Actually, it was strange.

Even after searching for so long, there was still no trace of the child’s parents. No reports, no witnesses—nothing that could even point her in the right direction.

Lena wiped her hands on her apron and glanced down at the small figure sitting quietly at the corner table. The child was too calm for someone who had supposedly been separated from their family. Too composed.

"...Did something happen to them?" Lena murmured under her breath.

The thought settled uneasily in her chest. Maybe they had been caught in some kind of incident. An accident. Or worse.

Before she could dwell on it any further, the restaurant door slammed open with a sharp bang.

The sudden noise made several customers flinch. Chairs scraped against the floor as three strangers barged inside, their presence immediately suffocating the room.

"...What timing," Lena muttered.

Her eyes were drawn to the first stranger instinctively. There was something about him—an aura that felt oddly familiar. It tugged at her senses, like a half-remembered dream.

She frowned, trying to place it, but no matter how hard she searched her memory, his face didn’t belong to anyone she knew.

The second one was far easier to read.

Hostile.

His posture was tense, his hand hovering near his waist as if he was ready to strike at any moment.

His gaze swept across the room like he was measuring distances, exits, targets. Lena felt her shoulders stiffen. Avoiding a fight didn’t seem likely.

Then there was the third stranger. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

Lena’s breath caught.

"...Huh?"

She leaned forward slightly, eyes narrowing as she took a closer look. No—he wasn’t a stranger. Not at all.

Those red eyes—always a little unsettling, always too sharp for someone so fragile—were filled with a mixture of worry and irritation. His uncommon black hair was messy, like he had run here without stopping, and his body looked as frail as she remembered.

Too thin. Too weak.

"...Wait."

Her heart skipped.

"Isn’t that—"

Her thoughts snapped into place.

Ah.

She remembered.

"Yes. Rin."

Rin.

The name echoed in her mind, and with it came a flood of memories she hadn’t realized she had been suppressing.

Rin standing stubbornly in front of her, insisting he was fine. Rin forcing a smile while clearly exhausted. Rin making promise after promise.

I won’t push myself.

I won’t get hurt.

I’ll come back safely.

Her chest tightened.

"...What have I been doing?" Lena whispered.

She hadn’t even noticed when Ryan stepped closer, his expression unusually tense. Leo stood beside him, arms crossed, worry written plainly on his face.

And then Lena saw it.

The way they were all looking at her.

Not angry. Not accusing.

Just... worried.

Rin finally met her gaze fully. His brows furrowed, annoyance flickering across his face, but it was overshadowed by relief.

—XXX has intervened.—

—That’s not allowed.

—You cannot resist brainwashing due to XXX’s authority.

Huh...?

The faint static that had finally faded from Lena’s mind surged back all at once, louder and sharper than before.

"Uh... kyaa—! Ugh...!?"

Her knees buckled. The world tilted, her stomach twisting violently as nausea rushed up her throat. She grabbed at her head, fingers digging into her hair as if that might keep her thoughts from spilling apart.

There were things she didn’t want to forget.

No—things she couldn’t afford to forget.

Yet whenever she reached for them, her memories slipped through her grasp like sand. Her thoughts tangled, snapped, reformed, then shattered again.

Everything in front of her bled into red.

—You are a character born to die here.

"Ugh...!"

The voice echoed directly inside her skull. There was no direction, no distance—no way to cover her ears or turn away.

"That is why I designed you this way. If you cannot die here, what meaning do you even have?"

Lena’s breath came out in short, broken gasps. Her chest burned, her heart hammering as if it wanted to escape her body.

She couldn’t resist it.

The voice was absolute.

It sounded childish—petulant, even—like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum when a toy refused to break the way they wanted.

And yet...

—The world is dark, unstable, and filled with misfortune. Stories that are bright, always successful, and full of happiness are nothing but hypocrisies. Lies meant to deceive.

There was bitterness woven into every word. A deep, ugly resentment, as though the speaker despised the world they themselves had created.

Lena didn’t fully understand what it was saying.

But her body remembered.

Her muscles tightened. Her stance shifted.

She knew—vaguely, instinctively—what she was supposed to do next.

—Don’t resist.

Her fingers curled into a trembling fist.

Three strangers stood in front of her.

No... not strangers.

Enemies.

She was supposed to knock them down.

Defeat them.

Then find this child’s parents—

...No.

The thought made her chest ache.

For some reason, she really didn’t want to fight.

But her body wasn’t listening to her.

Lena swayed where she stood.

Her fist was clenched, knuckles white, arm trembling as if it no longer belonged to her. Every instinct screamed at her to move—to strike, to eliminate the obstacles in front of her—

But her feet refused to take that first step.

Ryen noticed immediately. "Professor?"

Her vision flickered. The world lurched again, red bleeding into the edges, but the figures in front of her stayed painfully clear.

Rin didn’t move.

He was still standing where he had stopped earlier, eyes fixed on her, brows drawn tight. There was irritation there, yes—but underneath it was something far more obvious.

Fear.

Not of her.

For her.

Lena’s breathing stuttered.

The voice in her head hissed in response, sharp and displeased.

—Hesitation is meaningless. You were made to obey.—

The pressure intensified, like invisible hands squeezing her ribs from the inside.

Images flashed through her mind—fragmented, overlapping.

A classroom. Chalk dust.

A stubborn child with red eyes refusing to rest.

A small, quiet figure sitting alone at a corner table.

The child.

Her gaze flicked instinctively to the corner of the restaurant.

The child hadn’t moved.

They were sitting exactly where she had left them, small hands folded in their lap, eyes wide but silent. Watching. Waiting.