"Listen to me…"
A gentle, airy voice drifted through her mind.
It was Kafka's voice…
Kafka…
Who was Kafka?
Stelle still remembered the name.
But only the name.
Beyond that, there was nothing. Her memories were chaos—blurred and indistinct.
In that tender voice, like a lullaby hummed by a mother, the lake of Stelle's mind gradually calmed. It felt as though she were rising slowly from the bottom of a deep ocean.
Her ears began to catch fragments of noise.
Using every bit of strength in her body, Stelle finally broke through the surface and opened her eyes.
Light poured in.
Her vision brightened.
Her dormant senses slowly came back online.
And then she saw a gray-haired young man who looked absurdly familiar standing over her, staring deeply into her face and screaming with all his might:
"Rise again—my beloved!!!"
"???"
What was happening?
What was happening?
What was happening?
Stelle blinked her brilliant golden eyes, trying to process the situation.
Processing failed.
Thinking module offline.
Seeing her blink blankly in that adorably vacant way, the shock of "the dead coming back to life" slammed straight into March's brain—and was immediately followed by terror.
"Waaaah!"
"It's a corpse revival! It's a corpse revival!"
"Dan Heng! Dan Heng! Go get black dog blood!"
The cute, pretty pink-haired girl's face was completely overtaken by panic.
"Calm down, March."
Dan Heng, who had first been triggered into full PTSD mode by the words revive and secret technique, only managed to settle down after hearing Caelus explain his absurd ritual. Now, after taking a closer look at Stelle, he realized something he hadn't noticed before.
"She was never dead to begin with."
Dan Heng frowned and looked at Caelus, the depth in his eyes sharpening.
"Not dead?"
Still making bewildered eye contact with Stelle, March blinked.
[Host, maybe don't. She's already dumb enough as it is—stop messing with her.]
Even the System couldn't stand it anymore.
Caelus looked perfectly calm on the outside, but because the System was soul-bound to him, it could clearly feel that beneath the mask he was already losing his mind with glee.
[I'll buy her sunflower seeds later to apologize.]
Only then did March belatedly realize what had happened. Her grip on the "payment" baseball bat tightened until her knuckles went white.
A frighteningly kind smile appeared on her face as she gently poked the bat against Caelus's shoulder.
"Sir," she said sweetly, "don't you think you owe us an explanation?"
Her voice was clear and bright like the ringing of silver bells—
and colder than Six-Phased Ice.
If this guy didn't give her a proper explanation today, the brilliant and clever Miss March 7th was absolutely going to cave his head in.
Caelus, however, remained perfectly calm. He answered with complete composure.
"I don't believe I ever said she was dead."
"But didn't you say you were going to revive her?!"
March bared her teeth at him, glaring with all the fury of an angry cat puffing up its fur.
"But reviving her ≠ she was dead."
Caelus spread his hands and brought out the inequality.
It instantly destroyed March's entire position.
"Y-you—you…"
Gritting her teeth, March stammered in rage. Looking at the equation, she actually couldn't think of a way to refute it on the spot.
So she immediately turned to Dan Heng with a plea for support.
Dan Heng understood the look, gave a slight nod, and stepped forward. Expressionless, he looked at Caelus.
"Who are you? And why are you here?"
The moment Dan Heng asked that, March blinked in confusion again.
Weren't these two just researchers from Herta Space Station?
Dan Heng didn't answer the question in her face. He had noticed much earlier that the rescue coordinates for these two hadn't come from the station at all.
"Sorry. I forgot to introduce myself."
Caelus's face showed a trace of apologetic sincerity.
"My name is Caelus."
He answered Dan Heng very formally. Then he pointed at the gray-haired girl behind him, who was scratching the back of her head in confusion, and introduced her with utmost seriousness:
"This is Stelle. My daughter."
March: "!!!"
Stelle: "???"
Dan Heng: "…"
"Pffft!"
Somewhere hidden in the shadows, the bubble gum Silver Wolf had been blowing exploded across her face.
Kafka: "…"
According to the original script, after implanting the Stellaron into the vessel, the two of them should have left immediately.
But because of the "accident" Elio had warned about, they had decided it might be worth lingering a little to observe the situation.
The script hadn't explicitly said they couldn't stay a bit longer.
So, using Silver Wolf's aether editing and a conveniently acquired Curio—No. 211, Blind Spot—they had concealed themselves nearby.
They planned to observe Stelle and the gray-haired young man a little before departing.
"Rise again, my beloved" had nearly given Silver Wolf internal injuries from holding in her laughter.
This time, she completely failed.
With a single sentence, every single person in the room fell silent again.
The entire Curio Room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
"Y-your daughter!?"
March looked utterly horrified, her pointing finger trembling as she indicated Stelle.
"I thought she was your beloved!"
To be fair, March could barely accept some taboo sibling romance in a galaxy this vast. She was a seasoned Nameless who'd seen all kinds of things traveling far and wide.
But if it was father and daughter…
"Ah…"
Right as her thoughts began to spin out of control, March suddenly heard Dan Heng let out a long, weary sigh.
And only then did she realize.
With a fierce expression, she grabbed Caelus by the collar.
"You're messing with me again?!"
"No," Caelus said. "What I said is true. Who says your daughter and your beloved can't be the same person? If you don't believe me, ask her."
If he hadn't had the mask, Caelus would already have burst by now.
But with it on, he could maintain perfect composure.
At the very least, his face would never reveal his real emotions.
Not only that—
his handsome, clean, jade-like features suddenly gained several layers of weathered depth, each one seeming to carry years of untold story.
Seeing how unreasonably confident he was, even Dan Heng could no longer stay entirely calm. His eyes widened slightly as he looked at Stelle in disbelief.
This…?
Being stared at by both of them with gazes so complex they could not have been represented even by a fan chart—combined with the repeated lines of "This is Stelle, my daughter" and "Wasn't she your beloved?" drilling straight into her skull—Stelle nearly blacked out and flopped back onto the floor.
Her scalp tingled. A tidal wave of shock ran through her consciousness, wiping her already disordered thoughts into total blankness.
The key issue was—
she didn't know!
She genuinely didn't know!
She remembered nothing right now!
Even the name "Stelle" had only come back to her because Caelus had said it.
And without needing to consciously analyze it, there was an undeniable closeness and familiarity radiating from Caelus that she simply couldn't ignore.
That was probably what people meant by blood relation, right?
Even setting intuition aside and thinking about it rationally—
with their matching gray hair and golden eyes, you could pull a random person off the street and they'd immediately conclude these two were related.
Even if you pulled a blind person.
Her brain was shaking. Stelle desperately tried to sort through the chaos and find even the tiniest scrap of a clue.
Then—
ah!
She actually did recall a little forgotten common sense.
The galaxy was full of countless races, including long-lived species whose lifespans were far beyond normal. Some of them could be hundreds of years old and still look like teenagers.
A father and daughter—or mother and child—among such races might really stand together looking exactly like siblings.
The more she thought about it, the darker things became.
Was Caelus…
really her father?
And not only that—
a father with that kind of forbidden relationship to her?
Seeing Stelle trembling all over, sweating, tense, and unable to speak, March and Dan Heng felt a storm overturn inside their hearts.
Was what Caelus said really… true?
To them, Stelle's reaction looked very much like silent confirmation.
Two sharp intakes of breath sounded in the room. The way March and Dan Heng looked at Caelus had changed fundamentally.
It was like looking at a sunrise too brilliant to face directly.
Especially because Caelus had spoken of the relationship with such open confidence, without the slightest shame—as though there were absolutely nothing wrong with it.
"You… really are my dad?"
In the end, Stelle couldn't bear the turmoil in her heart and asked the question.
March and Dan Heng both turned back toward her in astonishment.
"I-I… don't remember anything." Stelle lowered her head, one hand on her forehead.
"…Amnesia?" March immediately recognized the situation.
Very familiar.
Dan Heng turned his gaze back to Caelus.
"We were caught in the Anti-Matter Legion attack. Stelle may have injured her head. To be honest, I also forgot a lot after being hit directly by an energy cannon."
Caelus put a hand to his forehead and feigned dizziness. But when he looked at Stelle, his eyes were full of utter sincerity.
"But no matter what, I could never forget her!"
Dan Heng's brow twitched.
"Stelle!"
Caelus's voice trembled. It was filled with tenderness, worry, and unwavering love.
"Do you really not remember your father?"
He placed both hands on Stelle's shoulders and lifted a strand of her gray hair. Two pairs of brilliant golden eyes reflected each other.
"Look at this. To be honest, I only regret that instead of inheriting my hair and eye color, you didn't inherit your mother's beautiful purple hair."
"Mother… purple hair… Kafka…"
The keyword triggered something.
A fragment of memory surfaced in Stelle's mind.
The way Kafka had looked at her—gentle, indulgent, like a mother gazing tenderly at her child.
"Kafka… Mom… Caelus… Dad…"
Clutching her head as blurred, chaotic fragments of memory flashed and collided, Stelle muttered the words under her breath.
Hack—cough cough!
This time, Silver Wolf didn't even manage to reclaim the bubble gum with her tongue before she swallowed it outright. Her facial control module had completely broken down.
She jabbed a finger at the purple-haired beauty beside her, who still somehow maintained a warm, composed smile.
"Hey, Kafka. What the hell is wrong with that guy?"
"…No idea."
Kafka's expression management was on a whole different level, so she could still hold it together externally.
Internally, however, she was nowhere near as calm as she looked.
Was this "Stelle" damaged in the head?
And what on earth was with Caelus's personality?
Kafka almost felt as though the person in front of her was a Masked Fool pretending to be her child.
Silver Wolf had insisted with full confidence that the male Stelle was still Stelle.
And Kafka trusted her teammate.
But if so—
why was he calling himself Caelus?
Had Stelle's consciousness split apart?
Or was it something else entirely?
Kafka sank into thought.
[Dude, tricking a one-year-old like this—could you try being human for once?]
The System could not hold back its commentary.
[Tricking myself doesn't count as tricking. This is a higher state of Elation. You wouldn't understand.]
Beneath the mask, the delighted curve of Caelus's lips was practically reaching his ears.
Hearing Stelle's murmured words, March and Dan Heng gradually let go of some of their doubts and began accepting the "facts."
March ground her teeth. The annoyance from being toyed with earlier, combined with her disgust at a father who would lay hands on his own daughter, finally pushed her past the limit.
She raised the baseball bat high.
"You bastard!"
She hadn't completely lost her head. March was still holding back. She only meant to teach him a lesson.
The bat came down and hit Caelus squarely on the shoulder.
"Ah!"
The scream that followed stunned everyone.
The one who cried out in pain wasn't Caelus.
Though he clutched his shoulder with a pained expression, the one who had actually screamed was Stelle beside him.
"Hiss—ow! That hurts!"
The pain in her shoulder came so suddenly that Stelle cried out on instinct.
Then she saw March holding the bat against Caelus's shoulder, lowered her eyes to look at her own shoulder, and froze with the profound, world-shaking confusion of a newborn baby encountering the laws of physics for the first time.
The bafflement in her clear eyes gradually transformed into a kind of stunned enlightenment.
March's brows knit sharply as she turned a piercing stare toward Caelus.
Dan Heng also shot him a deeply meaningful look.
Caelus: "…"
Caelus: "???"
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