[Insomniac (Green)]: You often have trouble sleeping at night. In exchange, your thinking ability slightly increases during nighttime. (One duck, two ducks...)
[Ichinose Honami's Self: Before each simulation begins, three talents are randomly upgraded. (Gold talents cannot be upgraded; this includes initial and fixed talents.)**
The talent [Insomniac (Green)] has been upgraded to [Night Owl (Blue)].
[Night Owl (Blue)]: You often have trouble falling asleep at night. In exchange, your thinking ability moderately increases during nighttime. (Three ducks, four ducks...)
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The day by the sea passed especially quickly. It felt like the sun had just risen, yet in the blink of an eye, it had already moved to the far end of the sky. As originally planned, Sakayanagi Arisu and Kitagawa Ryo's group decided to stay overnight at a nearby hotel and return to the hospital by car the next morning.
Since both children needed care, Chairman Sakayanagi simply booked a large room. After Arisu finished her bath, he brought Ryo into the hotel's impressively spacious bathroom.
The steamy air made the white tiles slightly slippery. The soft yellow lighting and the hotel's signature scent created a warm, comforting atmosphere. Before bringing Ryo out, Chairman Sakayanagi had already consulted nurses for proper patient care, and even though it was just one night away, he came fully prepared for emergencies.
What surprised Ryo was how practiced Chairman Sakayanagi was—his movements felt as though he had once taken care of someone before, or had worked in patient care.
But since the speech synthesizer couldn't be brought into the bath, Ryo couldn't ask about it. Instead, Chairman Sakayanagi spoke first:
"You've been the one sending emails to my inbox for the past two years, haven't you?"
"Sorry, I once looked through your bookshelf when you were asleep in the hospital. Your notes were very thorough… If Arisu finds out, she'd probably sulk for days."
Ryo understood exactly what he meant. For the past two years, he had been sending his research on congenital heart disease to Chairman Sakayanagi—not only because he had no access to other channels, but also because this was the one condition he had absolute confidence in.
Including the last simulation, Ryo had spent nearly twenty years on this endeavor. It was the first time he had ever dedicated himself so completely to a single task. Fortunately, with the help of various talents drawn during this round, he had finally discovered a clear path forward.
Seeing Ryo nod weakly, Chairman Sakayanagi couldn't help but embrace his frail body and whispered into his ear:
"Good boy… such a good child."
Though he only had a limited understanding of medicine, the chairman was deeply moved. Whether or not Ryo's data and treatment plans proved effective, his sincerity alone was worth everything.
"Arisu is truly a lucky child."
Then, perhaps swept by emotion, he added:
"It was with that same thought that her mother decided to give birth to her."
Ryo understood the implication. He may have only been twelve, but he was one of the world's most knowledgeable individuals on congenital heart disease.
Women with severe congenital heart disease are generally discouraged from childbirth. During pregnancy, blood volume increases by over 30%, and the expanding uterus compresses the diaphragm, shifting the heart and hindering circulation—putting immense strain on the heart.
During labor, contractions and maternal exertion further accelerate the heart rate. The abrupt drop in abdominal pressure following birth, coupled with the cessation of placental blood flow, drastically burdens the heart and can easily result in heart failure.
Worse still, the newborn carries a high risk of inheriting the same condition.
"It's like a cycle of suffering," the chairman said softly.
That was the very phrase a doctor once used to dissuade them, and reality had proved it right: the worst-case scenario had descended upon their family.
"Truthfully, Arisu's mother wasn't the heroic, unshakable figure Arisu imagines her to be," he murmured, caught in memory.
"Near delivery, she constantly worried whether the child would inherit her condition. She developed severe prenatal depression."
"She couldn't sleep for nights on end, gripped by irrational anxiety."
"One night, I woke up and found her missing. I rushed out and saw her asleep in a chair, curled up against a wall."
"Back then, I often cared for her—she didn't want to stay in the hospital."
As he spoke, he gently turned Ryo over and wiped his back with a towel.
"Compared to her, you're terribly thin."
"She used to ask if she was too fat or too ugly, and I'd always say it didn't matter—only I could see her anyway. If she wasn't happy, I'd just hold her until she was."
"Human beings need physical contact to understand warmth. That's something very important. Skin-to-skin warmth is never a bad thing."
"It was during that time that I finally understood that truth."
He fell silent.
Both he and Ryo knew what happened afterward. According to Arisu's pessimistic view, her birth had ruined the lives of three people—her mother's, her father's, and her own.
"The name Arisu was chosen in advance by her mother—Alice."
"Before she was even born, her mother had already read her the storybook."
"The message she wanted to give Arisu was hidden in the last paragraph of that story."
With his "Eidetic Memory" talent, Ryo instantly recalled the final lines of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. At the same time, Chairman Sakayanagi softly recited it—with a slight variation:
"And she would grow up to be a girl, a lover, a wife, just like her mother. May Arisu forever retain the pure, cherished heart of her childhood; may she one day enchant her own children with many strange tales—perhaps ones inspired by this very Wonderland. May their eyes shine ever brighter. And may she share Arisu's pure troubles, which once belonged to her own past… A pleasant memory of a summer day. Arisu was born of the finest parents, the finest child of all."
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Kitagawa Ryo couldn't sleep.
Part of it was due to the effect of the [Night Owl] talent. It had been useful in the past few years when he still had the strength to conduct nightly research. But now, as his body slowly failed him, it brought nothing but endless torment, night after night.
Like grains of sand in an hourglass, sleep had gradually drained away.
The pitch-black night felt no different from the day—just dyed in a different color. Staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, Ryo felt time lose its shape, liquefying and submerging him like amber.
His thoughts wandered back to the things Chairman Sakayanagi had said in the bathroom. Perhaps it was because the man had bottled everything up for too long, or perhaps he saw in Ryo the same qualities he had seen in Arisu's mother. Either way, the words had poured out all at once.
As a single father, the man had already done everything he could.
Sakayanagi Arisu—Ryo found it difficult to describe whether she had flaws in the traditional sense. With a strange, almost pathological clarity, he began to reconstruct everything he knew about her.
Eventually, he realized it wasn't about flaws—it was about absence.
Absence in her body. Absence in her family. Absence in her social life.
And absence bred repression.
This was why Arisu sometimes fixated so strongly on a person or object—pouring all her repressed emotions into that single outlet like a dam bursting.
She had experienced being loved far too much.
And now, she needed someone to love.
Ryo recalled all the simulations he'd run involving Sakayanagi Arisu. She had always displayed an unusual possessiveness—not necessarily in its intensity, but in its origin.
Her motivations often seemed unconvincing.
For instance, in reality, her reason for approaching Ryo had been to defeat Ayanokouji Kiyotaka from the White Room. Yet, her actual interaction with Ayanokouji had been limited to a distant gaze through one-way glass at the age of seven. They had never even spoken.
Ryo sometimes wondered: if he didn't exist, would Arisu have waited until high school at the Advanced Nurturing High School in Tokyo to finally face Ayanokouji?
He turned his head toward the other bed. To his surprise, Arisu was still awake, staring blankly into space, as though fixated on something invisible.
But he couldn't speak. His glasses had been taken off and left on the nightstand. Even a mere ten centimeters might as well have been an unbridgeable chasm.
"..."
He could only look at her, powerless to say a word.
Every inch of his body felt dull, submerged in pain too faint to register, yet too deep to ignore. Even if he couldn't feel the pain, he knew every organ, every crumbling piece of him was screaming.
Illness was bearable—if you were alone in the world.
Or if everyone else was sick too.
In that moment, he finally understood a part of Arisu's mindset.
To him, Arisu—who could still move freely—was healthy. But to Arisu, even the classmates she despised like Yamauchi or Ike were people to envy.
But this feeling couldn't be spoken.
It couldn't even be thought about. It couldn't become language. If it did, it would cease to be what it was.
It lived only in two places: the heart and the grave.
Ryo's breathing suddenly quickened, as though a taut string had finally snapped. Darkness swallowed him whole.
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Kitagawa Ryo was rushed to the intensive care unit.
Sakayanagi Arisu followed the nurse in a daze into the hospital room where Ryo had lived for five years—a room she knew too well.
ALS was not a common illness. There was no such thing as "recovering and moving back in." Everyone, including the doctors, nurses, and even Arisu herself, knew what lay ahead: the cruelest possible outcome.
She had come today to gather important belongings, preparing to slowly return the room to its original form. Soon, it would become a high-grade hospital room for the next patient.
Her mind felt chaotic. Before she realized it, everything had already fallen into disarray.
Sakayanagi Arisu's mind kept flashing back to the words she'd overheard from her father outside the bathroom that day.
She walked straight to the massive bookshelf she had given Ryo—almost comically large.
From it, she pulled out a thick notebook filled with densely packed analyses and treatment plans—all about congenital heart disease.
She turned a page. Tucked inside was a thick greeting card.
The motion of flipping the page disturbed something inside it. A faint jingle sounded.
Für Elise.
"I'll cure Ryo's illness."
The handwriting was hers, written three years ago.
Something welled up in her deep violet eyes—too much to hold back.
And finally, it spilled over.
Sunlight streamed into the room in fragmented rays.
Though there was no wind, she could hear faint, echoing chimes.
Like countless muffled little bells all ringing at once.
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