“Damn it...damn it, damn it, damn it! What’s the deal?! Why didn’t it work? Aren’t I a Play Actor too? Why?! Hey, why won’t you move? You have to listen to what I say! Listen already! If you don’t...”
She was beneath Castle Krios, in the engine room—in front of the castle giant’s brain. “If you don’t listen, no one will... No one will be able to return safely to their homes! Move, move, move, come on, move...! Use your Skill to send everyone home!”
Rei knelt before the exposed brain of the Titan holding up the castle and wept. She had been attempting to utilize the giant’s blood. Prodotis had controlled the giant via telepathy, and by granting the giant itself the use of a Skill, he had been able to expand the influence of his own Skill on a scale which would have otherwise been impossible. Rei had assumed that if she connected her mind with the giant’s, she could achieve the same miracle—but it seemed she had been mistaken.
Did the connection require some kind of recognition? Was this the difference in skill between her and the heroes? Was the giant simply fatigued from overexertion? She did not know the cause. Whatever the reason, the giant did not respond to Rei’s telepathy. She had abandoned her role of fighting alongside Dill and Sid and defending them, clinging to her last ray of hope as she descended into the basement...but it had all been in vain.
Rei couldn’t overcome this situation by herself. Above ground, Dill might already be dead, and her own body was beginning to fade away. Her body was only imaginary, lacking flesh, purely sustained by her Skill. Reincarnators were greatly influenced by their own emotional condition. At this moment, Rei’s condition was at rock bottom. Then she heard singing.
You may go in...
Now you may go.
Rei looked over her shoulder. There she saw a group of eight pale girls, each holding the other’s hands in a ring. Seven of them faced the interior of the circle, with only the one in front of Rei facing outside—a girl with blonde hair. She was still very young.
“Who are you all?”
The answer to Rei’s wary question was only their song.
Tell us, where does this narrow path lead?
This path leads to Tenjin’s shrine.
Please, now won’t you let us pass by?
You cannot pass, unless you say why.
What flowed into Rei’s mind was not the words, but information. Now she knew the secret of the garden. First Hero, now Lily...why could only a select few make use of unique Skills? Hero’s mind had wavered between bipolar extremes, even showing signs of having been fractured into multiple personalities. Lily was a circuit of Reincarnators in series, made up of eight girls.
Then what about Rei? Rei was the same—the girl named Rei Mishima had never existed in the first place.
We come to celebrate this child’s seventh birthday.
We come to make a humble offering.
“I see...no wonder. I did think I seemed a little too strong.” Before long, Rei would be torn apart to form the minds of thirty classmates, annihilating her own being—this was what Lily told her. It was as if Lily was attempting to recruit her—to incorporate Rei, who possessed qualities linked to the garden, into themselves in order to become a greater being.
Rei was resolute. She resolved to make a miracle happen.
“Okay. Take me with you...I just have one thing to ask in exchange.”
We don’t mind going, but we fear coming back.
Although you might fear it,
You may go in. You may go in.
✦ ✦ ✦
The circle of eight girls became nine. The giant’s Skill had been activated.
Rei would not be coming back again.
✦ ✦ ✦
“I had considered the possibility. Yours was one of the first bodies the Reincarnators obtained.” The girl Dill had been searching for now stood before him, expressionless. The air around them was covered with suddenly rising smoke, so Dill couldn’t see very far in front of his face. The rainbow, the blue sky created by the hero Prodotis, the hordes of Reincarnators he knew to be there—Dill couldn’t see any of them. They were all enveloped by the smoke.
As Dill tried to approach the girl, his body made contact with the smoke. It responded with an unexpected resistance, although it was still soft to the touch. Dill pulled back at once. The smoke had substance, and it was also viscous, so as Dill pulled away, strings of fluid dripped from the parts of his body that had touched the smoke, reminiscent of melted cheese. This was the very substance—the half-real ectoplasm—that constituted the Capital Tower.
Dill stepped forward with no further hesitation. “At that time, you were the only noncombatant they had. You were important to them and needed to be given a body before anyone else, but would not be sent to fight. Perhaps your body was selected to house some special Reincarnator...that’s what I thought. What Hero—Eugene—told me more or less turned my speculation into certainty.”
The half-real smoke coiled around Dill’s legs. With each step he took, Dill’s legs grew heavier. But his gait remained certain, unwavering. “I’ve finally found you, Iris. I’ve come to get you back. Now...come home with papa.”
There was a large amount of smoke binding Dill now, and his body would no longer move forward easily. This was the same phenomenon that had taken hold of the giant of Krios and stopped its advance.
Dill extended his hand through a gap in the substance all around him. Iris, the blonde-haired girl, did not react. Her eyes were turned down slightly, her face was expressionless, and she remained silent without so much as blinking.
“Iris. I just wanted to apologize to you one more time. I’m sorry for not being there to care for you. I pushed my family away. The truth is, I was afraid to stay with you. I’m...not a hero. I’m just a killer who took the lives of many on the battlefield. I didn’t want you to grow up as the daughter of a murderer.” With his hand outstretched through a gap in the sticky smoke, Dil struggled. So that his voice might at least reach Iris, he continued speaking. “I know there will come a day when I will have to atone for all the blood that I have bathed in—the blood that has stained me—with my life. It will be my just deserts. But I was afraid that you, Iris, might be caught up in my atonement...”
Dill’s outstretched fingers finally touched Iris. With his index and middle fingers, which just barely reached her, he traced the outline of her shoulders, caressing her and making certain that she was real. Then Dill let the knife he had concealed in his sleeve slip into his hand and gripped it before plunging it into Iris’s eye.
It put up no more resistance than a ball of cotton. The body that had felt so real only a moment ago turned to blue smoke and blended into the air.
“...That figures. There’s no way you’d go to the trouble of coming here in person.” Dill hung his head low in disappointment, letting the knife in his hand drop to the floor. “Iris, please forgive me. After coming all this way, I couldn’t bring you back...”
Uncle.
Dill’s head sprang back up.