"Are you... sure this isn't fabricated knowledge?"
Rabbit Girl had just opened her mouth when the words froze on her lips.
Because Artistic Self's form was beginning to turn into drifting specks of light from its edges.
She seemed to have noticed the change herself. Lowering her head, she looked at her gradually transparent hands.
"So... my time has come."
Her expression was initially tinged with confusion, but as her body continued to "turn into light," it gradually became one of relief.
She raised her head and looked Rabbit Girl straight in the eye, speaking in that ethereal voice as before:
"Even now, my mind still believes that you are me, and I am you."
"It is like a brand stamped into my thoughts, impossible to erase."
"...But at this final moment, I still want to ask you." Her voice was as soft as a distant sigh. "Have you ever, even for an instant, felt that I was myself, and you were yourself?"
The motes of light scattered faster, and her outline grew ever hazier, as though she might melt into the void at any moment. Yet there was not a trace of fear toward annihilation in her eyes—only a pure, almost stubborn expectation.
Rabbit Girl gazed at her and softly asked in return, "Is... that important?"
"The brand in my mind tells me that it is not important." Artistic Self's voice became increasingly faint and drifting, yet every word remained clear. "But the art I represent tells me that it is."
"What art seeks is nothing more than freedom... freedom that transcends every shackle."
She paused, and her final words carried a force that pierced straight through the soul:
"And freedom requires an independent soul."
The instant her words fell, her figure scattered completely like drifting fireflies, becoming countless