“BANG!”

Once everyone was inside, the door automatically closed by itself with a loud slam, shutting the field of Gladiolus flowers away and leaving them in the pure-white hallway. It clearly indicated to Simon that there was no turning back, and that the only thing he could do now was to continue forward.

As they proceeded to all walk silently down the hallway that seemed to go on as far as he could see, he felt that the time was appropriate to ask a few of his burning questions to the angel behind him before his chances ran out.

“Sister Anten… if you and I are ‘here’, where are your friends? What are they doing exactly?”

“…”

In response, she closed her eyes and began muttering wordlessly to herself, and it took a few minutes before she finally gave him the answer.

“I can confirm that my physical body is currently being protected by Miss Yuu, whom you already know, and the real Sister Renare. As for the ones you don’t know, which are the two guys that I believe you have seen before, they are drawing the Church of Enlightenment followers and the Paradise Enforcers away from the both of us. Therefore, we can most likely finish this in peace without any issues popping up.”

“And how long would it take to finish this whole thing exactly?”

“That depends on how well you accept what I’m about to show you. Of course, even if we take a long time to finish, a minute in this place is only a second in the real world, so we have plenty of time.”

“Tch, I see,” he grumbled in response.

He had expected something to go horribly wrong with the entire process such that he did not have to go through it and he could subsequently escape, but from the looks of it, she and her group already had everything planned out.

The three of them continued going down the hallway for a while more, with nothing in their surroundings changing or shifting at all, before he popped the next question, this time out of growing impatience.

“Um, where exactly are we going again?”

“…”

“Hello? Sister Anten?”

“…”

She had grown unnaturally silent again, seemingly refusing to answer his question. She simply kept her eyes on him and continued to walk, only stopping whenever he abruptly stopped as well.

“Hmph, I guess this really is a trap that you are leading me into, huh? That’s why you won’t tell me anything about this place?”

“… not quite, Brother Simon. We’re here.”

The Renare figure in front halted as soon as the Anten figure had announced their arrival, prompting the both of them to halt as well. As he looked around, he quickly noticed that they were still in the blank hallway, with nothing that had seemingly changed as far as he could see.

It was similar to the black void from earlier, with the sole exception of the sensation of the ground beneath his feet. All he could see around them was a pure and unchanging whiteness.

“Are you freaking serious?”

With his impatience growing once again, he furiously looked at Anten, only to see her with an amused smile on her face, as though she had expected and was just waiting patiently for his annoyed reaction.

“As I said, we are here. You just have to wait,” she replied as she coolly stared back at him, unconcerned with his increasing annoyance.

“Wait? Wait for what?”

“This.”

Without giving any warning, she suddenly raised one of her hands up to the white space above her head and loudly clicked her fingers, and right as she did so, the environment around them began to change rapidly, much like the fields that they were in before.

Once again before his very eyes, shapes began to form and connect with each other, rapidly gaining details and colors to form a cohesive and comprehensible setting that he could properly perceive and feel.

“… eh?”

As the area finalized itself, he recognized its layout in an instant. It was something he had seen every day for the past three years when he had woken up, a place that was supposed to give him comfort and solitude, at least for a short moment of time.

“Is this… my room?”

“Not quite,” Anten shook her head in response, “this is indeed one of the Church of Enlightenment’s dormitory rooms, but it isn’t yours. Not at this point of time at least. This is a memory from the past.”

“…”

Surveying the rapidly constructed room that they were in more closely, he quickly spotted some details that did make it different from his room, even as he gradually recalled how it had looked three years ago when he had first arrived at the Church.

The bed was in the wrong position and tidied up neatly as compared to his own usual untouched and messy style. The closet beside it was open, but the clothes inside it were folded and put in piles instead of being hung up on the rack like his were.

Last but not least, the desk at the corner had books that he could not recognize, along with stationery and other things that he could swear he had never owned before.

“So…” he asked after completing his careful analysis of the room, “if this is not my room, whose is it?”

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“It’s mine.”

A monotonous voice he had not heard before rang out beside him, causing him to jolt in surprise. However, as the initial shock wore off, he quickly realized who had startled him by suddenly speaking.

The reply had come from the Renare figure, with her emotionless expression staring ahead at nothing in particular and a voice that, upon further consideration, did sound like her, except with even less emotion and a more robotic tone.

“This room… is yours, Sister Renare?”

However, even as he asked her, she did not directly confirm the answer. Instead, she continued to speak to no one specific, maintaining the same flat tone as she began to rattle something off, inadvertently pushing him to quietly listen to her.

“I was first introduced to the Church of Enlightenment when I was 10. I was lost back then, clutching onto anything that could help me survive and move forward. Nothing could help me recover from the trauma I had experienced in the wasteland.”

As she recounted her story to him, the room began to come to life before them. The door at the far end opened, and a small young girl with tangled, unruly purple hair slowly crept in, her eyes rapidly darting all over the room as she took cautious and tentative steps into it.

However, even though her fear was apparent in her movements, the rest of her face remained firmly still, with no visible quiver or tremble, or even a slight shift in expression. She seemed to look completely calm and unfazed.

Based on that detail, and the color of her dirty hair, it was not hard for Simon to join the pieces up and guess who she was. Contrary to his expectations, the terrified girl who had just entered the room was none other than the younger version of Renare herself.

“Strange, I thought you would have been much more proper…”

“I didn’t trust anyone,” the Renare figure resumed, still paying no attention to him, “I didn’t speak to anyone, and I didn’t look anyone in the eye. For the first few weeks, I stayed cooped up in my room, and my food was always personally delivered to me during that period.”

The scene continued to play out, with the younger Renare disappearing from the entrance before quickly reappearing on the bed, cowering under its blanket, while there were several knocks on the door, polite but loud, that continuously repeated at set intervals until they gradually faded away.

“After some time, I finally began to come out of my shell, although I still could not interact with the people around me. I had slowly realized that it wouldn’t do me any good if I did the same thing every single day, and I began to take more risks to try and get used to the idea of being in a collective group, though not by much.”

Within a few seconds, the room changed to another place that he recognized as the Church’s Great Hall, complete with the long tables that he and the other followers usually ate at during mealtimes.

In this new scene, he could see faceless people wearing the Church’s white robes chatting and eating, but Renare was not among them. Moving his eyes away from the main group in focus, he spotted her sitting by herself at the end of the table, keeping her head down and slowly shoveling food into her mouth.

“Still, I kept doing the best I could, participating in Church activities, performing my basic duties, and being as helpful as possible. It was the least I had to do to repay the Church’s generosity and kindness towards me.”

As they continued watching Renare’s flashback, it did not take too long for him to finally cave and turn back towards Anten, who had been attentively nodding along with the story.

“… excuse me, Anten?”

“Yes?”

“What exactly is the purpose of showing me all of these memories? What do they have to do with me, or anything?”

“Ah, well…” Anten replied cheerily, “I told you this was about understanding, remember? You just need to understand—”

“Understand what? Why do I need to understand Sister Renare’s past? I don’t see how this helps me.”

“You seem to be misunderstanding something, Brother Simon. While I included Sister Renare’s memories into the parameters of my technique because I felt that she could help you find peace, I don’t control what is being shown to you. In fact, you are the one who is doing it.”

“What?”

“The reality is that only you and her know the reason why this particular flashback is playing right now. The two of you wanted, or perhaps I should say needed to see this, to fulfil your understanding, Brother Simon,” she explained.

“It’s all… me and her?”

“Correct.”

As they were arguing with each other, the Renare figure had continued to share her story at the same time without pausing even once, and it was not until the scene changed again that Simon put his full attention back on her.

“What is… this?” he muttered to himself as the landscape settled once again, creating yet another familiar location to him.

This time, they were in the main square, directly below the Church Goddess’ statue, facing the large crowd of followers that had all gathered and were staring expectantly at all three of them for some reason.

“Hold on a second.”

Right as he figured out, from the color and texture of the material below his feet, that he was standing on the stage that the Church normally set up for big events, the booming and charismatic voice that he suddenly heard immediately indicated to him who was currently standing beside them at the moment.

“Esteemed followers… dear brothers and sisters of the Church of Enlightenment… it is with great pleasure that I announce our newest member of the Elite Circle… Mother Renare! Please give her a big round of applause!”

“… Mother…?”

Sharply moving his head to the side, he could not mistake Renare, slightly older than she was in the previous flashback but still a great deal younger than how he knew her now, standing at attention beside the Elder and taking in the attention from the crowd.

Compared to her earlier appearance, her hair had been tied up into the familiar style that he knew she always wore, and her white robes had markings on them, confirming what the Elder was announcing to the crowd.

“That can’t be, you said you were a Sister…”

Those two terms could not have gotten mixed up by accident. A Sister and a Mother of the Church were two different positions entirely. If what he was seeing was true, it meant that she had hidden her true title, her true position, from him all this time.

“Sister Renare?”

“Before I knew it, I had excelled by leaps and bounds beyond what I had expected,” the Renare figure admitted with her verbal recollection, “all of a sudden, I had gotten the highest aptitude score in the yearly Goddess Initiation that the Church had ever seen before. Just like that, I was invited to join the Elder’s prestigious Circle, and I willingly accepted the position without a second thought.”

“…”

Now that the shocking twist had been revealed to him, Simon could not find the strength to comment on or question it. Instead, he began to patiently follow along with the story, determined to know more.

“However, even as I carried out my duties as a high-ranking follower of the Church, I gradually felt that there was something missing. Something about me that desperately wanted to find a way to reject the offer, that felt that I shouldn’t have accepted it so easily. I did not realize it at first, but eventually, as the months went on, I finally did.”

Another shift, and they were now in a room that he could not remember, even as he tried to comb through his own memories. Since it was a place that he could swear he had never seen before, the only logical conclusion he came to was that it either belonged to the Elder or Renare.

The entire layout reminded him of a standard meeting room, complete with a large circular table in the center, with chairs placed around it in regular intervals.

Despite its size being able to accommodate a significant number of people, only two people were present in the current scene, Renare and the Elder. The both of them were talking to each other in low tones, but given that they were witnessing Renare’s own memories, he could hear them clearly and pick up every detail in their conversation.

“Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider your decision? Keep in mind that once it happens, it won’t be easy for you to return,” the Elder spoke with some concern in his echoey voice.

“I’m sure of it.”

“I see. Thank you for telling me this.”

“Thank you for taking care of me all these years.”

“Yes,” the Renare figure added on as soon as the conversation between the two projections ended, “after a few months, I realized that, despite my loyalty and willingness to contribute to the Church, I had been missing one key component that put them both into scrutiny. Simply put, I just did not share the same beliefs as them.”

They were back in her room, and the projection of Renare was on the bed once again, though this time she was sitting on its edge, seemingly lost in her own thoughts as she absentmindedly fiddled with her hands and hair.

“It was at that point where I began to consider my purpose in the Church itself. I did not share any common beliefs with the rest of the followers about the Goddess or her Gift, no matter how hard I tried. If I wasn’t ever going to connect with them, what was I even doing there? Should I move on? What should I do from then on? Those questions plagued me for days.”

“That…” Simon could not help himself from uttering, having learnt important revelation after important revelation from her in such a short amount of time that it was hard for him not to reflexively say anything.

“Then, on the day before I decided to leave the Church and wander the wasteland to search for my true purpose, something happened.”

“Ow!”

All of a sudden, a sharp pain ran through his head, forcing him to close his eyes and clutch it tightly, but once the feeling subsided and he opened his eyes to look again, he immediately recognized the scene that was playing out in front of him.

“This is…”

“… the first meeting,” she finished his sentence for him, “the first time that I met him, and the day that I would soon never forget.”