Aoko: "Across the many parallel worlds, as I recall, Melissa only came to understand her feelings decades later, after Soujuurou died."
"Only then did she fully settle on her gender and choose to become a woman. After that, she guarded Soujuurou's grave alone, and I never saw her again."
Alice: "The reason is simple. An outside force intervened and forcibly brought that process forward."
Aoko: "An outside force? What kind? Some item that accelerates growth?"
Alice: "It didn't accelerate her growth. It made Melissa realize in advance what she wanted to become. Do you remember the activation condition for Sweets Hearts?"
Aoko: "I remember. A girl experiencing unrequited love. You mean Melissa ate Sweets Hearts."
Alice: "That should be right, and she likely ate it a long time ago. But the Melissa from back then didn't meet the requirements, so its rules were never activated."
"Under normal circumstances, once Sweets Hearts is eaten, the game begins if its target meets the requirements."
"If the target doesn't meet them, then it is merely a pudding containing magical energy. Ordinary people can't digest it, and it gets expelled after some time."
"But Beowulf was different. Its initial gender was neither male nor female, which fell outside Sweets Hearts' range of recognition. On top of that, Beowulf's body was filled with immense magical power."
"Sweets Hearts resonated with Beowulf's magical energy. Rather than being expelled in time, it remained dormant inside Beowulf, like a device on standby, waiting to activate."
"My guess is that after Beowulf ate Sweets Hearts, the two maintained some sort of balance, accelerating Beowulf's choice of gender."
"So it makes sense that Melissa was born early. At first, we thought Illya was the mastermind because there were no other possibilities."
"But now I can be certain that the other