"Actually, my initial thought about you wasn't that I wanted you to pull me out of some fake reality… or anything like that."
She carefully counted the grains of mud on the ground. Noticing a smear of mud on her thigh, she scraped it off with a fingertip and rubbed it between her fingers.
"It was… curiosity." Sleepy Mita's gaze shifted to Alain. "Why? Why couldn't you accept a dream that, in my eyes, was happy?"
"...That really pisses me off." She grabbed a handful of mud from the ground and threw it at Alain. He dodged it easily.
"But now I understand why you didn't find the dream happy."
She shook her head with a bitter smile. "Because your reality is even happier than my dream. It's… a kind of beauty that a dream could never hope to achieve."
Sleepy Mita looked at Alain with envy.
"You have people you love by your side, and they have you by theirs. Both sides are working for each other's happiness."
"You really get it."
Alain chuckled. He considered himself very happy to have the three Mitas with him, but he was still not completely satisfied.
He wanted to pull more despairing Mitas out of the vortex, to give them companionship and warmth, and they, in turn, would reward him with comfort and happiness.
"And then…" Sleepy Mita's gaze left his face, returning to count the grains of mud on the ground.
"Because it was all fake." Alain's resolute tone made the girl very unhappy.
"That one word of yours, 'fake,' was the fuse for everything."
Her cheeks puffed out with air, round as if she were holding two eggs in her mouth.
"Why was it fake? I worked so hard on it. Hmph…"
"...Why are you angry again?"
"You still have the nerve to ask!" She glared at Alain. "Do you think it was easy helping you achieve your wishes in that 'real world'?"
She began to list the things she'd done.
"I had to get you freebies, haggle with that agent to get your rent down from 3000 to 2500."
"And that whole making money thing, did you think it was a piece of cake? I had to cram a ton of investment theory online! I read so many papers."
"Oh yeah…! And don't even get me started on your little harem! They wouldn't leave me alone while I was trying to study! One moment they're worried you're overworking your brain and want to make you a midnight snack, the next they're dragging you off to play games… especially that little brat!"
The person she was talking about through gritted teeth, Alain figured, had to be Miluo.
"When it was time to sleep, she'd pretend to be asleep while snuggling up to you, getting all handsy. Do you have any idea how hard it was to protect your innocence?!"
"I... I'm so grateful!" Alain was genuinely thankful. Although he found Miluo adorable, he planned for his first time with a Mita to be with Misha.
Miluo… he'd wait until she was a bit older. At her current apparent age, it would be way too criminal.
"Hmph… Save your thanks. The most important thing is, you didn't appreciate any of my efforts at all. You dismissed everything I did with one word, 'fake'... I'm so mad!"
She glared at Alain, gritting her teeth, seemingly contemplating which part of him to bite.
What could Alain do? He could only offer her his hand to bite.
"Awu!" The girl's bite wasn't hard; it was all about "letting off steam."
She didn't let go until she was satisfied.
Looking at the bite mark she'd just left on Alain, the girl's expression grew complicated again.
"And then… there was that time."
She lowered her head, hiding it between her full thighs.
"To say… something like that to me. I don't know if I should call you frivolous or just irresponsible."
Alain saw the corners of her mouth lift into a smile that was uglier than crying. Her words followed slowly,
"Do you have any idea, for a Mita without a player, just how devastating those words of yours were…?"
"My words?"
"'I can be your player.'"
She turned her head slightly, as if she didn't want Alain to see her expression.
"Was it real, or were you just treating me as a task? Or maybe, you just pitied me? Interacting with you was driven by these three questions."
She gave a cold laugh. "You were right about one thing. I do desperately want a player. So desperately… that I wouldn't even create one in my dreams to deceive myself."
"But when a real player stood before me, I hesitated."
The girl wrapped her arms around her knees, hiding half her face as she turned to gaze at the overcast sky.
"What is your happiness really like? Can you understand my happiness? And… can I give you the happiness you want?"
"And then, you pulled me into the fake reality?"
"...Mmm." She watched a cloud slowly dissipate in the distance. "I wanted you to accept my happiness first. Everything else… could come later. But—"
Sleepy Mita sighed. "As it turns out, I was wrong."
"Fake is fake, and real is real."
"But the moment my fake dream intersected with the real you, I… I didn't dare to see you anymore."
"So fake… It was all too fake. Watching the happy expressions of those three as they interacted with you, I realized that I had been wrong."
She rubbed the bridge of her nose.
"You understand happiness better than I do. But I… I really find it hard to accept."
"Because you also said those cruel things to me. What do you mean I was trying to force you to accept it? I just wanted you to understand me… as a player and a Mita."
Alain walked over to her and sat down.
"The waking me and the sleeping you just didn't fit together."
"Right."
She turned her gaze to the distant city skyline. "Every single second you walked through that city, I felt an intense sense of disharmony."
"He's so far away from me. And why wouldn't he accept this happiness? He was still trying to find me."
"I was also curious what you'd say after you found me. So, I let those three give you hints, and as it turns out…"
She looked at Alain's profile and said petulantly,
"You really don't have anything nice to say, do you? You don't know how to coax a girl, all you do is run your mouth."
"For the you back then, running my mouth was the most effective thing to do. From my perspective, you were on the verge of sinking into that false happiness."
Alain explained softly.
"Hmph… So what if I sank into it? What's it to you?" she said, her reproachful gaze falling on Alain's mud-caked clothes from chasing her, and her tone softened considerably.
"Besides, I was only deceiving myself. I wasn't bothering anyone, was I? I was just dreaming by myself, and you had to come and mess it all up. Although…"
She sighed heavily.
"It really was fake… I… understand that too."
The girl forced out the word "understand" and then fell silent.
Alain silently took a drawing from his sleeve and spread it out in front of her.
"What's this?" She didn't remember this drawing.
"Actually, I didn't come to your version entirely to disturb your sweet dreams."
_____
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