[Your importance and standing in Theresa’s heart both rose after this night.] [At the same time, because your final words had granted a sense of security to Theresa—who had lost her family’s protection long ago—a seed of unusual emotion was silently planted within her heart.] [But you did not perceive this.] [After speaking so much extra this night, you lay awake for a long time.] [Because you discovered that Theresa had begun to diverge from the path of your own past growth.] [She had made a compromise that you had never made.
And you also realized you had given her excessive mercy and shelter.] […It shouldn’t have been like this.] [Theresa—this girl who was almost identical to your past self.
Though she differed from your past in having an elder brother, she should have, under your arrangements, walked the road you once walked.] [Under your arrangements and through the game, she should have become another you, another Manchester, even another…
Grand Duchess of Manchester.] [It shouldn’t be like this…] [It shouldn’t be like this…] [You realized you had been too merciful.
You shouldn’t have been.
Theresa had to walk the road you once walked; otherwise, this game would be utterly meaningless.] [You were very clear on where the problem lay.] [Theresis.
This Sarkaz slave you had casually brought along, originally intended as a mere sacrificial pawn, had become the soft spot that led Theresa to choose compromise.] [Perhaps you could simply kill him, and then watch as a child who once had her last family member was pushed to the extreme, personally shaping another version of yourself in this world…] [Thinking this, you picked up your cane and soundlessly made your way to a room on the first floor.
You gazed at Theresa and Theresis, huddled together and sleeping, pressed close to one another.] [A voice in your heart told you: Kill Theresis.
Then make Theresa the next Manchester…] “No way…
Didn’t I already choose to spare Theresis?
Could it be that Big Theres is destined to be sacrificed in the simulation no matter what?” “And my sim-self’s inner psyche is way too twisted and pathological, isn’t it?
She’s that obsessed with turning Her Majesty into another version of herself?
That’s completely pointless—no two identical leaves can exist in this world…
Does my sim-self not even understand that?” Watching the text and accompanying CG images the simulator displayed, Ecaros—lying in bed—stared at the very same ‘Ecaros’ who had just given Theresa a sense of security moments ago, now holding a cane and about to off Big Theres.
Her heart was a complex mess.
But considering ‘Ecaros’s childhood experiences and the self-doubt she’d developed during her travels abroad, the girl suddenly felt that this majorly twisted behavior currently unfolding in the simulator wasn’t entirely unacceptable.
She was, after all, a twisted villainess raised in a twisted environment.
Two-faced and emotionally volatile—that was perfectly logical.
Thank goodness I was picked up and brought back to Laterano back then.
Thank you, Mama Luciana…
Though she believed her childhood self wouldn’t have become like her simulated counterpart, Ecaros still felt grateful to the person who had taken her from that battlefield.
Because honestly—if she had survived on that battlefield, Ecaros felt her personality might have been several times worse, even more horrifying, than her sim-self’s.
Thank goodness she had met good people.
Patting her ample chest in relief, Ecaros inwardly praised the foster mother who had given her a second lease on life, and decided to eat her little cousin’s ice cream at tomorrow’s family dinner.
Then, with slightly excited satisfaction, she continued watching the simulation.
But obviously, the choice Ecaros had made would not go to waste—otherwise the branching point would have lost its meaning entirely.
[Yet, just as you decided to swing the cane down, you caught, by the faint moonlight, the peaceful smile at the corner of Theresa’s lips.] [That was also something your past self had never possessed—something you had once yearned for but never obtained…] [You hesitated.
You didn’t know if you should abandon the thought of killing Theresis to thoroughly enrage Theresa, to push her completely onto the road you once walked.] [Your reason demanded you kill Theresis.] [But your emotions warned you—if you did that, perhaps some things could never be undone.] [The game you spoke of would, because of your action, no longer possess the fairness you recognized.] [Your honor as a noble would be stained.
The final things you cherished would become worthless because of your own hand.] [At the same time…
you would utterly lose the chance to fully possess Theresa.] [She would hate you.
Just as you once did.] [But…
wasn’t that also what you longed for?] [To create another self.
Another Manchester…] […] [In the end, you fell into internal conflict.] [That twisted, hollow heart could not produce an answer.] [No matter which choice you made, you would obtain a result you wanted.
Yet you couldn’t make either choice.] [Perhaps you could consider this contradictory question again in the future, and choose then.
But…
Theresa was truly drifting further and further from your past self.
This you could not accept.] […Your heart wavered.] [And at that moment—perhaps because the door you’d opened let a draft into the warm room, or perhaps the candlelight filtering through the door crack was too bright—] [Theresa groggily woke up.
Looking at you, she murmured something indistinct, and then, without any reservation, opened her arms toward you.] [You instinctively met that embrace.] [And Theresa, seemingly freshly woken, wrapped her arms around your snow-white neck, clinging onto you, pressing tightly together with you.] [Very warm, and very soft.
To you, wearing only a thin nightgown, it felt as though you were holding a piece of warm, soft jade.] [Her slender tail also instinctively coiled gently around your arm—tender, yet giving your arm a faint constricting sensation.] [You froze.
But when you intended to toss Theresa back onto the bed, the girl held you tightly.
And you saw that peaceful, gentle smile on Theresa’s face.] [In the end, you stilled.
The half-asleep Theresa curled up in your arms, pillowed against the unbound swell of your chest, and peacefully fell asleep in your embrace.] [You held this Theresa, gazing at her sleeping face under the moonlight for a long, long time…] [You remembered yourself, once sleeping in your mother’s embrace.
Back then, you too had felt such peace.] [In a daze, you seemed to faintly glimpse the shadow of your true self.] [Though that silhouette might have only existed for an instant—might have only been an illusion—your heart had already grown calm.] [And at last, the answer given by reason was sealed deep within your heart by your own hands.
Perhaps your heart had already found its answer the moment it began to waver.] [You were merely searching for an excuse—an excuse to calm your twisted heart, to make it accept.] [And now, you had found it.] [“Don’t disappoint me, Theresa…” you whispered softly by Theresa’s ear—as if speaking to her, yet also as if speaking to yourself.] [Finally, you gently laid Theresa back beside Theresis.
You carefully rubbed the tip of Theresa’s slender tail.
After that tail tip had playfully wound around your fingers several times, it finally released your arm and curled back into the warm bed.] [Then, you covered Theresa with the blanket, tucking it in snugly.
At last, you left the room, quietly pulling the door shut.
But before you had taken more than a few steps, you turned back, stuffed Theresa’s tail—which had somehow peeked out again—back under the covers, and lit the fireplace in the corner.
Only then did you truly leave the little room belonging to Theresa and Theresis.] [The next day, upon waking, you also conceived of a solution that would satisfy both sides.] [And so, right before Theresis’ clueless, innocent eyes, you personally handed him—along with a letter of recommendation—into the care of the headmaster of the Royal Victorian Army Academy.] [Thus, this boy of merely twelve years entered the institution that trained military strategists and generals, becoming a member of the militarized, closed-managed boarding youth cadet class.] [This way, Theresa would be able to walk the same road as you…
right?] [You thought so.
But watching Theresa, standing beside you with a gentle smile, seeing off her tearful brother as he was led away by four burly military men, a faint doubt inexplicably arose in your heart.]