8. THAT WORLD WAS…

A sense of vertigo washed over Rain as his eyesight flickered a few times. Once his head stopped spinning…

…he found himself in his room.

He was on his bed, as if he’d just awoken from a deep slumber. Still worried, he quickly sat up and examined his chest.

……

The wound Deadrim inflicted on him no longer existed.

I’ll probably never get used to how Reprogramming feels…

Rain pressed his fingers into his chest. The absence of pain struck him as terribly odd. He examined his watch and realized it was about seven in the morning, which meant it was time to prepare for classes. And yet, the morning atmosphere felt serene and silent, without a single sound to disturb the peace.

Rain thought about how he’d just narrowly avoided death, as well as the fact that it’d only happened due to Isuna’s disappearance. The skirmish on that snowy mountain over the second-generation Exelia had ceased to exist.

Guess we’ve achieved our primary objective, at least.

Rain had no way of knowing if Isuna’s erasure had truly prevented Deadrim from becoming a Ghost. The world had shifted, so it was hard to tell much of anything, really. They could only confirm that after they collected information on the new world.

Rain rose from his bed and began changing into his uniform. If everything was normal, he had lectures scheduled for that day. He hoped to at least gather some information on the state of the world before those started.

After putting on his uniform, he reached for his coat, only to find…

“……”

…a bundle of blankets curled up on the sofa next to his coatrack. He didn’t even need to check to know the contents, since a tuft of silvery hair poked out of it.

“Air.”

“I’m not awake.” Her reply was as curt as it was immediate.

So you are awake.

“I made sure we shifted to a safe place, then decided to rest. All that stuff on the mountain took a lot out of me, so today I’m…tapping out.”

“…Shouldn’t we be gathering information about this timeline?”

“We can do that later.”

“Should we really put it off?”

“We just got a whole bunch of information we need to sort through. We should figure that out before searching for any new intel. Otherwise, there’ll be too much to take in.”

“Good point…”

They’d heard a hint about Ghosts that felt concrete, which they had to focus on.

“So with that in mind, I’m taking a nap. And I’ll go over what we know soon after, which will keep me from moving around. I won’t stop you if you insist on doing recon by yourself, though. Knock yourself out.”

…You’re just telling me to go gather intel on my own, aren’t you?

Seeing her act all bossy and arrogant felt oddly soothing.

…She’s back to being the same old Air.

He thought back to their conversation on that mountain, how they’d nestled together and how she’d served as his crutch. She’d cried and lashed out, putting her emotions on full display. The way she’d acted back then was, without a doubt, a part of her true self.

Sure, he didn’t understand everything about her, but he still knew a great deal of what made Air, Air. Their relationship had developed since they’d first met, so they no longer wanted to just use each other.

It is different…right?

Before leaving his room, Rain peeled back the blankets a little, exposing Air’s small head. Then he brushed his fingers through her hair.

“…What are you doing?” she asked.

“Combing your hair. In a way.”

“No, I mean, why?”

“I dunno. You just looked kinda worried to me.”

Air fell silent for a short while. “…I mean, even I get anxious from time to time,” she eventually said as she pulled the blanket up over her head to keep him from seeing her expression. “That Kaisei guy controlled Deadrim…and I’m a Ghost, just like her. Who’s to say I’m not being manipulated?”

Her concern was understandable. The western officer, Kaisei, had controlled all of Deadrim’s actions through a pact bullet. The man who may have been behind the Ghosts as a whole had turned her into a bloodthirsty maniac without her even knowing it. And so, Air had no way to know she wasn’t being influenced in a similar manner.

“Honestly, I’m scared. Am I the real Air? Am I truly acting on my free will? Is wanting to end the war even my own desire? I can’t tell… I have no way to know!”

No one knew the “real” Air, since she’d lived one hundred years ago, so Rain had no way to assuage her concerns. He had no way to truly understand her deep-seated fears and doubts.

“…Hey,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“When you pat my head like this, I feel like I’m your cat or something.”

The only thing Rain could do was reach out to her and let her know he would always remain by her side.

“What, you don’t like it?”

“I mean, it’s…uh…” Air trailed off but didn’t make any attempts to move away. She simply stayed put and let Rain brush his fingers through her hair. After a while, her breathing took on the slow rhythm of sleep. Her opinion on the matter was probably favorable.

Rain kept stroking her hair for a bit longer. And after lifting her hair up a bit…

You suck at pretending to sleep, you know that?

…he found that her ears had flushed red. Still, the sight amused him, so he didn’t stop.

As he walked toward the lecture hall, Rain mulled over everything that had happened. He needed to make sense of the information he had before gathering more, after all.

The whole chain of events with the second-generation Exelia was strange…

He’d been charged with guarding prototype units that were described as “not ready for live combat.” They were apparently experimental models made to test the flow engine, but the unit he’d used still served as a powerful weapon.

Rain had some background in Exelia development, including flow engine research, so the Turret-Model Exelia’s performance struck him as odd.

It felt way too close to completion.

They’d only finished the engine’s structure a mere two years ago. Under normal circumstances, it would have taken at least ten years to implement it properly, since developing new weapons systems was a lengthy process. But somehow, the Turret Model seemed approximately two years out from full-blown deployment.

O’ltmenia didn’t have the manpower or funds to progress research that quickly.

……

The unidentified units they’d fought on the mountain confused him as well. He and Air had only cooperated with Deadrim and Isuna for so long due to their presence. Those soldiers didn’t seem to be in league with the East or the West, which meant a completely separate faction had known all about the second-generation Exelias.

That faction had organized a platoon of over thirty men in an unusual environment like a snowy mountain…almost as if they’d predicted the train car would fall down the cliff with the Exelia in it.

None of this makes any sense…

However, most of all, Kaisei Reisman, the man who’d organized Deadrim’s battles and likely manipulated her with a pact bullet, weighed on his mind. If everything they suspected was true, then he was likely responsible for the entire incident. No, not just him. Something much bigger than one man had clearly pulled all those strings.

Nausea struck him. Rain refused to be optimistic and assume it had all happened by coincidence. His intuition colored his thoughts with paranoia, so he couldn’t help but believe the incident had been engineered to put something major into motion.

But what?

The same eerie, creeping feeling he got when he first learned someone had pushed the Ghosts into fighting resurfaced within him, which in turn triggered an indescribable sense of dread and disgust.

……

Rain approached Alestra Academy’s courtyard as such thoughts ran through his mind. It looked the same as ever. Isuna Cole had disappeared…and as a result, Deadrim likely never even became a Ghost. It had all worked out for the best. But for whatever reason, everything felt oddly artificial.

Maybe I’m just being a worrywart… Rain shook his head upon concluding that his baseless anxiety was a mere figment of his imagination. He needed to focus on gathering information instead, so he made his way toward the library, which archived newspapers daily, to learn more about the Reprogrammed world.

However, someone interrupted him as he prepared to step inside.

“Rain!” they called out to him from behind, sounding relieved. “Wait!”

“Athly…?”

“Haaah, haaah… I…finally found you…”

Athly rushed over to him, her voice hoarse. She’d clearly run out of breath, which meant she’d spent quite some time running around to search for him. Rain wondered what he’d done in that timeline to cause such concern.

“I’m so glad you’re fine… You’re not hurt…”

“…Uh, obviously?”

“Oh, thank goodness…”

She was so out of breath that she barely managed to string her words together. Though, the implication that he was supposed to be hurt was troubling.

Did something happen to me in this timeline?

He examined his body but failed to find any wounds. Additionally, he felt no pain, unpleasantness, or nausea. At worst, he felt a bit sluggish from all the thinking.

But then, why had Athly run around in a panic? Why had she appeared so worried?

“What’s wrong, Athly?”

“…Thank you.”

“Huh?”

“That confirms it.”

…Confirms what, exactly?

“I’ll see you later, Rain. There’s somewhere I have to be.” Athly left those parting words behind as she walked off. Apparently she’d needed confirmation, but Rain didn’t understand what she wanted to know.

She said “I’m so glad you’re fine”…but why?

Rain should not have been in any danger in the new timeline. In the world before the Reprogramming, he fell off the cliff with the rest of the car, but they’d erased those events. Plus, only someone who possessed the Devil’s Bullet noticed the shifts, so that couldn’t have been it.

…I should ask her about it later.

Rain headed for the library to gather more information. This early in the morning, there was no one else inside.

“Ah…!”

And so, the sound of a bottle shattering against the floor rang out all the more clearly. Rain had knocked it down in surprise.

“What…the hell…?!”

He’d slammed the newspaper against the desk in shock, which made the bottle sitting on it teeter, fall, and crash to the floor. Shards of glass scattered about as Rain stared at the newspaper in shock. The grim reality of the newly Reprogrammed world shocked him to his core.

The West commences its invasion of the eastern capital, Alestra.

Over three thousand confirmed dead.

Number of wounded individuals rapidly rising. Estimated to exceed five thousand by tomorrow.

Great losses suffered due to the West’s second-generation Melee-Model Exelia.

The West’s…second-generation Exelia?! That’s impossible!

Second-generation Exelia technology should have been exclusive to the East. But if that article was to be believed, the West had already possessed and perfected it.

Something… Something’s changed…in a big way…

And that change was due to the Devil’s Bullet.

I… We… There’s no turning back for us now…

An indescribable sense of dread loomed over him as he realized he’d caused a great shift in the currents of history.

What changed? No… What did I change?