Pulling herself free from her memories once more, Seele raised her right hand to her left arm, concealing the sorrow in her expression. Then she lifted her head and asked Vill-V the same sort of question the Herrscher of Death had once asked Kevin.
"Teacher Vill-V... Why do people always die so young?"
Had Vill-V known about the scene where the Herrscher of Death questioned Kevin, she would certainly have shuddered all over.
Questions asked by a landmine-type Herrscher had to be answered with extreme caution. One wrong response, and an entire city might end up buried.
Fortunately, Seele was not the Herrscher of Death, and Vill-V was not Kevin. Vill-V could imitate Father Otto's tone without any psychological burden:
"Because death has already passed away, and there will be no more sorrow, crying, or terror, for the things of the past have already passed."
It sounded as though she had said nothing, yet also as though she had said everything.
That answer really was perfect for coaxing children.
When it came to raising children, copying the way Otto treated Theresa could never go too badly.
At worst, she would raise either a silly Teri or a dense goose.
Seele did not immediately respond to Vill-V's answer.
She merely lowered her head to look at the cake on the table, dipped one finger into it, and placed it between her cherry-red lips.
Tears welled in her wine-red eyes.
Mm. It was clearly cake, yet it tasted salty. In fact, it was so salty that it was almost cloying.
It tasted like Mother Vill-V.
In Seele's impression, Mother Vill-V could do anything with ease... except cook.
At Seele's first birthday party, Vill-V had fulfilled her wish—to go see the sea together with everyone.
That was also the first time Seele had tasted sea-salt cake.
Back then, it had been so salty that everyone else wailed in misery, yet Seele alone ate the entire cake.
Even though she knew it was one of Mother Vill-V's pranks, Seele still could not bear to throw it into the sea for the fish.
After that, Mother Vill-V never made another cake quite so salty.
To ordinary people, a birthday celebration might merely be a somewhat special day among countless ordinary ones. Once they grew up, they might feel birthdays were nothing special at all, and might not even remember what had happened at those parties.
Yet it was precisely those unforgettable birthday celebrations Vill-V had organized that gave Seele, whose concept of time had long since blurred during the eternal cycle, her own fixed points in time.
They allowed Seele to remain Seele, rather than becoming some Herrscher from her memories.
Seele desperately wanted to cast aside the guarded composure she had forced herself to wear.
She wanted to bury her face in Vill-V's chest and cry like a spoiled child, saying, "I'm sorry, Mother Vill-V. Seele doesn't want to be alone anymore."
Seele had never been suited to playing the role of a lone wolf who concealed secrets. She lacked confidence, and she could not live without others.
Even though she had only been separated from Vill-V for three years, Seele felt those years had been harder to endure than the tens of millions of years she had spent in past cycles.
"Seele wants so badly to stay beside everyone..."
However, even Mother Vill-V, who could do everything except cook, was nothing more than an ordinary person in the face of Honkai.
She was no savior at all.
There was no savior in this world.
For ordinary people, the past was already past.
But for Seele, the past would never pass.
From the moment Seele became the Herrscher of Death, the embodiment of death itself, everything that had already become the past was destined to become the future once more.
That could not be changed.
Mother Vill-V and everyone else could flee from the past.
Only Seele, who had drowned within the eternal cycle, could never escape anything she had experienced in the past.
That was fine too.
Hiding inside the toy box and escaping from this world was the safest choice.
She would protect her precious treasures and face everything outside by herself.
And the price was merely that Seele alone would have to lock the toy box.
Seele would never choose to run away again!
...
Clatter!
The cake fell and splattered across Zeo's face.
Coo, coo, coo?!
Enduring the pain in her heart as she knocked away Mother Vill-V's cake meant Seele had rejected Vill-V's kindness.
Everything that came next could only be accomplished by Seele, the Herrscher of Death. Dragging Mother Vill-V into it would only place her in danger.
Just as Seele had foreseen.
"Teacher Vill-V, you've always been like this, hiding all the sorrow in the world beneath illusions. Seele doesn't need this kind of false happiness."
"Nothing will ever change."
"Seele understands all those grand principles about saving the world, but how do you expect me to endure all of this?"
"Seele... Are you acting out Lament of the Fallen over there...?"
It seemed that when facing a rebellious young woman, even bringing out Otto's rhetoric was useless.
Or was Vill-V simply too much of a straight man to understand a girl's thoughts?
There had not been much difference when Seele was a little girl, but once a young maiden began to blossom, she really did become an entirely different species.
Should Vill-V ask Elysia for advice?
Vill-V believed she had no maidenly heart to speak of, since she had never experienced the innocence of adolescence.
The girlish gestures she made in daily life were less an expression of maidenly feelings and more a form of smug self-indulgence.
A true maidenly heart was like steel, repeatedly hammered by its environment, quenched, forged, and finally cast into shape.
Put simply, her purity was insufficient!
Just as Seele continued venting the emotions she had suppressed within her heart...
Whoosh!
Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, Vill-V saw several missiles abruptly streak toward them, trailing flames.
"Seele?! Expert!"
Boom, boom, boom!
The sudden attack blew Seele apart.
Vill-V had layered the office with defenses, but because of the quantum domain, the office's defensive system had failed to activate!
Expert took an unconventional approach and activated a backdoor program, forcibly bringing the office's defensive system online.
Beep, beep—
Several mechanical arms began operating. From an arsenal stocked with various ion cannons and tracking missiles, they retrieved... table tennis paddles.
These defensive devices could provide protection during emergencies and play matches with people during their idle time. At present, they were still in entertainment mode.
Yet that did not stop the mechanical arms from swatting the missiles away.
Kaboom!
A tremendous roar erupted in the sky, shaking the entire office as though an earthquake had struck. The missiles clearly possessed considerable explosive yields. Had they landed, they would have been enough to flatten the entire building.
Perfect Score
A smiling face appeared on the mechanical arms' display screens. Then, perfectly satisfied, they put away the table tennis paddles.
As the smoke in the office dispersed, not a single trace of the earlier explosion remained anywhere in the room.
However, all the fluorescent butterflies that had filled the office had vanished.
Even the shattered floor-to-ceiling windows had returned to a completely intact state.
The office had once again regained its original appearance.
Only Seele was gone...
"Seele is no longer here. She used her ability to protect us."
Expert stroked the window, which seemed to have been locked in space, and clicked her tongue in wonder. "A quantum phantom? Did this window disappear a few days ago, or several months ago?"
Id asked, "Then what about Seele? Was she also a projection from the past interfering with reality?"
"Quantum phantoms can allow people to communicate across space and time, but nothing involving space-time is ever simple."
"This isn't some false image like an illusion or hallucination. It is genuine communication between the past and the future."
"Even the latest technology developed by humanity in the Three-Body universe has yet to progress beyond the theoretical stage regarding this phenomenon."
"Research into this phenomenon is included in the 'Delayed Speed of Light' project within a black hole's gravitational sphere."
After hearing Expert's explanation, Conductor scratched her hair in frustration. "Sigh. We finally managed to make Seele open up, only for an uninvited guest to interrupt us."
"Speaking of which... The office should have returned to the state it was in before Seele arrived, so why is it still such a mess... Zeo! Were you secretly playing with the office's defensive system again? You even tore the house apart! Just wait until Su comes back and deals with you!"
Coo, coo, coo?!