***
“How annoying.”
Simone’s face twisted with fury as he faced the hallucination.
The angelic smile he once showed to others was nowhere to be seen, replaced by a sharp, angry expression.
The transparent glass chamber, the people dressed in white, the sharp needles…
Most of his early memories were unpleasant, but this hallucination was from the worst period of his life.
As he looked at it, the memories he wished to forget began to creep into his mind.
“You agreed to relinquish your rights for a certain period.”
“Yes.”
Simone sneered as he stamped the contract.
The fact that he had come to such a place to survive was ridiculous, even to him.
Who would have thought that someone like him, who was once a noble, would fall so low?
He felt pathetic for wanting to live this badly.
However, before he could even process those feelings, he was immediately locked up in the laboratory.
It was an utterly humiliating and miserable experience.
At the same time, it was incredibly painful.
In the laboratory, Simone was subjected to experiments that suppressed his emotions. He was forced to control himself purely through logic.
Whether those experiments were a success or failure, he didn’t know. What he did remember was how excruciatingly painful they were.
“…I’m sorry.”
It felt as if cheap sympathy and guilt from others were mocking him.
While in the lab, the pain from the experiments’ side effects was difficult to endure, but what hurt more was feeling pathetic and powerless.
Every time a familiar face injected him with drugs, he was painfully reminded of how far he had fallen.
He felt disgusted with himself for wanting to survive, even through such means.
In the end, when he thought the pursuit had stopped and he was safe, he escaped from the magic tower.
“…I’m still alive.”
Simone still didn’t know if the experiment had succeeded or failed.
Although he prided himself on being a rational person, even now, look at him—wasn’t he being swayed by unnecessary emotions?
Simone stood frozen, unsure how to escape from the hallucination.
Should he attack? But would that even work against a hallucination?
In that case, should he maintain his composure?
‘But how?’
He didn’t know how to stay calm in this situation. No human could.
‘But I have to solve this.’
Simone knew this very well. There was no one who would suddenly appear and help him in his life.
Simone understood that he had to solve all problems on his own, and thus, he had always fought off dangers himself.
‘So, how do I get rid of them…?’
Just as he was trying to ignore the phantom pain he had been feeling, a blue light flashed from somewhere.
“Wow!”
Then, a bright voice.
The moment he recognized the owner of the voice, it felt as if violet hair fluttered past him.
When he turned his head, he saw that the people created by the hallucination had been pushed aside, and in their place stood a woman.
“Simone, catch this!”
It was Seraphina Viviana.
“How….”
“I used spatial wave magic! I know how to escape from this hallucination!”
Simone dumbly stared at the hand extended towards him.
“Grab it quickly! We need to escape together!”
In a completely unexpected moment, someone he never imagined came to his rescue.
As Simone, still in shock, grabbed the hand, Seraphina began to run ahead.
Simone, caught off guard, held her hand and ran with her.
Of course, he had felt that he and Seraphina had grown closer recently.
After she treated him when he was injured instead of abandoning him, Simone had been trying to be kind to her.
It seemed like Seraphina was less afraid of him than before, and because of that, he thought they had become closer….
‘I never expected it would turn out like this.’
Seraphina looked completely unfazed. The fear she once had towards Simone was nowhere to be seen.
Yes, she was smiling brightly.
Her face was so radiant that it made Simone forget all his painful memories.
“Hahaha! This is my first time using spatial wave magic, and it worked!”
Simone felt strange hearing her cheerful laughter from ahead.
Seraphina Viviana was truly a woman who was impossible to predict.
***
Even though Simone initially tried to hand me over to Princess Eva, I couldn’t help but assist him.
I knew what he had gone through in the magic tower and what hallucinations he was seeing, so how could I abandon him?
In fact, from the moment I arrived at the magic tower, it wasn’t just Ghieuspe who looked oddly uncomfortable, but Simone as well. Ghieuspe’s situation was far worse, so I didn’t pay much attention to Simone at the time.
At first, I thought the magic tower was simply reminding Simone of his past, from the days when he wandered aimlessly.
I assumed he was reminiscing about the days he worked odd jobs in the magic tower.
But now that I knew the truth about the tower, I couldn’t help but feel suspicious.
Did Simone really do odd jobs in the magic tower? Or was it something else…
‘The human experimentation in the magic tower….’
It was said that not only prisoners but also volunteers participated in those experiments. The usual reason was the massive amounts of money offered, but that wouldn’t be the case for Simone.
And indeed, the hallucination that Simone had seen seemed similar to the experiment scene I had witnessed.
‘Even though I laughed at the wrong time.’
I couldn’t help but laugh because I was happy to have successfully used spatial wave magic for the first time. Hopefully, Simone wasn’t offended.
When I finally dragged Simone out of the forest and gasped for breath, he looked at me with astonishment.
“Why did you… help me?”
“You helped me too.”
“But what if I changed my mind and decided to hand you over to Princess Eva?”
“Still, you saved me first, Simone.”
I shrugged as I answered, and he looked at me with a strange expression.
He stayed silent for a while, then finally spoke slowly.
“To be honest, I’m a little surprised.”
“Really?”
“I never imagined you would help me.”
“I’m not that heartless. If anything, you lot are closer to that….”
“Why do you always think of us as trash from the start?”
“Well, in your case, it’s not exactly wrong, is it?”
“……….”
Simone fell silent, seemingly hit by the truth. After a long pause, he asked quietly.
“What hallucination did you see?”
“The thing I fear the most is the unstoppable flow of time, slowly leading us to an inescapable bind.”
“What does that mean?”
“I was just joking.”
After exchanging a few meaningless words, silence fell between us.
Simone remained silent for a long time before finally uttering a single sentence.
“You probably already know what my hallucination was. You seemed to have guessed it back in the magic tower.”
