10 The Most Happy Nightmare 8

Ah, how cruel.

This world is ideal for Jin.

There is Ryo.

That alone is enough to call it perfect.

If only I hadn’t noticed, I would have drowned in this world.

But I noticed.

"...My left hand feels empty."

The hand I’ve held for so long is gone.

It feels unnatural that my right hand is full.

My dominant hand should have been left open—meant to protect someone.

The name Ryo—something about it feels off.

I haven’t spoken it in years.

In fact, the name that feels natural on my tongue is another.

This past eight years, I’ve called out this name again and again.

"Mio."

Once spoken, it triggers a chain reaction—everything comes back.

"Aah…"

This place was a dream.

It was a dream, precisely.

Ryo is here. Mio is not.

That is not Jin’s reality.

It came naturally. It simply became true.

No matter how happy it might be, the absence of Mio makes it a nightmare.

He instinctively wraps his arms around her from behind.

The warmth is real.

Not a phantom. Flesh and blood.

Tears fall.

—Ryo is already dead.

He has avoided that truth for so long.

He could say she is gone, but never that she is dead.

But now, for the first time, he admits it.

Jin senses the future is not yet fixed.

Not now. He concludes this with familiar certainty.

He is witnessing the completion of the Litheira, and the future that follows.

The foresight held by Ace—though in truth, everyone possesses it to some degree.

Only glimpsing the memory of ether sent from the future.

It is not now.

Not while Jin refuses to give up.

Not while he does not halt, and acknowledge the Litheira.

This future will never become real.

It has not been confirmed.

That is, if Jin can now cast aside this scene—this light he once lost—by his own hand.

If he can kill Rei once more, after she has already died.

"…I’m saying something foolish, aren’t I?"

It wasn’t a thing one could say straight into Rei’s face.

"You’re acting strangely today, Jin."

"I know. Just today… that’s all."

Tomorrow will not come.

Even if Rei were to reach tomorrow, the Jin there—would not be the same.

"She had a daughter."

"Yeah."

Rei’s hand gently rests over Jin’s.

Clutching it, not letting go.

Savoring every sensation.

"Always curious—goes off somewhere the moment you look away, gets lost easily, stubborn in her beliefs."

"Yeah."

"But she was important."

Rei wouldn’t understand what he was saying.

Literally, absurd.

"Still…"

Rei let out a sound as if satisfied.

You're not the Jin I know.

As Jin spent ten years without command.

The order has spent ten years with Jin.

Differences arising there are inevitable.

She is not the kind of order Jin knows.

He is not Jin, the one that Rei knows.

She knows it's someone else.

But Jin still had something he needed to ask Rei.

Instantly, comprehension arrives.

This is what I wanted.

There was something he wanted to ask.

There was something I needed to convey.

That is why, upon hearing there might be a chance for it to come true, I hesitated.

The realization came too late—her desire had never been to spend time with Rei, but only to speak with her once more.

— I've never been loved by anyone.

It was never given to them.

Childhood was taken from him—nothing more.

Even after joining the military, the feeling of friendship remained—yet it was absent.

When I was with Sharon.

She was the one who received. A life where being loved was taken for granted.

She sought love—but Jin did not know how to give it.

Thus, Jin did not know what it meant to be loved.

He knew it in words.

But never felt it in truth.

"Yet, after meeting you—spending time with you—I began to feel that something within me had been shared."

Rei listened silently to Jin’s words.

"I was loved by you. I understand that now."

When had that certainty first taken root?

At the very least, it was after losing Rei.

Only when he became aware of the void within did he finally notice what filled it—and the warmth it carried.

"I understand I was loved. But I—"

From the moment he realized it, unease set in.

What if it was wrong? What if it wasn’t true?

Love, recognized for the first time since the loss of Rei.

If that was so, then when she still stood beside Jin—.

"Was I given love by you?"

The happiness of being loved. That awareness came from Yuriya’s enlightenment campaign.

Thus, doubt arises.

Could I have given that to Rei?

"Was love expressed to me?"

Recalling, no words were ever spoken. Could feelings I hadn’t even acknowledged have been conveyed?

No confidence.

Would Rei have felt this happiness?

"Idiot,"

Rei laughed. A faint smile—resigned, weary, almost exasperated.

"I’m not some saintly figure. I wouldn’t stay with someone who couldn’t make me happy."

Yes, a quiet nod.

"Things were hard to understand. But I truly felt your love. I knew I was loved."

Jin felt genuine relief at the answer.

Ah… good.

The lingering attachment within. One of them fades away, felt distinctly.

Relief.

I realized I was capable of loving the Order.

Having received affirmation, a single conviction takes root.

I am capable of loving others.

It was only because I lost it here that I realized it.

Jin thought they were on the same level.

Yet—within Jin, the gap had already reached its conclusion.

Mio is the one who matters now.

The daughter I've raised for eight years is more important.

Jin surely surpassed the girl who had grown up alongside him—unaware.

I’m surely a different person from the one Rei knows. But I love you.

Yeah, I know. I love you too—but your current priority isn’t me, is it?

...I'm sorry.

Once noticed, there’s no longer any way to deceive oneself.

The loneliness of having the one most important to me replaced.

The guilt of conveying this.

"Don't apologize. But I did want to see her. Your precious daughter."

"Yeah. I wanted to show her too. My pride."

Sincere words.

If only.

If there were a future where Rei and Mio lived together.

Jin would sell his soul to the devil.

But there isn't.

Such a future does not exist anywhere.

As long as Rei and Mio originate from the same soul, Jin believes such a future will never come.

"Hey, show me your face."

Jin unclasps his arms.

They face each other directly.

Looking at Jin's face, Rei offers a faint smile.

A smile tinged with loneliness.

"I see. You became a parent first."

"...Yeah."

Alone in a world where Rei is already dead.

Alone in a world without Rei.

"I actually wanted us to become that way, together."

"Yeah. I did too."

But it never happened.

The ending that never came—this moment is it.

Knowing this, both of them twist their faces into sharp expressions of pain.

"Hey."

"Hm?"

"Is that child cute?"

"...Yeah. A cute girl, just like you."

Saying this, passion floods Jin.

Each time Rei speaks of something unknown to him, he understands more clearly that they have irrevocably diverged.

It feels as though he’s been told he will never walk the same path again.

Clutching at his chest, desperate.

The hard contact returning.

A ring that should not be here—embedded in Rei’s finger now.

Symbol of what Jin has lost.

"Actually—"

He offers it into Rei’s palm. It cannot be slipped through.

The twist of it seems to hint at the current state of their relationship. Unknowingly, his vision blurs.

He holds back tears, as if they were something he could not afford.

He held back the tears until the very end.

After ten years, the twisted ring finally reached its rightful owner.

Joy, yes—but not tears.

Not tears.

"I wanted to give this to you… to become a family…!"

But that was not to be.

It could not be.

His voice trembles. He cannot stop it.

The thought of what lies ahead makes his legs falter.

But he must move forward.

He must endure.

Because Jin chose it.

He chose to abandon the order.

"Ah… I see."

This moment is now nothing more than a dream to Jin.

A future that will never come.

"I won’t be there with you anymore."