I opened my eyes to a scene of raging fire.
Flames soaring high enough to lick the sky.
Beneath them, countless mounds of ash piling up endlessly.
A great conflagration devouring everything in existence.
Any moment now, those flames might swallow me whole.
Yet my legs were fixed in place, as though bolted to the ground.
Faced with a sight that could overwhelm even the soul itself.
I narrowed my eyes and thought quietly.
*It's a dream.*
Well — I had plenty of reasons to think so.
If the fire were really that close, even drawing breath would be agony.
Just opening my eyes would bring tears, and my skin would be screaming.
All of this was fake. Without a doubt, a manufactured dream.
Only after recognizing that did my body finally move.
I lowered my gaze and looked at my hands.
There, I found a pair of soft, utterly unfamiliar hands.
Not the hard, rough hands from my past life.
Not Leila's pretty, alluring hands either.
Just small hands — the only conclusion was that they belonged to a young child.
And the cumbersome chest that always got in the way of my line of sight was gone, too.
A flat, slight body, and tiny toes wriggling adorably.
Right. I'd turned into a child's body. What an absolutely wretched dream.
"……"
I opened my mouth to complain, but no voice came out.
Gaping open and shut. As meaningless as opening your mouth underwater.
Wow, how suffocating. For a moment I was so irritated I nearly bit my own tongue.
I had no idea what was going on here.
But if I just stood around, I was going to get swept up in the flames.
I looked around and decided to move somewhere — anywhere.
*Is this… a city?*
Lurching forward more like flailing than walking.
I gradually realized the surroundings were a city packed with buildings and high-rises.
What struck me as odd was that these were clearly buildings I'd never seen in my life.
Yet their forms were strangely, meticulously detailed.
My footsteps, already unsettled by that wrongness, came to an abrupt halt.
The reason was simple enough.
Deep inside a dark alley the flames hadn't yet reached.
Someone was crouched there, staring straight at me.
*A ghost…?*
No — why is the first person I meet in this dream *that*.
I tensed without thinking and swallowed hard.
Honestly, I was a little scared.
I've always had a bit of a weakness for frightening, startling things.
A figure sitting in a composition straight out of a horror film.
Even in a dream, it made my skin crawl. No, genuinely — I was scared.
But looking more carefully, the crouching figure was a child.
Long hair covering everything but the eyes… a girl, maybe.
Either way, I had absolutely no intention of going closer.
*Huh?*
But just as I turned to run without a second thought —
Before I knew it, I was standing right in front of the child.
As if the memory of walking here had been cleanly snipped away.
Goosebumps raced up my skin and I clenched my fist hard.
I never let my guard down, not even against a child.
If she came at me, I was fully prepared to beat her senseless.
Whether she sensed my thoughts or not, the crouching figure opened her mouth.
"Leila……"
A pretty, sweet little voice.
She looked like a ghost, but she was a girl after all.
But please — don't speak like a ghost. I'm begging you.
Ah, I just wanted to run.
Yet my body moved toward the child on its own.
As though my free will had been stripped away.
"Leila."
*Stop! Don't! That's terrifying!*
I struggled desperately against the creeping dread.
But before I knew it, the distance had closed to arm's reach.
Then the girl, her face hidden behind her hair, rose to her feet.
She was nearly at eye level with me, and her eyes were red.
This girl of unknown identity reached her hand toward my face.
"It's all… your fault."
"Gyaaah!"
I told you, I absolutely cannot stand ghost-like things!
Unable to bear it any longer, I swung my fist with everything I had.
A fist that moved by my own will, finally connecting with her —
And just like that, I woke from the dream.
"Hff — hah… haaah……"
What kind of nightmare was that.
I pushed myself upright and dragged in ragged breaths.
My body felt clammy from however much I'd sweated in my sleep.
Ugh, I'm thirsty. I want water.
Still not fully awake, I kept my eyes half-closed.
And the moment I moved my legs to climb out of bed —
A pain like something boring through my bones jolted my entire body.
"Ngh — hhk…!"
A single instant of agony sharp enough to make my vision swim.
A groan slipped out between my lips.
Tears squeezed from my tightly shut eyes.
My body trembled uncontrollably, regardless of what I wanted.
*It hurts, it hurts it hurts it hurts! What is this, what's happening?!*
I forced my scrunched eyelids open while hunched over —
And there in my line of sight was a thigh wrapped in layers of bandages.
*Ah. Right. So that's how it is.*
Perhaps because the pain had jolted the drowsiness clean out of me.
Sharp clarity returned to my foggy mind.
Only then did I look around.
A familiar place — stark white, smelling of antiseptic.
This was unmistakably the infirmary of the Lumia Branch.
"Waking up in the infirmary means……"
My last memory was losing consciousness after the fight with Midir.
It seemed the medical squad had arrived late and pulled me out.
Come to think of it, I was in a patient's gown. My wounds had been treated.
Right. So the Commander was alive and well, too.
I let out a long breath and rubbed my face with dry hands.
*Looks like everything got resolved safely……*
Well. I'd had a feeling it would turn out this way.
That's exactly why I'd gone so far as to think about turning back time myself.
To think I'd be incapable of killing the Commander with my own hands.
Could you at least warn me about something this important in advance? It matters.
*If I die now… the Commander will try to uncover the reason.*
I'd deliberately staged it that way.
Every death of mine up to this point had been in circumstances that left no other explanation.
Dying together with Erosion Species, dying twice from battle wounds.
But dying by suicide in an infirmary right now?
He might dissect my body to determine the cause of death.
And if evidence of suicide surfaced from that —
The look in the Commander's eyes, grieving over my death, would change.
Staring down at my corpse, he might wear cold eyes.
*No need to grieve over someone like this.*
Thinking of it that way, he'd look at me with empty detachment, and……
*Ugh, just imagining it makes my stomach turn.*
The nerve of him, being the Commander and all……
I shook my head vigorously to dispel the unpleasant image.
On top of that, one more question remained.
I didn't know the exact date and time right now.
But at this rate, I could certainly make it past that one week.
Yet if the Commander died here — would I return to the very beginning?
Or would a new save point form at some specific moment?
Without knowing the precise mechanics of Regression —
It wasn't yet time to act rashly.
So for now, I'd quietly accept defeat.
Accept defeat……
*Haah. Give me back my collection……*
I folded my uninjured leg up and leaned against it.
*Still — maybe it's because I slept. I feel a little more like myself. Back then, I was in a truly terrible state.*
I recalled the moments just before I lost consciousness.
Every plan in ruins, my head filled to the brim with frustration.
I'd even entertained the wicked thought of killing the Commander with my own hands.
But after sleeping on it, all that stress had vanished without a trace.
A kind of breezy acceptance — *well, what's done is done.*
It felt as though the me from back then hadn't been myself at all.
A laughable excuse, I know.
I rested my chin in my hand and stared blankly out the dark window.
For now, it seemed I needed to think about what to do going forward.
*The original story… I only know up to the early part of Chapter 2.*
Perhaps because I'd played through the original game so superficially.
There wasn't much I remembered about the plot.
Midir was the boss of Chapter 1 going forward.
And various Valkyries would start gathering in Lumia — that was about it.
Of course, I couldn't trust original knowledge anymore.
The moment Leila — who was supposed to die — was still alive, it was already an error.
I had no choice but to act as though this were reality.
I was never particularly sharp to begin with, after all.
*What on earth am I supposed to do* — that helplessness sat heavy in my chest.
I was sinking deep into thought when —
The infirmary door slid open with a soft sound, and someone stepped inside.
"Oh my, you're awake."
"…Ah. Doctor."
"Hehe, just call me Sepia."
A mature beauty with green hair and a beauty mark.
Her identity was Sepia — the Lumia Branch's medical officer.
At the sight of a familiar face, I picked up the performance I'd briefly set down.
The sweet, gentle girl who was kind and warm to everyone except the Commander.
I addressed her with a polite manner.
"How long was I asleep?"
"About eight hours."
Eight hours — so it was around five in the morning now.
No wonder it was pitch dark outside.
The Erosion Species army Midir had sent would all be dead by now.
Nailed shut. I felt a little gloomy.
All that scheming up until today.
Preparing the camera, rehearsing my lines……
All that effort, gone up in smoke.
Try as I might to hide it, my shoulders drooped on their own.
Whether she sensed my true feelings or not —
Sepia settled into a nearby chair and asked in a gentle voice.
"How are you feeling? Does it hurt?"
"It does hurt… but as long as I don't move, it's fine. You were the one who treated me, right? Thank you so much."
"Not at all. It's my job."
We both broke into perfectly girlish smiles at the same moment.
I asked Sepia when my wounds would heal.
She answered that I'd be able to walk in three days.
A wound that had gone clean through my thigh, bone and all — and only three days.
Whether Valkyries were remarkable, or the medical technology of this world was remarkable.
I smiled and said how relieved I was, while inwardly letting out a hollow laugh.
*At least I won't be limping for the rest of my life.*
Now it was time to ask the truly important question.
I glanced at Sepia sidelong, as if gauging her reaction, and spoke.
"Um — the Commander, is he……"
"He's safe. He hasn't woken yet, but his current condition shows no health concerns."
"Haah… what a relief."
I'd been worried he might have ended up in a vegetative state or something.
It seemed nothing of the sort had happened.
Since I couldn't turn back time with my own hands —
I wanted to avoid situations where there was nothing I could do.
As I pressed my hand to my chest and breathed a sigh of relief —
Sepia, who had been smiling pleasantly this whole time, suddenly spoke.
A cold voice that sent a chill down the spine of anyone who heard it.
"By the way, Leila. May I ask you something?"
"Yes, what is it?"
"…What exactly did you do to your body?"
"…Ah."
A somewhat vague, out-of-nowhere question.
But I understood immediately what she meant.
Sepia — the sole medical officer of Lumia.
She would have examined my unconscious body with careful thoroughness.
Most likely… she had noticed the existence of Sentiment.
No — of course she would have noticed.
No matter how small and thin the needles threaded inside —
Running a hand over the skin, you could feel that something was there.
There was no way she'd miss it while wrapping bandages around my thigh.
"Shall we have a little talk?"
"Ah — um, well……"
Sepia gripped my shoulder — the one I couldn't move — firmly.
An absurd pressure radiating from her even as she smiled.
It seemed this was going to be a difficult conversation.