“...What if this memory actually belongs to someone else who was there?”

Yuder’s thoughts, which had been tangled and storming, suddenly came to a halt.

“Someone else’s memory... Who do you mean... No way.”

Mid-sentence, he caught a glimpse of Kishiar’s eyes, laced with calmness but layered in complexity—and instinctively, he knew who Kishiar was referring to.

Who else could make him wear that expression?

If not himself.

‘Is he talking about the white glove?’

Seriously?

Kishiar, meeting Yuder’s gaze, slowly nodded.

“This isn’t based on solid evidence—it’s just a hypothesis, heavily mixed with imagination and intuition. But ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) would you hear me out anyway?”

“Of course. Please, speak freely.”

Yuder quelled the lingering daze and regained composure. Kishiar gave a short smile before continuing.

“That being has continued to exist even now, long after its death. We’ve both confirmed that it isn’t merely an illusion—it has will, and we can communicate with it.”

“Yes.”

“When I first heard about it from you, I thought—perhaps—it held a piece of mine. Or more precisely, something that makes up who I am. What’s called the ‘soul.’ For one person to exist in two forms at once, especially while carrying traces of a game already passed, that seemed like the most plausible explanation.”

He paused, as if to read Yuder’s reaction, then resumed.

“If that were true, then my soul should’ve differed from others in some way. But according to the pharmacist, there’s nothing wrong with it. Unlike your soul, which was weakly bound to your body and covered in wounds.”

“Inon said that?”

When had they discussed all that? If Kishiar’s soul was intact... then what did all this mean? Everything—the topic, the timing—it all set Yuder on edge with discomfort.

“When... No, never mind. Please continue.”

“Later, I asked Mick discreetly after he came to the South. He also said nothing about me seemed unusual. When two people who can peer into a being’s inner essence say the same thing, I discarded the first hypothesis.”

“...”

“Then how could that being exist at all? What could it possibly be based on? With that unsolved question lingering, I eventually got to see it for myself. Remember what I said after we tried the ‘dream’ in the office?”

Of course he remembered. How could he forget something like that? Yuder answered without hesitation.

“Yes. You said it looked like you on the outside but...”

“—its energy felt more similar to you,” Kishiar finished for him.

“That sensation I couldn’t fully explain... I’ve been thinking about it ever since. So I tried forming a new hypothesis. This time, centered on you.”

‘...Me?’

“According to the pharmacist, your soul was in poor condition from the moment you first met. He said he was worried you might die and kept checking on you, even giving you helpful items. Did anything like that happen in the previous game?”

Yuder shook his head.

“...No.”

“I figured. Then the damage to your soul is something that only occurred in this game. Even if your relationship with the pharmacist was different back then, someone like him wouldn’t have just ignored it if you were on the brink of death.”

It was true. Though Yuder and Inon hadn’t shared such open or deep conversations in the past life, Inon had looked out for him in many ways. He used to curse and heal Yuder whenever he found hidden injuries—if he’d noticed something wrong with Yuder’s soul, he would have mentioned it in some form, however indirectly.

‘...Unless he did, and I just don’t remember. But aside from memories tied to Kishiar, there haven’t been any other instances of forgotten memories vanishing without a trace.’

“So to summarize: someone whose soul was intact in the previous game ends up with a soul full of holes and weakly bound to the body in this game. You could call it the price of turning back time—but even that doesn’t fully explain it. Because the damaged parts of your soul have been gradually healing while you were with me. So where did those damaged fragments disappear to—and where did they come back from?”

Yuder thought of Inon’s annoyed face as he told him to stick close to Kishiar, since his soul would heal that way. He thought of the holes gaping within him, whispering in his own chest—and the moments when the empty, unexplainable sensations filled in and the memories returned while he was near Kishiar.

Now that most of the holes had been patched, when they met Mick again, he’d said many of the voids in Yuder’s essence were gone. It wasn’t a coincidence. The vanished memories and soul damage—and the hollow sense of self Yuder had felt—were clearly linked.

Until now, Yuder had assumed the cause of recovery was the mysterious bond between them—“the Mark.” But Kishiar hadn’t stopped there. He seemed to be pursuing an entirely new line of thought.

The return of Yuder’s memories. The healing of his soul.

And the nature of the hand in the white glove Kishiar had first mentioned.

Then, what Kishiar was getting at, ultimately... 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

With eyes sharp and heavy, Yuder opened his mouth.

“—You’re suggesting that the version of you beyond the rift... is a being made from my soul. Is that what you’re trying to say?”

A wave of dense fragrance rushed from Kishiar. It was more decisive than a yes.

“The clue that led me to this theory came when you told me about the ‘first connection.’”

That day in the past life—when Yuder’s world had been overturned.

The accident that occurred with the second awakening. The pain of something inside being torn and tangled and twisted. And the result: the “connection.”

Kishiar raised his head and stared into the dark room.

When he stretched out a hand, two small objects came flying toward them, pulled by some unseen force. Yuder recognized them as small decorative dolls that had been sitting on a shelf.

Wooden talismans common across the continent, shaped roughly like people with no eyes, nose, or mouth, painted with symbols for luck and protection. One was painted with red patterns for health, the other with black for longevity.

Holding one in each hand, Kishiar began his explanation.

“If we turned the ‘first connection’ you experienced in the previous game into a visible form... it might look something like this.”

The dolls in each of his hands suddenly shattered without a sound. Their pieces didn’t fall to the ground or hit Yuder—they floated in midair, as if suspended by threads.

Moments later, Yuder saw the scattered pieces begin to reattach to one another. The two dolls reassembled—though now they were mottled, no longer red or black, but mixed in color.

Their shapes were identical to before, but the mingled colors showed that red and black had merged. Kishiar brought the dolls closer, facing each other. The fragments trembled slightly, as if the red sought red and black sought black—but stuck together nonetheless. It looked like they had become a single, fused whole.

“What do you think would happen if someone tried to forcibly separate things joined like this?”

“They’d break.”

“Right. But someone with power like mine—it wouldn’t be entirely impossible. If I’d tried to sever the bond, I’d probably have done something like this.”

Kishiar squeezed one of the dolls in his hand. The red fragments suddenly popped out as if yanked.

“I would’ve started with this.”

Yuder quietly watched the black-only doll. With its red fragments removed, the black doll was now full of holes, barely holding shape. The red pieces clustered together like tiny orbs and clung to the other doll.

“...”

“But if, by some accident, the next step in the process failed to complete... what would happen to each of the dolls?”

With that murmur, the red-patched doll—still intact—slipped from Kishiar’s grasp. It fell into the sheet between them and vanished.

Only the holed black doll remained. Like a child who’d lost its way, it stared blankly. Kishiar picked it up and gently squeezed. The gaps in the doll contracted and began to form a compact whole again.

Though smaller and lighter than before, the doll now looked whole and solid. Anyone seeing it for the first time would assume it had always been like that.

While Yuder silently observed the doll, Kishiar carefully set it down. Then he reached toward the other doll, now buried in the sheets.

Once red, but no longer.