The world became unfamiliar in that instant.
The girls, who had been chatting so warmly just moments ago, all felt a tremor from the deepest part of their souls the instant the Naked Singularity was born.
It was the deepest, most instinctive fear of lives born within a world of self-consistent rules when faced with the reality that the very rules supporting everything were collapsing.
They did not understand what was happening. One by one, they fell silent.
Everything before their eyes—whether seen through their own perspectives or perceived through others—was collapsing, melting.
Being pulled apart, being torn to shreds.
It was as though the world itself had been thrown into a gigantic grinder, crushed beneath interlocking gears into a pile of scraps.
As everything was stripped of its material and energetic forms, ultimately reduced to information, then utterly pulverized in that state, the dazed girls felt as if a revolving lantern had begun flashing before their eyes.
Rita seemed to see that flower shop in her hometown, Manchester.
She saw her tiny younger self helping out inside the flower shop.
Seele Vollerei, meanwhile, stared in disbelief at a warm little island, where an elderly version of herself was enjoying the last warm sunlight of the day in the afterglow of sunset...?
By Mei's ear rang the voices of classmates secretly gossiping about her back at Thousand Feathers Academy, voices that had long since been forgotten.
Bronya seemed to once again feel the bitter cold brought by the wind and snow of her homeland...
Every one of them seemed to see their past selves, and also seemed to see their future selves.
Until—
Kiana: My head itches! I'm growing a brain!!!
A wail from Tuna successfully made everyone, whose nerves had already been stretched to the limit, suddenly catch