Day 47 concluded after Manager A affirmed his will to Abel. Only three days remained until the launch of the Seed of Light. Ye Lan, Angela, the entire company—everyone had taken another step toward escaping the time loop.
Abel, the personality representing Ayin's desire to abandon the plan, had vanished. Manager A was now only two fragments away from recovering his complete self: Abram and Adam.
With Abel's disappearance, the environment of the Architecture Team had dissolved further. By the time Ye Lan started work today, there was nowhere left for him to sit and rest in the team's main lounge.
***
"I have to admit something. In truth, I'm much more fragile than everyone thinks."
A didn't know where he was. He was lying on a lawn beside a familiar woman whose face he couldn't see, listening to her speak words that felt like a distant memory.
"I always stand before everyone full of confidence, saying things like 'Leave it to me,' or 'Follow me.'"
"But I was never brave enough to be certain of what I was doing..."
"If someone were to get hurt or fall into hardship because of my actions... I know I would end up hating myself for it."
"And that... is why I asked you for help..."
"No matter what I've become, please... finish the work that I started."
"The human heart is soft and fragile. Even a single shock can shatter it, and mine is no different... But you, you can bear all of that malice."
"The one true path remains unchanged. Otherwise, it wouldn't be you, right?"
A profound sadness washed over A. He opened his mouth, trying to make a sound, to beg the woman to stop, but he could do nothing but listen.
The woman fell silent for a moment before asking him, "Are you hesitating?"
"When I grew afraid of the path I had chosen, I too began to have doubts."
"It feels like... photosynthesis in a plant."
"Don't be so tense. Close your eyes..."
Even as A desperately tried to control his body, to see the woman's face clearly, his eyelids fluttered shut against his will.
"Yes, just like that. Let your body relax as much as possible, empty your mind... It tickles a bit, doesn't it? But you have to bear it."
"And now... disappear."
In that instant, with his eyes closed, A saw her face. He saw her crimson eyes...
Though his mind held no memories of her, he knew, instinctively, that she was Carmen. The vessel for all his emotions, the person he loved most.
The next moment, everything was consumed by an endless white light. A closed his eyes, and in doing so, closed them once more.
When he opened them again, he was standing before a massive tank filled with nutrient fluid.
A brain, connected to a spinal column and a full nervous system, floated within.
Waking from the dream, Manager A knew what this brain and its nervous tissue were. It was Carmen, cruelly and mercilessly dismembered and repurposed into a bucket, used to dredge what they needed from the Well. It was the heaviest sin he had ever committed.
The remains of Carmen, living tissue trapped between life and death, filled his vision. Memories surfaced with a ferocious, violent surge. A man appeared before him, wearing a wrinkled dress shirt under a tattered, worn-out lab coat.
The man's face was covered in stubble, his hair messy and matted, clearly having neglected his appearance for a long time. He looked at A with a defeated expression, and after a moment, he asked:
"Do you remember those days, when we could still feel the warmth of the sun?"
"Now, we've become so cold... so cold that we've forgotten to cherish such precious memories... No, perhaps warmth was never meant for us. You feel it too, don't you?"
The horrifying memories of failed experiments, of people dying one after another, flooded his mind. They clung to him like vengeful demons, demanding to know why he hadn't died yet.
In the midst of A's state, Angela's indifferent voice echoed through every corner of the facility. Day 48 had officially begun. Having recovered a part of himself, A did his best to ignore the man before him and the memories reverberating in his heart, focusing all his energy on directing the day's work...
***
Today, Ye Lan was once again in charge of managing the entire Architecture Team. On the bright side, the two new Abnormalities assigned to the department were both Tool-type, meaning he only had to manage the same four he'd been dealing with for the past two days.
Of those four, Happy Teddy Bear couldn't breach, and he had already completed the final observations for both Melting Love and the Queen of Hatred. Even if a Meltdown occurred, neither would cause a major crisis.
So, for today, there was only one Abnormality he needed to focus on. Actually, scratch that, he didn't need to worry about the one he hadn't dealt with yesterday.
Before Ye Lan entered the locker room, he was met by Geburah, the Sephirah of the Disciplinary Team, known to many players as "Red." After a brief chat, Geburah informed him of something that might or might not be bad news: that damned WhiteNight had swapped its containment unit with F-01-57, Little Red Riding Hooded Mercenary—the one he hadn't touched yet.
God only knew why A kept WhiteNight around instead of sending it back to the Well. But in any case, with today's challenge trial set to damage the harm-response system and multiply two random damage types by five, having an employee who could easily achieve a "Good" work result with WhiteNight was, all things considered, a positive.
After all, a "Good" result would cause WhiteNight to heal the physical and mental health of all employees in the facility.
Bidding farewell to Geburah, Ye Lan changed into the [Paradise Lost] E.G.O. suit, obtained from suppressing WhiteNight. It was ironic that the E.G.O. forged from such a unique Abnormality was also the perfect equipment for managing it.
Entering the main lounge of the Architecture Team, Ye Lan found the room had become a melted, distorted landscape, as if designed by an abstract master like Picasso. To avoid touching the liquified furniture, he stood at the entrance of a side corridor, quietly awaiting Manager A's instructions.
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