Chapter 295
"Ah, this is real life! This is true living!"
"My legs are moving, but the universe is upside down! HAHAHA!"
"Everything makes sense now—the meaning of all meanings!"
"We are great discoverers! Discoverers of laughter! HAHAHAHA!"
Time, measured in rotations, screams, and laughter, finally came to an end.
With the final hiss of hydraulics and the fading rumble of machinery, the flying saucer ride stopped.
The safety gates opened, and one by one the passengers disembarked on unsteady legs.
Among them, Ilux and Erietta tried to return to solid ground with dignity that had already cracked.
Their first steps wobbled.
The world around them was still spinning in lingering perception, turning a straight path into a complicated navigational challenge.
They held onto each other's shoulders or briefly touched arms to steady themselves, and their attempt to look "normal" only revealed how deeply the ride had affected them.
Yet behind the dizziness and staggering steps, another kind of light shone brightly on their faces.
Every twenty seconds or so, almost like a regular rhythm, laughter would burst from one or both of them at the same time.
It was no longer nervous or fearful laughter, but laughter filled with unsteady enlightenment.
Between those bursts of laughter, phrases that sounded philosophical were tossed out, spoken in a goofy, childlike tone.
They cheerfully declared that the dizziness and staggering were "the meaning of life within life," or "the meaning of walking within the word walking."
Those statements, which might have sounded absurd to ordinary listeners, were for them truths freshly discovered at the peak of tension and release.
Each time they said them, they would look at one another, and their laughter would explode again, louder and more honest, like two children who had just discovered the concept of laughter for the first time and could not stop enjoying it.
'Everything moves, yet she remains still.'
Dozens of meters behind them, right where the crowd began to thin and the shadows of large trees offered cover, the air shimmered faintly before solidifying.
Two silhouettes appeared perfectly, without sound or surprise, as if they had always been standing there, merely concealed by a layer of illusion that had just been lifted.
A pale, long–white-haired girl stood faithfully beside a man.
Aldraya's clothing, designed from the beginning to obscure her presence, retained its quiet essence.
The loose, bone-white top, its fabric soft and seemingly smoother than her own skin, showed only minor changes.
The drooping impression at her shoulder had vanished briefly when the ride spun at high speed, pulled by centrifugal force so that her shoulder and chest were momentarily more exposed, but it had now fallen back obediently, restoring the loose lines meant to hide her form.
The long sleeves were slightly twisted at the wrists, not rumpled, but suggesting that the fabric had briefly lost its sense of direction before rediscovering its calm gravity along Aldraya's sides.
The straight skirt below her knees, the most static element of her appearance, actually carried the clearest story of the wild motion she had just endured.
Yet its reaction remained within elegant and silent bounds.
At the peak of the ride's speed, the skirt did not flare wildly or lift uncontrollably like those of other passengers.
It rose only slightly on one side, obediently following the current of rotation, trembling faintly like a leaf stirred by a gentle breeze.
It was proof that physical laws still applied to her, but with dampened intensity, as if the fabric itself were conscious enough not to create a disturbance.
And when everything ended, the skirt required no adjustment.
It fell back into its original position perfectly, straight and neat, as though the disturbance had been nothing more than a brief dream.
Her white, silk-like hair was the only part that truly surrendered to the ride's dynamics.
As it spun, her hair lifted and spread, forming a temporary pale aurora around her face and shoulders, clinging randomly to her back and arms.
Yet the chaos it created was not human chaos.
No strands tangled or knotted together.
The moment the ride stopped, her hair descended slowly, a few strands even lingering in the air a fraction of a second longer than they should have, casually defying gravity before settling softly.
And then, stillness.
What caught Theo's attention the most, as he quietly observed from the side, was the absence of any corrective gesture.
Aldraya did not tug at her skirt, did not straighten her slightly twisted sleeves, nor brush aside the hair the wind had just scattered.
She simply rose from her seat with the same calm, efficient motion and left the ride without making a single effort to fix her appearance.
The slightly "disturbed" clothing was left as it was, carrying subtle traces of the experience she had just passed through.
And it was precisely there that the sharpest contrast emerged.
Amid other passengers busy adjusting themselves and complaining of dizziness, Aldraya stood with slightly imperfect attire yet radiated an unshakable calm, as if declaring that physical disturbances were only temporary illusions, while her essence remained untouched and eternal.
"Are you all right, Aldraya? Not dizzy or nauseous? That ride usually makes normal people feel uncomfortable."
From a safe distance, behind a large tree that served as natural cover, Theo's eyes followed every movement of Ilux and Erietta.
The two teenagers were still laughing loudly, occasionally staggering from lingering dizziness, yet their faces shone with innocent joy.
They were the center of his observation, the mission targets that had to remain under constant watch.
Yet amid his ongoing analysis of their relational dynamics, another focus subtly shifted within Theo's mind.
His thoughts, usually singularly fixed on the targets, now split.
He glanced slightly toward Aldraya standing calmly beside him, a silhouette sharply contrasted with the cheer ahead.
A question arose, not as part of observational procedure, but from something more personal.
In silence, he asked Aldraya about her condition.
He wanted to know whether, after the extreme spins and swings of that "damn" ride, Aldraya's body or consciousness felt any impact.
Was there dizziness that unsteadied her steps, nausea twisting her stomach, or any other physical discomfort commonly experienced by humans afterward?
"My condition is fine. However, I question your audacity—holding my hand and assuring me that everything was all right, only for you to be the one screaming like a child who lost his toy."
Aldraya did not reply with a smile, nor with any change in expression that could be read as relief or discomfort.
Her face remained an undisturbed sheet of ice.
Yet the response delivered through telepathy shifted the focus away from Theo's physical concern into a more personal domain.
Aldraya replied not by addressing dizziness or nausea, but by expressing her own confusion.
That confusion was directed at Theo.
In her characteristic flat tone, carrying a subtle critical weight, she stated that she was far more puzzled by Theo's "audacity."
Theo's sudden, unexplained action—casually gripping her left hand amid the chaos—was something that required far more explanation than any post-ride physical sensation.
To her, that abrupt and intimate touch was an unexpected variable, more complex than any law of physics.
Only then did she answer Theo's original question, stating that everything with her was "fine."
To be continued…