Outside the porthole in the ship's corridor, the blue surface of the Wandering Sea glimmered with a quiet light under the artificial starlight, as if frozen in the rift between time and space.
Steve and Sion sat side by side in comfortable observation seats, each holding a warm drink provided by the ship's vending machine.
The rosy atmosphere born from the shocking revelation of their supposed married relationship gradually cooled as the conversation progressed, giving way to a deeper and slightly colder silence.
Sion looked down at the steam rising from her cup, but Steve gaze lingered on the girl beside him.
When he saw her adorable, flustered face—blushing red enough to make her wish she could disappear—his male instincts were tempted. While the iron was hot, he wanted to break through her defenses with a few more bold jokes.
It wasn't that he had any bad feelings toward Sion, but his feelings were a bit different. For future happiness, self-restraint now felt like a necessary investment.
So, almost abruptly but still naturally, he changed the subject, and began to recount the tragic fairytale of the Tsukihime world.
He described the violet-haired girl Sion Eltnam Atlasia of that world: a girl who bore the heavy burden of the Atlas name, wandering alone through the barren wastelands of alchemy, never illuminated by a hope called Sokaris.
At first, Sion maintained an objective attitude, as if simply listening to data from a Lostbelt. After all, parallel world characters taking different paths in life is theoretically acceptable.
But when Steve spoke the crucial name, Zepia, Sion's hand holding the cup distinctly trembled.
"Zepia... Zepia Eltnam Atlasia? The current Dean of Atlas Academy?"
Sion's voice held a nuance of disbelief. In her heart, that man was eccentric, an uncurable theater maniac, and one whose impossible requests sometimes made her want to strangle him with Etherlites—but without a doubt, he had been her foster father.
In her world, he often intervened to guide her to the right path, and in the end entrusted the future of Atlas Academy to her. He was, truly, her father. In that world, he gave up the Altrassia name and called himself Night of Wallachia.
Steve's voice was as cold and impartial as if reading a forensic report, mercilessly calm.
"It was impossible to calculate any future where humanity avoided extinction. No matter how you estimated, the result was always destruction."
"This genius alchemist eventually went mad."
He sought the one-in-ten-thousand miracle, the so-called Sixth Law, and allowing his own downfall, he made a contract with the Dead Apostle Ancestor Princess Altrouge, becoming one with the phenomenon known as the TATARI.
As Steve explained, the foster father in Sion's memory, who always wore a wry smile and loved to talk loudly among dusty piles of books, gradually distorted and crumbled. He finally transformed, laughing madly in the moonlight, into a monster that spread materialized nightmares.
"And in that world, when you were fifteen..."
Steve paused briefly, as if considering his words, before finally speaking frankly: "For some unknown purpose—or perhaps just twisted love—he attacked you."
"He bit you, turning you into a half-dead Apostle."
Clink—
Sion didn't drop her cup, but from her violent shaking, hot coffee spilled over onto the back of her pale hand.
Yet she didn't seem to feel any pain at all. Her eyes were wide with pupils constricted. Her other hand instinctively covered her neck. The skin was smooth—no bite marks.
However, hearing Steve's story, she truly felt a cold, stabbing pain and a terrifying emptiness, as though her blood was being forcibly drained away.
"Bitten... by Zepia—by my father?"
Sion muttered to herself, her face instantly turning paper white.
This was not just physical fear, but a collapse of logic and emotion.
The person who had taught her Thought Partition, who had smiled with pride when she first succeeded in creating Etherlites, was actually the one who, in another world, stripped her of her human identity and cast her into an eternal abyss of vampiric hunger.
"That's—hell," she whispered in a hoarse, low voice. "For an Atlas alchemist, losing reason and becoming a bloodsucking beast is... a punishment worse than death."
"How did... how did she survive that?"
"Driven by vengeance, aided by a knight of the church named Riesbyfe."
Steve sighed softly, his gaze gentle. "She relentlessly pursued the Phantom known as the Night of Wallachia, trying to end this nightmare. And at the same time, she sought an end to her own descent toward inhumanity."
"Until she met me..."
Upon hearing this, Sion fell silent for a long time.
She turned her gaze to the gently undulating sea outside the window.
In that forgotten corner of a world, she truly felt, for the first time, the weight of the word fate. A single different choice, a tiny divergence at the base of a world—and a man named Zepia transformed from guide to destroyer, and she—from heir of hope to a spiteful wraith.
"...I see."
After a while, Sion exhaled deeply, as if expelling the coldness from her chest. She released her hand from her neck. Her fingertips were still slightly trembling, but her eyes had regained clarity.
"So this is what they call an event cut—the Zepia of that world couldn't bear the weight of the future and chose self-destruction."
"And perhaps here, Zepia—maybe because he saw hope, or maybe just out of optimism—chose to endure."
She looked back at Steve, her eyes meeting his straight and clear.
This time, there was no shame or fear, merely a faint sadness, a sense of relief mixed with deep gratitude.
"Rider, thank you—for telling me all this."
"It sounds like a dark fairy tale only a third-rate playwright could write, but... I know it's real."
"That truly was hell—my other self really went through it."
She gazed down at her still-human hands, coffee stains visible on the skin. That small pain—it struck her as real and irreplaceably precious.
"I'm truly grateful... for having been born in this world, and grateful that my foster father is Zepia Eltnam Atlasia. He's... an oddball, but still, a man of great responsibility."
"Even luckier..."
Her voice trailed off, and this time the blush on her face came from a warmer feeling, not just embarrassment.
"That the me who suffered in despair could meet you in the end."
"I can't inherit her memories, but I can reason this much—a person who could accept, protect, and even marry her in such a hell... that, truly, is a miracle."
Sion lifted her head. Those violet eyes shimmered with rational light, but waves of gentle feeling.
"I still don't fully understand the irrational contract called marriage—but as an alchemist, I can acknowledge the value of this result."
"My other self... surely, at that moment, found salvation, right?"
Seeing her seriousness, that gentle expression, Steve's instincts to not raise her affection level too high began to sound alarm bells again.
He coughed strategically, trying to hide his unstable heart.
"Aa... maybe so."
"At the very least, before she became human again, I did my utmost to suppress her vampire impulses... ahem, let's not talk about the details."
He stood, brushing nonexistent dust from his uniform and resuming his commander's posture.
"In other words, the tragedy in that world ended here. But the future of you, Sion Eltnam Sokaris, is still unwritten—a blank star chart waiting to be filled."
He held out his hand to her, then pointed toward the endless sea outside the window.
"Since you know the worst-case scenario, your next step is to create the optimal solution. Am I right, my genius alchemist?"
As she watched his departing back, a bright and demure smile unique to young girls finally appeared on her lips.
She stood, straightened her skirt, and resumed a confident demeanor.
"Of course! Now that I know my tragic fate in a parallel world came from not being able to calculate the future, I'm more determined than ever to prove that in this world, I can calculate the perfect future!"
"No matter if it's the burning of human reason or alien gods—before Atlas's calculations, they are nothing but equations to be solved!"
Maintaining just a bit of distance (so as not to think of those embarrassing words again), she quickly stepped to Steve's side.
But under the lamplight, their shadows were now closely intertwined.
…