The Past Is Past / Birdsong

"When we first met, you didn't fully believe in 'fate' yet. Were the children you adopted at the sanatorium, Chrono, and me all due to 'fate'?" Lin lowered his head, trying to find his own reflection on the turbulent sea, but could only see endless darkness. "Was our meeting all arranged by some kind of will?"

"..."

Aponia, unable to answer.

"Nun, there is no God in this world. If there is... He is either powerless or evil."

Lin turned away and delivered the cruel verdict.

Chapter Thirty-Five: The Past is No More

Guess who I am!

A pair of soft, slightly cool hands covered Lin's eyes, and a mischievous laugh rang out nearby.

"Guess correctly and you'll get a reward; guess wrong and you'll be punished!"

"... Vill-V".

"Huh? You guessed right this time?"

In fact, she had no intention of letting Lin Cai go. The woman with a carefree smile and unique hairstyle walked up to him and shook her finger.

In that instant, Lin felt as if he had returned to ten years ago, to the first time he met Vill-V, and to see her mysterious and proud figure.

It feels like a lifetime ago.

"Tell me, what reward do you want?" Vill-V reached out and pinched Lin's cheek. "How about we celebrate you regaining your memories with a kiss?"

Lin reached out and grabbed Vill-V's arm, then silently let go.

"Hmm? What's wrong?" Vill-V tilted her head and looked at Lin.

"At that time, you didn't seem to care much about my amnesia."

Vill-V is indeed a special person. She doesn't necessarily care much about many things that others care about. Perhaps this is what makes a genius different from ordinary people.

"Oh, that... do you care about that?" The woman wearing the pirate captain's hat wagged her finger and smiled playfully. "Do you think I don't care about you at all, Lin? Is that why you're angry?"

"...no."

"Haha, no problem~ Getting angry just proves Lin cares about what I think of you~ I don't mind~"

After laughing, Vill-V narrowed her eyes slightly and said to Lin with a rather complicated expression, "At that time, how should I react?"

"..."

"Angry? Crying? Breaking down? Those are things that Vill-V would never do."

"..."

"If I had a way to restore your memories, I would have done it long ago, but I... can't." Vill-V gave a self-deprecating laugh. "I call myself a genius, but there are still many things that even geniuses can't do."

"In the end, I can only accept it, can't I? Lin before amnesia is you, and Lin after amnesia is still you. No matter what you become, I will love you, that's all."

She said this, her eyes shining like fireflies in the darkness.

Water droplets tapped softly on the deck.

Lin raised his head, and one cold drop after another fell onto his face, splashing water in the lifeless pools of his eyes.

Seawater? No... it's raining.

A light drizzle, as light as a feather, arrived at this sea area at some unknown time, obscuring the moon's reflection.

The Sky People bestowed their love and gave souls to the empty bodies.

Lin's pupils were like shattered Amber, scattered and then coming together again.

"Vill-V, I..."

"Shhh."

Vill-V raised a finger and silenced Lin's lips as he was about to say something, her mischievous smile like that of a cunning fox.

"I don't want to hear people say things they don't mean because they're moved by a moment of emotion. Besides, I'm also soft-hearted. If Lin really said it, I'm afraid I would have done it to you right there on the boat."

"..."

Is this considered a... threat?

"Lin, you should have your own plans regarding that device and this game. I won't interfere. After all, I'm a kind and understanding woman."

Vill-V raised a slight brow and smiled, "Alright, what kind of reward do you want? Hmm... think twice before going too far. There are quite a few people here who can see the whole ship's movements."

Lin Jingran let out a breath, then said to Vill-V, "Could you let the 'true self' of Vill-V come out for a moment?"

Vill-V paused for a moment, then shook her head and said, "No, the 'id' has been dormant since she gave me the authority to split her personality. After her unexpected awakening last time, she fell into an even deeper slumber. 'We' cannot wake her up."

"Yeah..."

Lin exhaled a white mist, his deep pupils blurred in the darkness.

"That's a real shame."

Okay... we've looked at most of them, there are still...

"Forest."

"..."

Lin turned around and saw the boy with devil horns standing with his arms crossed, staring intently at him.

"..."

"..."

This must have been the hardest time. The boy had developed a bad habit of thinking things through in his mind. He might not be as simple and cold as Lin and Kevin, but his lamentable ability to organize his thoughts made him sometimes even less talkative than Lin and Kevin.

Judging from his ever-changing eyes, he must be contemplating many things in a turbulent state of mind. Finally, his gaze hardened, and he was about to speak—

"Never mind."

"..."

For some reason, Lin seemed to understand his words—it seemed too long-winded to say it out loud, so she simply didn't say it.

Left with no other choice, Lin called out to him, "Kosma, wait a minute."

"What's wrong?" Kosma asked, puzzled. His natural question made Lindu fall silent for a moment.

However, I still have to say something.

"I'm sorry about what happened to Dessidobia."

"..."

At that time, Lin had already discovered that Dessidobia was the Tenth Herrscher, but he failed to kill her in time, which later forced Kosma to kill Dessidobia with his own hands.

"... Lin, you always take the blame upon yourself."

After a long pause, Kosma spoke calmly to Lin.

"Because you failed to kill your comrades who had become enemies in time, your other comrades had no choice but to turn against each other, that's what you're thinking, right?"

Clearly, this is not a mistake at all.

"Call..."

Kosma, unusually, didn't let his mind wander. His eyes showed no weakness as he spoke to Lin with a serious tone, "Have you considered that others might also not want you to attack your former comrades?"

"I've thought about it."

"So why are you apologizing?"

"..."

"Lin, I may not be the first to say this, but you are sometimes too self-righteous, taking on responsibilities and pain that are not yours, and ignoring the feelings of others who also cherish you."

At this point, Kosma paused for a moment, then gave Lin an unusual smile.

"We're all like that."

Yes, among them, which one isn't a self-righteous megalomaniac?

Lin gazed at Kosma and said softly, "You're not the same as you were back then."

"Yes, I now know that I'm not a 'hero' who can do everything." Kosma smiled indifferently. "But whether I'm a hero or not doesn't matter anymore. I just need to do what I can."

Hen and Dessidobia are like the shadows cast by light behind Kosma, children, teenagers, and heroes.

The captain who once led the way took away the hero's dream, and the girl who accompanied him passed away along with the time of childhood.

Young man, Kosma, he can become nothing but himself, but it is precisely because of himself that he can walk in the darkness where he cannot see the way forward.

The Past is No More, but the damp fragments of a harmonica in my pocket jingle and clang, stirring up memories of my youth.

Chapter Thirty-Six Birdsong

Humans are amazing creatures.

They look to the future, yet are often tripped up by the past; they always praise love and hope, but often call decadence human nature.

Contradictions are inherent in human nature, so even cruelty and kindness can coexist in one person.

That's not exactly unusual.

The night was drawing to a close, and the rain was getting heavier. The weather at sea was so unpredictable, just like a person's mood, changing in the blink of an eye.

In Lin's life, friendship and love are often accompanied by bitterness, helping him to become a complete person. However, he can still truly feel how precious these emotions that have accompanied him all the way are to someone like him.

There is another emotion that should be felt first by everyone, but he rarely experiences it.

Family ties.

Looking back on Lin's past, the people who should have given him affection were often distorted.

Among the many people, there was one special "person" whom Lin didn't know how to treat, yet she gave Lin a feeling of being family.

Prometheus.

This is Artificial Intelligence he raised from scratch, growing from an AI that only existed in the system to having its own body and eventually seemingly acquiring some of his personality traits.

She was like an omnipresent ghost. Lin didn't see her when he turned around, but he knew that she often lingered in places he couldn't see.

She said nothing and did nothing; she seemed just as content as before she had a body, simply staying by Lin's side when she had nothing to do.

Just like now.

Don't you have anything to say?

"..."

Mechanical girl—although her body wasn't entirely mechanical, Lin was still used to seeing her that way— Prometheus watched Lin expressionlessly through her monitor.

Lin sighed. Prometheus was normal and "well-behaved" most of the time, but she was one of the few people that Lin couldn't do anything about.

Fortunately, whether Prometheus had finished her calculations or for some other reason, after the two stared at each other in silence for more than a minute, she spoke, "Lin, are you saying goodbye?"

Either someone else finds Lin, or Lin goes to find someone else. He has been doing these things since he "regained his memory," as if he is looking back on the past, or as if he is... making arrangements for his last moments.

Prometheus's logical algorithm is infallible. According to normal logic, there have been no other events or large-scale Honkai. Even though humanity has suffered heavy losses, under May's leadership, they are still making orderly plans for the future. Therefore, Lin has no reason to do such a thing at this time.

But she doesn't entirely believe in the logic of her system.

Just as almost everyone calls her Number One or Xiao Chu, only Lin continues to call her Prometheus simply because a later version of the Prometheus series was born.

Even though she knew that Prometheus was just the collective name for her series of Artificial Intelligence, and logically she should have considered herself to be "Number One," she still used Prometheus as her name.

Yes, not because of some cold program or system, but because of something May wanted her to have when she was created.

"If I said yes, what would you say to me?" Lin was very curious about what this girl, who was either obediently following orders or cunningly resisting and possessed a sense of self, would say to him.

"You've never smiled at me."

"Um?"

"You said that before."

Lin remembered that he had indeed told Prometheus that he would smile for her, but only if she learned how to smile first.

It's not through facial simulation by a program, but by laughing like a human being.

But this put Lin in a difficult position.