"This won't happen again, Queen."
"Yes. Next time, I will make you love me, brother."
(Ending X-02 Open 05/01 16:30)
Nevertheless, We Cannot Reconcile Our Differences
School let out for the day.
The fun part of the incomplete Golden Week – that is, the long weekend – started tomorrow, so most of the students were rushing joyfully out of the school.
Shiroyama Kyousuke, however, had a grim look on his face.
A sun shower poured from the beautiful evening sky. Glittering orange light was reflected throughout the scene outside the window, but the one boy remaining in the classroom was facing a certain individual.
It was the White Queen.
The summoner wore a school uniform and the monster was displayed on the Rainy Screen.
They faced each other through the red window, one on the classroom floor and the other in midair outside.
She giggled as she spoke using the directional speakers.
The change to the Rainy Girl had entirely erased the deathless world incident that had followed from the previous Telomere's End's suicide, but the White Queen seemed to retain her memories of it.
Was that due to being an otherworldly Material or was it something only the White Queen could do?
Kyousuke sighed.
"…Why are you here?"
"No ending could have been better. I can't think of anything that was lost here. At the very least, I avoided falling for your trick and abandoning that girl."
The floating White Queen truly seemed to be enjoying herself.
"…"
"What do you want to know?"
The White Queen smiled as she leaned in closer.
She bent over to peer up at the boy through the window.
"Which is different from your close-minded acceptance of only what's 'pure'."
He knew what she was trying to say, so he looked her in the eye and spoke.
"That is your delusion."
She giggled and continued in a sweet voice.
"…"
The White Queen displayed on the Rainy Screen held her slender hand out toward Kyousuke.
She seemed to be asking him for a handshake.
"I see…"
Kyousuke looked down at his palm.
But he did not take the White Queen's hand. He would never reach for the hand of that girl who floated outside the window.
After all…
"Is that how you kindly tempted Yasuzumi Hayato and Benikomichi Fuuki?"
Silence followed.
His words seemed to freeze the entire area.
The White Queen continued smiling.
And then…
Her laugh was full of scorn.
And of satisfaction.
"Aren't you just imagining that?"
"…"
"You failed. Can you really laugh after that?"
At that point, the White Queen asked a question instead.
It was not a warning filled with sharp thorns.
She sounded like she was rolling around the most enjoyable experience on her tongue.
"And?"
"That's easy."
Kyousuke did not hesitate to answer.
"I would do whatever it took to take responsibility for every last thing my decision had changed."
If the White Queen was a monster, then so was the boy who faced her.
At the very least, he showed some hints of that.
After all…
Kyousuke narrowed his eyes.
The boy's techniques and the Queen's power.
If they worked together, who could say how much they could accomplish?
But he did not want to see where that led.
"We will never understand each other."
"I can't join you."
The White Queen's outline blurred.
The deathless world plan had never even been started in this altered world, so the White Queen's body would never have been summoned and sealed inside the abandoned civilian space station.
Then what was this here?
He had no way of proving it, but Kyousuke suspected she was using brute force to reject the changes he had made.
But even that must have reached its limit.
She would vanish soon. She would return to the other world. And she would eventually reappear somewhere in this world.
Shiroyama Kyousuke did not feel sentimental about the White Queen vanishing.
He instead threw his words at her.
"This won't happen again, Queen."
And thus, the two of them parted ways.
Even after saving the world and even after rescuing a girl from unavoidable tragedy, they would still never work together.
Facts The White Queen used brute force to hold back the incident's changes and thus maintained her memories. This suggests that even rearranging causality would fail to affect her being, anything she caused directly, or anyone she killed.Shiroyama Kyousuke rejected the suggestion (or temptation) to work together for peace.Shiroyama Kyousuke will not hesitate to do whatever it takes to recover from his own mistakes. Even if that means violating the greatest of taboos.Despite Shiroyama Kyousuke's great skill and determination, the White Queen continues to smile. That is just how overwhelmingly powerful she is.Shiroyama Kyousuke and the White Queen turned their backs on each other. They will clash again soon.