“Well then, everyone! To new encounters. Cheers!”
Cups shot into the air all at once, the clinking so loud it sounded like crockery shattering from every direction.
Whip, who’d led the toast, came right up in front of me and knocked back the contents of her cup in one gulp.
“I’ve been just dying to talk to you, y’know?” Whip giggled.
“Whip… I’ve heard you’re the lunatic who’s got bugs packed inside her body.”
“From my perspective, this little buggy is just an adorable part of the family, you know? She’s got a name and everything. I call her Milk-chan!” As she said that, Whip stuck out her tongue with a bashful little gesture…
And at the corner of her mouth, something wriggled out.
The feelers of a bug pushed past her lips. From deep in her throat came a dry, scraping metallic sound.
A pair of antennae, each as long as a human forearm, suddenly extended right in front of us.
Alex let out a strangled shriek and sprang backward. While he stared wide-eyed, the warped, orange-glossed feelers slid neatly back into Whip’s mouth.
“W-What the hell was that? T-That’s way too big to be a centipede…”
“It’s not a centipede. It’s Milk-chan!”
Alex gave a shaky, forced laugh as he asked, and Whip answered as if she were talking about a pet cat.
Right. That’s the secret behind Whip Funny Task’s monstrous strength.
She’d let a bug parasitize her body and shared her nervous system with it. In exchange, she’d gained a level of explosive power, agility, and raw strength that exceeded anything a normal human could reach.
She was the leader of the Hidden Insect Corps, an elite squad of parasite-humans, and every last one of them was a monster in their own right.
Whip jabbed her fork into the mystery meat on her plate. When the tines pierced the skin, there was a soft, springy puchi sound.
“So, I’ve heard the rumors, and I’ve gotta ask… Are you and Joanne-chan actually, y’know, together?”
“I’ll admit we’re a strange match, but… yeah. We are.” I flicked my gaze to Joanne for a moment. She wore an utterly satisfied expression, clearly pleased I’d declared our relationship out loud.
“Mind if I ask something too?” I continued. “What kind of meat is this?”
“The seasoning might be a little strong, but it’s yummy, I promise.”
“I’m not asking about the taste. I’m asking about the source.”
At the edge of my vision, Stella narrowed her eyes in delight as she savored the meat.
That was answer enough.
Whip just gave me a mischievous smile, as if to say, “You already know, don’t you?”
I took a sip of my drink instead, as if I could wash the question away.
While I stalled for time like that, Whip kept shoveling food into her mouth at a ferocious pace, a feeler peeking out past her lips as she raised one finger.
“Here in the Northeastern Branch, we’ve got a rule: precious resources are never wasted. Fuel, food, water, building materials, hides, bones, bugs—we make sure to use everything to its fullest!”
On this resource-starved, frozen land, food was desperately valuable.
Given what kind of base the Northeastern Branch was, enemies and allies alike were going to die here in droves. Turning their remains into “materials” was… probably inevitable.
I’d been raised in a gestation sac, pumped full of God-knows-what chemicals from before I was born. It was a little late for squeamishness now.
I curled one corner of my mouth upward and sank my teeth into the meat, making sure to keep the actual contact inside my mouth as minimal as possible.
The meat was fresh.
It tasted… normal. Pretty good, even.
But I felt like absolute garbage.
Stella’s eyes narrowed, and for the first time, I saw the corners of her lips curve in a faint bow. While my mood nosedived all at once, she began to bring the gathering to a close, her voice low and even.
“From what Stella’s heard,” she murmured, “back when the cult’s numbers were still small, everyone used to sit around a table like this and eat together. It’s nice, isn’t it? To share a little warmth with everyone.”
Nice, my ass. This is dystopia cuisine.
Once everyone had cleaned their plates, the mess hall gradually emptied out. Joanne and Alex had vanished off somewhere, and before I knew it, I was alone.
I wandered through the dim corridors of the Northeastern Branch, vaguely looking for Celestia. I eventually found her in the residential area.
“Hey,” I said.
“Oakley,” she replied with a giggle. “Shall we have a little chat?”
“Yeah. That’s why I came.”
Maybe because she was off-duty, her hair, which was usually pinned up, hung loose around her shoulders.
She twisted a lock around her finger as she absentmindedly stroked her own hair, over and over.
We chatted at length about the geography of the Northeastern Branch and the local food, long enough that the silence between us started to feel comfortable.
Then Celestia frowned when she noticed my complexion.
“Your face is completely pale,” she said. “Do you really think you can handle the coming training like that?”
“Mm… If we can do something about the food, I might be able to manage,” I joked, giving an exaggerated shrug.
Celestia let out a soft chuckle. “That doesn’t sound like you. Complaining doesn’t suit you.”
For an instant, Celestia blurred in my vision, doubling at the edges. That half-playful scolding unlocked something in my memory, triggering a sudden flashback.
Those words were almost miraculously identical to a single line that had once pulled the protagonist, Alfie, back from the edge when he was about to run away from reality.
If I remembered right, it was in the “merry bad end” route, a branch that split off from the Grand Finale with just one different choice.
In a world steeped in grief, where the deaths of fourteen executives had already been sealed, Alfie had fallen into stunned despair.
And then Celestia had appeared before him, spoken those very words, and cracked the whip of love across the player’s back.
Of all the endings that left a mark, there were few, if any, that embodied Celestia as completely as that route did.
Even if her ideology’s been overwritten, she hasn’t changed at her core…
For a moment, I almost clung to the ghost of that girl made of pure light. But my brief escape from reality shattered the moment I looked into Celestia’s clouded eyes, dragging me back to the present.
“You’ve been staring at me rather intently,” she said quietly. “Is something the matter?”
“No, I was just… captivated,” I replied. “You’re beautiful, Celestia.”
Celestia’s eyes went wide, darting about as she ran her fingers through the silver hair brushing her shoulder. “P-Please, don’t joke like that…”
She looked just like she had back when she belonged to the Orthodoxy, and that gap between memory and reality hurt in a way I couldn’t put into words.
The memory-transfer method was a bust, but I’ll find another way to save you. I swear I will. Just wait for me, Celestia…
My reality was here, a place so dim and miserable it might as well be hell, where there wasn’t a speck of hope to be seen.
I had to live to change that reality.