Chapter 171 [End of Text]
In the fate after the closed loop, young Chimaera theoretically regained the ability to see Fyodor.
A familiar figure suddenly appeared in the empty space of those decades of life.
Defeated by the vast past, Qian Jianmu drifted in his memories, not knowing why he was here or why he didn't leave.
It was like a movie theater after death. He sat in the only seat and watched the familiar life being peeled back layer by layer. His heart was bleeding and his brain was aching. He persisted in replaying the movie, rewinding the key scenes over and over again.
The dead, the lost time, when everything still exists.
He crushed the wound like a masochist, finding a sense of being alive in the pain.
If I fall asleep, perhaps I can escape the reality after the movie ends.
...But isn’t such a life a little too sad?
"Wake up."
“…”
“Wake up!”
Someone clapped his hands beside his ears. Chigenmaku opened his eyes, but what he saw in his constricted pupils was not any house in Yokohama.
Without any obstruction, he saw clear and numerous spots of light like a sky full of stars, huge and magnificent, connected by slender, elegant and beautiful bands of light.
Orderly, fair, clear and clean as if it had been sorted out by someone with obsessive compulsive disorder.
only……
He looked toward the end of the strip of light.
He once looked towards the end of the world flow, but he was too hasty and did not find anything unusual except for some slight differences. But now, he clearly saw that the end of the light band seemed to be a tied pocket, and something forcibly cut off the connection between this world domain and other world domains.
"Are you daydreaming?"
Qian Jianmu sat up suddenly, and the girl in the white dress supported her face and looked at him with a smile.
"...Tired...Xiao Qian?"
"It's me. Thank you for walking so far." The girl stood up. She stretched out her hand to pull Qian Jianmu up from the ground, and stood on tiptoe to touch Qian Jianmu's hair. "Well! You look like you're doing well. Let's make quick work of this... Someone is waiting for you to wake up."
"You, you are not...how come you are here?" Qian Jianmu asked as he was pulled forward.
"This is the interior of Zero, which has been further upgraded after your fate closed its loop." The girl did not look back, her hair bouncing slightly as she walked forward: "As for why I am here... I am a true digital life, an existence that can be constructed with symbols. Only such a me... can leave behind an incarnation to explain the rest to you after death."
"The doppelganger after death."
"Yes, that is to say, I am now only 90% programmed and 10% core processing... a real machine. But if you don't like me now, the 10% of me will be very sad. Please, just pretend that we don't know about this."
"Even if it's your clone, it's still a part of you. You're standing here, and you are you."
"Ah, that's exactly what you would say. It seems like you haven't changed much in terms of not being wary of people you trust."
Only when he actually got up from the ground and took his first step did Qian Jianmu notice that what he was stepping on was not the soil.
It was a huge Möbius strip about ten meters wide, extending forward and then returning to its original position from one side. One could vaguely see the whole picture from the edge.
Looking up, I see the sky filled with stars; looking down, I see endless white. I can't see where the end is, and I don't know when I will stop moving forward.
Deliberately giving him time to observe the environment, the two walked for a very long time before Qiandiao Juan finally spoke.
"I will not apologize for anything I have ever done."
"I don't know if you hate me or not, but I don't have the ability to analyze this matter right now."
The girl looked back, her emerald eyes slightly curved, and she spoke softly:
"But I promised you that we will meet in the future... Maybe someone else has said that to you, remember?"
"Um."
She said, “So, we left you the seeds.”
"seed?"
"To put it simply, our chips and powers are interdependent. I am the 'omniscient' chip, and my power is time and space. I was born with countless future memories, and time and space created my omniscience. This is the relationship between the two."
Qian Niaojuan's voice was very soft, with a hint of the coldness of a machine:
"Mo Yun is a 'war' chip, and his power is 'control'. Control completes his war; Lilith is an 'invasion' chip, and her power is illusion. Illusion completes her 'invasion'; Yule is a 'technology' chip, and her power is conversion; Yajiu is a 'blessing', and her power is 'curse'; Caroline is a 'fertility', and her power is 'domination'; Luo Lan is a 'judgment', and her power is 'discrimination'... Do you know what you are?"
"gamble?"
"Half right."
The girl said:
"Your chip is a 'destiny' chip. The power is gambling. Gambling enriches your destiny, so your future is infinite."
"destiny……"
"Destiny is just a tool, an ability. But, have you noticed? The power that everyone has given you?"
There was a hint of smile in Qiandiao's tired voice:
"Lilith's pain perception, Mo Yun's blood manipulation, my time-space jump, Yule's energy conversion, Yajiu's eternal curse... they all represent our own powers and are part of our souls, so... it's just as you think."
Qian Jianmu's pupils shrank slightly. On both sides of the road, several snow-white stone tablets appeared and grew from the ground, and illusory shadows appeared around the stone tablets.
Like a wax figure, or a silhouette of time, it leaves behind some things that will disappear and stores them as specimens, or "seeds" that are about to sprout.
Mo Yun was leaning against the stone tablet, his eyes fixed on the road in front of Qianjianmu; Lilith was sitting expressionlessly beside the stone tablet, looking into the distance; Yuer was lying next to the stone tablet, pretending to be dead but looking like he was sleeping; Luo Lan was huddled in the shadow of the stone tablet, looking quite autistic; Caroline was sitting on the edge of the white road with her legs dangling in the air, in a dangerous but free manner; Yajiu was smiling quietly with his arms outstretched and his head raised to the sky...
As he moved forward, there were invisible and intangible phantoms on his side. The seeds of their souls were deposited in Qianjianmu's body, and like the forgotten Fyodor, they moved forward with him in a silent and voiceless way.
Until they reached an empty stone tablet, Qianniao Juan stopped, turned around and looked at him.
"Go ahead, do what you want to do, make up for the regrets you want to make up for, and give us the future you want."
His lips moved for a moment, as if he wanted to say something but swallowed the words back. Qian Jianmu clenched his teeth, lowered his eyes, and said nothing.
Her head was gently pressed down from the back of her neck. Chidori Juan stood on tiptoe and pressed her forehead against his. A cold mechanical light flashed in her emerald green eyes, distinguishing her from a real human being.
"Don't feel guilty, you're the only one in that world that's proud of us, you don't know what you mean."
"Everyone volunteered to get you out of that hell. Everyone."
"All misfortunes are because of you, and all good fortunes are because of you. You are the immortal god, the 'curtain' that ignores the joys and sorrows of the people involved and resists contradictions and sorrows."
After saying this, his tone paused for a brief but exceptionally clear moment. Chidori suddenly curled her brows in weariness, and the coldness disappeared in an instant:
"So, please bless us in your own way, God."
“…”
With a sob in his throat, Qian Jianmu closed his eyes and nodded slightly.
"……good."
"Well, my last mission is over."
Qian Niao Juan took two steps back and stood in front of the white stone tablet that belonged to her. She looked at a comfortable angle and said softly with an expectant tone:
"What kind of future would you choose? I really want to jump to the time when we meet again. I will definitely recognize you at first sight..."
"...Ajuan." Qian Jianmu lowered his head and suddenly spoke.
"Um……?"
"goodbye."
“…”
The girl with snow-white hair slightly opened her eyes, and then suddenly revealed a bright and brilliant smile, like a sunny day after rain:
"Yeah! Goodbye."
The girl was frozen into a shadow. She sat on the stone tablet, looking down at everything from above.
He looked down at Qian Jianmu, at the other people, and at this endless cycle of fate, with coldness and arrogance.
The empty Möbius strip can only accommodate one traveler.
Qian Jianmu turned his head and gently caressed each person's figure with his eyes, then turned around and embarked on the road that only he could walk.
This road is very long, and I don’t know when I can return to the starting point and return to that snowy field.
I don’t know how many stone tablets will be planted on the roadside and how many times I will say goodbye.
Everyone stood by his side of the road and watched him move forward; they walked together, then separated, then perished.
People I met in the past, friends now, and people I will meet in the future. Those white shadows piled up together, layer upon layer, forming a vast expanse of white.
White gradually filled the field of vision, covering from the road to the sky.
White is the snow-white ceiling of the medical room.
Qian Jianmu opened his eyes and saw the sunlight shining in from the clean window and falling on the brown bookshelf not far away.
"Basic Medicine", "Practical Internal Medicine"... The books are neatly arranged, exuding a faint smell of books.
The sound of book pages sliding across fingertips was very light, but it was particularly clear in the room. Qian Jianmu slowly turned his head. The man holding the book was not reading. The man with pale skin and purple eyes was staring at him quietly.
He said nothing, had no expression, just stared quietly, his eyes like a calm breeze.
Just like the scenes that were skipped in his recalled memories, at every juncture of his life, no matter when and where, these pair of purple eyes were always somewhere he couldn't see, quietly and steadily accompanying his life.
"...Feijia..." He whispered softly, moving his lips slightly.
Fyodor stared at him for a while, sighed, and slowly put the book aside.
Then, the stunned Qian Jianmu was embraced in a slightly cold embrace.
"Long time no see." The man's voice was unexpectedly gentle: "How's the weather today?"
...In that boring and scary childhood when the only entertainment was looking up at the stars, Qian Jianmu, who was left alone to kill time, could often hear inexplicable questions from Fyodor's mouth.
He would answer obediently because Fyodor would always give some different answers.
"Sunny day." The voice trembled slightly.
Fyodor laughed:
"Then congratulations, you have walked from the blizzard to the sunny day."
On the reflective window facing him, there were several heads lying from top to bottom at the door behind him. Ranpo was at the bottom with his cheeks puffed up, staring at him. After looking at him in the window, he suddenly smiled helplessly and squinted his eyes, like a very cute but oversized black cat.
The long memories were washed away by reality, and Qian Jianmu finally breathed a sigh of relief as if he had survived a calamity. His frozen body trembled unrestrainedly in the embrace, and his blurry right eye suddenly became clear, followed by his left eye.
It was as if the young man in the snowfield had hallucinations in the struggle between life and death and sleepwalked into the wrong fairyland.
He kept company with man-eating beasts, who responded with empty looks and intense pain that woke him from his dreams.
Decades passed by in a hurry, and one day I woke up from a dream, as if I had just escaped from that deserted snowy field.
So far away,
Spanning decades,
He finally walked from the snowfield to the city where he could survive.
…
After calming down, Sengenmaku, who had regained his composure, suddenly heard Dazai Osamu's seemingly calm voice (loud version) coming from outside the door.
"Maku-kun, um, Mr. Ayatsuji asked you to call him back when you wake up."
"Hmm...what's wrong?" Chijianmu picked up the phone and saw a missed call from Ayatsuji Yukito.
"Who knows, maybe he was targeted by some monster..."
"Why don't you come in and talk? Hasn't he been targeted for a long time?"
Two years ago, Ayatsuji Yukito was targeted by the Supernatural Intelligence Department. Fortunately, the article has been published and his supernatural powers are no longer uncontrollable, so Ayatsuji Yukito is not under house arrest.
But he was really annoyed by people disturbing his life, so he moved out excitedly to play with the Special Power Agent Department, hoping that the Special Power Agent Department would be okay.
"That was before, now it's a perversion."
"……Um?"
"Don't worry about it! Take Mr. Ayatsuji back to the shrine quickly! Save Ayatsuji Yukito, Mr. Maku!" the young man said in a long voice.
Fyodor beside him sneered, and Chigenmaku was silent for a while. He could understand that Dazai Osamu didn't want him to take Fyodor back to the shrine, but he was more concerned about another thing.
"What? You actually think I can save Ayatsuji Yukito? Is this true?" he said in disbelief.
Ayatsuji Yukito needs him to save him? He's the most aggressive, reliable, and intelligent man in the entire detective agency, you ignorant fellow!
…
But I still have to go and see it.
Yokohama today is still as free and peaceful as ever.
I don't know why, but he seems to have more and more work to do.
—End of the text—
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