Haruka felt like testing something.
Haruka: "Yume, did you ever give me a forehead band?"
Something flickered in her eyes at the moment...
She gazed at Haruka's forehead, noting the scar but observing that there was no bandage.
Yume: "Idiot, did you lose it? I can't believe you are that careless."
Saying that, she starts to laugh...
Haruka's eyes narrowed, a sense of unease coiling within him. This universe felt foreign, and Yume, standing before him, seemed a specter of familiarity that was oddly misplaced. They had never shared such closeness; an unspoken distance lay between them.
Something was amiss, an unsettling tug on his consciousness. The bandage on his forehead was a strange weight, a reminder of a history he hadn't lived. With each moment, he felt increasingly disconnected, as if caught in a reality that was both fractured and distant. In that strange existence, he realized he was no longer whole.
Haruka: "Oh... didn't you give that to me around... like... the day when the bullies yelled at me, saying that I made their parents ashamed of them?"
Yume: "Of course, yeah, dummy! Oh, wait, now you have amnesia too? I can't— That's literally embarrassing."
Yume kept laughing, but her laughing stopped when she saw a serious expression on Haruka's face.
Yume: "Oi... Haruka... c'mon, it was just jokes... can't take a little bit of teasing from you, love, huh?"
That did make Haruka feel something inside of him. She remembers that Haruka confessed to her, which the Alexo-Yume or βYume shouldn't have remembered.
Haruka: "Yume... I don't know what you are talking about..."
He gazed downward, lost in the void of his own thoughts. What was he even saying? Was Yume truly unaware of her own fate, having slipped away from one universe into the embrace of another? Did such power wane to mere flickers in other souls, as if it were a candle that could barely hold its flame? Or was it simply the way of the world—each soul, one day, forsaking its own shelter, trading the familiar warmth for the cold uncertainties of a new existence? A cruel dance, perhaps, where everyone is destined to wander, leaving behind the safety of their old lives in search of something that may never be found.
Yume: "Hell, you mean you don't know... I get this weird feeling... anyways... what were we talking about?"
Haruka: "Ferixo stones? Oh no wait, it's about my forehead band."
Yume: "What stones?"
Haruka was confused.
Haruka: "Ferixo?"
Yume: "What Ferixo?"
Haruka couldn't process what was going on right now... He thought Yume might be joking, but her face literally showed that she was not.
And out of the blue, Yume asked a question that Haruka was not prepared for.
Yume: "We... died... didn't we?"
Haruka couldn't process what she just asked.
Haruka: "What are you talking about?"
Yume: "We never had the Ferixo and Alastor stones before, but now we do—a significant change. When I woke up from a nightmare, I found myself here. The nightmare felt too real to be just a dream. We were hit by a truck, and when I opened my eyes, I felt a strange ache in my chest. I saw you crying."
Yume: "It could be a dream, but I saw myself in a dream the next day after I woke up here... I was talking with her... she asked me who I was....Something's off..."
Haruka: "Definitely is..."
Haruka was gripped by a gnawing fear that twisted in his chest. If Yume took control, what would happen to Alexo-Yume? Would she vanish, lost in the depths of another's will? Thoughts swirled chaotically, each more tragic than the last, enveloping him in a suffocating sense of helplessness. The divide between existence and oblivion felt perilously thin, and he wondered just how easily one could slip into the abyss.
And even if she was the Yume he knew all along, how was she controlling this body? Shouldn't Haruka be the only one to do that?
Yume kept staring into Haruka's eyes... it was clear that... she is now conscious of the fact that they both died.
Yume: "No lies... we promised... I know you are hiding something..."
Haruka: "Yes, what you know is true, but we must stay quiet about it. Others don't know; if your soul is here, I bet other souls are here too."
Yume: "Wha— What are you saying... Stay quiet? Ok, I get it, but what will go wrong? Okay, I get it too, but what do you mean by... others' souls?"
Haruka: "You see... Using Erythal Crimson I controlled my dead body and.....
(He kept explaining the whole thing he did when he was controlling his dead body using Erythal Crimson.)
Yume: "So... I don't know if there's another chance or not, but... let's live this chance properly..." She said with a grin, still filled with positive energy.
Haruka: "How are you still... so okay with it... How are you dealing with the fact that you died and just got transmigrated?"
Yume: "Everything happens for a reason, I guess? You can't—"
Before Yume could complete her sentence, Haruka started to speak.
Haruka: "But I was scared... I was overthinking... I thought your soul was lost, only I succeeded in transmigrating... I thought you were gone, so I will have to save 'this' Yume..."
Yume: "You moved on that easily after I died?" She teased lightly.
Haruka: "Move on? It is literally YOU but, in another reality, ... It's still you."
Yume: "Nah uh... No excuses, this is "Another" me... not really me, you know..."
Haruka: "But this is 'other' Haruka, and you would've thought that our death was a dream and you belong in this place and keep loving 'this' Haruka instead of me if I had never grown conscious of the fact that we transmigrated."
Yume: "Wait— How's that— That's not fair! Shut up!"
Haruka: "Now you get me."
Yume: "Sure, Mr. Smartass."