world?

Part of me definitely wanted to know.

If I could unravel everything surrounding Shredica and Akane, I might finally understand what happened to her and why she had ended up becoming the person standing in front of me now.

But should I really get involved?

That was the part I kept struggling with.

It felt like I was once again standing at the same crossroads, trying to decide whether I should involve myself with my previous world or simply leave everything connected to it behind.

I had already told Kaori about my identity, though, so I didn't think there was really any reason for me to avoid investigating this.

If Shredica and Akane were actually the same person, then I wanted to know why.

If they weren't, then I still wanted to understand why there were so many similarities between them.

Either way, something was connecting them.

I just had no idea what that connection was yet.

***

Shredica's POV

I had absolutely no idea what had just happened to me.

For a brief moment, I genuinely thought Leon was the same person I kept seeing in my dreams.

I saw Leon standing beside that person from my dreams, and both of them were saying something that sounded almost exactly the same.

The mole on my shoulder is really pretty.

The voice.

The face.

For that brief moment, the two of them seemed to overlap completely, as though my mind had somehow forced their images together.

"Kuh... what the hell is happening to me?" I muttered while washing my face with cold water.

I stared down at the water for several seconds, hoping the cold would help clear my head.

"What the heck is going on with me...?"

My breathing became heavier as I tried to understand what I had just experienced.

"Who are you, really?" I whispered.

My eyes slowly moved toward my reflection in the water.

"Akane..."

The name slipped out of my mouth almost without me realizing it.

I looked at my reflection again, but something about the face staring back at me suddenly felt strangely unfamiliar.

For a moment, another woman's face appeared in the reflection.

Well, it was still my face.

The features were the same, and everything about it should have been familiar.

Yet the expression was completely different.

My own expression was filled with anger, while the woman reflected in the water looked depressed, almost as though she had been carrying some kind of sadness for years.

I stared at her without knowing what I was supposed to think.

I still didn't know whether we were actually the same person.

However, considering how her memories kept appearing inside my head, and how I continued remembering things that I had supposedly never experienced myself, I couldn't simply dismiss the possibility anymore.

Something had to connect us.

"Am I... really you?" I whispered while staring at the reflection.

The only person who could possibly help me find the answer was probably the person I kept seeing in my dreams.

Tsubasa.

For some reason, I kept seeing him whenever I looked at Leon.

I didn't understand why.

I didn't understand what connected them.

But if those visions were showing me something real, then Leon probably knew more than he was saying.

Maybe he could tell me something about Tsubasa.

Maybe he could help me understand who Akane really was.

Perhaps, if I could uncover the truth about him, I could finally understand whether the memories inside my head truly belonged to me.