(13.2) Parallels

"We met when we were in middle school."

Uncertainty tinges Winter's words as he speaks.

"We talked all the time before I left Japan. I didn't hear from you anymore then but... but Kokone, we reconnected and even got engaged after all sorts of things happened!" He scrutinises her expression with disbelief but as far as he can tell, she has none the slightest clue what he's talking about.

"Lies!" She grabs Winter by the throat and pulls him close to her own face. "I was run over that rainy night yet by the reaver's luck, I was summoned to this world as a hero."

Winter attempts to use Analysis only to get effortlessly shrugged off. The one he believes to be Kokone scoffs at his attempt and throws him to the ground.

"Didn't you just hear me? A hero! I was a summoned hero here in the world of Carnia Love!" She kicks Winter in the stomach. Hard. "Only, it wasn't what I imagined. Monsters, places, even names were the same and different. I thought it was weird, right? But the protag was supposed to be 18 so maybe I just had to wait five years for my big otome game break!"

She kneels down in front of the gasping Winter and grins maliciously.

Her eyes, on the other hand, reflect a deep sadness Winter had seen so many times before.

"Turns out, ages here don't work like that. I told you, right? 600 years too early."

Shadow magic forms around her and punts Winter against the railing on the far side of Wish Park.

Winter groans in pain but the myriad of questions swirling in his mind spur him to rise again.

"That's… how? I remember you so perfectly, Kokone. You were my first love, even if I didn't know it yet. My only one. We spent half our lives together, so how can you say that none of that ever happened?"

"Then tell me your name."

"My… name?" Winter shakes his head, uncertain of her meaning. "It's Winter-"

"Not that one! Your Japanese name!" She raises an arm and shadowy gates open up around Winter. Skeletal hands ending in clawed fingers swipe at him.

He blocks the attacks and responds with a barrage of shadow bullets. Winter's heart isn't in the attack and slam harmlessly onto the flagstone around his target.

"I… I don't remember." Winter stumbles onto his knees, not yet recovered from the previous blow. "But I swear what I'm saying is true! If you just try to remember, you'd know my name!"

"Creep." A look of utter disgust reflects back at Winter as the two lock eyes. "I'm not into children, even if I know you'll grow into the best looking character in the game. So this whole 'we were past lovers' things won't work for you. I was dead for two years and on the run for twelve."

Winter stands now, using the railing as a support, and gives her a questioning look. "What? Dead? What does that mean?"

Shadows engulf her and suddenly she's face to face with Winter once more. Her eyes alight with the acid green mana.

"It means I wasn't on Earth. I was here, body and all, for decades as a hero." She lightly slaps Winter with a condescending smile. "It's a shame. After so long, I thought it was my new home. Until the Estrils' betrayed me."

"The Estrils' are one of the main supporters in Carnia!" Winter protests.

Of course they were.

Aside from Winter Estril who served as an antagonist and aid to the final boss if he wasn't recruited, the Estril family were a kind and benevolent faction that provided aid to the protagonist.

It was one of the first things the otome game introduced so that the protagonist didn't have to worry about money. How could the Estrils be evil?

"Yes, I thought so too." A look of boredom settles on her face as she throws Winter to the ground with resounding force. "Imagine my surprise when they told me: these bodily experiments are for the good of humanity, o great hero! Please trust us!"

She tries to kick Winter again but this time he's ready and deflects her attack back at her. The force is negligible, merely causing her to temporarily lose her balance.

"They wanted a weapon to dominate. So I dominated. Then, when peace fell, can you guess what happened?"

Winter balls his hands into fists and looks at Kokone with an expression of pain and sympathy. An action that nets him getting struck by pillars of darkness from all sides.

Even with a shell of shadows, her attacks still knock him around the park.

"Don't give me your disgusting sympathy. I was used and tossed aside by the Estrils'. By the one I believed loved me." 

She claps her hands together before her malicious smile and vacant eyes. "It allowed me a chance to use a powerful spell. An ancient one that summoned me back to Earth. Back to the night of my death. Only it wasn't. It was two years later."

Acid green mana coalesces around her, the strength of her power creating a heavy pressure in the immediate area.

"How funny… to find my parents dead and gone. The rest of my family blamed me for their deaths. That everything bad that happened to them in those two years was my fault. Because I had run away."

She starts cackling, a scythe crafted from shadows solidifies itself in her outstretched hands while the other scratches at her face.

"But it was actually all okay! You see, human traffickers found me and I learned something! The experiments to make me a weapon were a bit different but still there! My powers weren't completely gone!"

Laughing maniacally, she swings at Winter, attempting to tear him apart.

Thankfully for Winter, his small stature allows him to easily duck and evade the swing.

Kokone appears to have limited experience fighting people below a certain height, a fact that proves to be to Winter's advantage as tries to close the gap.

Winter strikes back with his own ranged shadow abilities, striking at her with non-lethal intent.

"The Kokone I know is a kind and strong person!"

Winter makes his shadows converge into a shield, deflecting the weaker attacks and redirecting the stronger ones back at the origin point.

"You love video games! Especially RPGs because you get to live vicariously. You love collecting prizes because it reminds you of what you've done! Even better if it's something metallic."

Winter leaps away from a sudden onslaught of shadow spikes. The attack was sloppy and telegraphed.

As if he caught her off guard.

"You've always been good at maths even if you hate it. You like to dress dark but you love colourful things! Since grade school, whenever you got really frustrated, you'd always say -"

"I'll quash you like a bug," they say in unison.

Winter nods, peeking at her from behind his shield. "No matter what it was. You'd always say that."

She screams and launches a barrage of shadowy spears to assault him.

"How! How do you know all of this? Huh?" Green mana encircles her shadows and strengthens her attacks, easily shattering every shield Winter forms. "Otherworlder? Impossible! Otherworlders lose so many memories to come here!"

She reinforces a shadow spear with an excess of green mana, charging it with explosive power. 

"We are a fractured existence!"

The spear flies at Winter with incredible speed, shattering the multilayered shield he puts up and knocking the wind right out of him. Even so, Winter somehow manages to replace his defences before another volley of normal attacks strike him.

Her shadows suddenly shudder and droop defensively around her. "I never had anyone. This world betrayed me. That world abandoned me. I have always been alone so how? How do you know me?"

Winter drops his shadows to look at her straight on. "I know. As Otherworlders, our memories are affected, blurred, even missing but I promise. My life may not be in focus but our life together, Kokone, and all that I feel for you cannot be any clearer."

"Liar! I was transmigrated here. Run over at thirteen. Betrayed at fifty. Executed at twenty-five. I… am a monster with broken time." Her shadows mimic the way she wraps her arms around herself. "As deserved of a serial killer, eh? Of a human weapon!"

Her attitude suddenly shifts and shadowy spikes fire from all around. It is all Winter can do to avoid being impaled, though he isn't so lucky as to be unscathed. 

His body is small but has nowhere near the amount of athleticism to avoid being struck several times over. If not for his mana shell reinforced by shadow magic, he would have lost a limb or two.

Winter rolls to a stop next to a guard's body behind a once artistically cut flower bush and briefly apologises to the corpse as it gets impaled by a spike trying to pierce him.

"I'm sure that whatever happened, you did only what you needed to do! I'm sorry you couldn't trust me enough to tell me any of this in our past lives but I promise I'll listen, that I'll keep listening, and do my best to make sure you can face everyday with a smile on your face! You just need to remember me, Kokone!!"

"I don't know you and I've never known you!" She stomps her foot on the flagstone and a humongous wall of darkness extends from her shadow to enclose Wish Park. "I didn't just stop with those bastards either! I killed them! I kept killing! For all twelve years I was back on Earth, I never stopped killing until I was executed!"

"No! Kokone, that's not possible. You were with me. We started a business. We had lots of friends and a good life. How could any of that have happened!?"

Suddenly, an idea crosses his mind. He recalls the conversation he had with Mirra and Phoebe on the banks of the river. 

"Parallel words… you are Kokone. Just not my Kokone." Winter's shadows falter at this realisation.

With his defences lowered and guard dropped, Vira has a clear opening.