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"Mr. Azik, what's wrong? Is something the matter?"
Hearing Lin Ruo's words, Azik, who had been hesitant, no longer hesitated and said, "I have recently recovered some memories... some of which are related to you."
"Oh?" Lin Ruo raised an eyebrow, a little surprised, but not too astonished, and asked, "Can you tell me more about it?"
Mr. Azik nodded, his voice low and gentle, "I don't remember much, just some fragments... In my memory, it should have been when I had just awakened from one of my reincarnations, forgetting everything. At that time, when I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was you..."
Speaking of this, Azik looked at Lin Ruo with a somewhat complicated expression, and said, "At that time, you claimed to be my teacher..."
Lin Ruo: ?
What kind of development is this?
Lin Ruo was stunned, and after a full second, he said, "Mr. Azik, do you mean that I am your teacher... or, I once served as your teacher?"
"No, the situation may be more complicated than that." Azik shook his head, his expression somewhat complex and somewhat strange, and said, "Although you claimed to be my teacher at that time, and you did teach me a lot, allowing me, who had just woken up and was still extremely confused, to find direction... but, but you didn't really seem like a teacher... In fact, at that time, you gave me a rather dangerous feeling. You were always observing me, as if conducting some kind of assessment..."
"Although I haven't recovered many memories... but in the limited memories, I did have the feeling that if you weren't satisfied with the results of the assessment, you would kill me..."
Lin Ruo: ...
What kind of development is this again?
Wait... Lin Ruo suddenly thought of something, his eyes flashing slightly.
How could he forget that Mr. Azik was once the Death Consul!
Although it is known from the original work that Mr. Azik was deeply influenced by Death when he served as the Death Consul, and his true self was suppressed by divinity, and he could basically be described as acting against his will, as the Death Consul of the Balam Empire, regardless of whether he was willing or not, the number of people who died because of Mr. Azik was definitely not small!
And Lin Ruo himself... could not tolerate the act of harming innocent people during the Pale Disaster launched by the Balam Empire!
Under this premise, after Death fell, if he encountered Azik who had fallen into the cycle of death, constantly losing his memory, seeking his memory, and then losing his memory again... to be honest, Lin Ruo had no doubt that he would attack Azik.
After all, Lin Ruo understood himself. If he had really witnessed the Pale Disaster, then even if he knew that the culprit was the Death, his attitude towards Azik, the executor, would not be very good.
— This is different from now. Although Lin Ruo now knows that Azik was the former Death Consul, he only understands fragments of information and doesn't have a real feeling for it. Under this premise, he also has a foundation of goodwill towards Azik from the original work, so he can naturally rationally tell himself that Mr. Azik acted against his will back then, the culprit was Death, and selectively ignore what happened back then.
To put it bluntly, just as Lin Ruo believes, he has never considered himself a good person, let alone a saint, so for people he knows, people he is familiar with, Lin Ruo also has his own selfishness. He doesn't have moral fastidiousness, so he naturally won't care about the mistakes that Mr. Azik made when he acted against his will.
But the mistakes of the past and the tragedy happening before his eyes are two different concepts. Lin Ruo wouldn't care about the past mistakes of his friends, but he absolutely couldn't tolerate someone he only had a slight liking for causing a catastrophe involving countless innocent people before his eyes.
Under this circumstance, the reason why he didn't directly attack but chose to assess the other party... was probably the result of the combination of the truth of the original work + goodwill bonus!
Although it was still just a guess, Lin Ruo had a feeling that his guess was already very close to the truth.
Tsk, suddenly I feel that the reason why he fought with Medici back then was indeed because of the war...
Although he had some guesses, Lin Ruo sorted out his thoughts and asked, "Mr. Azik, did I attack you in your memory?"
"No, although many memories are still missing, I am still sure that you did not attack me... Although I don't know the reason, it seems that I passed your assessment." Azik shook his head.
That's good... Lin Ruo breathed a sigh of relief. Although he had expected this result, when he actually got the answer, Lin Ruo's heart, which had just been hanging, was still relieved.
He was really afraid that a friend would turn into an enemy.
And after feeling relieved, looking at Azik in front of him, Lin Ruo suddenly felt a kind of unspeakable awkwardness.
"Cough..." This made Lin Ruo cough softly after a few seconds of silence, and said, "Let the past be the past, Mr. Azik, what do you think?"
The room suddenly became quiet again. Azik was silent, which made Lin Ruo's heart skip a beat, and then he heard Azik's usual low and gentle voice:
"Yes, let them pass..."
He smiled, his smile gentle, and said, "Actually, I don't have much real feeling for that memory... Both the me in that memory and you actually make me feel strange..."
"The one I am more familiar with is the current you."
This was undoubtedly a statement.
Lin Ruo breathed a sigh of relief again, but his thoughts were a little divergent because of Azik's words.
He could actually understand what Azik said about not having a real feeling for the memory... Because so far, although he has also recovered some memories, and pieced together a corner of his former self through Mr. Pallace, Roselle's diary, and other channels, if you were to say how much real feeling Lin Ruo has for this, he actually doesn't.
It's like he clearly already realized that he and Medici are close friends, and even personally experienced the sadness and anger caused by Medici's death and Medici's embarrassed situation, and would naturally bicker with each other when talking to each other, and even be sure that Medici would not hurt him... But Lin Ruo still doesn't have much real feeling for the fact that Medici is a close friend.
Otherwise, he wouldn't have stopped looking for Medici after the last time they met.
Lin Ruo is actually very contradictory now. On the one hand, he wants to find his memory and solve the mysteries surrounding him. On the other hand, Lin Ruo is actually a little afraid of finding his memory.
The memories he still has now are only the twenty-odd years before time-traveling, the eight years in Bungou Stray Dogs, and the two months after waking up next to Klein, but he can clearly see that the lost or sealed memories are a full few thousand years.
Just like Azik almost lost himself and became the Death Consul of the past after recovering his memory in the original work, Lin Ruo will also think about what he will become if he recovers the memories he lost for thousands of years!
Of course he is still him, but is he really still him?
Lin Ruo doesn't know.
This contradictory mood is actually reflected in his actions to find his memory, both active and salted fish, contradictory to death.
Alas... Lin Ruo sighed in his heart, looked at the person in front of him who, in a sense, could be said to be in the same boat as him, and couldn't help but ask:
"Mr. Azik, have you ever been afraid of becoming another person?"
"Your current life is only a short ten years, or even less, but the memories you have lost are hundreds of years at a minimum... What if they turn you into another person?"
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