At this point, she finally couldn't hold those feelings back anymore. They all burst out as sharp, cutting words.
"Because… you need her, don't you?! The one you want to be the manager is her! Not me!"
"It's the more mature me… not the current me that nobody needs!"
"So as long as I'm not here, it'll be fine… As long as I give my life up to her, that's enough, right?!"
That's way too insecure… Kuroba Akira couldn't help feeling baffled.
But someone who's socially anxious is prone to insecurity in the first place. She'd probably seen how the other her could naturally, easily get along with people, and that inferiority had been magnified without limit.
Like a certain hero of justice once said: you can lose to anyone, but you can't lose to yourself.
And she'd lost to her other self—so she'd fallen into complete despair.
Still, Akira thought she was digging herself into a corner.
"There's no need to draw such a hard line. The other Benika-san is still you, isn't she?"
"No! That's not the Benika-san you know! I'm not… I don't deserve it!"
Back when she'd first joined the company and started working, when she kept running into walls because she was terrible at communicating with people, Tashiro Benika had come to this shrine too.
She'd made a wish, hoping for release.
Maybe her prayers really had been answered. Maybe a savior really had descended.
That savior was herself—from another world.
At first, she'd truly been grateful to her other self. When her boss made unreasonable overtime demands, and when he dumped the grim task of handling horribly mangled corpses on a newbie like her, it was the other her who stepped in and argued on her behalf.
When she had to handle business communications she was hopeless at, the other her would step in and talk to clients for her… Thanks to her, work had actually become much easier.
It was the fantasy everyone's had at some point: if only there were another you who could go to work for you, handle all the trouble for you, then you could live easy and carefree.
The problem started once she learned about the other her's past—once she pitied her, felt sorry for her, and let compassion sway her.
Tashiro Benika bought her other self a pair of high heels, and even yielded her body—giving the other her time to move freely.
At first there was no issue. But little by little, as she watched the other her get along better and better with her coworkers, build good relationships with the other people at home, and even get invited by Kuroba Akira to switch jobs, she couldn't avoid realizing…
She was the "better me."
Eyes red from crying, Tashiro Benika hugged her aching knees, curled up, and sank into self-loathing.
"I… I'm just a coward…"
"I can't do it… I can't do anything… I only know how to hide in a corner… and dump all the trouble on her…"
"But she… she thinks about me, she worries about me… She says this is my life… but she's clearly the better me…"
Listening to her bare, honest thoughts, Akira pretty much understood where the problem lay.
It was dissociation.
Her sense of self was in chaos. Reality felt unreal. When she looked at herself, it was like she was looking at "someone else"—like I am no longer me…
That symptom was especially obvious in her case, because there really was another "her" living inside her head.
Everyone has moments where they hate themselves to some degree. More often it happens when you regret something—when you look back and think your past self was unbelievably stupid.
Looking back on his own past, Akira could only think his former self had been an immature idiot. If he could go back in time, he'd punch himself twice just to knock some sense into his head.
Tashiro Benika had an "other self from another world" as a direct comparison, so she felt her own "stupidity" even more brutally.
But when she said she wanted to disappear, it was really just burning the whole thing down—running from reality. All that talk about doing it "for the other her" was just an excuse.
So now he had to pierce that fake lie without mercy.
You idiot—quit being so dramatic!
"Stop talking nonsense, Benika-san. You want to live better, don't you?"
"What are you saying… I already…!"
"Then explain this: you only ran after I came home to look for you. If you truly wanted to disappear from the start, you wouldn't have needed to wait for me before acting. If you didn't tell anyone, no one would know where you were going to hang yourself, right?"
"Mm…!"
"So to me, that was a cry for help."
"I'm not… I didn't…!"
"To put it bluntly, Tashiro Benika—you're just jealous of your other self."
"That's not true…! I never thought something like that!"
Akira kept pressing, saying the things that stabbed straight into the softest parts of her.
"Really? Isn't it because you feel like you're obviously worse than her, so you want to disappear?"
"Ugh…!"
Tears spilled out again.
She felt wronged to the point she could barely breathe.
Because… she couldn't refute it.
What he said was all true. She knew she shouldn't think like that, but she still couldn't stop herself.
Her life…
Had been stolen by her.
The moment that thought formed was also the moment Tashiro Benika hated herself the most in her entire life.
She felt sick with disgust at her own weak, petty self.
This was Tashiro Benika's conflict with "herself."
Akira wasn't saying all this to crush her beyond recovery. What came next was the real point of this combo.
"But Benika-san, you're forgetting something. The other you isn't some twenty-four-year-old—she's a thirty-nine-year-old old hand."
The Tashiro Benika of this world was a true twenty-four-year-old woman, in the prime of her youth.
She was even younger than Akira had been in his previous life—just a fresh workplace rookie who'd only just graduated from college.
Her body might be mature, but her heart wasn't.
She hadn't weathered real storms. Her mental resilience was far weaker.
"…Huh?"
"She's been through far more than you. Of course she's more mature, of course she's better at dealing with people—because she isn't just another you. She's the 'future you.'"
"The future me…"
"Yeah. Nobody starts out mature. Have you actually talked properly with your other self?"
"Of course I have! I know she had it rough. She got into an accident not long after she started working and went blind… but she still pushed through!"
"Right. She pushed through—so why can't you? You know that back then, she didn't have another self to help share the pressure of living."
"Ah…"
All Akira could do was guide her.
Only she could save herself.
She was unlucky—because next to her other self, she felt even smaller.
But she was lucky, too—because she still had that other self to help her avoid crises, to keep her from stepping into the same traps she'd already stepped in before.
"Other Benika-san—can you hear me? Why don't you tell her yourself? How did you actually grow up?"
Tashiro Benika closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the aura around her had completely changed—Onee-san Benika had come out.
She gave a bitter smile, pressed a hand to her chest, and spoke to her other self.
"I'm sorry, Benika… Looks like I went too far. I just didn't want you to suffer as many grievances as I did, but I didn't realize it would make you feel like you weren't needed…"
"Maybe I shouldn't have stepped in and solved everything for you. Maybe I should've taught you how to solve things yourself…"
"I also… let pride get in the way, so I never told you about the setbacks I went through… because I thought you weren't like me. I thought you could become even better than I was."
She glanced at Akira, resolve showing in her eyes.
"Akira's right… I used to be just as scared of people as you are, because I went through 'that incident,' too."
For her—for them—those were the most painful memories, the source that had twisted their personalities.
"Just like you, I was once taken hostage by a serial killer."
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T/N: WHJAAAAAAAAAAT