Construction machines flood the slums with a hellish cacophony of drilling, screeching and beeping. Turns out, when so much is destroyed you actually have to rebuild it, which takes a LOT of manpower and a LOT of my eardrums being blown out. Of course, it won't actually physically hurt my ears, high endurance and all that, but it's still very annoying. I'm surprised they actually bother fixing the place at all, Provoj said the government barely bothered helping the poor, but that looks like a large scale rebuilding project that must have been pretty hard to fund, although I don't know how expensive building stuff is in this universe, so what do I know.

I guess rebuilding everything isn't really a solution either, nothing stops another rogue magical girl from destroying everything again. So I guess the government likes to apply band-aid fix and care very little about fixing the root of the problem. 'The government' is a pretty vague thing to call it too, but I've never been too much into politics. It's hard enough to understand even if I did decide to stay here, but if I'm going to leave anyway, what's even the point of getting too involved?

"I'll...protect...you?" Hotel says as they observe the construction workers with childlike curiosity.

"Make your own memories instead of taking stuff from mine," I sigh. Getting angry at them is pointless, they don't understand what they are doing wrong, it's not like raising a regular child. Hotel is more soul than human right now, and the only person that can educate them on soul stuff right now is unfortunately me. This leaves me--pun not intended--very little time to properly fix my UM too, it takes a lot of concentration to do so and I need to make sure Hotel won't do anything dumb when I'm working on it.

Thankfully, Hotel is pretty passive right now, they aren't inherently malicious and they learn pretty fast. Faster than the average kid actually, maybe even faster than me when I was...younger.

"Take...happy...care?" She Hotel says.

I stop. Something slithers in me like a snake, first the head, then it descends to my heart where it makes a nest, and from there, hundreds of little, disgusting, writhing things spread through the rest of my body. Biting and scratching, weeping and screaming. My hands are shaking, my breathing is getting heavy, my head hurts, I want it to stop.

The sanity system isn't working, of course it isn't. If they have access to my memories, then blocking them might have weird consequences. It's their fault, my eyes dart around to give me something else to think about, but I can't, it's their fault, if it wasn't for them, I'd be able to enjoy this universe just fine without feeling so stressed out. I almost slap them, but I manage to redirect my palm to my face as a last ditch effort to get some control over the wreck that I am.

The slap doesn't hurt, but it still helps me get my thoughts in order a little bit better. It's not their fault, they don't know any better, and it's my job to make sure they do know better.

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Remembering her is my choice, and I can't let others suffer because of that choice.

"Do you know what that means, Hotel?" I ask them while trying to keep some semblance of composure, of course, they can see straight through me--our souls are connected after all. I'm doing it more for me than for them.

"Happy...healthy?"

"Yeah," I take a deep breath, getting oxygen into my body doesn't actually calm me that much, but concentrating on my breathing does. It's blocking out everything else and focusing on something pointless that doesn't mean anything. It makes it so you don't overthink, only breath.

After a couple of breathing exercise, I start walking again, only for Hotel to stop too and stare at a half built house, it looks like any of the other buildings as far as I can tell, but they seem very interested in that one in particular.

They look back and forth between me and the house, as if they are asking a silent request that they are expecting me to understand and accept.

"Communication is important, Hotel, I can't know what you're thinking without you telling me," I say, it's not strictly true, we are linked after all and I could probably figure out their intent if I focused a little, but it's better to teach them how to communicate normally.

"...protect...help? Help! Help them!" Hotel points at the construction worker, then at the house, then back to them.

"And how will you help them, exactly?" I make sure to pay attention to their soul so they don't do anything weird while I'm not looking.

"How...this?" Hotel expands a part of their soul out of their body, it solidifies above their hand and slowly takes shape into a small...rectangular cube? It's not just an illusion, it's there, I can touch it. The object does not have a top and as I look inside I can see miniature lamps and decorations, exactly like...the hotel hallway.

That shouldn't be possible, right? They could do it back then because it was their universe, it was inside their soul. But this is another universe so... hooo.

I'm an idiot.

If you can create anything inside your soul, theorically nothing stops you from turning parts of your soul into a physical object inside of another universe. Soul surgery is just modifying a pre-existing soul after all, it's just that I never thought of using my own soul to create stuff when I could change the surrounding universe instead.

Of course that's a lot more expensive than basic soul surgery, you're literally cutting off a part of your soul and molding it into something physical, so you'd need a lot of experience to...

Wait, couldn't I have done that to get rid of soul bloat? Just cut parts of my soul and create a bunch of objects with them? Dumping too much experience into something else, even a universe, is usually a bad idea, but creating a bunch of stuff is pretty safe isn't it?

I scream internally at how much of an idiot I am for somehow never thinking of doing something that--in retrospect--is extremely obvious.

Hotel is still looking at me expectantly, pointing at every single thing relevant to this conversation, the mini-hallway, the house, me and themselves. It's like they are asking for a Christmas present and I'm the parent who has to desperately check their wallet to see if they can afford it.

I nod to hotel and forcefully drag them around the slums until I find an empty space that isn't actively being worked on. Eventually, we both end up next to a crater that must be the size of 3 or 4 houses, it's just as deep as it is wide and there's plenty of emptiness to work with.

"Alright, show me what you can do," I nudge hotel in the direction of the crater, "I'll stop you if you go too far, so go wild."

Hotel points to the crater, then to them, then to the mini-hallway multiple times, and I nod at every single thing they point at to make it clear that it's okay.

And for the first time, I see Hotel smile.