"Captain! Captain, can you hear me?!" Blue had joined the search the moment her body regained enough strength to move again.
Hours slipped by, and they finally reached the outskirts of the explosion site, the last trace of him.
They kept their distance from the clearing, wary of any lingering after‑effects.
Even from afar, the devastation was absolute, nothing remained at the center.
Blue herself had ventured closest, circling the blasted perimeter in hopes that he had escaped in some unpredictable direction and simply gotten lost.
But if that were true, it didn't explain why he wasn't responding through the A.D.A.
She wasn't panicking, but she couldn't settle either.
Never had she imagined that his relative well‑being would become something capable of stirring such deep concern.
Then again, it was difficult to blame that assumption. After all, they had spent the better part of seven months praying he wasn't nearby, only for those hopes to be shattered time and time again.
His brutal training had its uses, but it was never something anyone looked forward to.
"Big Sister!"
Behind her, a voice rang out, one she felt she hadn't heard in ages.
"Argenta!"
The little girl with pale blue hair and a metallic device encircling her head sprinted toward her. Blue recognized her instantly as the Captain's younger sister. She swept the child into a tight embrace.
"I'm so glad you're alright."
"I was really worried too," the girl managed, her voice strained as Blue's arms nearly crushed her.
"Ah–sorry!" Blue released her at once, and both of them let out a brief laugh.
"Where's Oliver?" Blue asked, glancing around. As far as she knew, Argenta had been under Oliver's protection the entire time they were gone, so his absence now was unsettling.
"We split up when we saw you from way over there. He went to find the others while I came to say hi. It was all my idea." She pointed proudly behind her.
"Really? You're just so smart and cute and absolutely adorable!" Blue exclaimed, nuzzling her cheek.
"Hehe! The last two mean the same thing, big sis! Why were you here alone anyway?"
"Right, by any chance, have you seen your big brother?" At that, Argenta's expression soured. She turned her head sharply.
"He's not my big brother, and I don't even want to see him."
Blue blinked, then gently turned the girl back toward her.
"Well, that won't do right now. We can't seem to find him, and I'm worried he's not okay."
"Hmph." Argenta folded her arms and pouted. "That's just a waste of time. He's not someone anyone should worry about. Cosmo can't die."
"That's really mean, Argenta–"
"No! It's the truth! He's always fine, no matter what happens, so why does everyone still worry about him?!" Blue found the girl's attitude deeply strange.
From her perspective, Argenta wasn't merely insisting, she was refusing to doubt her own words.
'Cosmo can't die.'
If Blue didn't know any better, it felt as though that statement formed the foundation of their entire relationship.
But surely she, who knew so little about them, couldn't be right on her first impression of the statement.
"Listen," Blue said, crouching to meet her eyes while holding her shoulders. She hadn't forgotten her original objective, but something about this dynamic demanded attention, and demanded change.
"No matter how you feel, you need to understand this." Her voice tightened with urgency. "Red said Cosmo was losing a lot of blood the last time he saw him. Then the explosion that wiped out this entire area happened, and we haven't seen or heard from him since. I won't tell you how to act regarding your big… about him. But I know you love him more than anything. If there's even the slightest chance that–" Argenta, silent until now, suddenly yanked herself free and bolted away.
She didn't seem to have a destination, but her movement wasn't aimless either.
Blue couldn't leave her alone, so she ran after the child–strangely, with a quiet sigh of relief.
***
That day was the first time pure darkness had ever brought her discomfort.
The images and sounds, the voices and faces, those constant intrusions driven into her mind each day, had ceased abruptly.
She couldn't hear them anymore. The people who called themselves her friends, who claimed they only wanted to help her. The people she never saw, yet recognized by the encrypted voices they used to speak to her.
The last remaining noise was the low, steady hum of the gigantic machine that had encased her for as long as she could remember.
Everything she knew came from it, and everything she expressed passed through it.
She had never heard her own voice, nor seen how she appeared to others.
And now her heart tightened with fear, because that might remain true for however long she had left.
For so long, the little girl had been accompanied only by darkness, left to wonder what had become of the life she endured.
Eventually, the weight grew too heavy to bear.
Through the artificial voice the machine provided her, she screamed.
She called out for anyone who could hear.
She named those who used to be with her, fake as she knew they were.
And she begged for something, anything, to change.
Eventually, her strength waned, her willpower drained, and she fell silent again, resigned to her fate.
"That burst of energy… was that you?"
She couldn't believe it.
A voice reached her from outside the machine, making her question her reality.
"Thanks to that, I was able to find you."
Somehow, she could tell the one behind the voice was devoid of willpower, just as she was. Perhaps for a different reason, but unmistakably so.
The young man who answered her call carried less joy in his tone than even the falsified voices she had always heard, but she didn't care. Not before she made her request.
"Mister, please don't stop talking."
This time, he was the one taken aback.
She didn't ask who he was, nor what he intended.
Her first instinct was a desperate plea born from unimaginable loneliness.
"That's quite the order. For you to make such a request… how long have you been out here by yourself?"
"I don't know."
"It's good to count these things, even if you're not sure you'll be okay."
"Mister… what do you mean by 'out here'? Am I not in the 'labraytorry'(laboratory) anymore?"
He spoke as though she were a lost child wandering, but as far as she knew, she was still connected to the machine inside a research building, something she had pieced together from scattered clues.
"Well, no. You're currently drifting in the depths of a vast space between the foils inside a detached bunker. I'm sorry to say this, but your boundary is no more." He delivered the news so quickly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
She fell silent.
Her heart sank, and her breathing turned erratic.
"But I didn't do it… I swear I didn't try to get out. It wasn't my fault, I did everything they told me."
"Calm down," he said as she was about to cry. "Letting your emotions run wild right now is the worst possible option. Besides, it wasn't your fault. It had nothing to do with you."He reassured her while tapping the part of the machine where her head rested.
It soothed her, but her mind was far from steady.
After a moment, she spoke again.
"They always said if I didn't listen to them, or if I ever tried to leave the 'capsool'(capsule), then I would end up hurting so many people. Everything around me would suffer, and I would be alone forever. So I did everything I was supposed to do."She poured out everything, everything that defined her.
She was a girl who had experienced the world only through the images and sounds the machine fed her.
All six years of her life were dictated by whatever her 'friends' chose to show her, and even her thoughts were regulated.
Everything she didn't see was left to her imagination, but she never felt she lived in hardship.
After all, she couldn't miss a freedom she had never known. The outside world was nothing more than a dream.
"Well, there was one thing they were right about. Trying to leave the capsule would have caused a lot of bad things to happen," he admitted. "But you didn't want to hurt anyone, did you? You did everything you could and endured it for so long. So… great job, I guess? You're a really… good girl."
"…"
"…"
"Mister…"
"What?"
"You have no idea how to talk to kids, right?"
"Zip it, smartass! That was the best I could do!"
She giggled without meaning to, surprised by the joy his clumsy words brought her.
And for a moment, their conversation seemed to make him forget his own sorrow.
"What's your name, anyway?" he asked suddenly. She fell silent again. "Do you not have one?"
"When they talked to each other, or forgot to turn off their 'mykrofons'(microphones), they called me '006'."
"I see… so it wasn't just two of you," he muttered, grief slipping into his tone, something she noticed instantly.
"What's wrong, mister?"
"It's Cosmo," he replied, leaving her slightly confused.
"My name… It's Cosmo. And I'm here to take you home."
"Home?" She knew the meaning of the word, but the idea behind it held no deeper significance to her.
"It's not much greater, honestly. For now, you won't be able to see the grand world. But at the very least, you'll be closer to a normal life," he said, offering it as though she could refuse. "You'll be able to cry and laugh, imagine and play, throw tantrums and yell all you want. That's something I can swear to you, Argenta."
"Argenta?"
"Don't read too much into it. It's just a random name I came up with on the spot. But it's better than '006', right?"
"Mister… you're so rude."
Still, it was too good to be true. Too drastic a shift from her previous life to accept so easily.
"What's the bad part?"
Cosmo smiled.
As he had indirectly admitted moments ago, the girl was unusually perceptive. "I have this device made by a friend of mine. It does the same thing the capsule does by suppressing that gift of yours, but you'll be able to walk, talk, and use your senses properly. Putting it on will hurt for a moment, but you'll be fine soon after."
"Wait, you're going to take me out? Don't try it, you'll die."
Even with the promise of better days, she wasn't willing to risk someone else's life.
If her curse could truly kill, she would rather drift alone for eternity.
But–
"That's not a problem you should worry about," he said boldly. "You see, I can't die."
"…"
"…"
"Oh, I get it, you're 'Aymmortal'(immortal)."
"No, not at all. It's just as I said, I can't die."
"…"
She was at a loss.
What kind of assurance gave him the confidence to declare such fate‑tempting words?
He didn't say it with pride or jest. He said it plainly, and she couldn't understand how.
But she still wanted to treat it like a joke, because it sounded like a hilarious bet.
"Even if you get stabbed through the heart?"
"Nah."
"What if you get hit by a gazillion 'myssylilees'(missiles)?"
"I'll walk it off."
"Hehe! What if you were eaten by a monster?"
"Tickle its belly and walk out."
"That's so silly! What about a fire‑breathing dragon?"
"Only a bug's scared of some lizard."
"…"
"…"
"Gooillotyne!(Guillotine)"
"'Tis but a scratch."
"Cut into a bajillion pieces!"
"Bandages."
"If your head explodes everywhere!"
"Drink some water… aren't you getting a bit too graphic?"
They laughed together for a long while, though it felt like only moments to her.
Slowly, she began to consider it. If she could truly open her eyes… Would it be selfish to believe him?
If he opened the capsule, would she blame him for whatever went wrong?
He was the first real voice she had ever heard, the first real conversation she ever had, and now he could be the first real face she ever saw.
For her to live freely, only one thing had to be true, irrefutably true.
And that was that Cosmo could not die.
"I… want to go home."
That was how Argenta earned her annoying big brother.
And how Cosmo gained his brat of a little sister.
***
The sound of a wailing child dragged him from the world of dreams, and the severe pain shooting through his bare arms confirmed he was awake.
He opened his eyes to the sky, and beneath it, the little girl was flooding his face with uncontrollable tears.
When she met his gaze, she gasped and fell silent.
"What the hell made you cry?" he asked, a mix of confusion and tension in his voice.
He was no stranger to seeing Argenta cry.
In fact, she did so entirely too much, and he was partly to blame for never being able to refuse her when she did.
But this was different.
She was so gripped with despair that it frightened him, and he could not forgive whatever caused it.
"Hey…" he murmured when she suddenly touched his face with her palm, examining him like some strange specimen.
She seemed unable to speak.
Her small hand squeezed his cheek from beneath his eye to the skin above his jaw.
"Argenta!" Blue emerged from behind her, pushing through rows of bushes Argenta had simply scurried under.
"Oh." She stopped when she saw Cosmo, then broke into a bright smile. "Captain, you're okay."
Argenta startled both of them when she suddenly leapt up and hid behind Blue, peeking out at Cosmo as though he had committed a crime.
'Can someone please explain what's going on?'
With no clue what chain of events had unfolded before he woke, Cosmo could only complain.