[Purification Process, Day 21 - From Epsilon's Perspective]
One hundred forty-seven. The number itself carried weight. When I started meditating, I could feel something clawing its way up from the depths of my soul to the surface. This was a threshold and I was preparing to leap.
As always, I merged into the void. But this time, at the bottom of that peaceful ocean, there was a shipwreck I'd been ignoring for years. And the doors of that wreck creaked open.
The memory didn't flood into my mind like a deluge, but seeped in like a single poisonous drop. That cold, sterile smell of the middle school corridor... That disgusting, sadistic grin on that teacher's face... And that moment. That moment when the whole world united against me, even though I knew I was right. The moment when the purest, most just part of me was crushed and killed that day.
This wasn't filth torn from my soul like in previous purifications. This was the exposure of rot at the foundation of my soul. And the worst part... was that Null saw it too.
She saw that small, helpless, wronged girl I hid behind the joking, cheeky, confident Epsilon. She saw the most naked form of my weakness, my shame. The "yamgium" inside me fed on this shame and rebelled, and I lost control.
As I drowned in darkness, a voice and a touch pulled me back. Null's voice and touch. What pulled me from that memory's prison was her illogical, instinctive intervention.
When the session ended, the reason for my exhaustion wasn't just the pain of purification. It was that crushing vulnerability from exposing the darkest secret of my soul. The smell on me was a physical reflection of my state of mind at that moment: Rotten and poisonous.
When I came out of the purification room, I found her lost in thought. As always, I tried to deflect the situation with a joke, "Were you thinking about me, my life?" This was my armor. The mask I used to hide my shame.
But she said, "Yes."
This single word created a crack in my armor. Instead of the sarcasm or anger I expected, I encountered pure honesty. At that moment, I realized the dynamic between us had changed forever.
In the continuation of our conversation, I noticed the change in her tone, in her pauses. When she asked me "What happened to that girl?" this was no longer just a data-gathering query. There was curiosity, perhaps even... concern.
The reason I didn't want to tell her about Delta wasn't jealousy, as I joked. This was part of that memory, and I couldn't lift the scab of that wound while being this exposed.
Finally, when I confessed my fear, when I asked "Will I continue to experience such bad things?" my voice trembled like a child's. And instead of answering, she just waited. That silence told me more than words could. That silence said, "I'm not judging you."
When I hugged her from behind, this was more than a thank you. This was a refuge. For the first time in years, despite showing someone my weakness, I saw that person still standing there.
When she said "I'll be here to save you," this wasn't an android's promise. This was a companion's oath.
The childish joy I felt when I pulled back wasn't just momentary relief. This was a discovery. Null was changing, yes. But the one who was really changing was me. For the first time in years, I was allowing someone to be beside me. For the first time, I was permitting light to seep in through one of the cracks in that armor.
While she searched her systems for the definition of the verb "to love," I had found something much more fundamental: Trust.