[Congratulations, Host — you wicked little thing, you've gone and ruined another person's life! The harm you've caused is rich and lingering, leaving Soyo with an aftertaste she'll never shake! In this Simulation, you employed a multitude of methods: you made use of countless characters, held covert control over the majority of situations, and quietly pulled off an endless string of successful little schemes. Do you remember that midnight scream of yours from early in the Simulation? That night was really something, wasn't it?]
[Calculating Remorse Index… Congratulations, Host. Lifespan awarded: Six years and one month.]
[Remaining Lifespan: Fifteen years, nine months, thirty days.]
[Overall Rating: Above Average.]
[P.S. Does the Host like the surname Haizuka? Do you like it? Do you? Heh. Always bossing me around doing your heavy lifting, and then making me play customer, employee, and ATM all at once. You're terrible.]
When Yoshiiro Chiose opened her eyes again, she was back on that tranquil beach.
She breathed in the free sea air, and woven into it, still clinging to the tip of her nose, was Kyoumoto's scent.
Kyoumoto was still resting.
To any outside observer, Yoshiiro Chiose had done nothing more than close her eyes and open them again. Just a single moment — and yet, years had passed. That was the Simulation.
Yoshiiro Chiose breathed in the free air with abandon. Her head felt like it was swelling, as if a tiny person inside was trying to split her skull open and claw their way out.
[Mood: heavy.]
"Looks like I need to rest for a few days… I'm so tired. Tired tired tired tired tired… exhausted to death."
She wanted to stretch properly, but with her little sister lying in her arms, Yoshiiro Chiose could only ease her limbs out in small, careful movements.
"Mmm… Sis? Did I make Sis too tired by squishing her?"
Kyoumoto had barely managed to wake up, and she murmured the question in that adorable, drowsy way of hers — and with that, nearly half of Chiose's exhaustion dissolved on the spot.
Little sister. So cute! Ugh, I'm dying.
As long as little sister is worried about me, every single bit of effort is worth it!
"It's fine, Xiǎo Jīng. Do you want to sleep a little longer? Sis isn't tired at all."
Any older sibling in the world would act exactly the same way when faced with a little sister this well-behaved and caring.
Her Xiǎo Jīng was simply the perfect little sister. Xiǎo Jīng was the cutest!
Chiose buried her face in Kyoumoto's hair and breathed in slowly, her movements feather-light.
Still that familiar scent… the scent of little sister. No — to be precise: my little sister is the most adorable creature in the entire world!
It almost felt as though someone had deliberately crafted a character perfectly tailored to her every need, and had been running a Simulation on her all along. Ha.
Yoshiiro Chiose shook her head, nearly cracking herself up at her own thought.
Sure enough — she had been Simulating for far too long, playing the villain for far too many years. Her nerves had been stretched too thin for too long.
The next few days, she would rest properly.
Chiose said nothing. She simply gazed out at the sea in silence.
She thought of Little Soyo.
That little fool — she wondered if she could take care of herself.
From here on out, that road was hers to walk alone.
"Xiǎo Jīng, do you know what the ocean looks like?"
"I have no idea, I can't see it! Sis is so dumb."
"Hehe. Then how about I describe it to you? What do you say?"
"Huh? Fine, there's just no helping you. Chiose, go on then."
"The ocean — she's a huge, wicked woman. Every day she lures all the good women out to sea, and then swallows them whole in one great gulp, and then…"
"? The ocean sounds terrifying."
"She really is, right? And then, the ocean, she also…"
Chiose's aimless narration rambled on. She just liked this feeling — chatting idly with her little sister.
In her wine-red eyes, four rings of gold glimmered in circles — crystallized sin.
That was simply how things were.
...
One month of lifespan. What can it do?
It can be converted into money.
One month is worth quite a lot — exactly 333,333 yen. If you're only exchanging a single month, The System will helpfully round it up for you.
But if you spend three months outright, what you get in return is one million yen.
One million yen… Yoshiiro Chiose had barely dared to imagine it.
Three years of middle school, grinding away at part-time jobs, hunting down day-labour positions with wages so pathetic they made her head go numb — and even then, she could only scrape together a handful of worthless coins each month.
And now, all it took was one turn as a villain to earn countless sets of three months, countless millions of yen.
And that was not all.
Money. Immortality. Endless material wealth. So long as you did evil, all of it could be redeemed.
"This is the Simulation."
Clunk —
A marble soda bottle dropped out of the vending machine with a thud, and Chiose's train of thought snapped to a halt.
She patted the bank card in her pocket — the one loaded with one million yen — and offered up a brief, silent prayer in her heart for her own act of [making a deal with the devil].
Great Takamatsu Tomori, forgive me!
Yoshiiro Chiose firmly believed that if there were any gods in this world, they had to be Tomori or Kyoumoto.
Because they were the most perfect little angels in the world!
And yet —
"School starts again tomorrow."
She didn't know why, but today she just couldn't bring herself to stay home and rest.
So Chiose had decided to come outside and wander.
Today was Sunday, April 5th, 2020, and she was alone, drifting through circles in the real world.
Chiose was talking to herself — or perhaps to The System, which had gone quiet the moment the Simulation ended. Who could say.
She twisted open the bottle cap, dabbed away the one or two drops that had leaked out, and tilted her head back.
The soda slid smoothly into Chiose's mouth, a few drops sneaking out from the corner of her lips.
She wiped them away with the handkerchief she always carried and watched the occasional car pass by in silence.
Having stepped out from the Simulation, Yoshiiro Chiose had become that sixteen-year-old girl once more.
She was no longer the naive little girl, nor the hard-drinking office worker, nor the hauntingly eccentric white moonlight — and certainly not that emotionally barren, large-scale villain.
She was just an ordinary girl about to start high school.
"This kind of life… isn't bad either."
Chiose still had a full fifteen years left to live — round it up and that was sixteen years!
Sixteen whole years! As many as all the years she had already lived in the real world!
A month ago she had been a wretch spending every free moment delivering milk, plastering flyers, and scraping other people's flyers off walls for wages so meagre they barely registered — and now, just like that, so much of that pressure was simply gone.
The more she thought about it, the more dreamlike it felt.
"Tomorrow it's off to Hane-oka."
Chiose wandered over to the small Park where she and Tomori had once eaten lunch during the second Simulation, and sat down alone on the swing, drinking her soda.
Everything around her was quiet. Office workers were buried in their cubicles. Students were at home or somewhere lively, enjoying the last stretch of their holiday.
Yoshiiro Chiose had become a loner again.
Only this time, Yoshiiro Chiose was not lost in the slightest.
The unease, the dread, the guilt coiled inside her — all of it shrank to near-nothingness in the face of the lifespan she had just deposited. It was almost as if it had never been there at all.
But was that really true?
And so Chiose sat there, seemingly at peace, leisurely enjoying her solitary afternoon.
For no particular reason, a vague restlessness crept in.
Why was she restless?
Yoshiiro Chiose raised her head. The drifting clouds at the edge of the sky answered her question.
[Not sure.]
That was simply how things were.
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