Ryusuke Muryōtō
"You'll see your mom and dad soon, Elinoya."
This is the end of the dream. The vision then often turns to darkness, with only the sounds of swallowing and chewing to be heard. Finally, the nun's inhuman face comes into view. She smiles and dissolves into fine dust, and the entire facility collapses with a crash.
Himeko's consciousness thus regained control of her body. In a daze, she looked at the paper report of the Chibbinorton Lake District. This reality and the dream that should have been an illusion intertwined, making it increasingly difficult for her to distinguish what was false. Only this bloody death was so certain, allowing no room for argument or doubt.
The woman took a sip of water from her glass, her Amber eyes lowered. With her slender fingers, she removed the hair ornament from her red hair and examined the delicate silver jewelry. Her soft skin rubbed against the patterns etched on the back, her expression wistful.
Happy 10th birthday, Elinoya.
These words, which I had commissioned from a jewelry store not long ago, have now become my final, poignant tribute.
Himeko slowly closed her fingers, feeling the coldness of the hair ornament, and murmured softly:
"Honkai..."
When will this finally come to an end?
It is precisely because she wants to see that future that she has been able to fight until now without showing the slightest weakness.
However, the orphanage incident still carved out a tiny hole in her heart, and the recurring dreams that lasted for a week repeatedly took advantage of this vulnerability, relentlessly pressuring this flaw, leading to her current mental breakdown.
The soldier's will gradually revealed itself, like the cracked surface of a mirror, to the cement wall beneath.
Chaotic, disorderly, and ugly thoughts seep into Himeko's consciousness, attempting to erase the path and ideals she has always firmly pursued.
This was naturally the work left behind by the missionary that day, but she naturally understood that such distortion and rewriting could not correct Himeko's thinking into the required posture.
The real trump card lies in a carefully crafted instruction.
The woman frowned subconsciously, feeling the phantom pain in her brain and the throbbing in her temples, and glanced at a number in her contacts.
This was a growing pain that Himeko was gradually getting used to. After applying for several physical and psychological tests without getting a definite conclusion, she suspected that there might be a problem with part of her mental health.
Lately, inexplicable thoughts have been constantly stimulating her nerves and pressuring her mind, lingering in her subconscious and providing Himeko with information that is a mixture of falsehood and truth, attempting to weave a lie that she can firmly believe.
This lie was so absurd and ridiculous that even a weak and ignorant teenager would easily believe it to be a lie, let alone a warrior with a tempered will.
However, under the preconditions of continuous hypnosis, brainwashing, cognitive modification, confusion between false and real memories, and a state of neurasthenia, Himeko is forced to gradually sink into this absurd information created by false memories, deliberate inducement, and malicious coercion.
Ryusuke Muryōtō is dead.
The scientist who should be leading the research project on the Mu Continent now, the kind yet sometimes stern father, actually disappeared during the Great Honkai.
This is the ideological imprint that missionaries painstakingly tried to give.
But how could Himeko agree? Her father's number was still in her contacts, and his social media account had recently been updated with an analysis paper on the ecology of Honkai Beast.
The authorship date on the paper was only half a month ago, and the exact date of subsequent publications could even be found on the researcher's forum platform.
Less than three weeks ago, the two had a phone call that lasted no more than fifteen minutes. The topics and the tone of their conversations were still vivid in their memories. All of this was proof that the other person was still alive.
This was clearly an absurd lie and illusion, yet Himeko ridiculously couldn't shake off this delusion from her mind. The idea that the other person had long since disappeared, or even died, kept swirling in her head, and she involuntarily developed a sense of trust in it.
Even though this trust seems so fragile and vulnerable, it clings to consciousness like a leech, like a comical yet indispensable clown in a circus, openly hidden in the heart, as if bowing and smiling radiantly to the sea of people in the audience.
False memories and real memories intertwine to form an indistinguishable picture. On one hand, her mind contains memories of every detail of Ryusuke Muryōtō's disappearance during the Great Honkai.
For example, on that day, Ryusuke Muryōtō was conducting sampling experiments in the Congo Basin in Africa. His planned itinerary for the next day was to travel to the Mu Continent to attend an academic seminar, but disaster struck when his phone became unreachable at the same time.
Busy organizing rescue and counterattack plans, Himeko had no time to worry about her family. In fact, to prevent herself from having any factors that would affect her rationality and composure, she deliberately did not inquire about her father's condition.
It wasn't until things had somewhat calmed down that Himeko learned that the base built inside the basin had been reduced to rubble by the Honkai Beast horde.
The so-called disappearance is just a euphemism. According to the last surveillance footage, the father was working inside the research institute at the time and had no time to react.
The reason why no remains could be found is simple: it is rare for identifiable remains to be left after an attack by Honkai Energy tides and Honkai Beast.
On the other hand, Himeko could clearly remember that day when her father was invited to be the person in charge and leader of a project in Haiyuan City. The Honkai Energy vortex failed to sweep over the city located at sea, allowing Ryusuke Muryōtō, who was not qualified in Honkai Energy, to still survive.
From a realistic perspective, Himeko used her own information channels and resources to review the data from that day in another form. After confirming that her memory of her father not being dead was consistent with reality, Himeko still couldn't pull herself out of this strange and nonsensical thought.
She gradually came to believe in her father's death and felt grief over it, even questioning whether the information she saw and heard was erroneous due to mental health issues.
The missionary's approach was clever; she understood Himeko's weaknesses and also knew that mere "bewitchment" could not destroy her will.
However, self-doubt, self-torture, self-condemnation, and other internal mental contradictions are the best ways to erode one's will.
Slow, gradual, and extremely destructive.
Himeko put the hair accessory in the cabinet, looked at the documents on the table, took a deep breath, and sipped her coffee. Just as she was about to continue working, she suddenly realized that the contents of her cup should have been water.
The woman gazed at the coffee in the mug, its color a neutral, slightly warm hue. Her Amber eyes were indistinct as the steam rose from the rim of the cup. She remained silent for a very long time.
Himeko now understands that even for the sake of her teammates and her job, she cannot ignore her current obvious mental state. If she continues in this negative state, she will inevitably make a major mistake at a crucial moment.
As a former researcher, Himeko is accustomed to thinking about the problems she is currently facing from a scientific perspective.
First and foremost, without a doubt, two completely different memories of his father surfaced in his mind.
This phenomenon is somewhat similar to false memory.
In other words, the automatic combination of information stored in the brain can lead to the creation of false memories that do not reflect reality.
Theoretically speaking, everyone's brain can generate false memories or distort the true nature of things.
People may have unwavering faith in their memories, and even believe the lies their brains create. This is not a pathological process; in fact, it can be said that everyone has false memories, especially those of scenes they personally experienced in childhood. It is normal for these memories to deviate from or even distort the facts.
The simplest example is that the testimony of eyewitnesses at a crime scene is not always reliable. Although the witness may believe that this is what he saw, the confusion of contextual information often leads to wrong identification of the perpetrator or wrong description of the scene.
The fundamental reason why humans can readily believe false memories is that the medial temporal lobe of the brain makes memories more vivid and lifelike through rich, specific details.
For example, when you recall a past Sunday, you might remember who your friends were, the afternoon movie you watched, the movie's content, the sweetness of the popcorn, even the flat cola and the bus that seemed to never come.
Such rich additional details will instill confidence in the authenticity of the memory.
However, with the current level of scientific and technological development, it is not difficult to distinguish whether a memory is false. By using diffusion tensor imaging, a diagnostic technique similar to magnetic resonance imaging, a conclusion can be drawn in a short time.
The reason is that the parts of the brain involved in creating false memories are different from the parts that store real memories; it relies on the activity of white matter connecting the hippocampus and the anterior hippocampal gyrus to store real memories.
Neurons connect to each other via axons, and nerve fibers formed by axonal bundles connect different parts of the brain.
If we consider the axon as the wire that transmits electricity to a household, then the white matter is like the high-voltage cable that connects a city to a power plant.
The detected brain images clearly show real and false memories cycling on different "high-voltage cables".
Unfortunately, the situation I faced was similar but completely different. The two parallel memories themselves could reveal a lot, not to mention that the self-examination reports had not mentioned anything unusual.
Frankly, as a former researcher, Himeko had come up with a variety of similar and even more complex hypotheses for himself over the past week, but in the end, none of them could be fully established.
Himeko struggled to answer her own questions with her existing knowledge. She couldn't understand the kind of predicament she was facing, nor could she comprehend why this predicament had coincidentally arisen after the Chibbinorton Lake District incident.
That nightmare was the cause of everything. Whether it was mental decline, memory loss, or even cognitive errors, they all gradually sprouted in the recurring dreams, accumulating little by little until they became so serious that they could no longer be ignored.
This is the only clue that can hold onto the physical object, which is why Himeko is so keen to investigate this incident repeatedly. Apart from the content of the dream itself and the lingering emotions in her chest, the key reason lies in this.
She revisited the second investigation report on the Chibbinorton Lake District incident, her mood growing increasingly somber.
Based on the information available now, everything makes perfect sense, and there are no doubts or conspiracies involved.
The clues I had been looking for might have been nothing but a mirage. It was impossible to find the reason for this situation or even a way to cure myself.
After ruling out all the obvious impossibilities, Himeko could only attribute it to the long-term effects of accumulated stress and emotions on his mental state.
Although this reason couldn't convince her, it was the only plausible explanation that could make this situation happen at the moment.
In fact, apart from her, staff and soldiers who recently noticed that something was wrong with her have similar opinions.
A long time.
The woman looked at the few remaining documents on the table and breathed a sigh of relief.
Although he was in poor mental condition, his work efficiency remained as high as ever, and all that was needed afterward was for his adjutant to check and calibrate the data.
This wasn't a particularly demanding task for the adjutant in the past, but given his current situation, it's likely his workload will change.
Himeko pressed her temples, feeling a wave of drowsiness wash over her, and murmured with a sigh:
"Try taking a break for a while."
Taking a bath is a pleasant activity, especially before bed.
Warm water meandered over the woman's every undulating curve, her vibrant red hair, soaked in foam, was gently rinsed clean, and these beautiful strands of hair, wet, naturally clung to her soft back and fair skin, incidentally concealing the crisscrossing dark scars.
In the rising white mist and comfortable temperature, she closed her eyes, feeling the drowsy laziness that swept over her, and savoring the comfort of her skin bathed in the flowing water, her thoughts gradually drifting away.
Compared to typical father-daughter relationships, her relationship with her father was actually quite good. Apart from her mother's early death, which led to them relying on each other for survival, Ryusuke Muryōtō's own personality was probably the key factor.
While the man was gentle and refined, he also possessed the rationality unique to a researcher. Surprisingly, his parenting style was also quite conventional. Although he was a brilliant researcher who was highly regarded during his university years, his expectations for his daughter were not the same.
Himeko's decision to pursue a research career was purely out of personal interest, but her life took a dramatic turn after she experienced the Honkai for the first time during her university years.
Given the frequency of Honkai at the time, and Himeko's talent and value that she had already demonstrated, enlisting in the military would actually have been a difficult thing.
As a father, Ryusuke Muryōtō should have been worried about whether his daughter would be in danger, but he respected Himeko's thoughts during their conversation and helped her successfully enlist in the army. He also provided a lot of ideas, resources, and even detailed help in the subsequent development of the first generation of general-purpose anti- Honkai armor.
In the following years, although Himeko was extremely busy with matters related to the Moth to Fire, and Ryusuke Muryōtō's work as a researcher was not very flexible, resulting in the two rarely meeting, basic daily communication was still maintained.
Upon closer examination, the relationship between the two is actually more akin to that of friends.
Of course, this does not affect Himeko's respect and love for her father in the slightest. Her image of her mother is limited to the beautiful red hair that she inherited perfectly and the fact that she was Scottish. Apart from that, there seems to be little else worth mentioning.
For Himeko, her father was her only blood relative in the world.
Even though she has been an adult for a long time, has her own beliefs and ideals, and is steadfastly moving towards the path she has chosen, this still cannot change or alter the bond formed by blood ties.
In a world mired in Honkai and calamity, where tragedy strikes at every turn, the importance of having a loved one is beyond words.
It is precisely because of this that Himeko suspects that the Chibbinorton Lake District incident further fueled her deep-seated fear of losing her father, even leading her to extend her own false memories.
Unfortunately, the instrument's tests proved that, at least at the brain level, no false memories had been generated, which is why everything was so puzzling.
Himeko had experienced four such episodes this week: waking up suddenly in the middle of the night with the unwavering conviction that her father was dead and feeling an involuntary grief. She even tried staying awake all day to see if the same thing would happen.
Reality proves that whether or not one falls asleep, it cannot completely ward off this illogical and bizarre situation.
Therefore, she no longer deliberately avoids sleep; rather, such an approach only exacerbates her mental exhaustion and makes her even more unable to distinguish between illusion and reality.
Himeko silently turned off the shower. She put on her bathrobe, dried her hair, and then sat on the edge of the bed, taking a sip of whiskey. Feeling a mix of tipsiness and drowsiness wash over her, she sank into the soft mattress and drifted off to sleep...