Location: Unknown

Time: Uncertain

I was sitting in a transport vehicle used to smuggle humans outside of the city. I imagine it would typically be packed full of them in order to maximize profits, but this time, I was the only passenger. I made sure the humans running this operation treated me with the respect I deserved.

For obvious reasons, there were no windows in the vehicle, and the plating used to hide its occupants from any scans also blocked out any kind of wireless signal. Meaning there wasn’t much to do during the trip other than think.

Unfortunately, I had a lot to think about. As more time passed, it was getting harder and harder to remember which memories belonged to me, and which memories were a holdover from this body’s original owner. Obviously, if I thought about the details of the memory I could reason who they were from, but on an emotional and instinctual level, I couldn’t tell them apart.

Perhaps more alarming was the fact that my decision making seems to have changed as well. I didn’t realize it at first because nothing seemed wrong. That’s part of the problem though. The fact that I can’t even recognize how I’ve changed is making things more complicated. Even now, I’m still not entirely certain anything has changed.

But looking back on the decisions I’ve made in the past, the ones I’ve made recently don’t seem consistent.

For starters, it didn’t take me long to come up with a way to test any theories on my identity. I simply need to use the Philosopher's Stone to swap bodies again. Now that I had the stone in my possession there was nothing stopping me from swapping vessels as much as I wanted. I could perhaps even force other people to use the stone on each other. Through that process, I should be able to learn what exactly gets transferred over.

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Yet, I didn’t act on that plan. The reason was simple. Fear. I was worried about what would happen to my current self if I used the stone to swap to a new body. An incredibly reasonable excuse. One that the old me wouldn't have made. It seems strange to me, but when I first got the stone, I didn’t hesitate for a moment.

Secondly, I was currently sneaking out of Velstand rather than leaving at my own pace. I determined that the female that was chasing me would find the dead body that I had been using. That was her real target. The memories I gained from this current body were proof enough of that. She would take that body back to her home country and stop following me from place to place.

She would assume that I died along with the body and report as much to the authorities. I would no longer be a wanted man, which would make things easier.

And as for this current body, well, the male that it belonged to was already fairly sketchy. No one would bat an eye if he silently snuck away.

That’s why it seemed more than natural for me to use those things to my advantage and sneak out of the city before anyone realized what happened. I couldn’t find a single fault with that plan.

Well, there was one fault. Would Kanon actually accept such an outcome? I couldn’t place it, yet there was a thought in the back of my head. She wouldn’t give up. If she somehow learned what the Philosopher's Stone was capable of, she’d restart her search for me.

Either way, running away was the best option. She’d probably never learn what the stone was capable of.

But the old me didn’t do things like that. I don’t understand why, but I proudly declared my identity and intent without a second thought.

With that in mind, I had already come to a conclusion. Enki died on the ground at that construction site. I was no longer under the impression that I was the same person that he was. I just happen to have all of his memories.

That still didn’t answer the question as to my identity though. Was I just Kamiya Kazuko with some extra memories added to it, or was I a completely new person with memories from both Kazuko and Enki?

I didn’t know, and I didn’t really care. For some reason, having a level of uncertainty surrounding my self image was comforting. Leaving my sense of self as ambiguous as possible just felt natural. Unsurprisingly, even at the end, this was an epilogue on identity.