The system flashed in the corner of Haru’s vision:
```
[Target Selected: Flavius Elegantius]
[Gar Kit Module: Available]
[Processing temporary installation...]
```
"How?" Flavius asked curiously.
"I can’t believe I’m doing this again..." Haru thought, extending his hand.
"It will be for a brief ten seconds... but you’ll see."
```
[Module Selected: Gar’s Eyes]
[Ready for temporary installation]
```
Flavius shook Haru’s hand.
```
[Installing: Gar’s Eyes]
[Compatibility: 2.0%]
[WARNING]
```
Flavius felt a little embarrassed. "And now? It was a pact, I thought you’d transfer your mana to so I could feel what’s from... another... worl..."
He stopped.
He started seeing numbers on things. Floating bars. Nas on objects.
He let go of Haru’s hand and looked around the room like a child discovering a new world.
"It’s... you, right?" He pointed to the air where he saw the interface.
"Yes. This is how gars see the world."
"This is definitely not a trick of his... I don’t feel any trace of illusions, nor mana being processed," Flavius thought.
Flavius read a blue bar floating above Haru’s head. "MP...?"
The na automatically expanded: PLAYER MANA.
Then he saw another: HP - HEALTH POINTS.
"What are these things!? Can you see... the amount of mana!?"
"We can see things and their limits." Haru explained. "Knowing how many tis we need to hit. Knowing what’s valuable. And more."
```
[Module Removed by User]
```
Haru almost felt dizzy, staggering.
The vision Flavius was having slowly disappeared.
He also felt slightly dizzy... and stared at his hands with a strange expression, half envy, half fascination, half desire.
"To be able to do that... if I had..."
He looked at Haru differently now and sat down slowly.
"MP... Player Mana..." Flavius murmured. "So you’re the player? A gar?"
Haru sighed. "Yes, I am..."
"So that ans this is a ga!?" Flavius interrupted, his voice rising. "And you, the Gars, are the ones who play, and we’re just re... pawns?"
"No. Even chess pawns are moved." Flavius corrected himself quietly. "So we’re just little gifts then? No! Even little gifts are moved!"
Flavius stood there bewildered, almost having a breakdown.
"NPCs..." Haru said, half-sighing, head down. "You’re NPCs."
"NPCs?" Flavius repeated.
"Non-playable characters. We can’t play them. Well..."
"What do you an ’well’?!"
Haru took a deep breath. "So of you don’t exist anymore..."
Heavy pause.
"Did you know the na Arwin Corvus?"
"Arwin...?" Flavius thought. "Da Corvus?"
"Yes. He doesn’t exist anymore. He was kind of taken over by another soul. By one of us."
He saw the confusion growing on Flavius’s face.
"What I’m trying to say is: you NPCs weren’t supposed to be playable, that is, controlled... but so gars, the ones I’ve t, are playing you. Your soul leaves and gives way to ours. Then it’s Arwin Corvus physically, but with a different soul."
"Does that an YOU!?"
"NO!" Haru cut in quickly. "I ca different from those I encountered. I appeared with my whole body and soul. There is no native Haru Mizuki. There is only ... When I was born here, I was already a complete . I didn’t replace any NPC."
Yukihi tugged at Haru’s sleeve. "If daddy isn’t daddy... who is daddy?"
Flavius looked confused. "So you are you who were you... but who were you?"
"I was and I still AM !" Haru explained, frustrated.
"But you said that others aren’t them..."
"Those were NPCs who beca Gars!...and...and they aren’t them, they are gars now."
"And you?"
"I’ve always been a Gar! I an, before I was a gar behind the screen, now I’m a... a... inside the processor, so I always have been!"
"But..."
"Stop!" Haru held his head.
...Ti passed. Haru explained what she thought she should or could.
Flavius finally nodded, still processing, his gaze distant.
"So... that’s all we are. We exist, but..."
Haru corrected, looking at Yukihi: "I think you exist. Maybe not before... but now..."
The way he looked at his daughter was too real to be just a ga.
Flavius realized this.
"Sign here." Flavius pulled out a paper, an official adoption docunt.
"I want to be called Haru!" Yukihi suddenly shouted.
"Why do you want to be called Haru..." Haru distractedly picked up the pen.
Yukihi grabbed his hand. "NO! I want to be called Haru!"
"Stop..." Haru already knew this would lead to a fight. "You couldn’t even write my na."
"I can read! I can write! Mom has been teaching !"
"No, you couldn’t..."
Haru wrote his na in kanji (Japanese) on the palm of his own hand; it was nostalgic to write like that.
春水 (Haru Mizuki)
"That’s not your na! Those aren’t even letters!" She turned his hand towards Flavius. "I want to be called Haru!"
"Yeah..." Flavius said, sowhat embarrassed, "...I presu you don’t know how to write in our language yet?"
"Not at all! I know how to write and read in your language!" Haru retorted. "I don’t know how, but I know. This is in Japanese, my language."
"Japanese?" Flavius blinked. "You’re from Japan? I thought gars were from another world!?"
"No, each gar has their own country, so are even from the sa country, but... ...Wait..." Haru froze. "Japan is here!?"
...Monts later they were looking at a large map spread out on the table.
Haru looked perplexed; it was strange compared to what he was used to seeing.
"It looks ancient... the ti of great cataclysms..." he rembered from geography class at school.
Continents in slightly different positions. Familiar nas, but not exactly the sa.
"Can you write my na in Japanese?" Flavius asked like a child. "Right here." He pointed to the edge of the map.
"NPCs..." Haru sighed and wrote.
フラヴィウス (Furaviusu)
"Oooh~ how beautiful! Does it have a aning?"
"No..."
"Mine too! Yukihi!"
"Now you accept being Yukihi?" Haru said, writing her na:
雪姫 (Yukihi: Snow Princess)
"I think it ans ’Snow Princess’."
"That explains the color of your hair," said Flavius, marveling at Yukihi.
"Okay, now I can sign..."
When he went to sign, Yukihi took his hand again.
"I want to be Haru..." She stopped. She looked into his eyes. "I don’t even rember being called that... I... I..."
Haru stopped and looked closely at her face. Yukihi wanted to cry.
He thought, "Maybe ’Yukihi’ brings back bad mories... even in the ga she’s a powerful and tragic boss. She wants to be new. But ’Haru...?’"
He sighed.
"Okay. Go ahead, write then."
He turned the paper over and gave it to her. "Write Haru-Yukihi Mizuki."
"I LIKE IT!" She took the pen excitedly.
She wrote with childlike but neat handwriting.
When she finished: "From now on I am Haru-Yukihi! But you can call Yuki, or Yukihi, or Haru!"
"You had the privilege of choosing your na... how envious," thought Haru.
"So, Mr. Haru..." Flavius put the paper away, "...we’re done for today."
"That’s it for today?"
"Hahahaha! Did you think the questions were over? I even have proposals! Hehehe~"
"If that’s how it’s going to be then..." Haru suddenly looked serious. "In that case... could you do a favor?"
Monts later they dropped Yuki off at ho, said goodbye to Kira who would be right back, and got into Flavius’s carriage.
They headed to the Cathedral.
They entered a room where students were studying, like a college auditorium, with rows of benches, a professor at the front explaining advanced theology.
Haru scanned the room looking... And found her.
There. Third row. Black and white habit. Black hair tied back. Perfect posture.
The nun.
Haru nodded to Flavius in confirmation.
"Just as I predicted!" Flavius whispered. "See? Young nuns in the Cathedral an they’re students from this Academy."
She patted Haru on the shoulder as she left. "I won’t tell your wife anything, hehehe~..."
She had completely misunderstood, thinking Haru had co there to betray Isabela, his fake wife.
Haru didn’t even answer. "What the hell is wrong with him?"
She stood there observing the class from afar.
The nun was focused, taking notes, listening attentively, totally absorbed in her studies, but then... She felt sothing, turned her head in Haru’s specific direction.
Haru’s entire body shuddered, the spirits within him scread.
*DANGER!* *DEVOUR!* *RUN!*
A cacophony of terror and hunger mixed together.
Their eyes t for a second.
Violet eting gray.
She froze.
Then she turned quickly, pretending not to have seen, returning to her books, but her hands trembling slightly as she held the pen.
Haru smiled. "You’re the next waifu." [ADOPTION COMPLETE]
◊ Yukihi officially renad: Haru-Yukihi Mizuki
◊ New target identified: Mysterious Nun
...Flavius left the Cathedral, his mind still stuck on Haru’s words.
That feeling of seeing the weakness in things. That vision. Numbers. Bars. Limits.
He got into the carriage but couldn’t stop thinking. "So, the boy knows how many tis to hit until I break..."
He paused, processing.
"I understand now why Baron Valtherion took this boy... a weapon for his house. And there’s nothing that can be done until he’s caught by the Custodians..."
"Stop." He said to the coachman.
The carriage stopped and Flavius got out. "I’ll be late. I’ll co walking."
The coachman nodded, confused, and continued on his way.
Flavius began walking through the streets of the Capital, already sowhat distraught.
"...There are things here... that weren’t born here." He slowly turned his head back, looking at the crowd. "And so of these things... can... occupy others?"
"Now I’m wondering... when will a Gar take over my body?"
He stopped in front of a shop he hadn’t seen before but had heard of: Iron Prostheses.
"Interesting..." he murmured, entering.
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