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I had never allowed myself to imagine never feeling her again. Now I understood how ignorant I had been.

I wanted to sit down and weep my eyes out, to make this nightmare end, but I had to ensure Mina was safe. I pulled up her sweater and inspected her wrist, pressing sterile gauze against the wounds to stem the bleeding, but calmness eluded me. For the first time in my life, I was terrified of messing something up, unable to move without feeling like I was fighting against time. My legs slipped on the bathroom floor, I lost my balance but I managed to hold Mina tightly against my chest. I carried her to her own room and wrapped her in a blanket. I ran to retrieve the blood tube I had prepared for her group, then took the electrolyte solution as well. My hands were shaking as I transferred the blood into the syringe; my sensors were sending warnings that my heart rate had reached a dangerous level, but I didn’t give a damn.

There was no one else there. The whole world had disappeared, and all that remained was this eerie sight before me.

“Why…”

I couldn’t gaze at her face; I didn’t want to see her closed, unconscious eyes. For the first time, seeing her face hadn’t evoked any positive feelings in me. Yet my Mina looked so beautiful when she was asleep; then why was it so unendurable to look at her now?

“You can’t disappear like this… You can’t do this, please… Answer! Please, answer… Why, why…”

My entire world was crumbling. Everything seemed to be gone. Nothing mattered anymore except Mina’s stupid tower, and I would do anything to prevent it from crumbling too.

Forever. Didn’t we say forever?

“Did you forget I exist? Tell me, I’m begging you, answer me! Did you forget I’ll always be there for you? How could you be so evil, Mina? How could you do this to yourself? To me?”

Some words I couldn’t even bear to say out loud echoed in my mind.

Did you love Bernova girl this much? Was her absence truly so unbearable for you? But what about me, Mina? If you wanted to meet her that badly, did you really forget about me? Have you erased me completely? What more do you want from me? I gave you everything. My soul, my body… so why am I still not enough?

When will I be good enough for you? Why don’t you care about me? Am I really that invisible to you? Tell me, what do I have to do to make you see me?

I realized something else at that moment.

Why should she cling to life for a mindless robot?

A machine was not enough to endure this life. Of course she would want something real, I knew it well. If all she had left was a robot, why should she hesitate to leave without looking back? Perhaps that was the reason for the increase in her reset requests. She didn’t want to leave anything behind.

I kept my eye on her for a month, pursing her relentlessly, but it seems I had quickly let my guard down. People always praised my foresight, but it was all bullshit. I hadn’t predict a shit, and now I was paying the price.

There was such chaos inside me even the beast which had been caged for months had taken advantage of the chaos, breaking the strong iron bars and escaping. I couldn’t hold it any longer, it wasn’t going to obey me anyway. Like everything else inside me, it only took orders from Mina. So it had to wait for her to wake up to tame it.

Well, it had to wait its turn.

☾

Mina

I turned into a snowflake in my dream. For once, I had become part of something gentle in the sky, something almost hopeful.

But then, like waves rising in a storm-dark ocean, the sky shifted. A downpour began. The snowflake became a pebble and pierced the Earth like a bullet, tearing through the fragile beauty below.

It happened again. My dream turned into a nightmare as always. I ruined everything as always. It seemed whatever I touched was doomed to destruction.

I’m just a witch. Francis Bernova was right.

Now, I was as tall as mountains; my hair dripped over the treetops. Smiling, I tossed the contents of the basket onto the Mars. Daffodils withered, butterfly wings caught fire, my mother’s face—who died giving birth to me—faded away, Eli’s arm tore off, my father died alive in the flames, and Remi’s throat was slit.

Because of me.

Because of my dark magic.

Slowly, I opened my eyes. The first thing I noticed was I couldn’t move my joints. I was cold like a corpse. I frowned, wincing as my senses slowly returned.

“Mina.”

When that haunting voice filled my ears, a pain formed in my eye sockets, and warm tears gathered. I thought I had turned into an iceberg, but a single voice was enough to release the sorrow had accumulated in me.