The clubroom door closed behind him with a quiet click.
Soren bent down at the entrance, unfastened his boots and toed them off, leaving them neatly by the wall.
His shoulders relaxed slightly as the familiar atmosphere of the clubroom washed over him.
He walked past the dining room and paused for a second.
A thin strip of light spilt out from beneath one of the interior doors, the room Lev had claimed.
Soren smiled faintly.
"He's working hard."
He imagined Lev sitting at a cluttered table, dark circles under his eyes, hair a mess, surrounded by tubes, vials, and tools, muttering to himself about formulas and concentration, forgetting that sleep existed.
It was strangely reassuring.
At least someone was being consistent.
Soren moved on, stepped into the kitchen, and grabbed a clean wine glass from the cupboard.
With that in hand, he went to the living room and flopped down onto one end of the sofa with a sigh.
The room was dim, lit only by the mana lamp on the side table and the sliver of moonlight trickling in through the curtains.
Soren reached into his inventory and pulled out one of the wine bottles.
The cork came out with a loud pop that echoed too clearly in the quiet room.
He poured the deep red liquid into the glass until it was almost full, then lifted it to his lips and took a slow drink.
His brows furrowed.
"...Sweet."
Far too sweet, like someone had drowned the grapes in sugar out of spite.
Well, he had asked for whatever, and the barkeep had obliged.
Cheapest wine, cheapest taste.
Soren let out a small sigh and took another sip anyway.
He didn't really care how it tasted.
He just felt like drinking.
It was as simple, and as stupid, as that.
The wine burned faintly as it slid down his throat, warming his chest in a way that had nothing to do with comfort.
"Why me?" he murmured into the silent room.
The words slipped out before he could stop them.
He set the glass on the table, leaned back into the sofa, and stared up at the ceiling.
He wondered, not for the first time, what he had done to deserve this kind of repetition.
On earth, his family had been trash, to put it kindly.
He had spent years trying to get them to look at him properly, to treat him like their son rather than a spare who never measured up.
They never had.
Every achievement was weighed against his sister's.
Every effort he made was dismissed as "not enough."
He remembered standing in the hallway of their cramped apartment, suitcase in hand, shoes lined up at the door, as his parents watched him from the living room.
He remembered the way his father had smirked, as if he were humouring a child.
– You'll crawl back in a month.
His mother had just clicked her tongue and told him not to embarrass them.
They hadn't believed he could survive on his own.
He remembered moving into Aria's place.
The relief of having somewhere to go.
The guilty gratitude when she had told him to treat the apartment as his own.
He remembered the first time he had been paid properly for a modelling job, more in a single cheque than his father made in months.
He had been happy, stupidly so.
He had thought, for a moment, that this would finally be it.
Proof.
Proof that he could do something.
Proof that he wasn't useless.
He had gone home, showed them, and told them he was doing well.
His father had glanced at the amount and clicked his tongue.
– It's only temporary. That kind of work never lasts.
His mother had shrugged and gone back to doing chores.
Even when he made more than his father, even when he stood in front of cameras and magazines, even when people, strangers, called him beautiful, his parents never acknowledged him.
They looked down on him to the very end.
He took another drink.
The wine tasted worse the more he thought.
In the end, he had never been able to change anything back there.
All he had ever wanted back then was for his family to finally treat him like their son, to acknowledge his efforts, but they never did.
His memories of the last few days before he transmigrated were foggy now, but he could still clearly see their faces.
The contempt.
The boredom.
The way his sister's voice had dripped with mockery whenever she spoke to him.
He laughed quietly.
It came out bitter.
Then, after dealing with all of that, he had opened his eyes here.
In Ivansia.
Inside his favourite game of all time.
At first, he had thought it was some kind of reward.
A second chance in a world he already knew.
A place where he could live a comfortable life if he just stayed out of the way.
He could watch the characters he loved from a distance, enjoy the story as an observer, maybe nudge things slightly if he wanted to.
That had been the dream.
But this world didn't care about his daydreams.
Not only had he been dragged into event after event against his will, but he had ended up in a body with another awful family attached.
The Arden family.
Those first two weeks of summer break at the Arden estate had hurt more than he had expected.
He had told himself it was fine.
That they weren't really his parents.
That it wasn't really his sister.
That their cruelty didn't matter because the original Soren was already gone.
He had pretended that the things they said and did brushed right off him.
But that wasn't true.
Every word.
Every look.
Every dismissal.
It all dug into places that already had matching scars.
And then there was the stranger part.
Every time he interacted with something related to the original Soren, places, objects, people, his own thoughts and emotions became… clouded.
At first, he had just thought it was weird.
An immersion effect.
Something to help him get used to the world.
He didn't hate it; in some ways, it made things easier to play along with.
But it had started happening more and more.
And today, with Freya's diary, it had gone beyond "weird."
He hadn't just sympathised.
He hadn't just understood.
His own mind hadn't felt fully under his control.
His hands had moved automatically.
His thoughts had taken paths he hadn't chosen.
His emotions had spiked in ways that didn't feel entirely like his own.
If he had to describe it…
"It's like I'm sharing a body with someone else," he muttered.
The wine glass reflected his face back at him, warped by the curve of the glass and the dark redness inside.
He stared.
White hair that shimmered even under this weak light.
Red eyes, unnaturally bright.
Pale skin without a single blemish.
Two small beauty marks, one beneath his mouth, one beneath his eye.
None of it was his.
Not from birth.
Not originally.
On Earth, his hair had been black.
His eyes had been an ordinary shade of green
His skin had more colour..
His face had been… his.
The face staring back at him now was Soren Arden's.
The original one.
The one that had learned to smile while being slowly broken.
The one that had looked at Freya with that kind, hollow gaze she wrote about.
And yet…
"It's starting to feel like mine," he whispered.
That was the part that scared him.
If it were just that his soul had been put into another body, that would be one thing.
He could live with that.
But when he thought about how his feelings reacted when he saw the Arden estate, when he stepped into Freya's old room, when he read her diary…
It didn't feel like simple empathy.
It felt like two sets of memories and emotions overlapping.
His own life.
Soren Arden's life.
Layered atop one another, blending at the edges.
What if he stayed here long enough and stopped being able to tell where one ended and the other began?
What if, one day, he woke up and there was nothing of "Isaac" left?
Just "Soren Arden."
"No…"
He didn't want that.
He didn't want to disappear.
But at the same time…
He didn't want to go back to Earth either.
His family there hated him.
His only friend, Aria, was dead.
He had no job, no home.
The only thing he had left at the end was ❰The Knight of Stellaris❱.
And even that had been scheduled to end service.
He took another drink.
"I just wish I knew what was going on…"
Why he was brought here?
Why did he keep getting pulled toward the "main story" no matter how he tried to sidestep it?
Why did his thoughts slip away from him whenever the original Soren's past came up?
But there was no one who could answer him.
The gods?
They weren't talking.
His memories of the moment of transmigration were foggy, like someone had smeared ink over that part of his brain.
He could recall fragments, tiredness, a dull ache in his chest, the notification about the game ending, but nothing concrete.
By the time he noticed it, his glass was empty.
He blinked, looked at it, then reached for the bottle and poured more.
When he checked again after a while, that first bottle was finished.
Then the second.
By the time he came back to himself properly, three bottles lay on their sides on the table, all empty, while he had just started on the fourth.
He tilted the fourth bottle, watched the red liquid fill his glass, then swallowed another mouthful.
For some reason, he had always been a heavy drinker.
On Earth, it had been a problem more than once.
Here, his body was stronger, his tolerance higher.
He could drink a stupid amount without passing out.
It was another thing he hated about himself.
He let out a quiet laugh, one that carried no real humour, and took another sip.
"Well, what can I do?" he asked, to no one in particular.
Nothing.
That was the truth.
Even if he decided he wanted to avoid anything related to Soren's past, he couldn't.
He didn't know what counted as "the past" until it was already in front of him.
Even if he wanted to stay out of the story, the relationships he had built, the choices he had made thus far, had already dragged him into the centre of the board.
Lilliana.
Amelia.
Louise.
Olivia.
Esper.
Felix.
Alex.
Lev.
He had tied himself to them.
And they had tied themselves to him.
There was no such thing as "watching from the sidelines" anymore.
And even if he wanted to find out the reason he had come here, there were no leads.
The system gave him quests, sure, but it didn't give him answers.
So, in the end, all he could do was what he had always done.
Keep moving.
Keep surviving.
Maybe he would lose himself along the way.
Maybe he would never know why he had been dragged into this.
But right now, the only thing that mattered was staying alive.
Himself.
And the people he cared about.
If he could protect that much, then…
"...That's enough."
He raised the glass again.
The room was warm now.
His cheeks felt faintly hot.
When he brushed his fingers across them, they came away tinged with a light pink.
"Did I drink too much?"
He glanced at the table in front of him.
One, two, three, four…
Five, six.
Six empty bottles lay on their sides, labels turned at odd angles, like they were looking back at him in judgment.
His head felt heavy, like someone had draped a thick blanket over his thoughts; his eyelids wanted to fall shut on their own.
But that heaviness brought with it a familiar comfort.
It dulled the sharper edges.
The ache in his chest, the burning tightness in his throat, the weight of Freya's last words, all of it faded to a low hum in the background.
The bad memories blurred.
The anxiety about the future softened.
It was cowardly.
He knew that.
He knew he was just using alcohol to run away, even if it was just for a night.
But right now, he didn't have the energy to fight that habit, too.
He leaned back into the sofa, letting his head rest against the cushion, the glass dangling loosely from his fingers until he remembered to set it down on the table.
His eyes drifted toward the ceiling again.
"It'll be fine," he muttered to himself.
He wasn't sure who he was trying to convince.
Maybe Freya.
Maybe himself.
Maybe the other soul tangled with his.
His vision blurred around the edges as sleep crept up on him, slow and heavy.
He closed his eyes.
The warmth of the alcohol, the softness of the sofa, the faint ticking of the clock, and the distant quiet of the academy at night wrapped around him like a blanket.
Within a few breaths, his consciousness slipped away, taking his worries with it.
At least for a little while.
————「❤︎」————