A doctor dressed in a white coat with a nurse beside him asked me about my condition.
I answered honestly, telling him how I felt. He nodded as he checked my pulse, listening carefully to the rhythm, before asking more questions—whether I felt pain, if I was dizzy, how I slept. I gave him positive answers to almost everything. My body still felt weak, but compared to when I first woke up, I was doing better.
It has been four days now since my awakening. Four days of trying to piece together the fragments of memory, and of adjusting to the strange fact that I had been in a coma for two weeks.
No one told me directly. But I wasn't stupid. I could tell from the way they avoided my eyes, the way their words came out cryptic, wrapped in careful tones.
I also confirmed that fact with Elara, of course.
Now—who was Elara? Well, she was the mechanical being that hovered around me, though strangely, no one else seemed able to see or sense her.
I had asked her why that was the case, and she explained in that calm, melodic voice of hers that she lived in a plane called the Ark Plane. From outside, it could be described as a virtual plane woven into this one, a kind of overlapping layer of reality.
Basically, she existed in the virtual dimension of this dimension, and because of that, others couldn't perceive her. She was here and not here at the same time. Only Ark Humans, she told me, could truly see her.
Yeah—Ark Human. That's what she called me now. According to her, I wasn't just a normal boy anymore. I had become something different, something more.
My base stats—her words, not mine—were already at the peak of human capability. Agility, stamina, strength, metabolism, lung capacity, even how my body processed energy… all of it was far beyond what an ordinary human child should possess.
She explained that the reason I had been unconscious for two weeks was because of the strain. The digestion and merging of Mark's memories had put enormous pressure on my fragile child's mind. On top of that, the system had been reshaping my body.
Changing the body of a child, Elara said, required far more work than adjusting that of an adult, since children grow and change so rapidly. That was why it had taken so long.
I accepted it. Honestly, it wasn't hard to, because I could already feel the difference. Mentally, I wasn't just the same boy I had been before.
The grief for my father was still inside me, but it had shifted, dulled into an ache rather than the all-consuming storm it had been. It was strange, almost wrong, that I could feel both the pain and the calm at once. But it also felt… good. As if something in me had made space for it.
When the doctor asked about my condition, I answered him steadily. My voice didn't crack. I even managed to smile faintly as he checked my pulse and scribbled something on his clipboard.
And then, just as he was about to speak again, the door to the room swung open.
A woman stepped inside.
I looked at the woman, and a smile bloomed across my face as soon as I saw her. She wore a neat, proper set of office clothes—a true salarywoman's attire—as she stepped into the room, carrying herself with the calm steadiness that always seemed to surround her. She gave me a smile in return before turning to the doctor.
"Is he ready to go?" she asked gently.
The doctor glanced at his clipboard, then passed it over to the nurse with a nod. "Yes, he's ready to go," he said with a smile. Turning to me, he added warmly, "Take care, and don't forget to take your medicine on time."
I straightened a little and gave him a polite bow. "Thank you, doctor, for taking care of me."
He returned the bow. "You are welcome." Then, stepping back, he also bowed politely to the woman. She returned the gesture with the same grace.
"I'll give you both some free time now," the doctor said. "Please don't forget to collect the medications from the counter."
The woman nodded in understanding. With that, the doctor handed the prescription to the nurse, who moved ahead to the chemist to arrange the medicines. The two of them left, the soft click of the door closing behind them leaving the room quieter than it had been in days.
Now alone, the woman turned her gaze to me. Her smile was soft, almost motherly, the kind of smile that always seemed to steady me no matter what storm was inside my chest. "How are you feeling, Ryoushi?"
"I can't wait to go out now," I answered, the eagerness slipping through my voice without me meaning it.
She laughed lightly at that, the sound warm and comforting. "Alright then, let's get ready."
With that, she moved to gather my things. There wasn't much—just a couple of blankets she had brought from home to make the hospital bed more comfortable, folded neatly in the corner.
This woman… she wasn't my family, not in the truest sense. But she had stepped into that role regardless, carrying the responsibility my father had left behind.
I asked, "How's Heena?"
Aunt Haruka's lips curved into a smile as she replied, "She's fine. She's at her friend's house right now."
I nodded at that. It made sense—school hadn't started yet, and we were still in the middle of the long holiday break.
After my father's accident, Aunt Haruka had decided it would be best for us to move into her house. At the time, I didn't really understand why, but now I could see her reasoning clearly. It wasn't just about me—it was about Heena too.
Living somewhere else was her way of giving us something stable to hold on to, at a time when the memory of Father's death was still raw in our young minds.
Aunt Haruka had never been my father's romantic partner. She was something different. She was someone my father trusted deeply—trusted enough to ask her to step into a role far greater than that of a mere friend or colleague.
Back then, before Mark's memories merged with mine, I couldn't grasp what that meant. But now… I understood. My father had wanted her to fill the void my mother left behind, the gap of a mother's presence in my life.
And Haruka… she accepted. Not for herself, but for Heena. She was a widow, and Heena needed more than just her mother to grow up with.
She needed someone else she could look up to, someone to balance out the loneliness in her heart. My father must have seen that too—that their two broken families might be able to patch something together for the children.
Whether it worked or not… well, that was something only us children truly knew.
Now, Haruka was my legal guardian. Not my mother, not by name, not by adoption—at my age, it was already too late for that.
And yet, she refused to leave me adrift. Blood relation or not, she had known me for years. She had shared meals with us, been inside our home, and she understood the reality of my life.
My father had been an orphan; I had no relatives on his side, and he never once spoke about my mother's family. In truth, there was no one else left for me.
So she stepped forward. She made the choice to be here, to shoulder me along with her own daughter.
And for that, I was grateful. No matter the system, no matter Mark's memories that swirled in me now—in the end, I was still just a child. A child with the heart of one, even if my mind sometimes reached further.