That sensation came again.
Confusion, scrutiny, bewilderment. All the assorted emotions of the person opposite were registering in her awareness, by some means she could not work out, by some means or other.
And the person standing across from her held that same ability.
This was a problem.
It was not as much of a problem as genuine mind-reading would have been, but having her emotions read was quite problem enough.
【I thought I could keep the act up a while longer... should I play dumb here?】
"...Oh, that's right, I'd completely forgotten. To keep anything from going wrong, the Sage of the demon race sealed your memories temporarily."
The strange angel in front of her seemed to think of something all at once, and put her hand back into the shadow she had leaned out of. After a bout of clumsy rummaging, she pulled a peculiar polyhedron out of it.
At first glance, its shape was like some otherworld version of a Rubik's cube, one of those little toys that test memory and observation.
"Mm..."
So it was not that she had inherited none of the original owner's memories on crossing over, but that this portion of them had been sealed away?
That was, unavoidably, a relief.
Granted, for someone who crosses over, inheriting the original owner's memories means being influenced to some degree by that owner's memories and feelings, which often enough leads to doing a great many things against one's own will.
But Seraphia was not worried about that.
Back when she had not yet been Seraphia, across the nearly twenty years of life she had lived, she had suppressed her own thoughts and needs far too many times because of what was going on around her.
And now a new life had arrived.
She took the 【puzzle toy】 from the hands of the angel whose name she still did not know, and as the thing gave off a faint glow it floated up at once in her palm and began, like a Rubik's cube, to solve itself.
Once it had returned to a complete state, pale white points of light flowed out of it, drew close to her body and sank in, and the memories belonging to 【Seraphia】 came slowly back to her.
Through the time it took to digest those memories, there was none of the skull-splitting headache found in the transmigration works she had read before.
Though perhaps that was only because the so-called merging of souls had already happened at some earlier point, or because a body capable of sending a grown man flying on pure physical strength was simply not that delicate.
"Thank you for your trouble, Nephim."
Following the tone and the form of address used in those memories, Miss Angel spoke the name of the person before her, her expression somewhat complicated.
"Thank goodness... it really is you, Big Sister... I was worried there'd be some side effect."
"Mm. It's me. 'Seraphia Vail.'"
The memories flooding in answered a considerable number of her questions, among them the one Miss Angel had been guessing at until now: the reason she would inevitably come to oppose that protagonist of destiny.
She was a monster, the same sort of existence as that little one who had been purified.
Or rather: every angel born into this world is a monster.
It is only that the luckier ones, like Seraphia, come with a flawlessly beautiful form, with beautiful wings and a dignified halo that match the Church's standard exactly.
The unlucky ones come out like that little one, or like Nephim standing here, carrying a malformation that makes ordinary people uncomfortable.
Though from the standpoint of being born a monster in the first place, a complete individual like Seraphia is the one that is anomalous and malformed.
"I'm so sorry, Big Sister... my stomach was empty today and the food in the human world caught my attention, and by the time I caught up with you, I realized the Church's commission was to destroy one of our own kin... I should have gone over sooner and taken her away... she couldn't even talk yet..."
Unlike Chinese, this world's language drew a plain and audible distinction between certain pronouns.
In the mouth of that Executor of the Inquisition, the word used had been 【it】. The person in front of her used 【her】.
Looking closely, Seraphia also noticed that the skin around those black eyes carried a faint red mark. She had been crying before she came.
"..."
Still steeped in her grief, Nephim did not notice Miss Angel's expression at that moment.
【A people who ought not to exist... is that it?】
For reasons unknown, the angels are born into this world as monsters, and the instant one is discovered by the Church it is killed as a blasphemy against the faith. Only the very rarest angels, those whose appearance carries no abnormality at all, are welcomed into the Church as 【Holy Wings】 to be revered and enshrined.
And the deeply ironic part is that an angel, once born, does not merely follow instinct into killing and feeding and destruction the way ordinary monsters do. Like a human, it can be shaped into an individual personality, and every angel possesses the ability to sense the emotions of others through its halo. With training, the emotions of any race at all can be sensed, which makes the overwhelming majority of angels a delicate-minded lot, unusually attentive to how other people feel — however terrifying their outward appearance.
But from humans, this ability can only pick up profound malice, so the surviving angels resolved to protect the kin who had no power, and at the same time to find a way for their kin to go on living beneath the sun.
The final answer to that question was to join the humans' 【mortal enemy】, the side of the demon race.
To wait until enough strength had been gathered, and after the entire human world had been destroyed, to live together with the demons on land beneath the sun.
And she, Seraphia, was a 【saint】 whose heart was bound to every one of her people. For the sake of her kin's future she had gone into the human world, earned the right to become a Holy Wing, and settled in as a mole to wait for the day the moment ripened—
【This really is Infernal Affairs...】
Recalling that very famous film from her previous life, Miss Angel let out a sigh.
Nephim, in front of her, understood it as a sigh of helpless resolve.
"Big Sister... you really are so strong..."
The 【Seraphia】 of those memories was a person of enormous resilience and great gentleness, and so was deeply trusted by everyone around her, and was the sort of existence her previous-life self could only have looked up at.
Though of course she was...
Seraphia Vail, from the moment of her birth, had possessed a flawless appearance, none of the visible defects of her own people, and the power to solve a great many troubles with her own strength.
So it was exactly as that truth she had settled on in her previous life had it.
'Only people born with the conditions to be loved get loved, and only then do they learn to love others. Only people born strong come to enjoy a challenge, and only then do they become the sort of person everyone else sees as unstoppable.'
"Well. In any case, let's get our mission onto a stable footing first."
Almost instantly, Seraphia had made her decision.
【I died once, and I've been handed a second life... this time, whatever else happens, I'm going to live for myself.】
"Mm! Understood. I'll help with your work, Big Sister, and carry information for you."
Nephim rubbed at the corners of her eyes, working to put on her usual serious face.
【But I have no intention of being that 'mole'.】
Seraphia maintained the smile on the surface, soothing the person in front of her.
The original 【Seraphia】 was a born strong one, a born recipient of love, and so she could carry other people's expectations, and wanted to answer them.
But that outlook had nothing whatsoever to do with the person now occupying this body.
Those malformed faces in the memories only made a person uncomfortable. In the end, what reason did she have to stake her own life for these people born defective, and fight a battle against that world's protagonist that she was certain to lose?
As a Holy Wing of the Church now, so long as nothing went wrong during her probationary period, she would certainly go on to live as someone revered.
'Lady Holy Wing! Please, take this!'
During the day, a townsman smiling with all his teeth had pressed a delicious little snack she could not name into her hands.
That had been the first time since her birth that she had felt human goodwill so directly, the sweet smell of it very nearly the smell of happiness.
"Mm. But until things settle down, don't do anything unnecessary, now."
Seraphia took the other girl's hands gently in her own. Hands no different from an ordinary person's, carrying warmth no different from an ordinary person's—
And then she deliberately overlooked the faint trembling in them, produced by a grief that had not yet gone.
Because she only wanted to live for herself now.
The plan from here was to build a good relationship with that protagonist of destiny, and then sell her own 【kin】 for a good price.
TL Note: 【it】 / 【her】 — in the narrator's native Chinese these two pronouns are written differently but pronounced identically, so the distinction she hears here is one her old language could never have carried in speech.