06 The Power to Change the Universe 3

Mio became aware of the word "marriage" at some point.

Probably when Jake married Helen.

Six years ago, around the time she was ten.

That was the first time Mio learned that two people who loved each other would someday marry.

She did not immediately think, "Then what about me?" Instead, the first thought that arose was:

"Why don't Papa and Sharon get married?"

A simple, naive question.

The following year, Kou and May married.

To Mio, who had attended the training academy almost daily during the time Jin was Instructor and shared dinner with them, Kou and May had been reliable older siblings.

She clapped her hands so hard her fingers turned red with joy.

Yet another deepening question.

"Why?"

Chronologically, Kou and May were younger than Jin and Sharon.

Why did those two marry, yet the two she loved—those who surely loved each other—remain unmarried?

Shortly after that, she turned twelve.

Receiving sex education, she began questioning herself.

Where had she come from? From whom?

She feared she was an alien presence, unrelated to the two she loved, disrupting the bond between her beloved oto-san and Sharon.

That thought took root.

If so, she wished at least not to interfere.

Better still, if Mio could simply be with them—no deeper meaning, just as the words said—she would be content.

For Mio, with no knowledge of her birth mother and only Jin as her adoptive parent, Sharon had been, quite simply, a mother figure.

From that day on, Mio began speaking aloud what she had never said before.

To the person involved, it seemed casual—yet too direct, too blunt, a clear appeal.

A tangible and intangible message implying she could have married Shirley all along.

Well, unfortunately, even after three years, that message still has no effect.

The reason Jin owned a house too large for one person to live in.

After she began to suspect it might have been the reason her existence had obstructed a past marriage, she became even more resolute.

In the end, it turned out to be Mio’s misunderstanding.

Two years later. When she was fourteen.

Feeling a slight unease about discussing such matters with her father, Mio turned to Shirley first.

Shirley, as always, listened with genuine concern.

“Jin is not very perceptive, you know. Not that he’d be able to pay attention to something like this… it’s awkward, really.”

She muttered something like that, and Mio agreed.

Indeed, it was slightly awkward to be so attentively considered on a matter so uniquely feminine.

In the end, she was told it was a personal matter—everyone differs—and Mio felt relieved.

It was frightening—everyone around her had already begun, while she remained untouched.

—Ever since childhood, she had felt something different.

Not arrogance born of ability.

Not indifference to her own appearance.

A sense of otherness rooted in past experience. That was the source.

Perhaps she was not an ordinary human.

Mio—secret from Jin—once investigated her biological parents.

She asked casually, discreetly, how to obtain household records from someone other than Jin.

The most reliable method was DNA screening.

Every living being has parents.

By comparing her DNA to potential relatives, matching patterns would reveal her genetic parent.

She did not wish to know who her parents were.

Only to feel certain.

She wanted to prove that the conclusion she was reaching was born from adolescent imagination.

If there was no need to identify the individual, the search was simple.

All DNA data collected since the founding of the migrant fleet, stored in the fleet integration database.

A microcosm of human history, encompassing both the living and the dead.

Any human should have at least one match here.

The result—NG.

Several individuals showed fragmented similarities, but no more than distant relatives.

No one could be conclusively proven to be a parent.

How deeply that fact struck Mio.

If her parents could not be identified, then her parents were not in this database—meaning they were non-registered citizens.

Or possibly, she herself was a design baby, genetically altered to the point that even her parents could not be traced.

Either way, it was far from ordinary.

Mio, who had once sought ordinariness, sought it even more fervently.

If one cannot change their birth, then one must change their way of living.

Just a little bit ordinary.

An ordinary life.

For she had longed for it.

Helen, married to Jake.

May, married to Kou.

Both seemed deeply content.

Shortly after, their children were born.

To cherish such tiny, fragile lives with tender affection.

To long for that, to wish to become like them—there was nothing strange about it.

To dream of someday marrying someone beloved and bearing a child with them.

That was what she had wished for.

Thus, Mio desired ordinariness.

Peacefulness.

It was then she learned the saying: "Fortune and misfortune are like a tangled rope."

Both happiness and sorrow come equally.

No great peaks or valleys needed.

Complete flatness is impossible in life itself.

Just a slight variation would be enough.

I already experienced plenty during childhood—no need for grand events.

I don’t need more.

Please, please.

May my life have nothing at all from now on.

It was a desperate prayer.

A desperate plea.

But even that prayer—every hope—was brutally torn apart.

I was not human.

That one fact was the foundation of everything.

Mio heard the sound of the door to the future she had seen before her closing.

After learning about Rei, she felt, in a way, saved.

"Ahh. That’s right."

I was wrong from the beginning.

It wasn’t that the future closed because I never made a mistake—no, it closed because I was wrong.

Then I can correct that mistake.

I thought that.

If I have no future, then I must return it.

To the one whose future I took by my own doing.

If I can revive the Kusakari Order—revive the Higashiō Order—then that is what I must do.

That is my duty.

That is the correct path.

And the means to achieve it were already prepared.

There is no future for me, not one meant for a being unlike a human—how could I possibly share a future with others?

◆ ◆ ◆

"I just want to go out with you—like you! Got it!?"

I don't understand.

What did you just say?

Go out with you?

Shopping?

No—no, that's not it.

Then you said you liked me.

Who? Who did you say?

(You, Tōya-kun—me?)

The reconstructed heart accelerates its rhythm.

She feels heat rising to her cheeks.

Mio herself is bewildered by the outburst of emotion so entirely out of place.

Happy.

She tries to rationalize it, but her mind is overwhelmed by nothing but that single sensation.

Nothing else can be thought of.

Yet a calm part of her still warns.

Because that’s not normal.

No one could possibly like a monster.

Her blood ran cold the moment she realized it.

It was painful to have warmth taken from her, once given.

If it was never going to be hers, she wished she’d never even brushed her fingertips against it.

"I think... Toya, you're misunderstanding something."

Her voice trembled.

She felt more shaken than when she’d learned her friends were still waiting.

"What do you mean, misunderstanding?"

"I'm not... human."

"I know. You're from the Terminus people. I’ve received the basic explanations too."

"Ter...? My true body isn’t this one. It’s the cold iron frame over here."

Mio tilted her head, unfamiliar with the name of her own kind.

But immediately, her focus shifted—not to that, but to clearing up the misunderstanding she had caused.

"So it’s like the relationship between an assault frame and its pilot, right? What’s wrong with that?"

"No! I’m not real! I’m just a copy!"

"No, it's not that I'm a fake or anything. To me, Tohgo is just you, here. To me, you're the real one."

"W-Why are you not worried about that at all!"

"Actually, I don't understand what Tohgo is even worried about."

Mio, visibly confused, mirrored his bewilderment.

And then one possibility struck her.

This delusion. Perhaps...

"Besides, Tohgo-kun said he liked me. But that's not right either."

"Then what's wrong with that?"

She took a breath. Her heart raced—not for the same reason as before—she tried to suppress it.

"Tohgo-kun thinks he likes me. But that's because I made him think so."