Temporal Entanglement (after battle)
A soft singing echoes in Ryōshū's ears.
When will Mommy come back? Will she be here today? What about tomorrow?
Mommy, I really wanted to keep our promise.
I wanted to stay in here and wait quietly...
... Shut up.
Was I too impatient?
Did Mommy leave because I couldn't wait out that one fleeting moment?
Stop talking...
Words mingle and tangle together, making it impossible to tell who is speaking to whom.
Your daughter has left you forever!
Just as you did!
No doubt Araya will hide again.
And I'll be wandering again, searching for her.
We won't be able to meet for a very long time.
So I cannot lose her. This is my last chance.
Araya loved watching the stars. She may still be hiding somewhere in that starry night.
Mhm! I'll be fine. I'll be waiting for you here, Mommy!
This is the House of Spiders.
A place no one can escape from. A place ever suspended, ever barred from touching the sky.
The tiny, cramped little space to which I never returned.
Left...? Never!
Ryōshū lets out an anguished cry as she swings her sword once more.
…….
The Nursefather makes no move to avoid it, as though she's entrusting Ryōshū with the right to end her.
Which memory... did you carve away this time?
…….
And finally, the Pinky Nursefather falls where she stands.
The floor of the House of Spiders was cold and unyielding.
Hide in this box for just a little bit.
Once you get in, close your eyes... and count.
It'll be...
It'll be quiet and dark, but... when you're in here, everything passes quickly.
How do you know?
Mommy... used to hide here all the time.
So stay in here and wait for me, Araya.
I promise I'll come back for you.
Mhm! I'll be fine. I'll be waiting for you here, Mommy!
No.
She will never come back.
Once Mommy comes back...
We're going somewhere the stars are so close it looks like you can touch 'em!
I'll pack us lunches... and cut the sausage into octopus shapes.
And when I'm done waiting, Mommy will show up and tell me I did good.
She'll say, "I knew Araya'd be good at hiding."
And then, after a little more time...
I'll wear a big flower, bigger than a watermelon... for my graduation.
I'll take it off after... and give it to Mommy.
She'll look good with hydrangeas 'cause they look just like me.
And then... I'll learn even more letters.
I've got to teach her all the new slang too.
And then, and then...
No.
Those days don't come, Araya.
And then we'll climb to a real rooftop and feel the real wind and eat cold watermelon together.
Mom forgot all about me.
The door never opens.
…….
There's no calendar in there. I don't know how many days have passed.
And no clock either, so I can't even tell if it's day or night.
…….
I see it now.
I was left behind. Mom left for good.
Today never ends. Tomorrow never comes.
Once that certainty settled in...
Once every shade of the darkness felt as though they belonged to me...
I threw the door open myself.
If someone had been waiting on the other side of that door...
It should've been her.
Oh, dear...
You've fallen into a Temporal Entanglement, Araya.
From the looks of it, my darling daughter must've stepped into this vault countless times.
Her blood, you see... interacts uniquely with the flow of time. That's what allowed her to step in here unharmed.
You, too, were born with Yoshihide's blood because the higher-ups of the Thumb wished for another candidate with an innate aptitude to wield Arayashiki, however...
The fact is it's simply impossible for you to ever match my Yoshihide's aptitude for it.
Blood - yes, blood is important, but it's only the first and most basic requirement. What really counts is how you sense time.
The way that child perceives and observes time - the intuition, the balance, the perspective - isn't something that can be imitated.
Well, thanks to that shared blood, you somehow managed to hold out against time and even read it...
But that's also exactly what made a mess of the time you were supposed to bear inside this Time Vault.
…….
I have no idea what kind of emotion drove you to push that door open...
But we will be reunited with Yoshihide again, without fail.
Because as long as that child remains incomplete, the House of Spiders... will endure.
And it just so happens, there's a vacancy in the House. Perhaps your aptitude will also be enough to seize the title of Dihui Star...
When I opened my hands...
... I saw wrinkled old fingers...
... and strands of thread twined around them.
Is this my name?
Yeah. A-ra-ya. That's how you read it.
It's too hard to read...
How do you write your name, Mommy?
…!
Hmm...
The side effects must've kicked in.
With all this unstable superposition of time, you're bound to experience them for life.
These threads hold nothing but pain, and they all lead back to you.
Closing your eyes...
... won't stop the visions from flooding in.
That's the nature of "time." It is inevitable.
Does that mean, if I follow these threads to where you are...
If I become a Nursefather... will I see her again?
Even now, the wait has not stopped.
Of course. My sweet daughter will come home.
Mommy, I learned something at school today...
You're not supposed to smoke around kids.
... Says who?
The teacher.
Cuz I'm still a growing kid, and we need to stay healthy...
... but we can't do that if people around us keep smoking.
Why not?
Well, because I'm in a growth period! If bad cells form in your body at a young age, teach said... the bad stuff grows faster?
"Grows faster"? Your teacher's a cocky douchebag.
Mommy! Don't talk about my teacher like that...!
After that day, however... Mommy never touched a cigarette again.
But I'll grow to smoke the same kind she used to.
Every time I took a drag, it felt like I was breathing alongside her.
*puff*
The acrid scent that the flow of time draped over her... now lingers on my skin.
My mind ribbons and swirls like the cigarette smoke in the air...
... carrying me to the moment I never want to see again.
Mommy! Where are you going?!
Don't leave me here. Where are you going?!
Where did you go?!
…….
…….
And...
You...
... Crawling back to the House of Spiders... with that, huh?
And once it became painfully clear that there wasn't even an ounce of recognition in her eyes, not even a brief spark of it,
the myriad moments inside me, bound and constricted by tangled threads, began trembling and thrashing aloud.
Mommy...
Can I call you... Mommy?
…….
The child in Ryōshū's memories, the same child who used to munch through mouthfuls of snacks, practice how to read and write, and sing songs with barely intelligible lyrics, grows into the form of the Pinky Nursefather standing before her eyes.
Her final gaze is not trained on Ryōshū. It is staring off into the distance, an unknown point between the folds of time.
Araya...
Araya...!
The singing voice fades into silence as the Pinky Nursefather's fallen body goes still.
Ryōshū raises her sword ever so slowly.
<Ryōshū.>
…….
She answers with silence, staring down at herself.
I understood what it was that she was watching.
She was looking at every strand of thread connected to her, the bundle of strings forming her "self"...
... and the chain that linked us together throughout our journey.
<.......>
<You're thinking about severing the chain.>
Ryōshū has failed to protect Araya.
What she'd promised to her daughter with that pinky swear turned into lies...
and the thread that had connected the two of them was severed into a thousand little strands.
This meant that our pact - her contract with Limbus Company... no longer meant anything to her.
Clock. I... lost the one and only thread... that I was clinging to.
What reason do I have...
... to stay?
Clang!
Ryōshū cuts off the chain. It falls apart with so little resistance that it's almost as if it had never linked us together in the first place.
And that was only the beginning.
The days of her life let out a piercing shriek as they are severed away by the sharp edge of her blade.
The memories shaped by the culmination of those days begin to fade,
hacked into pieces, mutilated; time itself howls with a piercing cry.