"By your sister?"
That caught Geno somewhat off guard. He'd assumed Odile and her sister had died here when the Hollow erupted — it seemed there was more to the story than that.
"Yes. I remember it clearly. We were performing when the Hollow alarm suddenly went off. The guests panicked and scattered every which way — but the two of us stayed perfectly calm."
"Because we already knew this disaster might happen." Odile shared this shocking secret with Geno.
"The owners of Ballet Twins Building — the Bolt brothers — invited my sister and me to perform there specifically to stave off bankruptcy, to draw in more high-society guests and win over investors."
Odile closed her eyes softly, lost in memories of past glory.
"We were quite famous in our day, so of course we accepted the invitation. But that's exactly how we came to learn the secret behind it all."
"The truth behind the Bolt brothers' bankruptcy."
Odile's story looked like it would run long, but Geno clearly had no patience for it.
"Could you cut to the chase, please?"
Realizing she'd lost the thread herself, Odile waved a hand, a little embarrassed.
"Er — right. Long story short, my sister and I discovered the Bolt brothers' secret, and they realized we knew. They wanted to get rid of us right then, but with the gala so close, they kept us alive for the time being. Instead, they gave me a ring to bind me."
"A ring?"
Geno blinked. A ring — wasn't that...
"Yes. The very ring on Miss Twiggy's hand right now. Once it's on, it can never come off. And the power sealed inside that radiant ceramic would ceaselessly Corrupt whoever wore it — bit by bit, eaten away by Ether Corruption, until they died."
The Barlay brothers used this to threaten the Nette sisters. After all, if either of them ever dared speak up, they'd never be free of that ring.
"We had no choice but to submit to them. And on the very night the performance began, we learned something even more brutal."
Odile's expression turned grim. Geno could even make out a trace of anger on her face.
"The Ether concentration around Ballet Twins Building was climbing. A Hollow could erupt at any moment."
That was the true cause of it all. The Barlay brothers, desperate not to let the gala fail, had buried the truth — and every last guest that night paid for it.
The Nymph Sisters, thanks to their unusually high Ether Aptitude, were among the lucky few who survived.
That overloaded the elevator and left it unable to move — so in the end, my sister and I were the ones they shoved off it.
It was almost funny, in a bitter way — the elevator was crammed full of gold, silver, and jewels, yet it couldn't spare room for two scrawny girls.
"The elevator went rushing off, and the two of us had no choice but to wander the building, helpless."
Two frail girls, alone in a dangerous building full of roaming Ethereals and warped space — Geno could hardly bear to imagine how they'd survived.
But Odile's story wasn't over yet.
"It wasn't long before I was the first to give out. The ring's Corruption left me — already weak — barely able to move through the Hollow. Watching our rations dwindle day by day, I finally made a decision."
"I would give whatever chance of survival was left to Augetta. To my sister."
Odile never wanted to become a burden to her sister, so she waited for a moment when Augetta wasn't looking, and took her own life.
"...So that room where we found you was..."
"Yes. That's where my bones were laid to rest. I went there in secret, without Augetta knowing, so she'd never find my body."
Odile wondered, sorrowfully, whether she'd have regretted her choice back then, had she known it would come to this.
"But death didn't erase me. Instead, I ended up like this — existing as a ghost. Worried about how Augetta was faring, I went looking for her. But by the time I found her, it was already too late."
"Losing me left Augetta vulnerable to the ring's temptation. In the end, she became a fiend straight out of hell, reborn in the shape of an Ethereal."
"Nether Nymph — that's her name now."
As Odile poured out these long-buried secrets, Geno fixed on the one detail that mattered.
"The ring's temptation?"
This ring actually had that kind of power?
"Mm. The ring doesn't just hold enormous power — there's a lingering consciousness sealed inside it too. I died too soon to be affected by it, and after my death, that consciousness only kept fading further."
But it was different for Augetta. Under the crushing weight of survival and mental strain, she was easily led astray by the consciousness within the ring — until she embraced the Ether of her own will and became the monster she is today.
"After that, she started wandering the building, hunting down the ones who'd abandoned us. In her eyes, maybe, everything that happened to the two of us was their fault."
And that was the truth Odile had spoken of — the fate of those who hadn't died in the disaster itself.
Hearing all this, Geno fell into thought.
A consciousness sealed inside a ring, leading people astray — why did that sound so much like the Progenitor...
He recalled how Little Geno had once tried the very same thing on him — though admittedly with a cruder, blunter method.
"I think I've got the general picture now. So how do we deal with the one outside?"
Geno was still troubled. He'd pieced together the connection and history between this ghost woman and the Ethereal outside, but that didn't actually solve the problem at hand.
"Even with your help sensing her presence, I still can't catch her — not against that strange ability of hers."
Geno had seen it himself earlier. It wasn't as if he hadn't tried to grab her — but every time, she'd dodge with some bizarre trick, vanishing from right in front of him without a trace, completely undetectable.
Hearing this, Odile lowered her head and fell silent. But only a moment later, she looked back up, meeting Geno's eyes with an earnest expression.
"There is a way. Her ability comes from the ring — and I can use the ring's power too, to cancel hers out."
As Odile said this, her voice suddenly grew hesitant.
"It's just... I might need to take control of Twiggy's body again. You — you won't mind, will you?"
Odile asked carefully for Geno's opinion. Using someone else's body, after all, wasn't exactly the moral thing to do — especially given she already had a track record of it.
Geno hesitated at that. But before he could answer, another voice spoke up first.
"I don't mind."
____
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