Even after the challenge was completed, however, A did not immediately issue the end-of-day command.
His dialogue with Abram was not yet over...
"Carmen is right here. She is neither living nor dead! Do you have the heart to abandon her and walk toward an unknown future!?"
"Being imprisoned in this never-ending cycle is our inescapable atonement!"
"And you want to walk toward tomorrow, toward the future?! You want to escape your regret and your sins?!"
But A could no longer be broken by his words. Whether it was regret or sin, he had the conviction to bear it all. The trust placed in him by everyone in the facility would not let him fall.
"..."
His shattered facet—the part of him that wished for atonement through an endless loop, the part that craved the release of death, all merged into the personality of Abram—began to laugh.
"If that's how it is,"
"This is... the last door. The one that never appeared in those stories."
"I can't open it."
"This door... only opens for those without regret."
"Do you really think you can open this door?"
A cold sneer crossed his lips, but A could see a sliver of hope in his eyes.
A door, looking as if it were both an illusion and a tangible object, stood in the secret room where they were. A first gave the end-of-day order to the employees, then, under Abram's expectant yet envious gaze, he pushed the great door open.
"You did it. You did what I could not."
Ignoring the distracting noise from the fading Abram, A stepped through the doorway, walking forward into an endless light.
...
...
***
"Dammit, Ye Lan, I'm telling you, I used to be secretly jealous of you. I thought I deserved the title of 'star employee' too."
The employee Ye Lan had rescued sought him out after work, grabbing his hand excitedly. "That was Supervisor Geburah! Even a fake one is still the legendary 'Red Mist'! The fact that you took her down single-handedly is just... it's just so..."
"So what?"
Geburah's voice came from behind the employee, startling him so badly he nearly jumped out of his skin. Having had more than enough frights for one day, the employee beat a hasty retreat as soon as he saw Geburah. He had a counseling session with Hod to get to and wasn't about to put himself between Ye Lan and Geburah.
"He runs fast," Geburah remarked, tossing away the cigarette butt from the small slot on her box-like body. She turned to Ye Lan. "You really saved the day."
"It was nothing. It's not my first time dealing with you in that state, after all," Ye Lan said, finding a place to sit down and chat with her.
Geburah lit another cigarette. "Hah," she said with a self-deprecating laugh. "Back then, I was so consumed by rage that I lost all reason. I abandoned everyone I was supposed to protect to fight a useless battle against those Abnormalities."
A passing employee from the Disciplinary Team handed Ye Lan a sandwich stuffed with Thuringian sausage and yellow mustard. "Thanks for the support today. This one's on me."
Waving goodbye to the employee, Ye Lan said to Geburah, "But the you of today would never let rage destroy her reason again, right?"
"Yeah. It feels pretty good to have finally made peace with the past..."
Honestly, watching a box containing a brain chain-smoke was a bizarre sight, but Ye Lan could seamlessly picture her as her in-game portrait, so it wasn't *too* strange.
The two continued to chat near the Disciplinary Department for a while before an employee from the R&D Team ran up to them.
"Um, is now a good time to talk?" the employee asked, scratching his head awkwardly. He wore the black and gold honeycomb-patterned uniform of his department.
"R&D Team? What does that stooping hag Binah want you for?" Geburah flicked her ash, her mechanical eye looking at the employee with displeasure.
"I know you and Binah have your 'issues,' but he's here for me, right?"
Ye Lan reached out and ruffled the top of Geburah's boxy head like one would a child's hair. The action left both Geburah and the poor employee frozen on the spot.
"Hey, spit it out. What's up? Once she snaps out of it, we won't have time to talk," Ye Lan said, nudging the stunned employee. Geburah was already blinking; his stunt wouldn't keep the Sephirah stunned for long.
The employee seized the opportunity, explaining in the briefest possible terms, "Oh, right! The Department Head wants to know if you're free for a tea party later."
Ye Lan just had enough time to say he'd be there in half an hour before Geburah, who had pulled a Mimicry sword from thin air, chased him from the corridor all the way to the cafeteria.
***
Half an hour later, Ye Lan appeared as promised at Binah's tea table. The Sephirah of the R&D Team was quite surprised by his current state. After hearing from her employee what incredible stunt he had pulled on Geburah, Binah had expected him to be delivered in pieces, or as a human pretzel if she was in a good mood.
Yet here he was, every limb intact, with only a few bleeding scratches.
"Don't look at me like that. Geburah isn't some monster. A joke like that, she'll slash me a couple of times and cool off. Besides, I can dodge, can't I?"
"How curious. You, the 'star employee,' are strange from head to toe. If we weren't all prisoners in this jail, I would have already gathered a team to try and disassemble your brain."
Looking at the employee before her, who seemed utterly unfazed by the tombstones surrounding them, Binah's curiosity about him grew stronger. Her daily amusement, which had consisted of observing the "bucket" that was Carmen, now had a new addition: probing Ye Lan.
"Haha, that's not a very funny joke, Garion."
Perhaps out of retaliation, or perhaps because tomorrow was the final trial for the Architecture Team, Ye Lan completely dropped the pretense of not knowing things he shouldn't. Right to Binah's face, he called her by her name from before she died—Garion.
"How could you..."
"Let's save this secret as a celebratory gift for when this is all over. After all, secrets make a person more charming, don't they?"
With that, Ye Lan left a stunned Binah—her face twisted into a grotesque smile—and walked out of the R&D Department, returning to his own dormitory.
Day 48... End...
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