No matter how much you enjoy something, you get tired of it if you repeat it enough times.
Then, how many times are left until this meeting grows tiresome?
Shei tried to count the numbers but stopped. This meeting had already exceeded thirty times. However, Shei was always as glad to see him as the first time—no, as much as that second moment. That feeling only ever grew larger, never once diminishing.
Perhaps, even if Shei repeated this meeting over and over again, she would never feel weariness.
Even though she had entered a dark and gloomy prison, Shei's heart pounded like a child arriving at a park.
Just what kind of expression would he face her with this time? Bewilderment? Wariness? Or, like the first time, would he brazenly try to brush it off with a lie?
He showed a different reaction every time. It varied depending on when, with what expression, and with what words Shei approached. It was completely unpredictable, which made it all the more anticipated.
Shei counted the numbers inwardly.
One, two, and three.
Now, at the timing remembered by the Cheonbangyeong, he fell from the sky like a gift.
"Uwaaaagh!"
Thud. Hanging from a parachute, he flailed as he fell into Tantalos. Crashing somewhat roughly, he grabbed the back of his neck and stood up.
This place was a prison, and to him, Shei was nothing more than a stranger. If she suddenly appeared and approached, he would be bewildered and burdened.
However, Shei had no room to care about such things. The moment she saw him, Shei's heart was already filled with endless longing, joy, and an overwhelming sorrow. Shei was already embracing him.
"Hughes!"
Burying her face in his chest, she rubbed it against him like a cat. His collar smelled of the nostalgic scent of earth. Not caring that her face was getting dirty with dust, Shei fully savored his presence.
"Welcome! I missed you."
"I'm back. It's been a while for me too."
Hughes calmly stroked Shei's head. He should be seeing Shei for the first time in this cycle, yet his attitude was exceedingly brazen. Smoothly glossing it over, he then asked with a serious face.
"But who are you?"
"Hughes. I'm Shei."
"Ah, yes. Nice to meet you, Shei. But that wasn't the answer I was hoping for."
Hughes looked around with an awkward expression and said.
"This is Tantalos, the worst prison of the Military Nation. I don't know if you're a prisoner or a guard, but 'Welcome'? It sounds like you want to teach me a lesson, which is scary."
"I know you. I came here to meet you this time."
"A stalker following me all the way to prison? That's scary in a different way..."
But Shei knew. That lax attitude was a vulnerability exposed on purpose. It was bait laid out to figure out the person named Shei.
Hughes was thorough and cold. Even in the first regression, Shei hadn't known he was the King of Humanity. She only learned the proper circumstances in the third regression. Only after learning the full truth was Shei barely able to trust Hughes.
Of course, that too was just the tip of the iceberg. It was only after repeating nearly ten more times after that, that she learned Hughes's true feelings.
Finding it hard to wait any longer, Shei conveyed the truth somewhat hastily.
"I'm a regressor. I've already gone through several regressions to get here. And I've met you in every regression."
"Regres...sion...?"
Hughes's idiotic expression felt so real that Shei enjoyed seeing it every time. It would be hard to see such an expression from him if not for now.
Shei explained everything from beginning to end. The story was long and rambling, with the context getting mixed up multiple times, causing Hughes to ask back several times as well.
"I also know the fact that you're the King of Humanity!"
"Tsk."
Hughes, who had been repeating his doubts, eventually admitted it. That Shei was a regressor, and that she had already repeated this meeting numerous times.
"Okay, okay. I got it. The world will be destroyed in 10 years, and you, Shei, have to stop it."
"We have to."
"Why me of all people..."
"Because you're the King of Humanity."
Even if Hughes hadn't been the King of Humanity, Shei would have been with him every time. Perhaps it was a relief that he was the King of Humanity. It gave Shei a justification to seek him out time and time again.
"Can't we just gather all the remaining forces and attack the Tree of Depravity?"
"You always ask that. We tried that. We used the Empire and the Demonic Federation to make Nevida a continental public enemy. But right before the Holy War was declared, the King of Sin appeared."
"He became the King of Sin just by being a continental public enemy? A powder keg right before exploding would be less sensitive than that."
Discussing what to do this time was also enjoyable. Even though they had failed and despaired many times, he constantly came up with different methods.
"Should we completely switch sides and join Nevida? Just flip the board and make Nevida and the King of Humanity the new kings of the world. Then we might be able to avoid the world's destruction."
"I told you earlier. That method doesn't work. If the King of Humanity fully resurrects, you have to be sacrificed."
"Huh? Since when? That's the first time I'm hearing that."
"Didn't I say I infiltrated Nevida's side?"
"Is that what infiltration meant? I thought you just snuck in. I wondered what you meant by dying while running away, so that was it."
If she were alone, there would have been limits to the methods she could come up with. However, somehow, when she was with Hughes, methods she had never tried before would pop up one after another. Methods that were slightly different from the ones that had failed before.
"Ah. No. I didn't say that this time."
Then, suddenly.
Very intuitively.
No basis. No logic. Before cause and effect could even connect, Shei realized it through instinct and sensation, through a momentary flash of insight.
"Hughes. Can you read minds?"
"...Huh?"
Even if it weren't Shei, regressing nearly 30 times would make anyone confused.
However, they wouldn't say the wrong thing and then cancel it with certainty like Shei. The moment she spoke, Shei was sincere, she had intended to say it, and she thought she had said it.
Looking back, it just wasn't this cycle.
This situation had already happened nearly twenty times. Shei had no time to figure out what she said or didn't say in which cycle. The situation conveyed in the 21st cycle was explained differently in the 24th cycle. The before and after got mixed up, and the descriptions changed each time.
However.
Hughes never got confused even once.
Shei didn't know it then. She didn't even feel a sense of incongruity. But looking back,
"I don't think I said that in this cycle. Yeah, I didn't. I'm sure. With a 50% probability, I'm sure."
"Do you not know what probability means, Shei?"
"Th-that can't be helped. If you regress, things get confusing. But this time it's real."
Because there were so many similar experiences, even Shei got confused and mixed up a few things when speaking. Yet Hughes accurately distinguished them.
Because he was smart? Probably. But fundamentally, his comprehension reached a much deeper place.
"You knew what I didn't say. Now, and in the past too."
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Realizations felt while living and struggling together for dozens of cycles. Points discovered because she watched him from the closest distance with the greatest affection.
His greatest secret, finally realized only because they had become a pair who recognized each other through feeling and sensation rather than words and actions.
"Right, Hughes? You can read people's minds, can't you?"
Truth is irreversible. Because once you realize it, you can never go back to how it was before.
"Stealing the Unique Demonic Art isn't the power of the King of Humanity either, right? You read mental images, calculate them in your head, and use them, right?"
This was the truth obtained through over thirty regressions. It was useless to deny it. It was not suspicion but certainty, and she faced that truth not with a sense of betrayal, but with joy.
Therefore, even Hughes couldn't bear to deny it.
"...Ugh. The me from the previous cycle. Should have hidden it better. She's the easiest person in the world to fool, yet I gave her every clue and got figured out."
He muttered brazenly even though it was his current self who got caught. It was no different from an admission. Shei urgently approached Hughes and asked.
"Then you know everything, right? What I did while regressing, what I went through. You know it all, right?"
"In your case, Shei, I can't read your memories of previous cycles. If I could really read everything, I wouldn't have been confused either."
He obediently revealed the truth.
"Aren't you offended?"
"Offended?! I'm rather happy!"
"Happy?"
"Yes! Now I'm not the only one who knows! I just have to come here every time!"
Reading minds meant looking into even the most secretive and ugly desires. A normal person would find it repulsive.
But for Shei, it was hope.
"I just have to come here and deliver my memories to you. I just have to recall my past cycle experiences so you can read them! Because you can do the rest!"
There were no secretive and ugly desires. She didn't even have the time to recall such things.
Just coming down to the Abyss, spending a brief moment with him, and soothing her exhausted body and mind was the entirety of the happiness Shei knew.
This brief moment with him was the pillar that sustained Shei's regressions.
"And when that's over."
The karma of regression, destroying dozens of worlds to save just one. Who could endure that?
It was far too heavy a burden for a single human to bear. Growing weak, wanting to pass it off to someone else—these were only natural.
Just as an old man who enjoyed a long life does not fear death, Shei too welcomed her end.
The crushing duty, the lives placed on her shoulders, the memories of the dying, and the loneliness left standing all alone after returning, having engraved all of it in her heart.
Even if it was impulsive, it was inevitable that a desire to end this loop and fall asleep would arise.
"I am... no longer needed..."
Shedding clear, sweet tears, Shei entrusted everything—from her duty to her will—to the mind-reader before her....
-Cheonbangyeong. This won't do.
And a wavering voice.
-Don't recall it. Hide it away. This is my weakness and cowardice. A prophecy that because I am weak and lacking, I will eventually give up.
Hundreds of ripples overlap and scatter. Noise creeps into the once-vivid memories.
Child God.
The Original Sin of Uncertainty.
If memories are also information, then they too possess the Original Sin of Uncertainty.
In this world, there is an inevitable error that cannot be overcome by anything. If you narrow the partitions to know its location, it bounces around here and there; if you widen the partitions, it becomes difficult to pinpoint the location instead.
Even if a god were to come, they could not know the exact location and state of something.
This is the Original Sin of Uncertainty.
It artificially amplifies that inevitable error. It buries the information in blurriness and ambiguity.
A future Demon God discovered in the ???th cycle. A different singularity reached by humanity that survived a little longer. There, Shei met the Demon God.
Shei could not learn that. It wasn't simply because she was stupid. If one were to call her stupid for failing to understand the Demon God, it would be like denouncing 99.9% of all humanity as idiots. It was just too difficult, a truth hard to grasp even intuitively.
Instead, Shei acquired it.
In the primordial age when humans were beasts, they lit fires without knowing what combustion was. They shot slingshots without knowing elasticity, and counted the seasons without knowing meteorology.
What does it matter what the Demon God is? In the end, it too depends on how it is used.
Shei engraved the Demon God's great discovery into the Cheonbangyeong. She threw herself into the error and uncertainty where even the Cheonbangyeong couldn't react. A realm that had now reached the level of laws—even the Demon God accepted it as a heavenly punishment.
However, because she hadn't fully understood the Demon God, that Demon God remains as the Child God. She could not share it with anyone.
Because of that, it was all the more perfect.
With this, the memories after the 14th cycle are sealed. Shei cannot recall them either. When she dies, she always returns to the beginning of the 14th cycle, having to overcome the apocalypse in that stupid and weak state of Shei, without even being able to love him to her heart's content.
-It can't be helped. This is my sin. After knowing Hughes, I am too weak and lacking, eventually relying on him.... Because I volunteer to be Hughes's puppet.
From that day on, Hughes closed his heart to Shei. Right after leaving Tantalos, he departed without a word.
Shei tried crying and clinging to him, and even tried binding him, but Hughes precisely exploited Shei's openings. Shei couldn't hold onto Hughes.
Even when she demanded to know why he was distancing himself, his answer changed every time. Meaning he wasn't answering sincerely.
She noticed Hughes's lies, but that was all Shei could know. Because Shei was not a mind-reader.
She even hated him, and despaired. Later, not wanting to be hurt, she didn't even go near the Abyss.
It was only much later that Shei realized his true intention.
-That's why Hughes left me.
Truth is irreversible. Because once you realize it, you can never go back to how it was before.
That was why Shei sealed her own memories.
-Repeating is fine. Because I'm used to it.
Even if it's the Original Sin of Uncertainty, it was closer to intentionally forgetting. It only popped out when the Cheonbangyeong weakened, or in a way that Shei herself didn't even realize. It wasn't perfectly the same as before.
But as long as Shei herself couldn't recall it, she wouldn't notice. Even if she vaguely caught on, if Shei's will was firm, she would stay by his side.
That was enough. As long as they could be together.
-I'm sorry to the 'me' who can't feel this emotion, and to the 'me' who will act mean to Hughes.
What was truly regrettable was Shei's emotions. The precious emotions, forged and sculpted through dozens of cycles after that, that she absolutely didn't want to forget. While hiding her memories and suppressing her emotions, she would have to watch him get hurt and die.
-But... the 'me' who lost her memories will eventually come to like him just like I do.
It will be brief anyway. Shei will fall in love just the same, and he will become precious to her. Just like the current Shei.
And by that time, that cycle too will reach its end.