After the call with Elysia, Ryn still felt a bit uneasy and prepared to rush back to Canghai City from the Mu Continent overnight.
Just as he was about to leave, he bumped into Mobius, who was walking unsteadily with her head down.
Ryn waved his hand in front of Mobius, but she seemed completely oblivious, continuing to walk like a zombie.
"Mobius? What's wrong?" Ryn grabbed Mobius and asked with concern.
"Oh... it's you, Ryn... Just in time... help me ask for a leave of absence, I need to go home."
Mobius looked up at Ryn for a moment, then lowered her head again and continued on her way.
"Hmm? A leave of absence?"
Ryn looked at Mobius's staggering back with confusion. What had happened that she didn't even have time to send a message to ask for leave?
He casually sent a message to Mobius's lab team to request leave for her, then quietly followed behind Mobius, wanting to see what had happened at her home.
He followed Mobius through many twists and turns, finally spotting her home in a somewhat desolate neighborhood—a delicate little villa.
From the look of her house, Mobius's family must have been quite wealthy once, but now they had fallen on hard times...
Ever since Mobius's mother fell gravely ill, all the family's money had been consumed as if set on fire.
Mobius paused outside the door for a long, long time.
Hiding behind her, Ryn couldn't see her face and didn't know her expression, but it must have been one of profound sadness...
Finally, it was Mobius's father who noticed someone at the entrance and opened the door. He wasn't very old, but he already had a lot of white hair and wrinkles, his face etched with weariness and fatigue.
Looking at Mobius standing outside with her head down, her father asked in the gentlest voice possible.
"Why don't you come in...?"
Mobius didn't speak, only kept her head lowered.
"Sigh, come in..."
Mobius's dad took her hand and led her back into the room.
The father and daughter stood before Mobius's mother's bed, silently looking at her, already deceased.
"I've already called the funeral home, they should be here soon... Is there anything else you want to say to Mom?"
"No... nothing..."
Even if she said anything, she wouldn't be able to hear it anymore...
Mobius quietly looked at her mother's body, lost in confusion and doubt.
"Dad... do you know... why people die?"
"I don't know... All life exists in a cycle of life and death. It's because death exists that life is all the more precious, and we must make better use of the time we have while we're alive..."
"Mmm..."
After that, the father and daughter said nothing more, not knowing what else to say. They just stood there quietly, waiting for the people from the funeral home to come and take the body away...
A light drizzle began to fall from the sky. Mobius's father went with the funeral home staff to the crematorium.
A few minutes later, a dispirited Mobius left the house, planning to go to the lab and rely on intense experiments to distract herself and ease her grief.
The rain soaked Mobius's body, but in her distracted state, she paid no mind to her condition, just walking numbly.
The rain drenched her hair, and her wet clothes clung to her skin, making the already thin and frail girl seem particularly small and helpless at this moment.
Ryn opened an umbrella and walked to Mobius's side to shield her from the rain.
Mobius had never mentioned her family to him or Einstein, and Ryn had never asked.
If he had known earlier that Mobius had a terminally ill mother, perhaps Ryn could have cured her... but now, for a being that had already died, whose soul had already dissipated...
Ryn couldn't bring back the dead, only revive a dead body, and such a result was meaningless.
Mobius walked for a while before she realized Ryn had been holding an umbrella for her. She reached out and caught the raindrops sliding off the edge of the umbrella.
"Oh... so it's raining."
"Yeah... it's raining."
"Heh, rain when someone dies. According to the customs in Shenzhou, this is a good omen..."
Ryn remained silent, not answering Mobius, because it was better not to respond to such words.
Mobius also knew such talk was meaningless and said no more. They were researchers; they believed in scientific facts more than folk culture.
But, at a time like this, Mobius still wanted to believe a little. To believe that this was the rain her mother had become after death, a rain of blessings, a rain that meant her mother was still by her side.
"Ryn, do you know what death truly is? And why... do people die?"
"Sorry, I can't give you an answer."
"Is that so? Yeah..."
Mobius was momentarily puzzled by Ryn's lack of an answer, but then she came to terms with it.
Even she, a biology researcher, couldn't figure out what death was. How could Ryn, who specialized in artificial intelligence, give her a convincing answer?
That's right, she was Mobius, who aspired to become the greatest biologist! If she herself couldn't offer an insight into death, how could she expect an ordinary person to tell her the answer?
Mobius took a few deep breaths. She still found her mother's death hard to accept, but more than the sorrowful ache, a different, intensely strong feeling was now rising in her heart.
Death. To study death, to fight against death, until she finally mastered death.
To fight against a law as ancient and mysterious as death, how exhilarating, how... thrilling it would be.
「4.30. Happy birthday, Snek~」