"Lucia? Wait — no! How could Lucia possibly be here? Who are you?! Why are you wearing my friend's face?!"
Geno had been puzzling over why Lucia had appeared in this dark place — and then it hit him. This was his mindspace. There was absolutely no way the real Lucia could show up here.
"Get back, whatever you are! How dare you impersonate my friend!"
If something was appearing here, it couldn't be anything good.
With that thought, Geno swung a fist straight at her.
But the punch stopped dead the instant it reached 'Lucia's' face — for no reason Geno could explain.
What stunned him even more was that he hadn't decided to stop.
"What?! How is this possible?! This is my mindspace!"
Geno stood there, thrown completely off balance. He was inside his own mindspace — and yet he couldn't bring himself to attack the fake Lucia standing in front of him.
"Don't be so hasty, little lamb's friend. I'm not going to do anything to you."
Geno didn't believe a single word of it.
Yeah, right. You barge into someone else's home and then say you mean no harm? Who's buying that?
"Who are you?!"
He struggled to launch an attack, but his body flatly refused to obey — as if somewhere deep in his subconscious, a command had been issued: do not harm this person.
"Me? But you've already met me, haven't you? Just last night you were holding me close and patting me on the head."
Last night? I held her? And the head part...?
Geno's mind rewound to the night before. His thoughts had been a mess from the Filth's influence, but the only people he'd encountered were Lucia and Yidhari...
"Hold on. You're not... Cili, are you?"
"(o▼)o☆ [BINGO!] Got it in one! Surprised? I really do love the name little lamb gave me."
The figure clapped her hands in delight, then spun in a happy little circle on the spot, as though she might just float away from sheer excitement.
"Cili... why are you here?"
Now that he knew who he was dealing with, Geno still had plenty of questions — but after their few encounters, he'd come to believe she wasn't a bad sort. Well. A bad Ethereal, rather.
After all, she'd never shown any hostility toward Geno or the others from the very beginning. And right now, she was the one holding all the cards — even if he'd wanted to fight back, he didn't exactly have the means.
"Well... the main reason I'm here is actually because of the thing behind you."
"Behind me?"
Geno turned around. Sure enough, there it was — the Filth's shadow, limp as a dead dog, still pinned to the ground under his suppression.
Its power seemed to have been severely crushed. It was no longer holding Geno's face — in its place was a featureless black silhouette, its features impossible to make out.
"That's right. From the very first time I saw you, this thing has been lurking inside you. Those times you lost control — I was the one suppressing it each time to bring you back."
"But the main reason," she added, "is that little lamb asked me to. She wanted me to help you."
'Lucia' — or rather, Cili — clapped her hands again, like a child showing off something clever, and shuffled closer to Geno. Then she tilted her little head forward expectantly.
Geno blinked, not quite following — and then he saw it. Cili was looking up at him with wide, hopeful eyes, her little tail swishing back and forth behind her, unbearably cute.
Huh. Funny, I never noticed Lucia had this kind of side to her.
"Right? I think little lamb is adorable too — but shouldn't you be giving me my reward now?"
Geno startled so hard he nearly jumped out of his skin. Then he remembered — this was his mindspace. Thinking something and saying it out loud were exactly the same thing here.
"Sorry, my mistake. But when you say reward..."
Looking at Cili, who was still swaying her head and tail with that expectant look on her face, Geno thought he understood what she was after.
He reached out and gently began to pet her on the head, running his palm slowly over it.
"Hehe~"
At his touch, a satisfied smile finally spread across Cili's face — and then she twisted around and threw her arms around Geno's waist, giving him yet another fright.
"Hey?! Don't press in that close!"
That's — right there — !!
"Hm? You humans don't like this? I'm pretty sure all the other human males I've seen are very fond of it — hugging, kissing, XOXO and all that."
"Stop picking up every random thing you see!!"
Geno's face went scarlet on the spot.
This creature, wearing Lucia's face, saying things like that with absolutely zero filter or shame — it was genuinely hard to handle.
No! Geno! You're a taken man! And Lucia is your friend! You absolutely cannot make a move on a friend —
And that goes for a friend's face too!
"? Humans are so strange. Whatever, that's not important."
Cili let go of Geno and put a bit of distance between them, then turned her head to look at the Filth, which had begun to slowly melt into a puddle on the ground.
She studied it with an expression of casual curiosity.
"It's been suppressed, but getting rid of it for good isn't going to be so easy."
As she spoke, she extended her small hand. The Filth — which Geno had been pinning to the ground — suddenly wrenched free of his hold as if gravity itself had released it, shot upward, and lunged straight for Geno.
Then it got slammed back down into the ground and ground into the floor all over again.
"See? Even with my help, it can't make much of a move right now — but the moment you let your guard slip even a little, it'll rise again."
Cili crouched down, resting her cheeks in both hands, a playful smile curling at her lips as she watched the Filth getting kneaded into increasingly absurd shapes under Geno's grip.
"How do you know so much about this? Actually — forget that for a second. What exactly are you?"
Geno could tell: Cili's understanding of this mysterious Filth ran far deeper than his own. Whatever she was, she was no simple Hati.
"One question at a time."
Cili rose to her feet and stretched languidly, the motion tracing every perfect line of her silhouette — then tilted her head to look at Geno, that same expression on her face: a little naive, a little playful.
"I wouldn't say this thing and I are exactly close, but I've known it since quite a long time ago, so I know more than most. As for me — well, myself, or I suppose my Ethereal self — little lamb should have told you about me already. Our history goes back further than you'd think."
Cili stood there, and something in her eyes seemed to drift — her thoughts crossing back through time to some moment Geno couldn't place.
In that instant, to Geno's eyes, Cili looked suddenly like a stone statue weathered by long ages — indifferent to the world's changes on the surface, yet worn down by time all the same, whether she'd wanted to be or not.
____
👻🔥Walnut-chan ;)🔥👻
🔥 New history: Arknights Endfield: Picked Up a Gugugaga
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