Present, Memory.
“I know the future of this world.”
I spoke in a calm voice.
In the cold corridor, my breath stretched out as if drawing the sentence in the air.
“......”
Javert gave no real answer.
She only stared at me blankly, at a loss for words.
Another drop of complexity mixed into the air, which had already been confused enough.
I smiled quietly.
“......It is not that there is nothing.”
“Then?”
“I simply... do not know where to begin.”
“This feels new. To think I would see you this shaken, Chief Investigator.”
Her green eyes wavered sharply.
Just by meeting her gaze, I could gauge how disturbed she was.
Inside her head, the words I had left behind must have been mixing together in a mess.
“Um, when you say you know the future of this world...”
“I mean it exactly as it sounds.”
Surprisingly, Javert did not seem to doubt the statement itself.
Well, it would be stranger if she refused to believe me now.
Too much had happened between us for that.
The future she had just glimpsed, and all my words and actions that had been hard to understand until now...
‘If she adds the assumption that I acted while knowing what would happen, even those parts make sense.’
Did Javert think the same thing?
The woman’s breath stopped for a moment.
A moment when she did not even exhale.
The thoughts swarming through her stretched out like a Nightmare.
Her voice was not steady. She forced the words out as if they had been torn up by the roots.
“Student Viktor... are you a prophet, or something close to one?”
“Something along those lines. Though I would be slightly different from a prophet.”
“Then the memories you showed me earlier were all...”
“Memories of the future. More precisely, futures I glimpsed.”
“......”
The woman’s shoulders trembled faintly.
Her breathing stretched thin.
“That is...”
A tragic ending.
A terrible dizziness.
Javert seemed to be turning over those horrifying memories.
The hundreds of daggers that had stabbed her own neck, again and again, as she regretted and cried each time.
“......”
“Chief Investigator.”
I quietly stepped forward.
The corridor had been submerged in darkness the whole time.
Before I knew it, the scenery before us had grown noisy.
“There. The chimeras.”
Grotesque shapes stood in a swarm inside the corridor.
Monsters crawled along as their teeth and tentacles writhed.
They were the mutated students.
Torn uniforms and chunks of flesh were scattered everywhere.
The scene looked far too much like one of the futures I had shown her.
“......”
Javert stopped walking.
Her legs seemed to have gone stiff.
Across from us, strange mutants were swarming.
The days to come. The mistake she would commit had been recreated in the corner of her vision, as if laughing at her.
“Ugh...”
A hellish scene.
The woman stood there, unable to move either way.
The one who led Javert then was none other than me.
“Take my hand.”
I gently held the woman’s hand.
With her trembling body heat in mine, I moved one step ahead.
We crossed the corridor.
<Gilhgilhgilhgilhgilhgilh>
<Kwedkwedkwedkwedkwed>
<Ugeulaglswoteolgkilhsilseulg>
We walked between the chimeras.
There had to be at least a few hundred of them.
They looked ready to rush at us at any second.
“Slowly.”
Even so, I paid no mind to that killing intent.
I calmly escorted Javert.
She held my hand tightly.
Splash, splash.
I stepped firmly across the floor pooled with blood.
The monsters thrashed, but they did not actually attack us.
“......We’ve arrived.”
Like that, we reached the end of the corridor.
We had broken through the dense forest.
The cries of the chimeras rang out behind us.
Creak.
At the end of the corridor was a single wooden door.
The door that had let us move from the past into the future.
Click.
The moment I gripped the doorknob, my warped perception recovered.
My dark vision turned bright.
The things that had been chimeras returned to their original forms.
When I opened my eyes again, only students were wandering through the corridor.
-Did you all hear? They said this exam is going to be really hard.
-Uaaah! I’m doomed! I played around and didn’t study at all...!
-I’m hungry. Should we go to the store before lecture starts?
-The person who brought it up is buying, right?
-Who decided that? Rock paper scissors!
Daily life.
Children passing by, laughing and chatting.
The scenery behind us was utterly peaceful.
“Hehe. This time, no one got hurt, right?”
“......”
Javert stared blankly at the corridor.
Soon after, Purgatory’s announcement rang out.
[You have successfully cleared Regret ‘Imagination’.]
[The next stage trauma will be set.]
A complex light seeped into her green eyes.
I pulled the woman by the hand.
“Shall we go?”
“......”
Creeeak.
Before I knew it, we were opening the door to the final regret.
The bright background turned black again, and air as cold as ice brushed my cheek.
My breath billowed out.
It was clear, like cigarette smoke.
In that scene, I was lying slammed against the floor.
“This hurts a little.”
Familiar air.
A familiar composition.
A familiar space.
Ding-!
[Regret ‘Memory’ will now begin.]
[The set trauma will be recreated.]
This was the final regret.
Present, Memory.
Javert and I were tangled together in the cold corridor.
I was sprawled on the floor, and Javert was holding me as if strangling my neck.
It was a familiar scene.
“Chief Investigator.”
“......Student Viktor.”
The green eyes I looked up at quietly were shaking.
She seemed to have realized the situation too.
This was the corridor of Purgatory Floor 81.
The moment when my identity had been exposed, and Javert had subdued me.
Squeeze.
Javert’s hand brutally tightened around my neck.
Perhaps it was not by her own will, because the woman looked flustered.
“Wait, my hand is moving on its own...!”
My breath was crushed. Her grip slowly grew stronger.
I was fine for now, but at this rate, my neck would soon break.
‘I see.’
So this seemed to be the final trial.
What she regretted was life.
The woman regretted the very fact that she was alive.
The task for this stage was probably whether I could change Javert’s heart.
‘Does it want me to give her the will to live again?’
If we failed, it was over.
The woman and I would be trapped in an eternal Nightmare.
“Chief Investigator.”
That was exactly what I wanted.
After all, I had started all this to save you.
A neck like this, I could offer up as many times as needed.
I looked up at you calmly.
“Student Viktor! Leave this place at once...!”
Her eyes looked frightened somehow.
You twitched as if trying to resist the coercive force.
Cold sweat gathered on your forehead, but it was nothing more than a meaningless effort.
Crack-!
A grotesque rupturing sound.
My neck could not withstand her grip and snapped.
Javert’s face turned white.
Even that scene faded away.
‘That hurts more than I thought.’
I died.
And then,
Ding-!
[You have failed to clear Regret ‘Memory’.]
[Restarting the set trauma.]
My vision returned.
I blinked.
‘I wonder if regression feels like this.’
The same air.
The same composition.
The same space.
I was sprawled on the floor, and Javert was strangling me.
I was not the only one who had gone through that rewind.
Javert shouted, pale as death.
“No...! Leave, leave at once!”
“Chief Investigator.”
“Student Viktor, you already completed your trial, did you not?”
“That is correct. If I wanted, I could leave this floor right away.”
“Then hurry and escape...!”
The woman shouted at me to stop getting dragged into this and leave.
She seemed to know because she had experienced the earlier stages.
This hell did not end.
Until the task was completed, it would repeat forever.
If I stayed here, that meant my neck would be broken again and again.
“Student Viktor!”
Divine energy boiled in her palm.
Javert gripped my neck even tighter.
Sizzle.
A sensation like being burned with a hot iron spread through me.
Behind the awful burning pain, my neck bones were squeezed as if they would shatter.
“Leave at once...!”
“I refuse.”
I smiled.
Even as my flesh cooked and my breath stopped, I smiled.
Crack-!
[You have failed to clear Regret ‘Memory’.]
[Restarting the set trauma.]
I died, then came back to life.
My third death was already approaching before my eyes.
Javert was strangling me while urgently pleading for something.
“Chief Investigator.”
I parted my breathless lips.
Haltingly, I assembled the sentence I needed and spoke it.
“Would you... listen to my story for a moment?”
“Leave at once! You have already died twice!”
“I believe I told you I refuse.”
“Even if it is temporary, death is still death! If this kind of experience piles up, your mind cannot possibly remain intact...!”
“Never.”
I smiled.
The flesh at the nape of my neck melted.
“I will never leave you alone.”
Bang.
This time, I think my entire head burst open.
My insides flipped and churned.
[You have failed to clear Regret ‘Memory’.]
[Restarting the set trauma.]
I died and lived.
As always, Javert was strangling me.
“Chief Investigator.”
“Student Viktor, please...!”
Time was infinite.
Because I would not leave this place, or your side.
“So.”
Let us talk.
A deep and sad story.
Even so, a story that lets us live the next day.
A story where I become your life, and you become mine.
“Chief Investigator.”
The reason you must live.
The reason I must save you.
The reason I want to live with you.
Ding-!
[Forgotten Sage's Contract]
-Category: Document
-Grade: A+
-Status: Clean
-Description: A parchment left behind by the ancient sage ‘Anael’. Its effect is...
“Please listen to my story.”
That kind of story, with you.
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