At Ariel's urgent cry, we rushed out of the room and headed together to Manu's private maintenance room.
Manu was already there, completely shut down.
"She wouldn't answer no matter how many times I called, so I came in..."
"What? She's just powered down."
Unlike Ariel, who was beside herself with worry, Sati remained indifferent despite someone having collapsed right in front of her.
"What should we do? Want me to get a battery?"
"...Could you?"
When she casually asked whether she should bring one from the storage room, I gave a brief answer with a heavy heart.
It was obvious that Manu had stopped replenishing her batteries.
For a human, it was much like choosing to starve oneself to death.
While Sati headed to the storage room for a moment,
Ariel clenched the hand she had raised to her chest and spoke, her face twisting as though in pain.
"Why would she...?"
"Not everyone is as kind as you two."
To Ariel, who repeated "why" as if speaking to herself, I stated it as though the unusual ones were the two of them.
"Considering how long I was gone, it's only natural."
"Leader..."
When I murmured as if reminding myself of my own position, Ariel looked at me with a small measure of pity.
"I was prepared for this kind of treatment to some extent."
"Even so, she doesn't have to go this far..."
Just as my conversation with Ariel was reaching its height—
"Hey! Got it!"
Heavy, unconcerned footsteps approached, accompanied by Sati's voice calling out as if it were all a hassle.
Back already, Sati immediately twisted open one end of the battery and brought it to Manu's neck as though plugging it in.
If there had been a needle attached, it would have been downright chilling.
The game had never depicted how Replicas consumed batteries, but apparently this was what it looked like.
It looks like she's giving her an injection in the neck...
Watching it made the side of my own neck tingle for no reason, and I raised my right hand to scratch the left side of my neck.
After the replenishment had continued for some time,
Manu's body, which had been completely motionless, gave a twitch. Soon, she was able to move on her own.
"Ugh."
"Hey. Refill yourself from here on out."
Sati irritably tossed the battery at Manu, who groaned from the floor.
"Why...?"
Having barely regained consciousness, Manu held her head and spoke as if asking why we had woken her up.
"Why? Ha. That's not even funny."
"Sati..."
Apparently dumbfounded by Manu's attitude, Sati let out a hollow laugh and glared as though she were about to start a fight.
At the hostile atmosphere, Ariel grabbed Sati's arm and called her name. But after noticing Ariel's reaction, Sati turned her gaze to me.
"You and Ariel, get out for a minute."
"What? No, but..."
Sati suddenly told us to leave.
She seemed to think that if I left, Ariel would leave with me.
I had a bad feeling about it, so I tried to hold my ground here at least once, but...
"I don't like repeating myself, you know?"
Seeing her face, genuinely full of irritation, I decided there was no helping it. I put a hand on Ariel's shoulder and nodded at her anxiously wavering gaze.
At my unspoken signal that we should step out for now, Ariel nodded as well and left Manu's room with me.
That said, we did not go far. We merely stood with our backs against the corridor wall near the maintenance room.
"What the hell are you so dissatisfied with?"
The argument began with Sati's irritated question.
"I wasn't going on operations, so I didn't need supplies."
Manu revealed why she had not replenished her own batteries in response to Sati's question.
She was not going on operations, so she had not needed supplies.
It was not wrong if one followed the logic of it, but Sati was not the sort of person to say, "Oh, is that so?" and let the matter go based on a few excuses like that.
"Ha, what an accomplishment! Then why don't you just go on operations?!"
"...I don't want to."
Sati laughed hollowly again and pressed her, while Manu firmly answered that she did not want to.
"Yeah? Then let's hear your precious reason."
Even before Manu's firm response, Sati did not back down in the slightest. Instead, she pressed even harder, demanding an explanation.
"I don't want to tell you."
But Manu remained stubborn, answering as though she did not wish to tell anyone else her reason.
"Right. You're the only one in the world who's miserable, aren't you?"
Even then, Sati did not retreat. Instead, she began speaking as though the whole thing were ridiculous.
"Do you think we just accepted that everything would be fine from now on because that guy came back?"
What followed was about my return and Sati's own feelings.
Her voice trembled as she pressed Manu, as though saying, I'm no less miserable than you are.
"That's not..."
"What do you mean, it's not?! You're thinking that kind of crap, so you're pulling some hunger-strike stunt while going, 'No one understands the feelings of a pitiful bitch like me~'!"
Manu tried to argue, but Sati cut her off midway and pressed her even harder.
Along with those words that seemed to guess at Manu's feelings, she compared Manu's deliberate refusal to replenish her batteries to a hunger strike.
I'd thought she was trying to starve herself to death, but a hunger strike?
Was that another way of looking at it?
Just as I tilted my head, unsure what to make of it—
"Listen. That guy woke you up because he decided you'd be the most useful right now. He said you alone would be better than Ariel and me going to the surface together."
As if driving in the final nail, Sati seized the upper hand and began pressing Manu, who had been unable to offer any meaningful rebuttal.
"Seeing unmotivated, selfish people like you makes my blood boil."
Sati's complaint-filled voice followed.
It seemed there were personal feelings behind her anger as well.
"Is your mood really that important? If you're not in the mood to shoot, are you just going to let a monster tear you apart right in front of you?"
Then she threw out an absurd hypothetical, reducing Manu's refusal to go on operations to nothing more than throwing a tantrum.
"That's not what this is about..."
"No? It is exactly what this is about."
Manu tried to argue, but the momentum had already swung far too heavily in Sati's favor.
Honestly, it was a ridiculous example, but it seemed effective enough for overwhelming her opponent.
"You're just refusing a reasonable operation because you don't feel like doing it."
Once Sati finished speaking, a brief but tense silence followed.
Meanwhile, apparently still worried by the argument between the two, Ariel lightly gripped my sleeve.
In the silence, the only sounds were my breathing and the faint rustle of Ariel's fingers against my sleeve.
As the long silence continued in that stillness—
"Then what meaning do those operations even have?"
"What?"
It was Manu, not Sati, who broke the silence first.
At Manu's murmur, mixed with emptiness and loss, Sati let out a short, puzzled, "What?"
"...It'll be the same anyway, once that person disappears."
Manu slowly answered in a subdued voice.
It would be the same once that person disappeared.
The "person" Manu was referring to had to be me.
After all, the city's decline had happened during my absence.
More accurately, it was because of the system that prevented batteries and Power Stones from appearing on the surface when there was no player.
In other words, Manu had been refusing operations because of the emptiness and loss she had experienced before.
She feared that no matter how diligently she cooperated with operations now, it would all become the same again if I disappeared.
"No matter how many operations we carry out, if that person disappears... what's the point?"
She had worked hard, only for everything to return to square one, leaving behind nothing but vague despair.
That was why Manu had given up.
Even on allowing herself the slightest hope in anything.
I could not say I failed to understand how she felt. As I scratched the back of my head, feeling equally unsettled—
"Everyone will just suffer all over again..."
"Shut up!"
As if crushing Manu's anxiety beneath her heel, Sati suddenly shouted.
"We can think about that when it happens! And do you really think something like that is a reason to sit around doing nothing now?!"
She said we could think about such things when the time came, and that it was no reason to do nothing now.
It might have sounded irresponsible and reckless at first, but beneath it was a sense of responsibility that said they had to do something somehow.
"Everything will go back to the way it was?! I know that too! I know, but I do it because I know we have to!"
She did it because she knew they had to.
It suited Sati's personality in many ways, yet it also revealed the quiet kindness she had for those around her.
"Even Ariel, who held out until the very end without lying down in her case, forgave him! So who the hell are you to act like you're the one suffering?!"
As Sati continued her impassioned speech, Ariel stepped closer at my side and buried her face against my shoulder.
I had thought the two of them were unusually intertwined in the side stories, but it seemed they really had been especially close.
She might be a little prickly toward me, but for Ariel, Sati truly seemed to be the best friend she could have.
"If you understand, be there for tomorrow's operation."
When Manu could no longer offer any rebuttal, Sati apparently decided there was no need to say more. Leaving behind that unilateral notice, she started walking away.
Her irritated footsteps thudded through the corridor.
I had been listening to their entire argument nearby, and only then snapped back to my senses with an inward curse, trying to leave with Ariel, but...
"...Ah."
"...Ugh!"
Fat chance. We were too close, and Sati caught sight of us in the corridor immediately.
The scowl on Sati's face as she emerged from Manu's maintenance room instantly twisted into an expression full of embarrassment.
Sati stomped toward us, abruptly grabbed me by the collar, and glared through clenched teeth.
"How much did you hear...?"
"Uh, well..."
I hesitated under Sati's interrogation and swallowed dryly.
If I told the truth, she would definitely kill me.
I have to somehow make an excuse that we only just got here...
Just as I was racking my brains for a lie—
"From the beginning... to the end..."
Not wanting to lie to her precious friend, Ariel beat me to it and answered Sati first.
"W-What the hell?! If you had any sense, shouldn't you have waited somewhere your voices couldn't be heard?!"
Sure enough, Sati flew into a rage and seemed ready to lunge at us, apparently trying to hide her embarrassment.
"S-Sorry...! But thank you..."
"Agh, whatever! Go to hell!"
When Ariel tried to thank Sati for stepping up for us, Sati just violently scratched at her head, spat out a dizzying insult, and stalked away.
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