A blurred illusion.
Lynn watched the scene in that memory from afar. He watched the curse gradually emerge on her body, watched Madam Doll appear and take her away.
And from the very moment the Doll Curse took hold of her...
The girl who had fallen became Black String Moon.
She put on the splendid dress her mother had sewn for her. For a very long time, she quietly became a part of Doll Manor, a heartless girl who was more doll-like than any of the dolls. She never asked about her past, nor did she ever seek out those forgotten years.
But Lynn's brow remained tightly furrowed.
He looked at the Cloth Doll in his hand.
Because even at the beginning of it all, that broken girl on the beach was still not the tiny figure he had been chasing through the illusion.
And if she really was Black String Moon...
Then she could only have been...
"Before the fall..."
Lynn raised his head and stared blankly at the drizzle falling from the black mist.
In other words...
That obsession with "death is where I belong" had existed in an even earlier time, before Miss Doll's fall, in another life of hers, in a more distant era.
And even though she had forgotten...
Those past experiences still influenced everything about her through her subconscious.
Even if she no longer knew it herself, that obsession still remained, urging her to cast off the shackles of "being alive."
He abruptly turned his head toward the burning high-rise slowly sinking into the sea.
And if that was the case...
Something must have happened.
Something terrible must have happened before that fall to plant the suggestion that "living is torment" deep in his Miss Doll's heart.
In an instant...
Lynn understood something.