Sir Awen turned his head and looked at him with a conflicted gaze.
"You've lost your way, Lynn."
"I haven't lost my way!"
Lynn stared at him, his eyes bloodshot.
"I just want to change things another way. What I want is a whole Miss Doll, not a puppet without a past. That's why I didn't choose this path from the beginning-because I felt there was still hope."
Sir Awen took a deep breath and said:
"But Lynn, you should know that a dream is ultimately just a dream. However real it may be, it can't replace someone's actual past..."
"But I never wanted to replace her past!"
Fragments of sorrow flowed through Lynn's eyes.
"Big Brother Awen, do you really think it was only a dream? She could perceive me, and I could perceive her. I was there beside her through every moment of that life. Were all those experiences unreal too?"
"I know her past really can't be changed anymore, but I never wanted to change it. I just wanted to tell her that life has never been nothing but suffering. In that distant future, she could be happy too. She could be full of hope too."
"That's what I've wanted to do all along."
Sir Awen gazed at him for a long time.
And Lynn stared back unwaveringly, refusing to yield. Beneath the entire sheet of ice, the silence was as cold as frost.
Time continued to pass.
At last, Sir Awen raised his head, his eyes grave as he looked toward the surface of her subconscious.
"But we're out of time."
Above that sheet of ice, fine cracks spread like patterns in glass. They were a sign that death had reached the deepest layer of her consciousness. The immense fixation on death within her subconscious had