What even was all this...
No wonder you, Ash, thought everyone was so hung up on you that they couldn't get motivated. You'd gone way overboard grinding affection points yourself!
"Still, sorry about this. Starting now, I'm going to muddy up your sweet dreams."
As he spoke, Kain poured all his strength into turning the dial on the Mirage Mirror through its final rotation. The incomparably beautiful dreams on the screen became vortex-like scenes, gradually twisting out of shape.
"Eh—where is this?"
Just a moment ago, they had been happily living carefree lives with Ash. In the blink of an eye, they found themselves on an incredibly flat plain, surrounded by seas of flowers matching their respective colors, yet the place seemed profoundly lonely.
The girls stared blankly at everything before them. There was neither sun nor moon here, only a figure stepping over petals as it approached from beyond the horizon.
"You are—"
Once they saw the distant figure clearly, their pupils contracted sharply in shock. Because that person was—
"That's right."
Humanoid figures who looked exactly like Itsuki, Erika, and Yuri in appearance and build, but differed completely in their cold expressions and white lab coats, walked up before them. It was as though a full-length mirror had been placed before them, reflecting another side of their true selves.
"I am—you."
"This is the final trial of the Heartbreak Mirage Mirror. It seems someone activated the mirror's power and reconstructed your dreams into this testing ground."
The other girls standing before them calmly explained the mechanism to their originals.
"The final trial is defeating ourselves?" The quick-witted Itsuki and Yuri had already more or less guessed what they meant, but their counterparts shook their heads and corrected them.
"I am indeed you, but I am the 'shadow you.'