I'm No MOTH Hero

There would never be a perfect story in this world that could save everyone.

Nor would there ever be a perfect hero who could save everyone.

There were only fates destroyed in a torrential storm, and miserable people struggling through the mud.

Mei could barely remember how she had felt when she first met Lin. He had sat there like a lifeless statue. In that dim, confined space, beneath that indifferent helmet, his eyes had studied her with even colder detachment.

If Mei could return to that time, she would surely set aside her wariness toward this man with such a troubled fate, smile, and reach out to remove his helmet.

Because she knew that what he hid beneath that helmet was not cold-bloodedness, but softness.

It was precisely because he could not abandon that original sincerity and tenderness that he hid them beneath the helmet.

Sympathy? Pity?

Mei could not accurately describe the feelings she developed for that man as she gradually learned about his past—feelings that he seemed not to need others to bestow upon him.

Back when she was still in school, during the period when she had been isolated because of her father, Mei had read about a strange creature in a book called the Moth of the Apocalypse.

A jellyfish of the hydrozoan class and Anthoathecata order, the sole genus of its family, found throughout oceans around the world. It had been named for its overall shape resembling a lighthouse.

After reaching sexual maturity, the Moth of the Apocalypse would "grow backward," reverting to a polyp. It was considered an immortal species, and research into it might have a major impact on aging and disease.

It was probably a creature everyone would envy. Perhaps it would never die. To it, life was merely a cycle;