After finishing the mission report and submitting it, Silas turned his gaze toward Vill-V, who was lying on his bed, eyes vacant.
He glanced at the time and spoke:
"Even if your resistance to the anesthetic spray is that low, you should be able to move by now, right, Vill-V?"
Vill-V rolled over, turning her back to him. She muttered under her breath:
"As expected, I really am a useless good-for-nothing. I don't have a shred of femininity. You'll definitely abandon me now..."
Silas: "..."
Why say something like abandon? It made him sound like some heartless scumbag... Well, if he judged it rationally, maybe he really was sprinting headlong down the road to becoming one.
But he had never once considered developing that kind of relationship with anyone. How did that make him a scumbag? And where did this talk of abandonment even come from?
"Vill-V, if you don't turn back around, then everything you've installed on me and in this room..."
Vill-V immediately sat up, facing him with an aggrieved look.
"I was just throwing a little tantrum... Who told you to never really care about me..."
Silas tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"You call that a little tantrum? If you threw a big one, would you try tearing down the entire Fire Moth base?"
Vill-V poked her fingers together.
"Well... it's not impossible..."
"Hm?"
"We... were wrong..."
Silas squinted at her. This was the Original Vill-V. Likely, the other personalities had pushed her out front—she was usually more honest and obedient, easier to forgive.
"Alright, fine. Since in the end nothing actually happened, just don't let there be a next time." Silas sighed helplessly. What else could he do? She was already admitting fault so sincerely. Of course he could only forgive her.
After all, Vill-V had always helped him a lot. Thinking about it that way, maybe the one in the wrong was actually himself.
But what Vill-V was thinking was completely different. During that time when she had been paralyzed and unable to move, Silas hadn't so much as glanced at her—he had chosen to calmly finish writing the mission report instead.
A girl, lying there completely defenseless before him, and he didn't even look?
Vill-V felt her pride deeply wounded.
Was it really because she wasn't pretty enough to catch his attention?
And she couldn't shake the feeling that from now on, Silas would most likely ignore her completely. That she would be left behind, tinkering away in the Helix Workshop all alone...
In the end, even if it had been Pure Evil who instigated it, all of them had agreed. No matter how she looked at it, there was no escaping responsibility.
"If I had known it would end like this, I might as well have gone through with it back then..." Vill-V muttered softly.
Silas: "..."
Good grief. So you haven't reflected at all, have you?
He let out a sigh, looked at her, and said:
"Listen, Vill-V. I don't plan to pursue this matter any further. I just want to know—why did you suddenly want to do that? And... Pure Evil I can understand, but what about the others? I asked Mobius the same question: just how did you all end up liking me?"
Pure Evil chose this moment to surface, her voice brimming with triumph:
"See? I knew Silas would forgive me. After all, he understands my feelings best..."
Silas cut her off coldly.
"You're the ringleader. Your responsibility is the greatest. I'm only letting it go because the other personalities tried to stop you."
"How we came to like you..." Vill-V tilted her head, hesitating, her voice tinged with embarrassment.
"If we told you, would you... care about us more from now on?"
Silas pressed a hand to his forehead.
"I just want to understand. In the last era, I never gave these things a thought."
"Because in your eyes," Vill-V said softly, head lowered, "we were only people you saved incidentally on your way to rescuing Elysia. We overheard your conversation with her. We know you've liked her from the very beginning. We know you've always wanted to save her from that predetermined fate. And we know, from the very start, that your heart never had a place for us..."
During that vacation, Vill-V had overheard Elysia's confession to Silas in its entirety.
If it had only been that, she wouldn't have gone so far. But afterward, she watched as Elysia and Silas grew closer and closer.
That alone she might have endured—after all, Silas had still brought her gifts, and even indulged her tinkering around his room.
But when Mobius boldly made her move, that was when Vill-V truly snapped.
She wanted to hold him too.
She wanted to be cared for.
And yet, apart from him tolerating a few of her little tricks, she felt he never really cared about her.
Of all their daily interactions, hers with him were by far the least.
And then there was Lilith—sooner or later she would join the Fire Moth. Vill-V felt she had no chance of competing with her. After all, Lilith carried the "previous life" buff. In that former life...
The different personalities had fallen for Silas at different times. Pure Evil had indeed been the first, but back then, the others had only harbored deep suspicion toward him. After all, Pure Evil embodied all of Vill-V's pride, a side utterly ill-suited for this era.
Anyone who dared to draw out Pure Evil naturally became someone the others watched warily.
As for the Original Vill-V herself—she was the last to fall for him.
So late, in fact, that it wasn't until the final battle with the Finality. When the [Anti-Finality] was shattered and all seven personalities fell silent, she had been at her lowest, most desperate point.
Without her weaponry, Vill-V was practically powerless. Just as the Finality's strike was about to end her life, it was the Fallen Angel who stepped in, intercepting the blow and pulling her back from the edge—back from being hurled off the moon.
Had he not, her own later calculations told her she would have drifted away as cosmic debris, a corpse wandering the void.
But when Silas brought her back, he carried her in a princess embrace. In that instant, the Fallen Angel's face had perfectly fit every girl's fantasy of a white knight.
That was why the Original Vill-V, as the primary self, had always wavered when it came to confronting her feelings for him.
The Conductor was in a similar situation—she had fallen for him a little earlier, during the Twelfth Herrscher incident. But the hesitation of both selves was precisely why [Vill-V] as a whole had always chosen to observe from the sidelines rather than step forward.
"Since you already know," Silas said, looking at her steadily, "then there's nothing more to hide. It's true—I fought to save Elysia. But it wasn't only for her. If that were the case, then after she sacrificed herself, there would've been no reason for me to fight the Finality. No reason for me to save you, either."
Vill-V listened in silence.
"My original intent was to save all thirteen of you." Silas's tone was calm, steady.
"I told you before—in the future I foresaw, only a handful of the Thirteen survived into later generations. Most of you—yourself included—died on the moon, or chose annihilation. But you should have, and deserved to have, far better futures.
I remember every trick the Magician performed. Every dish the Flavorful cooked. I remember everything about you. To me, you all truly exist. And that is why I wanted to save you from the bottom of my heart."
He paused, then admitted:
"But I must also confess—I always placed saving Elysia first."
"That much is obvious." Vill-V narrowed her eyes at him.
"But... hearing it from your own mouth like this, rather than eavesdropping through instruments, somehow makes it easier to believe. Makes me feel that even if I were deceived, it wouldn't matter..."
"This is no lie," Silas replied.
Vill-V sighed.
"So that's how it is... That's how you end up drawing all of us in. Since you refuse to abandon anyone, then shouldn't you also show me a little more care?"
Silas: "..."
What was happening today? First Mobius, and now Vill-V?
Vill-V suddenly stood up, spreading her arms.
"Then give me a hug, too."
Silas thought for a moment. At this point, what was there left to argue about? Would it even change anything?
Forget it.
He stood as well. Vill-V immediately stepped forward, wrapped her arms around him—then rose on tiptoe and pressed her lips against his.
Silas: "???"
Weren't we just talking about a hug?
Vill-V stepped back with a mischievous grin.
"After all, I am a con artist, aren't I~?"
Then her expression shifted again.
"Silas, I want one too!"
Silas took a step back, his face cold.
"That's enough."
"No way! We're all Vill-V. Just because she's the Original doesn't mean you get to play favorites!"
Silas: "..."
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