"Where is this...?"
Origami opened her eyes inside a sleeping consciousness.
What she saw was a completely white space.
Looking around, she recalled the memories from before she collapsed.
"Did I lose consciousness again? I should have been with Itsuka-kun..."
Origami had blacked out the moment she saw the flames coming from Shido’s hand. As she kept looking around, she suddenly felt something behind her.
Feeling that strange unease, Origami turned around and found another person there.
"You are... me?"
The haircut was different, and even the clothes were strange, but the face was unmistakably her own.
The space where this other self existed was completely different, covered in darkness and dyed black.
'What in the world is this...?'
As Origami, feeling confused, reached out toward the space where her other self lay sleeping, the darkness burst outward and surged over her.
And what rose up was a memory that did not exist.
'This is... my memory?'
More precisely, it was the remnants of a past that had once existed, but was now gone.
While Origami experienced the other self’s memories, the Origami of the past also regained consciousness and experienced the memories of the current Origami.
Her dead parents were alive, and they had even come to her high school entrance ceremony.
It was a happy memory the Origami of the past had never possessed.
As the two of them recalled each other’s memories, their gazes met, and the severed white and black spaces began to blend together.
******
"Let’s go, Hikinon!"
"[Ohh! Leave it to me, master!]"
I pulled out Hikinon and deployed an ice shield to block the beams Tobiichi was firing.
Crack!
The moment the beams struck the ice shield, they were absorbed and instantly turned into chunks of ice, which then shot down the other beams.
"Hup!"
Whoosh!
Not missing the opening that created, I swung the spiral sword down and attacked Tobiichi directly with flames.
Fwush!
But perhaps because of some survival instinct, black feathers gathered together and formed a barrier, blocking the fire.
"Tch! Fighting with numbers, huh!"
Unlike me, who could only use one weapon, or at most two, my opponent had dozens of feathers.
So even flames that one feather couldn’t stop were being blocked by layers of them.
It was annoying enough already that I was fighting while basically burning myself as fuel, and because my opponent was who she was, it was even more irritating.
"Itsuka-kun!"
"Whoa!"
And the problem was that Itsuka-kun was included among Tobiichi’s targets.
If she had only been attacking me, I could have drawn her attention and forced a path through, but since Itsuka-kun was also on the list, it made things far more troublesome.
Watching her fight by satisfying the two things I hated most—swarming numbers and hostages—even though I knew Tobiichi wasn’t in her right mind, anger still boiled up in me.
"Damn it, this is such a cheap way to fight!"
It wasn’t like I hadn’t considered burning all those black feathers to ash.
Of course I had tried it, since getting rid of them would remove Tobiichi’s means of attack.
The problem was that those insane feathers, as if they were made of particles of light, kept turning into light and slipping away every time I tried to burn them.
Because of that special trait, I couldn’t burn them, and since I didn’t have any wide-area defensive skills, I had to stay by Itsuka-kun’s side and protect him, which meant we’d been locked in a stalemate for several minutes.
"Hey, Itsuka-kun! Why don’t we just charge her!? We both have regeneration, and I’ve got healing too! We can become a close-quarters tank built on regeneration and healing!"
"[What the hell are you talking about!? What if Shido dies doing that?]"
"I’m just saying it off the cuff!"
Words I normally would never have said just came flying out of my mouth.
I guess all the times I’d been put through that kind of crap in Dark Souls, or when I’d fought devils a few times, had piled up and clouded my judgment.
"Fine! Hikinon! Can’t you make the ice shield bigger?"
"[No! This is the limit! Wanting more than this is greed, you idiot master!]"
The shield Hikinon was currently projecting was about four meters across, which should have been plenty, but because beams were raining down from every direction, a flat shield wasn’t performing very well.
"Then at least change its shape!"
"[You think I can do that!?]"
"This is driving me crazy!"
My opponent was trying to kill me, I couldn’t kill her back, and I also had someone I needed to protect from attacks coming from all directions.
No matter how strong I was, if Itsuka-kun or Tobiichi died, it would all be meaningless, so this fight was bound to be difficult.
"I don’t even know anymore!"
At this rate, Tobiichi’s angel was going to fully manifest, so I quickly dropped my stance, put Hikinon back into my inventory, and grabbed Itsuka-kun by the back of the neck.
"Wah!?"
"From here on out, we’re breaking through in a straight line!"
"Aaaah!!!"
As I kicked off the ground, Itsuka-kun screamed.
Probably because the speed made the air resistance hurt like hell.
But I couldn’t stop now when I needed to reach Tobiichi as fast as possible, so I ignored his screams and arrived in front of her.
Swoosh! Swoosh!
Sure enough, the feathers judged us to be a threat to Tobiichi and fired beams to take us out.
But by then, I had already reached my destination.
Fwoom!
I wrapped flames around the spiral sword and stabbed through part of the angel that had been covering Tobiichi, melting straight through it.
Then I hurled Itsuka-kun through the opening and shouted, blocking the incoming beams with my body.
"Itsuka-kun! I’m counting on you!"
"Aaaah!"
Itsuka-kun answered with a scream and flew toward Tobiichi.
******
Inside her own mind, or perhaps in the space of her unconsciousness, Origami faced her past self.
She had been briefly confused by the memories of her past self, who wore an angel as if she were a spirit, but now that things had settled down...
Past and present began to talk.
"I killed my father and mother."
The first to speak was the Origami of the past.
"In this world, none of that happened! Itsuka-kun’s older brother—!"
As the present Origami spoke, she felt a strange sense of unease.
In the memories of her past self, Shido’s siblings were only Mana and Kotori, so an older brother could not have existed.
In other words, the one who had saved her parents was not an older brother, but Shido.
"No, Itsuka-kun saved them...?"
While the present Origami was flustered by that fact, the Origami of the past asked her with despair-filled eyes.
"If you say it was something that never happened, then what are my memories? Can I just pretend I never killed them?"
"That’s...!"
There was no way she could say that it could simply be treated as if it had never happened.
It was a history that no longer existed now, but it had certainly existed, and even if it was in the past, it had been her own wrongdoing.
On top of that, the present Origami had directly experienced those memories and felt that despair for herself, so she clutched her head with trembling hands.
Seeing that, the Origami of the past said calmly,
"I am you, and you are me. Even if the world was remade, memories... don’t disappear."
The present Origami, forced to face the truth she had been fleeing from until now, sank down and felt a deep despair.
Along with that, darkness gradually filled in and began to consume the present.
"I can’t do this anymore... So you too..."
"Stop...! Please, stop already...! I can’t...! Please, someone...! Anybody, save me...!"
Just as she was being swallowed by despair and her personality began to break down like her past self’s, an all-too-familiar voice pierced the ears of both Origasmi.
"Origami――!!!"
"...!"
A voice she could never forget, and must never forget.
Shido’s voice reached all the way to Origami’s heart.
"Itsuka-kun...?"
"Why is Shido..."
Both Origasmi looked toward the place where Shido’s voice was coming from.
As if hope had entered the dark, deep despair, that place, cracked and broken open, was shining brightly.
Through the gap, Shido’s voice came through and delivered his words to them.
"Don’t carry it all by yourself! Just like five years ago! You’re not alone! You’re not lonely!"
At those words, both Origasmi recalled what Shido had said in the past.
The words of the boy who said he would accept all her sadness and anger, who told her to lean on him when there was no answer, and who asked her not to fall into despair.
The voice of the younger Shido changed into the voice of the grown Shido as it reached the two of them.
"Even if you destroy the world over and over again, I’ll definitely do something about it! Even if you feel like you’ll fall into despair again and again, I’ll definitely save you!"
"Shido..."
"I...!"
As Shido’s voice drew closer, a crack of hope began to widen in Origami’s mind, which had been filled only with despair.
"Reach out, Origami! I need――you!"
Toward the shadow of Shido visible beyond the light of hope, both Origasmi reached out their hands.
Then the two beings merged into one and took Shido’s hand, and at last Origami’s despair came to an end.
******
"Phew, finally over."
A few minutes after I’d thrown Itsuka-kun through the gap in the angel, the words he shouted reached Tobiichi and her reversal was undone.
Right now the two of them were crying and saying something to each other, but all I could think was that it was over, and my body felt strangely light.
"[No, literally light.]"
"[Yeah. Half your body disappeared, so of course you’d feel lighter...?]"
"Ah."
No wonder my vision was missing half of itself. Half my body had turned to ash and crumbled away.
Apparently I’d pushed the flames too hard while rushing to break through Tobiichi’s angel, and then my body got pierced by the beams in that state, which caused my regeneration to stop for a moment.
"I’m really glad..."
Itsuka-kun and Tobiichi, now sealed after even kissing, stared at me with shocked expressions.
"Yo. Finally done?"
I smiled to let them know not to worry and greeted them cheerfully, but for some reason both of them reacted pretty intensely.
"Hieta! You, your body...!"
"H-Hieta-kun! What happened!? Is this because of me!? I’m sorry!"
"Hmm..."
It wasn’t like it was a problem, since I’d regenerate soon enough anyway, so why were they making such a fuss?
"[Yeah. Mayuri and Sachi asked me to tell you: 'See you at the mansion.']"
"[See? I told you to take better care of your body..."]
"Ahaha..."
Yeah, I was probably going to get lectured for a few hours over this.
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