Turning Chapter 1131

Chapter 1131

"...What if this is really the memory of someone else who was there?"

Yuder's complicated thoughts that had been tangled suddenly stopped.

"The memory of someone else? Who do you mean... Surely not."

In the middle of speaking, the moment he saw Kishiar's eyes filled with complex coldness, he instinctively sensed who he was trying to talk about.

Who else could make him have such an expression?

If not himself.

'Is he talking about the white glove?'

Seriously?

Seeing Yuder's eyes, Kishiar slowly nodded.

"This isn't a statement based on perfect evidence, but rather a hypothesis with a lot of personal opinion mixed in, relying on imagination and intuition. Still, can you listen for now?"

"I'm fine with anything, so please speak freely."

Yuder calmed his dumbfounded feelings and regained his composure. Kishiar, who had smiled briefly, began his story.

"That being has continued to exist even now when you've come back in time, despite having been dead for a long time. We've both already confirmed that it's not just an illusion, but has a will and can communicate."

"Yes."

"When I first heard about that being from you, I thought it might be a being that had part of... more precisely, something that constitutes me. That thing also called 'soul'. Two people existing simultaneously. Naturally, I thought that was the most likely guess for it to exist together while having traces of a game that had already passed."

After saying that, the man paused for a moment as if trying to gauge Yuder's expression, then continued his story.

"If that thought was correct, there should have been a part in me that was somewhat different from others. But when I asked the pharmacist, he said there was no problem with my soul at all. Unlike your soul, which was full of wounds and even had a weak connection to the physical body."

"Enon said that?"

When on earth did they have such a conversation? And if there was no problem with Kishiar's soul, what was going on? He felt perplexed, with every aspect of the conversation's content and timing bothering him.

"When exactly... no, never mind. Please continue."

"Later, I casually asked Mick who came from the South, but he also said he didn't see anything particularly unusual in me. When two people who look into the inner being in different ways said such similar things, I discarded the first hypothesis as it was."

"..."

"Then how and on what basis could that being exist there? In a state of having such unresolved questions, I finally became able to see him directly too. After the 'dream' we tried in the office before, what I said about him. Do you remember?"

Of course he remembered. How could he forget such surprising words? Yuder answered without hesitation.

"Yes. The exterior was the same as you, but..."

"-I said the energy it possessed felt more similar to you."

Kishiar finished Yuder's sentence.

"I've been thinking constantly about that feeling I couldn't clearly explain even myself. And I came up with another hypothesis. This time centered on you, not me."

'...Me?'

"According to the pharmacist, your soul was in a very bad state from the first time he met you. He said he was constantly worried you might die and kept checking your condition while giving you things that might help. Was there such a thing in the previous game too?"

Yuder shook his head.

"...No."

"Right. I thought so. Then it means that your soul's condition being different from others only occurred in this game. Even if your relationship with the pharmacist in the previous game was different from now, someone like him wouldn't have just ignored a person in mortal danger."

That was true. Although Yuder hadn't had as deep and honest conversations with Enon in his previous life as now, he had cared for Yuder in many ways. If he had discovered a problem with Yuder's soul, wouldn't he have at least mentioned it indirectly while cursing and treating injuries Yuder hadn't mentioned every time he found them?

'He might have, and I just don't remember... but if it wasn't a memory related to Kishiar, hadn't there been no memories that disappeared without me even knowing they had been lost like that until now?'

"So to summarize, someone who had a sound soul in the previous game came to have a soul full of holes and weakly bound to the physical body after coming to this game. One could think that's simply the price of coming back by turning back time, but thinking differently, that doesn't seem to be a perfectly satisfying answer either. Because the damaged parts of your soul kept recovering while you were with me. Then where did the damaged parts of your soul that you lost disappear to, and where did they come back from?"

Yuder recalled Enon's irritated expression telling him to stay close to Kishiar as much as possible because his soul's damage and binding force recovered when he was with him, and the holes gaping and pulsing inside him simultaneously. He also remembered the moments when those indescribably strange empty sensations slowly filled while being with Kishiar, and memories returned.

Now that many holes have been filled, it's no coincidence that Mick, whom he met again, said that many holes in Yuder's essence had disappeared. The memories that disappeared from Yuder, the damage to his soul, and the holes in his inner self that he felt himself were clearly related.

Until now, he had thought the cause of that recovery was just the mysterious connection between them, that is, because of the 'imprint', but Kishiar seemed to have tried to approach it again in a new direction without stopping there.

Yuder's memories that disappeared and returned, and his soul's damage that was recovering.

And the essence of the hand wearing the white glove that Kishiar mentioned at the very beginning.

Then what he wanted to say in the end was...

Yuder opened his mouth with sharply sunken eyes.

"-You think the you beyond the crack might be a being made of my soul. Is that what you want to say?"

A thick scent rose sharply from Kishiar. It was a more certain response than saying it was correct.

"I got the clue for this hypothesis when I recalled hearing about the 'initial connection' from you."

The day that became the beginning that completely shook Yuder's life in his previous life.

The accident that occurred simultaneously with his second gender manifestation. The shocking moments when he writhed in pain as something inside was torn, mixed, and tangled. And the 'connection' obtained as a result.

Kishiar raised his head and stared somewhere in the dark room.

As he reached out his hand, two small objects flew towards them from somewhere as if caught and pulled by something. Yuder realized they were small decorative dolls that had been on the shelf.

Wooden dolls used to ward off bad luck, commonly seen anywhere on the continent. Although they had no eyes, nose, or mouth, they had a shape similar to humans, and various patterns or colors with different meanings were often painted on their bodies. The dolls Kishiar brought also had red patterns wishing for health painted on one, and black patterns wishing for longevity on the other.

Holding one doll in each hand, Kishiar began his full explanation.

"If we were to make the 'initial connection' you experienced in the previous game into a visible form, it would probably feel like this."

Suddenly, the bodies of the dolls held in each hand silently exploded and shattered into pieces. However, those pieces didn't fall to the ground or hit Yuder's body, but floated in the air as if suspended by threads.

After a moment, Yuder saw the scattered pieces sticking back together again. The two dolls that had miraculously reconnected, however, had mottled colors unlike their original appearance.

Kishiar brought the dolls close together, facing each other, their shapes exactly the same as before but now made of mixed red and black colors. The reconnected pieces wobbled and moved as if trying to return black to black and red to red, then stuck together. It looked like they had become connected and merged into one mass.

"What would happen if someone else tried to forcibly separate these mixed and connected things?"

"They would break, I suppose."

"Yes. But for someone with power like mine, it's not completely impossible. If I had tried to cut the connection between the two, probably..."

As Kishiar applied force to the hand holding one doll, only the red pieces that made up that doll were suddenly pulled out all at once as if someone had yanked them.

"I would have tried to do it like this first."

Yuder stared blankly at the doll that was left with only black. The black doll, with half of its red pieces removed, was full of holes all over its body, barely maintaining its shape. The red pieces extracted from the black doll clumped together like a tiny ball and stuck to the opposite doll.

"..."

"But what if, due to some accident, the next step that should have followed wasn't properly carried out and ended? What would happen to each doll?"

With the quiet voice, the opposite doll that was still maintaining its intact shape fell from Kishiar's grasp, holding the clump of red pieces that had come out of the black doll. That doll completely disappeared, buried in the sheet wrapped around their bodies.

All that was left was the black doll full of holes. Kishiar grasped and kneaded the black doll that had been blankly standing like a lost child, and its gaps began to shrink and clump back together.

The black doll that had clumped together again looked perfect without holes on the outside, even though it had become lighter and smaller than before.

To those who saw this doll for the first time, it would seem as if it had originally been made that way.

While Yuder quietly stared at that doll, Kishiar carefully put down the shrunken black doll. Then he turned towards the opposite doll buried in the sheet.

The one that had originally been the red doll but was no longer so.