Sirius felt unsettled, though he chose not to dwell much on it.
They are, in the end, a contract between a boss and an employee.
Whether she treated him as a friend, as an employee, or something else, it wasn’t his turn to speak up.
Though it would hurt if he wasn’t even a friend.
He was honest about that part.
‘Wouldn’t it be easier to straight up ask her?’
Ironically, what he thought was the exact same thing the First Mirror was thinking.
‘Won’t it be better if they talk together?’
At this point, it had shed its ‘artificialness’, gaining a humane personality.
It had seen how Sirius treats Herta and vice versa.
The two had their own thoughts, yet nobody chose to confront the other.
No matter how much they understood each other, a “doubt” will never be resolved without a confrontation, so much so that this ‘urge’ had awakened its first signs of humanity back when Herta asked it to discreetly monitor Sirius.
At the center of all this, the First Mirror felt how it was to live between divorced parents.
Thus, it thought of a brilliant idea after three whole years:
‘Should I intervene?’
Unbeknownst to Sirius, the silent First Mirror beside him was cooking up a plan.
He went back to his professional side, calling forth the virtual screens accessible by the helmsman of the space station—the Captain, per se.
‘Instead of Hyperion, I am driving Herta’s Space Station.
If everything is as expected, Earth’s still recovering from the Herrscher of the End.
But then, there’s that different time ratio between worlds…’
Sirius’ idle thoughts ensued while doing his work.
He checked on some co-dependent systems that needed troubleshooting, checked on the fuselage of each sector, and so on.
His life on the Herta Space Station was that of a Supervisor.
His crew consisted of nothing but robots doing other work.
Admittedly, it would have been more interesting had they been the Herta puppets.
‘Speaking of robots, when will she build her puppet army?’
Recalling his ‘privilege’ to check on Herta’s research logs, he asked the First Mirror:
“Can I see all of her queued research?”
“Certainly. They are the three-layered analysis of the anti-organic equation, the general framework analysis of Scepters, studies on the fourth dimension…” It told him a lot of interesting research topics.
“…the Longevity Retention Project, study on the Borisin Race’s vitality… the creation of Puppet Herta…”
Two of the things Sirius heard made him pause.
‘The longevity project.’
He had almost forgotten about this one.
He was only twenty-four, at the prime of his life.
He hasn’t thought much about old age, especially when he died at eighteen in his past life.
‘The game said that she developed it in her senior years.’
Sirius knew full well Herta would come up with something incredulous to delay her aging.
She would still look in her thirties when she was already in her seventies.
By the time the longevity restoration project was over, she could return to her prime years.
Still…
‘A mature Herta in her thirties.’
Sirius could not deny the expectations rising from his heart.
(Mature Herta, Source: https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/8311570)
Both the mirror and the man could not stop daydreaming.
*****
The body is the carrier of mind, the container of one’s ‘self’.
It was inseparable from one another, but the same could not be said in Herta’s eyes.
Through a series of operations, she could change the container of her ‘self’, momentarily projecting her ‘mind’ to another location.
It was one of the core technologies of her soon-to-be puppet army.
Woosh-!
A faint breeze of fresh air brushed past the ball-jointed doll.
The white dress she wore swayed along the wind, with the ends of her black overcoat moving alongside it.
Her shoulders were exposed, revealing visible robotic-like arms.
The suppleness of her white skin made her indistinguishable from a real girl, save for the obvious fine lines on her body.
The scent of grass entered her simulated olfactory senses.
The wide area of grass was filled with countless tombstones, a testament of The Blue’s previous tragedy.
The one she stood on was noticeably older, having signs of weathering.
It was present before the earthquake struck.
The grass around them was cut short, and there was a basket of fresh assorted flowers nearby.
Evidently, someone was taking care of them.
She paused for a long while.
She did not visit this grave as much, taking several years of interval.
At times, she found a basket of flowers; on other occasions, she did not.
She thought it was one of her parents’ former friends, but now that she was an Emanator, she saw enough clues to tell who it was.
‘You…’
The doll woman did not speak the entire time.
Her gaze remained on the tombstone.
Nobody knew what she thought of. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Before leaving, she left behind the lab-grown clematis flower attached to her beret.
It was organic, yet it would never wilt nor age.
The woman, Herta, stored the doll back to a secure base down on The Blue, before her split consciousness returned to her real body.
A flicker of light emerged on Herta’s eyes.
She visited The Blue while conducting an experiment on the Space Station, an operation that was otherwise difficult, if not outright impossible for most.
It took some time to determine the results of her experiment—a failure.
Herta recorded its logs before leaving the room.
Woosh-!
Woosh-!
She passed through a bunch of automatic-opening glass doors.
Her footsteps produced a rhythmic sound as her heel tapped on the glass and metal surface.
Before long, she reached the main bridge of the space station—the ‘Master Control Zone’.
Tap.
Tap.
…
Hearing the footsteps behind him, Sirius looked at its direction.
There, he saw Herta.
She was the same as always.
Her outfit never changed.
He knew her identical sets of clothing stored in her closet.
He was expecting a casual question regarding the space station’s workload, but he was destined to be caught off guard now.
“Since when did you start visiting my parents’ graves?”
“That… from the time I got hospitalized.”
Sirius felt slightly guilty while explaining.
It was something he did behind her back, after all.
“I heard about your parents from my mentor.” At his mention, Sirius’ eyes dimmed slightly.
“He told me your parents were part of the team that rescued the stranded space ship.”
He vividly recalled the memories of seeing that news back when he was five.
The Federation’s focus on building space ships was the trend back then.
However, it was also then that problems cropped up.
One of the space ships assigned to transport metals from another planet lost contact on The Blue.
Its population was in the hundreds.
It turned out that its communications system and flight system were fried due to ‘technical’ mistakes.
A rescue team was soon dispatched.
Just as they fixed it, another round of explosions occurred on the transport ship, killing dozens of people.
Ironically, it was the space ship itself that had problems, not the pilots.
It was built wrongly as the communication and flight systems were connected, instead of having two separate power systems.
A system error appeared on the flight system, prompting the ship’s nuclear reactor to increase its output.
It short-circuited a bunch of communication systems first, which led to the loss of contact.
Later on, it spiralled even more out of control, damaging the ship’s navigation systems.
The system error was resolved, but not without blowing a section of the space ship.
The people who took care of it all died, being sent off with honorable deaths.
It partially mirrored that of the Chernobyl Disaster back in his previous life, except that it was the power plant itself that had the problem, not the personnel.
In the end, another rescue team was dispatched to tow the transport ship, which took several months of effort.
Herta’s parents happened to be a part of those who died to it.
Honestly, when Sirius had first heard about it, he was caught off guard.
Herta never shared her past, nor did he bother to look it up.
Though if that was something known publicly, he would have already known.
This level of ‘secrecy’ made him aware there was a lot more to Herta’s life than he had imagined.
It was also why he hid his knowledge of it, as it would make him look too nosy.
He breached Herta’s privacy, after all.
Now that he had been discovered, he had no ideas of hiding it.
Sirius knew Herta would see through his lies—just as he was always read like an open-book.
“I… sorry if that made you feel unwell.”
As much as Sirius wanted to dodge Herta’s gaze, he chose not to.
He wasn’t scared of accountability.
Herta did not say anything, merely stepping closer towards him.
Doubts appeared in her heart.
The fluctuations she felt when she realized it was Sirius was something she could not rationally explain.
Why did she keep Sirius by her side?
It all started with her interest in him as a subject.
She wanted to see if he would be the same with others, or that he would prove her expectations wrong.
Bluntly speaking, she wanted to see if he would fall, just like the drunkard who threatened her life back in the party.
Herta received an answer when he became a Pathstrider.
Sirius’ enlightenment made her treat him as an equal—as a trusted friend.
Since then, Herta noticed so many things she previously had not. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
His willingness to admit his mistakes and his ignorance was one thing.
His ability to understand her needs was another.
When the earthquake struck, his first thought was to fetch Herta.
He also cooked up the food that she found satisfactory.
He did all of her trivial work without saying another word.
When she needed someone, she always found Sirius, and he was always there.
Nobody understood her as much as he did, which was why Screwllum pointed their relationship as enviable.
Not only was Madam Herta a step above other Geniuses in terms of intellectual prowess, she also had someone caring enough who makes her breakfast!
The question in her heart, one which lasted for three whole years…
She was determined to see through it now.
Herta stopped right in front of him.
The distance between the two was close.
Their height difference existed, though Herta’s soft heeled-boots closed most of the gap.
It was through her amazing spatial awareness that Sirius’ face hadn’t struck her huge brimmed hat.
At close proximity, he caught a whiff of sweetness.
It was reminiscent of lavender, but he was sure it was not.
It was soft and gentle to the nose, carrying a light fragrance that put his tense mind at ease.
But when he saw the top of Herta’s chest from a higher angle, it all turned to nought.
‘W-why is she…’
His heart skipped a beat, hanging in tension.
“Do you want to know…” Her lips parted and pursed, a trace of hesitation appearing on her beautiful pair of eyes.
“…what a kiss tastes like?”
“Ah?”
Sirius’ brain short-circuited.
His eyes turned blank, trembling as he saw a tinge of red emerge on Herta’s otherwise calm face.
His throat ran dry, not knowing how he should respond.
Fortunately, Herta was no ordinary woman.
She is an Emanator!
Before Sirius could speak of his answer, she already saw through his thoughts.
If he didn’t like her, he would instinctively feel averse, yet he did not!
When it comes to research, Herta wasn’t one to be indecisive.
She placed both her hands on his collar, and then dragged Sirius towards her.
Their noses happened to hit each other, but she acted as if she did not care.
She kept on pulling him.
Eventually, her lips touched his.
The soft sensation invaded Sirius’ brain, making it numb.
His eyes saw hers closely—enough to see her irises shake.
She, too, was stunned.
Just like him.
Herta’s proactiveness did not make her immune to a girl’s first kiss.
Sirius felt a tinge of warmth transmitted from her, along with a slightly sticky and slippery sensation.
‘I… kissed…’
Only at this moment did his soul come back to his body.
Sirius’ strong core prevented him from falling over.
His full, undivided attention, went straight to Herta’s face up close—and the lips touching his.
It was his first kiss too!
For five entire minutes, the two stayed in this awkward yet romantic position.
Herta was the one to let go, her chest heaving up and down.
Sirius remained in a daze, recalling her words about ‘tasting’ a kiss.
Herta’s lips tasted nothing, yet it felt so sickeningly sweet.
It left him wanting for more, though his embarrassment was the first to kick in, followed by confusion.
In this moment of daze, Sirius asked what he always wanted to know:
“What are we?”
“I suppose it makes someone stupid.” Herta paused, looking at him somewhat unbelievably.
“Love, that is.”
Seeing his stupefied look, she knew all of her words were true.
Love does make someone stupid!
“Are you saying I am a casual woman? That I would kiss someone randomly?”
Her annoyed tone was enough to set Sirius straight.
“No, no, of course not. You are the Herta.”
Sirius already had an answer to his question, and Herta saw straight to it.
“Good. If you hadn’t answered it properly, I might have to operate on your brain.”
“…”
She did not leave him, as he had expected, but instead drew closer to him again.
“One isn’t enough. Let’s do it again.”
“…Kissing?”
“Hum.”
Several more ‘experiments’ ensued, and the forgotten First Mirror made sure to record all of them.