Although Klein understood that the true Acting Method for a "Soothsayer" definitely involved more than such superficial things, he still could not help but feel terrified.
...Alice would not talk like this from now on, would she?!
Klein seriously imagined Alice speaking that way while dressed in a black robe. The vivid image immediately sprang to mind, and it somehow did not feel out of place at all.
Of course, in Klein's imagined image, whenever Alice's robe swayed as she walked, the floral dress she had worn on his birthday was underneath...
—She might occasionally put on an act, but she could never genuinely become like that.
They looked at each other with worried expressions. After quite a while, Alice muttered to herself:
"If only there were a living 'Soothsayer'... no, a living 'Mercury Serpent' I could ask."
A living 'Mercury Serpent'... Klein froze, instantly thinking of someone.
"Will Auceptin?"
"...First, do you think He would tell me?" Alice rolled her eyes. "Second, if you mean memories, then unfortunately, my memories are not even continuous."
Her intermittent periods of sleep and wakefulness, along with the vast stretches of time between them, had left severe gaps in Alice's memories. There was simply no way for her to sort out much useful information from them.
Being able to infer the beginning and end of things, as well as how their relationship had progressed in the end, was already the result of her utmost efforts. The Acting Method... unless Will Auceptin had been explaining the Acting Method to her in one of the fragments she remembered, it was absolutely impossible, okay?
Alice pinched her brow, glanced at Klein, and said expressionlessly, "Mr. Fool, if the Acting Method requirements for a 'Soothsayer' really are like this, then you're finished."
After dropping those words, Alice