But right then—
—she was struck by a sensation like an ice-cold hand clenching her heart.
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—You’ll lose.
—And that means you’re worthless.
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If you lose—all you have left is emptiness.
✦ ✦ ✦
Those black words tore through her body, and a beat later—
—before she realized it, she was swiping aside the ball of light with even more precision than she knew she had.
She turned aside, and with a spring in her step from muscle and magic, Alucia bounded off the ground—
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“Gah… Ah!”
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—and a moment later, she had ruined everything.
✦ ✦ ✦
Hands pressing the pit of her stomach, Nana slowly fell to her knees, then weakly collapsed.
There had to be less than ten people who had been able to follow everything that had happened. The only thing the audience had managed to witness was Nana being flung away by enough magic to go slightly over her defensive attire’s threshold, then collapsing in pain—and to the side, Alucia was standing there cruelly.
What had happened? Nothing at all.
Nana had used the best strategy she had, and then Alucia had vanished from her field of view—dominating Nana with just one strike a few seconds later.
“V-victor…Alucia!”
Alucia wiped the uncomfortable sweat that was streaking from her armpits. She was the winner of the match, but she was breathing hard as if she was deathly ill. You could see the paleness on her face even at a distance.
“She’s so strong!” “Oh, I knew she’d win, after all…!”
“But…did she have to go that far?” “Well, it is a competition!”
Cheers, applause, and some slight confusion embellished Alucia’s victory, making it even more dramatic and scandalous.
But—none of those voices reached her ears.
As Nana was lying there, breathing shallowly, Alucia was even more drained than her. She stared at her hands.
She was plenty used to the feeling of being alone and apart from the world, but right now, she felt somehow terribly, hopelessly cold.
✦ ✦ ✦
This is a curse, she thought.
✦ ✦ ✦
Alucia had always used her reason to keep full control of herself in order to win, and she had believed that she could manipulate herself perfectly. The ability to absorb the blood of others and amplify it to gain their powers was just a bonus. She even felt that this almost excessive coldness and completeness was the greatest strength that she had gained from her bloodlessness.
But.
✦ ✦ ✦
—Choosing to lose of her own accord was beyond her.
She couldn’t even do something so simple.
✦ ✦ ✦
“I see…so I…”
✦ ✦ ✦
Smiling brokenly, Alucia passed by Nana’s fallen figure and slowly stepped down from the stage. The cheers and applause from the audience sounded so far away, as if they weren’t even directed at her.
✦ ✦ ✦
“—I’m just scared of becoming worthless.”
✦ ✦ ✦
The second section came to an end, and I went on a break for a while.
My breathing had gotten shallow, so I took some deep breaths to calm myself down a bit.
—There was no way I could read something like this without having any thoughts about it.
The story was asymptotic to reality in a deliberate way, with such precision that it was willing to hurt and exhaust the reader. It depicted the depths of individual hearts and revealed their shapes—so much so that I could be certain that her writing it now of all times had to be a message.
✦ ✦ ✦
Most likely, Kikuchi-san had rewritten the story of Pureblood Hybrid and Ice Cream to structure it just like this.
She grasped the essence of things that happened in my life, then adapted them.
She granted our cores to characters that shared commonalities with us to make a different story.
And—consistently through this whole story, she’d added a new element that hadn’t been there before.
And that was the point of view that was probably the one area that hadn’t really been talked about in my own experience of the story.
✦ ✦ ✦
That was Aoi Hinami’s emotions and motivations.
✦ ✦ ✦
Kikuchi-san had most likely made the story from Libra’s perspective as the base, and she was trying to reveal Aoi Hinami’s essence by reconstructing and composing it from Alucia’s perspective.
“…I see.”
Eventually, I slowly came to understand one more thing.
The various storylines of Pureblood Hybrid and Ice Cream—
For example, Alucia using Libra to try to verify the pureblood power that she’d tested previously, or Nana teaming up with Libra to try to defeat Alucia.
None of those were events that Kikuchi-san had seen herself.
✦ ✦ ✦
All those were from the world only seen from my own first-person perspective.
I was the only one who should know those events firsthand.
✦ ✦ ✦
I thought back on everything from the first time I had spoken to Kikuchi-san until now.
Every time I had stumbled in life and had been indecisive about something, I’d gone to the library as if I was visiting a save point and talked to her about my problems.
Each time, I’d received hints, and she’d put the underlying motives to words to guide me.
At some point, she had said:
✦ ✦ ✦
That when she was listening to me, the images came to her mind just as if she was reading a book.
✦ ✦ ✦
Eventually, I started dating her, and then I began talking to her about an even broader range of things.
I’m sure it’s not unusual to feel like you can tell your significant other things you can’t tell your friends. That was why I told Kikuchi-san about my secrets with Hinami, and little inside stories that I hadn’t spoken about before, as much as I could without being insincere to others.
—But.
✦ ✦ ✦
What if Kikuchi-san was creating a novel based on the things seen from my point of view?
What if Kikuchi-san was writing a story based on the memories like a novel that I had talked about?
✦ ✦ ✦
All the various things that I had told her since I had started playing the game of life—
✦ ✦ ✦
—were being turned into another story.
✦ ✦ ✦
I swiped on the screen feeling like I was hauling in a lifeline, reading the continuation of the novel. I had no idea what the point of view or emotions this story gave to me might bring about.
But this story reinterpreted my own life, rattling my very sense of values, and it shook my instinctive desires. My brain was seeking more.
But—
“Oh…there isn’t any.”
When I scrolled down, the right side of the screen did not display the “next chapter” link. It seemed this was as far as Kikuchi-san had written.
I put down my phone.
I’d felt like involving myself with anyone, or even playing Atafami, was too much trouble.
But now—I wanted to read more of this novel.
I wanted to talk with the person who had written it.
I’d gotten back my reason to move toward something.