The Matter of Being Found and Adopted by Talula

Only now did Orson notice that both his hands had been tied to a post in the ground, leaving him unable to move. And he was not alone. Behind the dim lantern sat a figure he found incredibly familiar.

Talula...

The villainous boss from Arknights, a terrifying existence capable of melting an entire street with ease.

"Um, I—ugh!?"

Orson had only just started to say Talula's name when, before any sound could leave his mouth, an excruciating headache suddenly surged through him, followed by nausea and the urge to vomit.

"Cough, cough... What is going on? Where am I?"

After the explosive headache subsided, Orson barely managed to question Talula, who was dressed in a stiff, military-style uniform.

"If you are pretending to have amnesia, you had better make it more convincing."

Talula replied coldly, making it clear that she wanted Orson to drop the act.

Pretending to have amnesia...? What was that supposed to mean?

Just as he stood there confused and unable to make sense of the situation, Orson suddenly remembered.

There was no stench of decay, yet the space had been suffocating. His numb body, everything swallowed by darkness, the girl who had died in his arms, a convergence of some chaotic emotion, and darkness... darkness?

Orson frowned. When he had cursed his own weakness and faced imminent death, he had felt as though some part of his body had been torn away.

Had that been something real... or just another hallucination?

"You seem genuinely shaken and bewildered, so let me fill in some details. When I found you, you were sitting in the center of the village. Around you were ruins and corpses sliced apart by something. Can you remember what happened in that village now?"

"Sliced apart... what do you mean, sliced apart? I do not know anything about that... I was locked in a barn for maybe five or six days, or seven or eight... Damn it, I do not know exactly how long. Anyway, I was about to die, and those Infected were even trying to gnaw on one another just to survive. I was because of... no, I do not know whether that was a hallucination, but I do not know what happened to the village itself... Urgh!"

The explosive pain struck again. Orson, completely out of the loop, had no idea what had happened to that village.

Orson still wanted to explain, but before he could finish, an icy wind suddenly blew in through the opened tent flap. A woman in a white coat entered the tent, with long white hair and a pair of striking rabbit ears.

An illustration is available here and can be viewed after updating.

Orson remembered this girl well too—the captain of the Abyssal Hunters, the Infected rabbit known as FrostNova, the conscience of Reunion, who would later die in Lungmen. One of Orson's wives.

"I saw what happened to that village, Talula. Even the ghosts of the tundra from legend could not have done something like that. It would be best to eliminate this unstable existence."

"W-wait...!?"

He had just met wife number two, yet the first thing she said was that she wanted him dead.

"That is a reasonable suggestion."

Talula did not object to FrostNova's proposal. As the center of the conversation, Orson could only stare helplessly and confusedly from where he was tied to the post.

These "wives" from the game he knew were now standing before him in the flesh, but they were discussing how to kill him, this "strange survivor."

This was nothing like the transmigration stories he remembered!

"I want to ask you a question. I hope you will answer honestly."

After several seconds of silence, Talula spoke to Orson. Naturally, he immediately nodded, indicating that he would cooperate with whatever she asked. He practically wanted to confess every last one of his fetishes.

"When we found you, the granaries in those villages were piled full of Infected corpses. Unlike the other villagers' bodies, which had been cut to pieces, those Infected had bite marks but had not been sliced apart. Their bodies were relatively intact. And when I found you, you were holding the only girl without a single wound in your arms. Who was she to you?"

Talula looked at Orson. Her black eyes carried an oppressive force no girl her age should have possessed.

"That girl... I had no relationship with that child. The only connection between us was that I witnessed her death with my own eyes. She stopped breathing in my arms. I could not accept that fact, and I could not accept that all I could do was watch it happen. That was not how people should die!"

Orson blurted out everything in his heart in one breath.

"But that is the ending we Infected are supposed to receive in the eyes of others. You are Infected too. You should understand that."

"Wha... Infected? Me?"

Orson froze. The word he heard from Talula hit him like a blow to the head.

Before being transported here, Orson had always thought "the Infected" merely referred to a disease that gave pretty girls some markings more in line with his tastes. He had never thought it was anything serious.

But during his time at the farm, he had seen the end awaiting the Infected—losing all five senses, coughing blood, their entire bodies becoming covered in stone. In the end, even their corpses could not remain whole. They received no gravestones, no mourners. People only waited for the contamination to fade before smashing the bodies apart to search for Originium.

"So you only recently became Infected? Then learn to understand. Understand the suffering borne by those people you once watched from the sidelines."

Talula noticed Orson's agitation and quickly realized that this young man might have still been a "normal person" not long ago.

Faced with Talula's cold "mockery," Orson did not become angry or complain. After a brief period of confusion, he could only accept the fact.

"I... I think the Infected should receive special care and management. But I have never believed they should be discriminated against or persecuted."

Orson lowered his head and spoke quietly. His words made Talula turn her gaze back to him.

"Being infected with Oripathy has nothing to do with a person's character, beliefs, or race. It is merely a matter of birth and luck. I have never believed that turning one's birth or luck into a reason for discrimination and unequal treatment was right!"

"..."

Talula fell silent for a moment before asking her next question.

"What do you think you can provide to the Guerrilla Force?"

"Talula, are you planning to—"

FrostNova looked at Talula in surprise.

"Let us hear his answer first."

Orson had never imagined he would meet his "wives" this way. With his mind a complete mess, he realized that Talula's words might be an opportunity—an opportunity to stay alive.

"I... I can provide—uh..."

Never in his more than twenty years of life had Orson hated being useless as much as he did now.

"I—right! I can perform Guo Degang's crosstalk routines!!"

Ah, it was over. He was definitely dead.

Ten-second countdown: cut the red wire or the blue wire. Yet with his brain about to burn out, Orson chose to "trim his nails."

But in the face of that utterly absurd answer, Talula merely frowned slightly and asked her final question.

"Have I met you before? Why did you call me 'wife'?"

"—"

Orson's face turned scarlet. He wished Talula would just put him out of his misery.

The Princess in the Dream

"I survived..."

In an inconspicuous camp amid a world of ice and snow, Orson sat blankly on a tree stump, staring dazedly and confusedly at the blue sky and white clouds.

His hands were bound together by chained handcuffs, while a thick circular iron collar sat around his neck. Supposedly, it could melt his head off with ease.

Though Orson now looked like some garlic-headed man who had failed to snap his chains, or a death-row prisoner about to be dragged to the market for execution, he had at least survived.

"I cannot remember how I answered that last question at all..."

Because his "overwhelming embarrassment self-defense mechanism" had activated, Orson had forgotten how he answered the question, "What does it feel like to be called someone's wife upon meeting them for the first time?" while FrostNova and Talula stared at him.

Judging from the outcome, Talula had not turned him into a matchstick and lit him up, nor had she chopped off his head with her sword. So he had barely... made it through the crisis?

Orson had never imagined meeting the girls from the game in this way.

Normally, the standard transmigration plot was for a girl to fall into danger and for him to make a dashing entrance. Instead, the girls made a dashing entrance and discussed whether to kill him.

But then again, where exactly was he in Arknights' timeline?

After his peaceful daily life was shattered, after being dragged into a grave of despair, surviving by sheer luck, being saved by Talula, and fighting for the chance to live, Orson finally had a chance to think through his situation as he rested briefly on the tree stump.

Although they had not spent long together, Orson could somehow sense a strange incongruity during his encounter with Talula and FrostNova.

It felt as though these two Reunion leaders were different from how he remembered them.

Orson lowered his head and thought deeply, trying to first erase his own unbearably awkward answers before finding the source of that feeling.

Was it their appearances? Talula did seem much gentler-looking than he remembered, while FrostNova had not changed much.

Was it their personalities? Talula had not spoken in any deliberately cryptic riddles during their conversation, while FrostNova was reliably cold as ice.

Was it their clothes? Talula's overly proper-looking military uniform was stylish, but it seemed completely out of place among the surrounding Infected. FrostNova's outfit, on the other hand, was exactly as he remembered aside from its faded color... Wait, faded color!

Orson thought of something. He got up from the tree stump and looked around the settlement, confirming his suspicion.

Neither Talula, FrostNova, nor the other Infected wore that black-and-red Reunion symbol, the one that was practically embedded in their DNA.

"I quit after finishing Chapter Seven. Chapter Eight was supposed to be coming out, but I got dragged to this godforsaken place to dig potatoes before I could play it. So this is the story afterward? No, FrostNova, she..."

Orson muttered as he sorted through the situation.

FrostNova was still alive, so the timeline had to be before Chapter Six. It could not be any point between Chapters One and Seven either.

"Maybe Reunion did not fall apart yet, but rather... it had not even been founded?"

There was also Talula. By Chapter Seven, she had been practically insane. Not only had she plotted against every companion around her, she had even planned to unleash Chernobog and ram it into the black, high-class Lungmen. Her death count had to be at least five digits.

Though he had not been conscious at the time, he had called that war-crazed lunatic who abandoned even her own comrades "wife." Did that mean he was secretly just a face-con?

Orson pondered for two seconds.

"Well, all men are face-cons!"

Then he suddenly smiled in relief.

Although he had sorted out some of the situation, he was still desperately short on information. Talula had not specifically told him what to do, so he might as well wander around nearby.

Orson got up and began strolling around the camp. After only a few steps, he encountered several Infected soldiers. These Infected, wrapped in clothes and strips of cloth, were chopping firewood.

"Whether they are Infected or ordinary people, the things they need to do to survive are pretty much the same."

Orson once again understood that whether one was Infected or an ordinary person, they all needed fire, warmth, and shelter to survive. There was no difference in that regard.

"Hm? You are... Oh, you are the survivor Talula found in the village, right? Why are you restrained?"

The Infected soldiers noticed Orson's arrival. They looked curiously at the unremarkable young man dragging handcuffs behind him, supposedly a survivor.

"I... Uh, my current situation is a bit complicated? I am not sure whether these are precautionary restraints, or whether I got cuffed because I sexually harassed your boss."

"?"

Orson's explanation left the Infected with question marks all over their faces.

"Are you really a complete idiot?"

FrostNova's voice suddenly came from behind him. Orson turned and discovered that the white rabbit had arrived at some point, though he had not heard her footsteps at all.

Jokes aside, FrostNova was supposedly absurdly light. It seemed that was true.

"FrostNova, the Abyssal Hunters were looking for you. They said the process from the last battle with the Enforcement Team could be optimized."

"Understood. Thank you for informing me."

FrostNova walked over to the firewood pile and picked up several logs, giving Orson another glance in passing.

"Just behave yourself. We do not have the spare manpower or energy to determine your stance or nature. Talula may not wish to eliminate you, the sole survivor, but I do not mind."

"..."

After delivering her threat, FrostNova turned to leave. But then Orson opened his mouth.

"Miss FrostNova—"

"?"

FrostNova stopped walking and looked at Orson with a frown.

"Um... It is good to meet you."

"..."

FrostNova remained silent and did not respond. She simply walked straight toward another tent some distance away.

Please take care of yourself and live well.

Orson did not say the rest aloud.

Given their current positions, FrostNova was probably someone he needed to "treat carefully." But being able to personally see Snow Rabbit alive still made Orson very... happy.

After helping chop a few pieces of firewood, Orson continued wandering around. When he reached the most remote corner of the settlement, he suddenly sensed some kind of melody