Chapter 18: "Why were you disappointed?"

329 feels terror, because he believes her.

Yasha isn’t lying. She has the strength and capacity to express her sincerity. She throws a scorching heart straight at him, scalding this frozen corpse to the point of pain. 329 can’t help but shudder, yet he can’t bear to set down the source of heat. He’d lost the moment Yasha said the words. His inner doubts have found answers and excuses. Every urge coaxes him: believe her, believe her, don’t mind the details.

The frightening thing is, he wants to believe her.

329 doesn’t know if it’s love. He has no precedent to refer to, no one to ask. Does she love him? Maybe it’s only a twisted determination and unwillingness to let go, one that changed her life and seared its way into her soul. But if this determination persists, it’s not much different from an eternal vow. Does he love her? Maybe he’s just grasping at straws, taking dependence for love, lost in his own delusion. But the course of his life is already set; Yasha won’t let him go, and he can’t find the wish to leave. In that case, dependence behaves no differently from love.

There’s just one question left, one that’s plagued him the entire time, one that he still can’t answer.

It wanders his throat like a ghost. If he spits it out, it might bring doom; if he swallows it down, it will haunt him for a hundred years. Yasha has never lied to me, 329 says to himself. Another thought bubbles up: she’s only hidden things. She only needs to hide things. 329 sighs deeply, squeezes his eyes shut, and opens his mouth.

He asks, “When you found out I loved you, why were you disappointed?”

Yasha blinks, her lips parting slightly, as if astonished by this question. Unfortunately, 329 knows her too well. He sees the touch of apprehension under the surprise. She’s not astonished by this question; she’s astonished he still cares about this question. She prevaricates for a moment, then says awkwardly, “I wasn’t disappointed.”

329 watches her.

“I really wasn’t disappointed!” Yasha insists. “I just didn’t expect it…your first impression of me could hardly be called ideal, and my treatment of you has been lacking in many ways. I genuinely didn’t think you’d fall in love with me.”

It’s the truth. At least, it’s part of the truth. It’s also one of 329’s points of uncertainty. Yasha’s obsession with him has driven her half her life. Why, then, didn’t she set up a better first meeting for them? She could’ve descended from the heavens like a savior and played the amnesiac 329 like a fiddle. “Would you mind engaging in sexual relations with me?” is hardly the ideal meet cute.

“I didn’t plan on meeting you for the first time under those circumstances,” she says, embarrassed, her cheeks growing pink. “But I couldn’t resist. You were so close to me and yet so far. How could I resist? It, it wasn’t a good beginning. I want a new beginning. I want to give you the best beginning possible.”

329 suddenly shivers, a chill crawling up his neck.

Yasha says, “I wanted to give us a new first meeting. To delete both your sufferings as an Exile from before, and my presumptuous intrusion.”

“If your body doesn’t change, and you don’t remember anything, and you delete the record from the simulation, and no one else knows, is that any different from it never happening at all?”

329 understands now.

Yasha’s strange expression in that moment all makes sense now. She was surprised, that he went and fell in love with her on his own initiative. Vexed that this wasn’t going to plan. Debating whether she should still proceed with the plan and delete his memories—she didn’t want to sacrifice this “save file” where he’d already fallen in love with her. What a pity. What a waste. Even if none of it was remotely optimal.

Without thinking, 329 shoves Yasha off him. He scrambles backwards, not stopping even when he hits the headboard, as if there still might be some space behind him where he can hide. His back presses against the wall, his stomach ice-cold. Bottomless terror clamps down on his throat; he wants to scream, but no sound comes out.

He’d thought that he had nothing, that the worst thing that could happen to him was death, but an ignorant commoner couldn’t hope to guess at the games played by the powerful. They erased Eden, but Yasha can also erase 329—she would have done it already, if she hadn’t happened to discover his inconvenient love. In another world, where happenstance didn’t happen, what would it be like now? Would 329 still exist? When Yasha won, when she lovingly erased the suffering of these years, 329 would no longer exist, while Eden remained beyond recovery…

What would be left inside this broken body?

Who would he be?

No no no no no, don’t, don’t do it, he says, shaking his head madly. Don’t do this to me, you can kill me, you can leave me, but don’t touch my brain again, he thinks—and then he realizes, even if Yasha touches his brain, he’ll never know. When Yasha tries to reach for him, he slaps away her hand, screaming hysterically.

The queen-to-be’s eyes widen, her green gaze full of surprise and hurt, as if not understanding why her pet is suddenly throwing a tantrum. She spreads her hands coaxingly, kneeling on the bed, offering explanations and comfort.

She says, “I won’t hurt you! It won’t hurt at all, it’s just the awful memories from these two years…”

She says, “I won’t delete anything important, just the things that hurt you…”

She says, “I’m not going to do it, that was just the original plan, it’s already been scrapped, if you don’t want it I won’t do it…”

She understands nothing.

“What happens the next time you want to do this?” 329 asks. Yasha opens her mouth to speak, but 329 already anticipated her meaningless promises. He doesn’t want to hear them.

“What happens the next time you decide your performance falls short of perfection? The next time you think I’m unsatisfied and want to do better?” he says harshly. “Are you going to reload and try again?”

In the midst of fear blazes rage. Blue eyes meet green eyes, no longer shrinking back, forceful and intimidating. 329 demands, Eden demands, “What am I to you in the end? A game? How am I different from your simulations? Are you going to save data for each dialogue option you choose? Once you’re done saving, will you have any reason to keep me around?”

“It’s not like that!” Yasha says, stunned. “You’re irreplaceable…”

“I’m irreplaceable.” He laughs. “Do you see me as a human being? Or, is it that human beings in your eyes can be rewritten according to your whims? You’re no different from your father.”

Something surges in his heart, like burnt ash and kindling relighting, like the last flash of a dying firefly. Anger can make his blood roar, can make the dead return to life. He’ll shrink back, he’ll compromise, but when he has nowhere left to retreat, he’ll stand and face death head-on. Yasha is struck dumb by his interrogation. Eden feels a scorching, painful sense of release, like a moth smothering a candle flame with its own body.

“It’s not like that…” Yasha insists weakly.

“It is,” Eden says coldly. “You hate him for touching your property, but you never truly opposed him. Your greatest pain was only wanting what you couldn’t have. You don’t know…you don’t know how much mere mortals like us fear being helpless.”

Yasha sees Eden’s tears.

She sees hot tears and courage, she sees coldness and rage, she sees how terror and despair erupt as hot lava. Suddenly, Yasha realizes that the Commander’s call to arms wasn’t born of some romantic heroic idealism, and that those who responded weren’t buoyed by some false sense of their capabilities. They were courageous because they were afraid. They were simply people who’d found themselves with their backs to a wall and refused to die in silence.

“No, I know!” Yasha insists. “I know! I just, I just…”

She knows what it feels like to be helpless. She knows how terrifying it is to be cherished. It was those realizations that woke her from her sweet dreams, and for them, she climbed to the highest peak, believing that as long as she was at the helm, she wouldn’t need to fear being betrayed or wronged. But she’d never wondered how dear, cherished Eden, Eden who was fully aware of what it meant to be cherished, was supposed to not be afraid.

She looks like she’s been slapped, wide-eyed and tongue-tied, her eyes filled with tears too. Eden doesn’t know if the tears are from urgency or regretful realization—can he hope for the latter? Faced with those eyes, the anger can’t endure, leaving only a thick fog of exhaustion and helplessness. Just as he thought the first time they’d met, the young alpha holds no ill-will. She strides forth with head high, racing toward the flower on the mountain’s peak, unable to comprehend the anguish of the grass trampled underneath her feet.

How do you make a god understand the suffering of ordinary mortals.

“Will I still remember, tomorrow?” Eden says wearily. “Will I remember what I asked you?”

“Yes!” Yasha says urgently. “I won’t touch your memories, I swear…”

Eden says, “I don’t believe you.”