Chapter 54: The Meaning of Life, Sudden Collapse, and... Vegetative State?
[As time passed, you began suffering from severe insomnia, unable to sleep night after night. Those complete memories in your dreams made you deeply uneasy. You always thought it was a problem caused by your overly developed brain, but it wasn't until you saw the complete developmental process that you were startled awake.]
[The problem lay in the fact that, time and time again, everything started from a certain node and then developed in different directions.]
[Like... a game being loaded from a save file over and over again.]
[You began attempting to use trace amounts of the hallucinogenic substance extracted from that flower.]
[Consequently, in your dreams every night, you could see each of those lives—the very tragic memories that were splitting your head open.]
[This was the first time you viewed these memories from a complete and relatively objective perspective. Out of the four lives, you finished watching the first, second, and fourth. The remaining third life, however, was only fragmented.]
[Even so, you still figured out the pattern between these memories. You seemed to have verified something. During the day, your mood became congested, increasingly silent and depressed.]
Nighttime.
The moon was bright, the stars sparse.
Haruka sat in the pavilion of the villa, staring blankly at the bright moon in the sky. Beside him, Shoko was draping a coat over his shoulders.
"Shoko, if everything is fake, does our life have meaning?" Abruptly, Haruka spoke.
His tone was filled with unspeakable confusion and decadence.
Shoko showed no surprise. As the person who shared his bed, she had long since noticed Haruka's abnormality during this period.
Breathing out warm air, Shoko took Haruka's hand, which was clenched tightly into a fist, into her own.
"I don't know. Meaning of life and all that... for me, before I met you, I didn't even feel like I was truly alive. My life only started turning again after I met you."
"If I had to say, the meaning of my life is you."
Shoko said this softly.
That's right.
This was her true thought.
Before meeting Haruka, she lived in pain every day—discrimination from others, guilt toward her family, the bitterness of enduring suffering...
She didn't know why she was living.
She was merely surviving based on the instinct of life, living just for the sake of living.
Perhaps, there was also a hint of unwillingness, envying others?
It wasn't until she met Haruka.
Everything changed.
So, fake or not, even if her previous life wasn't fake, to her, it was no different from being fake.
If there was Haruka within the falsehood, she would rather live in that falsehood.
Haruka turned his head to look at Shoko.
Looking at Shoko's eyes, filled with love and attachment.
Haruka's heart twitched violently.
Yeah.
Fake or not.
Why care?
As long as the person I care about is still here, my life has meaning, and everything still exists.
Where she is, is where my heart finds peace.
Haruka sighed lightly, opened his hand, and held her cold palm back. Then, the two leaned against each other, watching the full moon.
In the sky.
Fine snow began to fall sparsely.
Adding a touch of chill.
***
[You temporarily put aside certain worries and began to devote yourself wholeheartedly to research.]
[Using the resources of Kaguya Shinomiya, you obtained a large quantity of those blood-red flowers from the deep mountains of South America, and also acquired multiple precious machines.]
[Especially as your feelings for Shoko deepened, your research began to advance by leaps and bounds.]
[Everything seemed divinely aided.]
[What was originally estimated to take more than a year, or even two years, was forcibly shortened by you to half a year.]
[Just another half-year, and you will be able to develop a special neuro-drug for auditory nerves. Victory seems right before your eyes.]
[But, time waits for no one.]
[Four months later.]
[Shoko went completely deaf.]
"Alright, don't worry. It's not like I'm gone," Shoko comforted Haruka.
For a moment, it was hard to tell who was the deaf one.
"Shoko, don't worry. Give me a little more time. Just a little more time, okay?" Haruka gripped Shoko's hand tightly.
He wasn't nervous without reason. The memories were simply too heartbreaking.
Especially the scene of Shoko committing suicide after losing her hearing...
The corner of Haruka's eye twitched violently, his head throbbed with pain, and his vision actually started to double.
"Mm." Shoko patted Haruka's head.
For this day, she had already learned lip-reading.
She hadn't thought about suicide.
No.
To be precise, she had dispelled that thought.
Because to this day, she still remembered Haruka's "threat."
So, she could only try hard to be as normal as possible.
Fortunately, having experienced this in her childhood, she was "experienced."
However, at this moment, Haruka's expression was wrong.
His eyes were glazed.
His body was actually swaying from side to side.
His breathing became heavy and erratic.
"Shoko... I... You..."
Thud!
He actually fainted straight away, smashing onto the ground.
"Haruka! Haruka!!"
Amidst Shoko's screams, Haruka fell into a coma.
***
[The 'Past and Present Lives' talent completely unsealed.]
[You fell into a coma.]
[You fell into a deeper dream.]
[Here, you finally saw the complete third memory, especially the life after Shoko committed suicide.]
[It's just that this third memory is very long, and in the dream, you can't feel the passage of time at all.]
[Outside, due to your sudden coma, many things fell into chaos.]
***
"Coma? What's the situation?" Kaguya Shinomiya asked.
"Kaguya-sama, the situation isn't good. According to the doctors' tests, Kasugano fell into a coma due to abnormalities in his brain. Currently, his brain is still active. Logically speaking, this should be a sign of waking up."
"But he's very strange. He remains in a state of deep sleep, as if he can't wake up on his own. Moreover, according to the doctors, the probability of him waking up isn't high."
"This..."
"Vegetative state?" Kaguya Shinomiya suddenly spoke.
Ai Hayasaka lowered her head.
"This might be... an unconventional vegetative state."
"..."
"..."
The conference room fell into a long silence.
Ai Hayasaka's heart was pounding.
She knew very well how these people treated those with no value.
But she wasn't sure what Kaguya-sama would do.
No emotion could be seen in Kaguya Shinomiya's crimson eyes.
"Call the best doctors for treatment. Think of every possible way."
Kaguya Shinomiya glanced coldly at Ai Hayasaka, who seemed to have breathed a sigh of relief.
"What, do you think I did wrong?"
"No, Kaguya-sama. I didn't mean that." Ai Hayasaka hurriedly said.
Kaguya Shinomiya ignored Hayasaka's explanation and just walked out on her own. "It's just equivalent exchange. His contribution is enough for me to do this."
"...Yes, you are right, Kaguya-sama."
Click-clack, click-clack.
Under Ai Hayasaka's gaze.
Kaguya Shinomiya walked out calmly.
Ai Hayasaka knew that Kaguya-sama would be very busy next. She also sighed.
Because next, she would be busy too.
A life of toil~
----
Don't worry, I didn't forget about the missed update from the other day. You're still getting that extra chapter today!
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