Chapter 1755 - 243.5 - Akane's And Shredica's Feelings (1)

Shredica's POV

It turned out that Leon was Tsubasa.

Knowing that should have changed something inside me, or at least that was what I initially expected to happen after finally learning the truth. Somehow, though, I couldn't find anything in myself that felt particularly different. It wasn't like I was suddenly looking at him as an entirely different person, and it wasn't like all the memories I had of him suddenly became meaningless either.

If anything, it felt strangely normal.

That was probably the weirdest part of all this.

I had expected some kind of revelation to hit me, something dramatic that would make me look at Leon differently from that moment onward. Instead, I was left standing there with the same feelings I had before, wondering why the truth hadn't shaken me as much as I thought it would.

Why was that, I wondered?

Honestly, I didn't even know what I was supposed to feel about the whole thing. There was no sudden change in my emotions, no overwhelming realization that completely flipped everything around inside my head. Whatever I felt toward him before learning the truth was still there, and whatever relationship existed between us still felt exactly the same as it had before.

It was almost disappointing in a strange way.

I had discovered that Leon was actually Tsubasa, someone from the life I apparently had before becoming who I was now, and yet I couldn't help thinking that nothing had really changed between us at all.

I kept asking myself what exactly was supposed to change after learning something like that.

The answer never came.

In reality, nothing had changed.

I didn't suddenly become closer to him, nor did I suddenly feel like I needed to distance myself from him. Leon was still Leon to me, regardless of whether his previous name had been Tsubasa.

Perhaps that was because the person I knew now had been shaped by everything he had experienced in this life, just as I had been shaped by everything that happened to me after becoming Shredica.

While I was taking a shower, I pressed one hand against the wall beside me and stared at the reflection appearing across its polished surface. The wall was shiny enough to function almost like a mirror, although the water running down it made the image slightly distorted whenever another stream passed over the surface.

I could see my own face staring back at me.

Yet somehow, now that I knew I had lived another life before becoming the person I was today, looking at that reflection felt strangely unfamiliar.

It almost felt like the person staring back at me wasn't entirely me anymore.

Instead, it felt like I was looking at the person I used to be.

The person whose memories had been buried somewhere deep inside me.

The person who existed before I even understood that she was there.

It was difficult to explain the sensation properly, but it felt like my body had started recognizing another reality that had always existed beside me. I had simply been unable to notice it before.

The longer I stared at my reflection, the stronger that feeling became.

Then, almost as if something wanted to make that reality even more obvious to me, I suddenly heard someone speak.

"Hey."

I immediately looked up at the reflection in front of me, expecting to see something different.

Instead, I only saw my own face.

Her face looked almost exactly like mine, but the expression she was making was different. While I was staring at her with confusion, she looked back at me with an expression that seemed almost annoyed.

That was when I realized that the person looking back at me wasn't simply my reflection.

It was Shredica herself.

"What are you doing?" she asked while staring directly at me through the reflection.

"What do you mean?" I asked her, genuinely confused by what she was asking.

She looked at me with even more irritation, as though my answer had somehow managed to make the situation more complicated than it needed to be.

"Am I really you?" she asked. "Or is it because I'm trapped inside you that you've developed a completely different personality altogether?"

Her question caught me off guard.

"Why are you talking to me?" I asked, still trying to understand what exactly was happening.

"Well, isn't it natural that I'd talk to you?" she replied. "You're me, after all."

My eyes widened slightly when she said that.

"I am you?" I asked, still having difficulty accepting what she was telling me.

"Yup," she answered casually. "Or are you assuming that we're different people simply because you've developed your own memories while mine have been suppressed all this time?"

Well, that might have actually been the case.

I had been thinking that even though we came from the same body, I couldn't really consider her to be me. I didn't know her, after all. I didn't know what she had experienced, what she had thought about, or what kind of person she had been before all those memories disappeared from my awareness.

For all I knew, I might not have even recognized the person I used to be if I had met her somewhere before.

The memories I had now were the ones that shaped who I had become. The memories I had forgotten felt like distant pieces of someone else's life, something that technically belonged to me but didn't necessarily feel important anymore.

But was that way of thinking actually a mistake?

"Yes, that's a mistake," the other me answered immediately.

Her expression became more serious as she continued looking at me through the reflection.

"A really grave mistake, actually. I mean, how dare you forget the existence of the person you used to be back then?"

She sounded almost like she was pouting while saying it, which made the whole conversation even stranger considering she was technically me.

"If you want to get those memories back, then you should take them from me," I told her.

"Why should I take them from you?" she asked. "Didn't I already tell you? You and I are the same person."

She continued staring at me through the reflection before slowly relaxing her expression.

"Even though our memories and life experiences are different, that doesn't mean I'm somehow less of you. Besides, your feelings and my feelings are still aligned, even after all these years."

She paused briefly, almost as though she were thinking about whether she should say what came next.

"So many years have passed, yet it seems that my feelings for him are still exactly the same, even after all this time."

When she said that, I stared at her reflection for a moment.

Something about the way she said those words made me curious, and I couldn't help but wonder exactly what she was referring to.

"What do you mean by that?" I asked her.

"Leon," she answered without hesitation.

Her expression softened slightly as she looked at me through the reflection.

"You love him, don't you?"