THE WORLD IS ENDING.

Only this world, Exflibberaguil corrected himself. I’m sure there are plenty of other worlds that are perfectly fine. If I fail to save this little, insignificant one, I’ll just move on to the next. I only need to wipe my memories, nothing difficult.

If only I didn’t feel the guilt…

Exflibberaguil sighed, turning his head to look at Nick. Her hand resembled a mitten from all the gauze wrapped tightly around it. Exflibberaguil had learned to become paranoid of rabbit bites. Most of them were harmless, but if that rabbit had been sent by Cosmo the rabbit leader, Exflibberaguil doubted the bite was not venomous. The higher circles of rabbits were usually carriers of viruses transferred to them by mosquitoes they breed.

Nick hadn’t showed any symptoms of illness, other than slightly longer sleep cycles and a decrease in appetite. But Exflibberaguil had no way of knowing whether this was abnormal, having close to no knowledge of Sodriew. Besides, sleeping longer didn’t seem like a symptom and anyone would lose their appetite if they ate bowl noodles every meal for a week.

“Hey Nick, how are you feeling?” Exflibberaguil asked, trying to act indifferent.

“My name’s Nick,” she replied glaring at him. She had almost completely recovered, except for some parts of her prefrontal cortex which often made her seem extremely immature sometimes.

“That’s what I said.”

“You said Haynick.”

“I said,” Exflibberaguil sighed, rolling his eyes, “Hey. Nick. Two very different words.”

Nick shrugged. “Whatever floats your boat. I know what I heard.”

“And I know what I said,” Exflibberaguil snapped.

Nick muttered something to herself, but Exflibberaguil didn’t bother listening. There were more important things to tend to other than Nick’s useless blabbering, such as food. Their supply of instant noodles was running out again, which meant Exflibberaguil had to go out for more. Unfortunately, with the publicity they were getting, it was too much of a risk to go out with Nick behind him. The bandaged hand would also give off the wrong signals, and more than once Exflibberaguil had noticed people staring at him and was forced to change parks.

Leaving Nick in the trailer was no better. Now that she had begun recovering, Exflibberaguil feared she’d begin wandering around when he wasn’t around. Box, having no hands, could not stop her long enough. Exflibberaguil could possibly handcuff her, but he couldn’t find his cuffs and had a vague memory that something had happened to them. He didn’t wish to remember though. Remembering things was always dangerous.

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Exflibberaguil buried his head in his hands. Here I am. The world’s only chance of surviving. Yet I’m on the verge of starvation because these monkeys believe in the villain!

“What are you thinking about?” Nick asked in that annoying innocent way of hers.

“Food.”

She sniffed. “You couldn’t be. You never think of food. It’s cup noodles every day. If you actually took the time to think of it, you’d realize that maybe it’s good to buy different varieties.”

“There’s nothing wrong with cup noodles,” Exflibberaguil replied defiantly.

“You have all this money! Can’t you get pizza or Chinese takeout?”

“And risk being seen? No thank you!” Exflibberaguil groaned.

“What’s so bad about being seen?”

“Just stop asking questions!” Exflibberaguil yelled. “It’s annoying. You still don’t understand because you thought it was smart to just go ahead and wipe all your stupid memories. Just leave be alone, alright?”

Nick sniffed and scrunched her nose up. “You’re the one to talk. What do you do? Mope and groan every day? Besides, don’t you wipe your memory too? What’s so bad about it?”

“It’s only bad when some arrogant idiot uses it for selfish and personal motives!”

“Hmm, let’s see here,” Nick began, holding out her hand. “Arrogant? Check. Idiot? Check. Selfish? Check.” She ticked them off her fingers one by one. “Personal motives? Check. Oh, were you trying to describe me?” Nick laughed coldly. “You hypocrite.”

“I’m not a hippo—hippocrip—hip—”

“Hypocrite, sir,” Box called from his charging port under the bed.

“Yes, that,” Exflibberaguil said with a wave of his hand. “That’s not me.”

Nick didn’t say anything.

“Okay, that was a weak argument,” Exflibberaguil admitted, “but at least I know what I’m doing. You could have easily gone blind if you weren’t so lucky.”

Nick stayed silent. For a moment, Exflibberaguil feared that she had remembered everything, and had gone back to giving him the silent treatment. Finally, she spoke in a dry voice, “It’s been a long time, you know that? I need to go somewhere—I can’t remember where, of course, but I need to get back. Yet here you are, in this trailer doing nothing to help. Have you given up?”

“N-no!” Exflibberaguil stammered defensively. “Of course not! I’m doing plenty to help. You just don’t know it of course. Look, I even know who the bunny leader is!”

“Do you have any proof of it?”

“Ah…don’t start interrogating me now.”

Nick sighed without taking her eyes of him. “You know, I don’t really trust you anymore. Just putting it out there. You haven’t done anything productive lately. Is this a sort of prank? Because I’m very tempted to just call the police.” She paused. “You’re not telling me something, aren’t you? You’re hiding something. I can feel it.”

“Me? No!” Exflibberaguil replied, not even convincing himself. “I—I’m going to go to the convenience store for some food,” he said loudly. “I’m going to lock you in the trailer, if that’s all right. Since you’re telling the truth too, I might as well say I don’t trust you either. So don’t try and go escaping alright? My ferret will catch you, I’m sure.”

“You mean the ferret you haven’t seen in the last few days?”

“I’m sure he’d turn up eventually,” Exflibberaguil said hurriedly. “Now don’t think about escaping, alright? I’ll find you eventually. Not to be creepy or anything.”

He slid out the door as if he were the one that was going to be locked in. “I’m sorry,” he called.

What for? Nick thought, moving toward Exflibberaguil’s laptop, I never wanted to go outside.