[Keep going and live on, my daughter. As your daughter, I'll be praying for you from another world.]
For some reason, when the simulation ended, a single teardrop slid from the corner of Yoshiiro Chiose's eye.
It quietly traced its way down from the corner of Chiose's eye, finally falling among her silver-white strands of hair, without stirring up any ripples.
[Congratulations, Host—you wicked thing, you've destroyed another person's life! After grasping all sorts of intelligence on Nagasaki Soyo's life, the special events and ordinary events both great and small, the Host decisively became a wicked woman with a powerful store of information, and, prescribing the right remedy for each ailment, kept dragging Soyo into the ingenious traps the Host designed.]
[Your comprehension of evildoing and your methods of evildoing are both constantly improving. May you master new techniques and learn new skills ever faster, and tirelessly go on ruining people together with this Host!]
[Settling Remorse Index.. Congratulations, Host, you have gained lifespan: a full seven years]
[Remaining lifespan: twenty-two years, four months, and twenty-seven days]
[Overall evaluation: upper-middle]
[Ps. I hope you can perform at an even better level next time. By the way—first being the mother, then the daughter? How interesting.. That's just like you, Yoshiiro Chiose. Even faced with such a vast difference, you still handle it with ease? Hachi-Chiose... you little rascal...]
Chiose had absolutely no desire to listen to the System's noisy voice; she only selectively picked out a few keywords.
The System said twenty-two years and four months, right!
Ha→ ha↓ ha↑ ha↓
Now even living to thirty-eight wouldn't be a problem, and she was getting close to the thirty years needed to cure her little sister's eyes.
Just one simulation brought such a bountiful harvest—oh, my adorable daughter Soyo! Your daughter Chiose loves you so much!
The happiness brought by learning her lifespan had grown lasted only a brief few seconds.
Having leapt down from the bed, Chiose stood frozen blankly in place.
Her hands still held that raised, celebratory pose, the corners of her mouth still curving upward; with her back to the moonlight, in this moment she was the goddess of victory of her own world.
But after the brief surge of excitement passed, what greeted her little heart was a wave of inexplicable emptiness.
[It's over again.. one whole life.]
The years she'd spent in the simulations and in reality added up to.. scattered here and there, some twenty or thirty years, probably.
Actually.. it was pretty strange.
It was as if her life had been cut into countless little segments, and in each little segment there would be someone to accompany her through it—
But, it was only companionship.
At some unknown moment that companionship would vanish, and Chiose would be flung into the next fragment.
Countless people would leave her—like Mini-Lamp, Alcohol Lamp, the idiot small-fry Taki, daughter Soyo, mother Soyo...
And countless people would come into her world—like Takamatsu Tomori and Shiina Taki in reality... as well as her most beloved little sister.
[In just an instant, have I already come this far?]
Actually, just last week she'd still been staring blankly at a critical condition notice.
"Haah.."
Yoshiiro Chiose stood barefoot on the ice-cold floor; in the very end, she actually no longer knew what expression to wear to meet the gaze of this world.
She walked alone toward the little balcony at the edge of the living room, leaning half her body against the railing, admiring the eternal, unchanging moon.
"Actually.." Chiose's mouth muttered and murmured, whispering softly, "I'm grateful—truly grateful that mother Soyo gave me, one last time, a keepsake of [a mother]."
Counting the simulations, it had already been... ten-some, nearly twenty years since the passing of her own birth mother, Ms. Haizuka.
Everything about her mother had grown blurry and indistinct.. just like how, in the simulation, Soyo's memories of Ms. Nagasaki had become incomplete.
And it was precisely because Chiose knew which things would make her suffer that she had used those tricks on Soyo.
"Haah."
The second sigh of the night.
Yoshiiro Chiose pinched her own little face, but because there wasn't enough flesh on her cheeks, all she managed to pinch up was a fistful of loneliness.
"I used to really hate it when Mom took photos of me with her phone, hated how she always filmed me in her videos—every time I'd speak up and scold her, telling her to stop filming me."
And every time, Mom would laugh awkwardly and say, what's wrong with taking just one!
Only now did Yoshiiro Chiose realize that only Mom would raise her phone to record her.
Mm.. and yet now there weren't many photos of her together with her mother in her own phone.
Of the few that there were, most... were taken back in her childhood by her mother, using the very first phone her mother had bought for Chiose.
Her mother's phone was actually still at home; it had been kept carefully as a memento in the nightstand of her parents' room.
Chiose knew it held many memories of her parents, but she was a coward, and didn't dare at all to go leafing through it.
"Little Soyo, ngh, you absolutely have to pull through... You burst out seven years of lifespan for me... haah, it seems you must have suffered terribly."
Seven years—longer than what she'd gotten from every previous simulation.
She really had no idea how that child had fared afterward.
Ask the System?
Forget it—the System was just a scummy idiot; what could it possibly understand.
"Big sis?"
Kyoumoto's soft call came from behind her, and Chiose, startled, turned her head.
"Little Kyou? You're awake—did I wake you up?"
"Mm-mm, no, I just wanted to get up to use the bathroom, and then I found big sis was gone. Big sis, do you really not have anything on your mind? You've been acting strange lately..."
"Aha! How could I have anything on my mind—big sis would never keep anything from Little Kyou... Go on and use the bathroom, I just got too hot and came out for some fresh air... I'll come back in a bit and keep sleeping with you."
"Okay! Better hurry, or the blankets are going to go all cold and chilly again."
Because she was incredibly familiar with the home environment, Kyoumoto could carry out most activities around the house just by feeling along the wall.
In the darkness, Kyoumoto knew this home even better than Chiose did.
"Ah, it's really nice—my little sister gets to be happy, and in reality I get to meet everyone and save their somewhat unfortunate, regret-filled lives.. all of it is worth it."
With an expression on her face that could be named 'isn't this rather nice too,' Chiose let out a long sigh.
She liked to do things in earnest, so if she really were to be friends for a lifetime in reality, she would do everything a friend ought to do.
Helping her good friends resolve their worries and troubles, supporting one another through one bout of adolescent confusion after another! Yoshiiro Chiose! You're a wicked thing tempered through trials in the simulations...
"So I ought to be even kinder to everyone in reality—just treat it as giving my own conscience a little bit of comfort."
Waving at the moon, Chiose stretched lazily and walked toward the bedroom.
[Tomori, Taki, Soyo—you must all be fast asleep by now.]
I hope you have sweet dreams.
Tonight there is moonlight; return home and rest easy on your pillow.
____
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