A prolonged silence settled between them, but Ashen had a burning question that he couldn't answer, no matter how he thought.
"Hey, how do you keep switching between that version that you created by lies and the real you...?" he asked, voice somber. "If what you said is true, then, if you lied a lie and believed it so thoroughly, wouldn't that version of you start believing that it was the real personality?"
Lucia stayed silent, making Ashen press more. "How can you guarantee that you won't get lost in your own lies? How do you protect the genuine you from being swallowed by the falsehoods...?"
"..."
"...Is this even your real personality?" Ashen's face grew grimmer the longer the silence stretched.
Thankfully, Lucia didn't remain quiet for long. "You don't have to worry. That would never happen to me, and this is indeed the real me."
"...And you're so confident in that... why?" Ashen shot back, still skeptical.
"It's simple, really. No matter how many masks I wear, my true self never truly disappears." Her gaze was fixed ahead rather than on him. "It's like riding a horse without the reins. Another part of me takes over... steering, speaking, moving, and I just fall back."
A faint shrug lifted one shoulder, but there was no change in her expression. "I don't vanish, though. I'm still there, flowing quietly. You can imagine it as a stream of thought… but while others only have one, I have many."
Her eyes flicked to him briefly, then back ahead, as if checking he understood.
"The stream of thought holding my true personality never disappears. While other streams merge, separate, and dissolve, my true self stays unbroken, spectating as the other mes play at being the real one."
She said it as if she were describing the roundness of her eyes or how she had four limbs, a simple fact of her existence.
She even snickered, unexpectedly. "...Sometimes it's even entertaining. I couldn't resist... just tipping my hat at their performance~"
Ashen just stared blankly before slowly shaking his head. "...Crazy."
She countered, "I'd say it's more amusing."
"You, thinking like that, makes it only crazier..."
"Well, to each their own quirks, I guess." She then gestured forward. "It seems the woman you're stalking is about to disappear, aren't you going to follow her...?"
Ashen's eyes narrowed the instant he caught sight of her vanishing form through the windshield.
The key turned with a sharp click, and the engine growled to life. He leaned forward in the driver's seat and pulled out without hesitation. Tires bit at the asphalt as he closed in, keeping the figure squarely in his sights, following close enough to observe without being seen.
"By the way, this is not stalking! I'm just making sure she is fine."
"And how is stalking going to help with that...?" She asked.
"Well, I can see her expressions and general mood from here. It looks like she's holding on fine. At least there's no bullying or stalkers around—"
"—Aside from you." She interrupted.
"Yeah, but I'm not here with bad intentions—wait, I'm really not stalking her, knock it off." He rolled his eyes, exasperated.
"...Sure." She nodded along. "Why am I tagging along, anyway?"
Ashen parked the car at the end of the street as he saw the young woman finally enter her apartment.
He reached the backseats and grabbed a package. "Of course it's to deliver... this!"
Lucia kept staring as he tried to hand her the package. "When did I become your delivery woman?"
"C'mon, please do this for me. That woman looks like the type that'd be suspicious of anything, especially a bundle of cash coming from who knows where..."
Ashen had an awkward smile as he clapped his palms together. "I could try to just dump it on her or mention her father's name, but she could just not use the money..."
"..."
Lucia gave him a deep look before letting out a soft sigh. "...Alright."
He lit up at her affirmation. "Thanks! You're really a lifesaver! I take back what I said earlier, there's no way such a cute woman can be crazy, haha!"
"...Shut up." She snatched the package from his hands and disembarked from the car.
Walking down the street, she finally reached the apartment's front door.
The door took quite a while to open after she rang the bell. 'She's probably checking the camera feed right now,' Ashen silently thought.
Braun had warned him that his daughter would be extra careful with her security.
Approaching her as a stranger will be hard. 'Well, that's what living on your own throughout your teens will do to you... Braun's job probably factored into her paranoia.'
And that's why he let Lucia handle it instead of doing it himself and risking just being a nuisance instead of helping.
The door finally opened, and Lucia's unreadable expression slowly changed to a friendly one.
The woman's hazel eyes narrowed in wariness first, but Lucia didn't seem to mind.
Ashen could only see her expression change from a sheepish smile to a happy one and finally to an embarrassed expression as they kept chatting.
And surprisingly, or should it be unsurprisingly at this point... the woman's expression melted from vigilance into a longing look before she smiled back, and she even accepted the package by the end of it.
The moment the door closed, Lucia instantly returned to her usual expression.
She walked back, each click of her high heels echoing on the pavement, until she reached the car. She opened the door and eased herself in, her long legs gliding in first, hips following with measured grace before she settled on the seat.
"...Thank you for your efforts."
"No problem." She nodded.
Ashen restarted the car and drove to their final destination of the day.
"So, which personality did you play this time?" Ashen asked after a while, unable to hold himself back from poking at the enigma that was this woman.
"The same old Ashen's crush-struck colleague." She answered without beating around the bush this time.
"Still that? How'd that even work on her?" He asked back, confused.
"Individuals like that woman who seem always paranoid and wary of anyone they encounter usually have a sharp perception of other people's emotions. They can sniff out malice from a mile away." She shrugged. "I just had to be sincere enough when persuading her, and she'd pick up on it just as she usually picks up on bad intentions."
"...That easy? And why does it have to be that personality?" Ashen asked back, still unconvinced.
"You'd be surprised at how rare the number of individuals we interact with, who are purely sincere. So it's not that easy." She glanced his way, expression unreadable. "As for why that personality, it's simple..."
"Whose request was it to persuade the wary woman?"
"...Mine." He answered, now seeing where this was going.
Lucia nodded. "I said that the 'Ashen's lover' personality thinks she spent the days of your tutorial phase with you. Who else was there, I wonder?"
"...Braun."
"There you have it. She was helping the man she was deeply in love with, and a friend's daughter. I think she'd have plenty of sincerity, don't you think?"
"...Sure." Ashen helplessly shook his head. "It was wrong of me to question the expert. I'm sorry, your highness..."
"As long as you know." She merely nodded back at his jesting words, as if she took them seriously. "I might keep this personality for a bit longer; it's surprisingly useful, especially if I'm going to be seeing a lot of you now."
She turned only to catch Ashen's complicated expression.
"...Does it bother you?" she asked a beat later.
"Oh...?" Ashen was confused by the question for a bit before he shook his head. "No. Rather... I'm a bit confused, that's all."
"...About?"
He hesitated for a moment before he carelessly shrugged. "Well, I'm a bit happy that you were not actually acting, and there is really a part of yourself in there that thinks of me so highly..."
He then clicked his tongue. "But at the same time, just a bit upset that this personality will eventually get wiped out..."
Lucia narrowed her eyes. "You're actually taking pity on an untrue guise?"
"Huh, am I not allowed to? It's like feeling sad when your favorite character in a book dies, not the kind of 'I want you to switch with that personality forever'—no need to worry." He grinned.
"How carefree... unlike you, I can't pity those personalities, otherwise I'd really risk keeping them forever."
"True." He nodded in agreement; from her perspective, he realized it was an insensitive thing to say, so he flashed her an apologetic smile.
But her stare stayed unimpressed before she slowly shook her head. "It can't be that you're eyeing that lover personality...? You weren't jesting when you called yourself a scumbag, it seems."
Ashen bristled. "Hey! I was just being honest there!" He ran a hand through his hair while keeping the wheel in grip with the other.
"No man wouldn't feel at least a little pleased when a beautiful woman thinks well of him. Doesn't matter if he's married, single, or even a misogynist; some part of us stirs."
He let out a short, self-deprecating laugh. "Some choose to wrap it up in indifference, and I choose honesty, even if I'm never going to act on it!"
A pause, then he glanced sideways, keeping one eye on the road. "And since you were able to create that personality, it means you think of me decently enough as a man."
He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel's leather. "Looking at it from another perspective, Lucia the lover is proof that you have thoughts about me, no matter how minuscule."
'Isn't it you who is getting seduced on your own?' He smiled faintly but didn't utter the unspoken accusation.
It didn't matter as the message got to her loud and clear.
Lucia stayed silent for a couple of moments before she also decided to counter with the same argument.
"I'm also a normal woman, and men aren't the only ones who can't control their feelings. At least I use mine for something productive, instead of merely feeling pity."
"..."
Ashen, as a man with a decade-long relationship under his belt, knew that winning an argument with a woman was a lost cause. And Lucia, no matter how eccentric she was, was still a woman, just as she had mentioned, so he just shrugged in the end.
"...Well, let's keep it at that."
They finally arrived at the antique shop where Ashen first appeared when he came back to Esperra.
They were going to use the same teleportation circle to go back to Seravelle now.
Lucia and Ashen walked inside side by side. The old shopkeeper who seemed to be snoozing on the counter lifted his head and half-opened his eyes.
When he saw Lucia, he just nodded and went back to napping.
Meanwhile, she guided Ashen to the backroom, where they finally found the circle in its same state.
Ashen could feel the immense amount of mana radiating from it. 'I wonder how they can charge something like this when Esperra is almost a desert in terms of mana...'
He didn't get to dwell much on his thoughts as the circle started lighting up when he stepped in.
He turned to face Lucia, who watched him from the boundary.
"As we have previously talked about, I'll catch up to you as soon as the recruitment period ends. Try to stay alive until then."
Ashen smiled bitterly at her sad attempt at a goodbye.
"...Aye aye, cap," he answered the detached tone with a lazy salute of his own.
Lucia's lips twitched, and as she watched the circle gain more brilliance, as if it was about to swallow him up, she added in the same stoic tone, though worry seemed to seep in this time.
"I hope these three days at Esperra haven't dulled your survival instincts... remember, where you're going, if you blink once, you'd find yourself in a beast's belly, so stay sharp." Her piercing eyes locked on his, conveying how serious she was. "The tutorial phase was merely that... A tutorial. So brace yourself."
Ashen also nodded, adopting a more serious attitude this time. "You got it. I'll do my best... And good luck with your recruitment, too."
She faintly smiled. "Good luck surviving then, I suppose."
.
.
Whissssh.
☽⟲✧⸸✧⟲☾
Volume 2: Interlude: Esperra ~ End.