Matt POV
"Bubble..."
"sway... sway.. sway..."
My eyelids feel heavy and damp.
"Schwarz, wake up! At this rate, you’ll disappear again!"
A muffled and distant voice echoed sowhere far away.
Huh... who is Schwarz...
"Wake up! You promised !"
Promised...
Promised...
...I don’t rember promising anything.
"Where did your resolve from that day go?!"
Resolve...?
?
If I had sothing like that... my life wouldn’t have turned out like this.
...I must be dreaming again.
"Dammit,"
"splash!..."
"Bubble.... bubble....."
"Bub... glub... w-a-a-a-ke... u-u-u-p... "
My body was shaken rigorously, yet all I could feel was a gentle swaying motion.
It felt like I was sleeping in an automatic swaying hammock.
...Mmn...
This went on for a good 10 minutes until it slowly stopped.
Magic hammock... did you break?
Don’t worry... I’ll fix you later...
"Bubble... bubble..."
"... N...oo... ch...oi...ce....."
"Bubble.... bubble.....bubble....."
.....
Warm..
Sothing soft pressed against my lips.
Instinctually, I clamped my mouth shut, but I couldn’t stop it. It slipped inside and started to move, wiggling against before wrapping tightly around my tongue.
I couldn’t think, I could only feel the way it tangled with . I felt like I was being violated, yet I didn’t even want to fight anymore because of the euphoria that ca with it.
I could feel a thick warmth starting to burn at the top of my head.
_________________________________
[Universal System Override]
[Code: 0003]
[User: Verde]
[Granting temporary shared access to Verde’s Existence]
[Stabilizing host condition...]
[Transferring necessary narrative...]
[Warning: Partial existence overlap initiated]
[Sustaining user through external life-link]
_________________________________
...Huh?
Did I... forget to turn off my alarm...?
A sharp light cut through everything.
A translucent screen ford, close enough that I couldn’t look away.
_________________________________
[User: Verde is sending a ssage within the link]
"Is the debt you promised to settle with that boy a lie?"
_________________________________
Debt....
I don’t have such a thing. I cut ties with everyone.
....
But I guess, I do have one...
One that I cannot repay enough with my life alone.
Right....
The reason why I insist on living this pathetic life is to see his story reach a happy end.
_________________________________
[Universal System is online]
[Code: 00##]
[User: ########]
[Stabilizing host condition...]
[Complete.]
[User: Weiss is sending a ssage within the link]
[Welco back, World Rejector]
[Retrieval of access to the Universal System function in process]
[Complete.]
_________________________________
As I slowly regained consciousness, the first thing I saw was exactly what I expected.
It was a blurry, glitched green silhouette, but I could see her much more clearly now.
Back then, all I could make out was a shadow. Now, I could see fragnts of her hair and even her physical form.
Her hair was incredibly long and straight, flowing wildly through the water.
....
Huh?
Wait, water?
"Gurgle! ...Gurgle!!"
What the heck? Had I been sleeping underwater this entire ti?
Panicked, I thrashed around, trying to swim toward the surface, but Verde stopped .
She swayed her hand, leaving behind green luminescent particles that shaped themselves into letters.
"Calm down. We are in a garden."
Huh? How did it make sense for us to be in a garden?
Suddenly, the underwater scenery shifted instantly into the backyard garden from my previous world.
!!?
What just happened?
"Welco back, Schwarz."
"Verde?"
So, your mory of remains. It seems your authority has completely left you.
"Why are you here? Why did you save ?"
"Weiss discovered our connection. As shaful as it is, I am forced to be his eyes upon you."
She flicked her hair with her hands, and the strands twisted themselves into the shape of a drill.
"Beyond that, I am not obliged to say anything more., you’ll just forget it all anyway."
I wanted to refute that, but given my circumstances, I knew I shouldn’t.
I looked around....
It truly was the garden from my previous world, the one my mother had tended to in her limited free ti.
I walked toward my favorite section.
A bush of white baby’s breath. Beside them, daisies grew in bulk.
I crouched down and took a whiff.
The nostalgia hit imdiately. This felt too real to be an illusion.
Verde stepped up behind and tapped my back.
"This is not an illusion. We are in your sea of consciousness. Everything you have experienced and rembered will be made real here, depending on your thoughts."
"So that’s why you said we were in a garden. It’s to shift the landscape. But how did you know I had this mory?"
"Has your authority left your mory foggy again? You offered it yourself during the coming-of-age ceremony, allowing to peek into your everything.
"There wasn’t much to search, as your ’Destroy’ authority was erasing your mories constantly, but I could still trace a quarter-century of foggy fragnts."
Did this an she knew the truth about and the future of this world?
...
Oh, right! I forgot.
Once you reach a certain pinnacle, you naturally gain that knowledge, and since Verde sees as Schwarz, she assus I already know.
Even if I didn’t, everything would just trace back to my authority destroying my mory.
She crouched down beside and sniffed the flowers.
"It doesn’t sll like anything at all. In all my long life, I have never seen a flower like this."
"Haha...., I know. I think you’ll prefer the one beside it," I said, pointing at the daisies.
She caught their scent and smiled. "It’s fragrant and not overly sweet. What are these called?"
"The small clusters of tiny flowers are called baby’s breath. The fragrant ones are called daisies."
"I see. I’ll rember them. I recall the boy you owe wearing a spatial storage device shaped just like that daisy. I thought it was just a strange design, turns out it was a species I simply hadn’t seen."
I felt a spark of happiness at her praise. That ’flower’ ant a lot to .
Naturally, it’s also my responsibility to nurture and repay what that flower represented.
"Verde... I think it’s ti for to go back."
She touched a daisy gently.
"I don’t think you would want to wake up if you knew what was happening outside."
I shook my head softly left and right.
"I know."
...
We just squatted right beside each other, staring at the flowers in front of us in silence.
...
After a while, I stood up and patted the dirt from my knees.
I rembered we kept floral shears in the garage.
The mont the thought crossed my mind, they appeared in my hand.
I crouched back down and snipped a few stems of baby’s breath.
"Verde, did you know that many people consider this flower a weed? It gets trampled on a lot."
I gathered the stems and arranged them neatly.
"More often than not, people would rather pluck them out. But the mont I saw this ’weed’ bloom, I felt attached to it. I didn’t even know it was an actual flower. It’s just like . Useless, unwanted, and a mistake."
I then sheared off so daisies and arranged them with the baby’s breath.
"But you see, sotis this grass shines best when it’s with others."
I thought of a ribbon and the white plastic film we used for wrapping; they magically appeared in my hands. I put together a humble, neat bouquet.
"So even if I am useless and unwanted, I will still exist. I’ll do it for the sake of soone who can shine and soone with a more aningful purpose than ."
I handed the bouquet to Verde. She accepted it, looking down at the arrangent.
"Beautiful..."
"Thank you for saving , Verde. I think it’s ti to face my despair."
She looked straight into my eyes—or at least, that’s what it felt like. All I could really see was her glitched, silhouetted fra.
She reached out and touched my chest.
"Your friend was very diligent in preparing things for you."
"Haha, I’m sure he was." I shrugged.
"I hope we see each other again. I quite fancy your current self."
I nodded.
"Yeah. I think I like my current self more, too."
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