Chapter 13: Fantasy, Books, and Words

Books, Books everywhere. I walked into the main library with sun shining down the windows above towards the shelves that look like they spanned into infinity, with every book that I see has different contents in each and every one of them. Without noticing, I wore a black regalia with golden floral patterns scattered all over it, walking with a black pair of socks and shoes, with every step I took, marveling at the magnificent library that I'm currently in.

Endless shelves of books, admiring every book that I came across. I feel like this is a dream. With a little hesitation, I tried to take one of the books that has the title "Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica", Written on the side of it. Carefully opening the page one by one, to find the book apparently lighting with such light that it blinds me temporarily.

Surprised, I close my eyes but still holding my grip to the book, trying to not drop it onto the floor just because from what I see, the book contains only a set collection of parchment paper, with research calculations and mathematics scattered all over it, and the reason I don't want to drop it is because...I don't want to scatter all the paper onto the floor and hassling to pick it up later.

With the light that just shines through, I somehow gain the information and knowledge of all things that are in that book, even though I already read it when I was little, there's nothing wrong if you want to gain more knowledge from the real version, I guess. Afterwards, I put Newton's book back to the original shelf and moved on to the next one with a little bit more information about how the whole universe works.

Five minutes later, I can still see these endless hallways of shelves with books scattered around the library. Taking and putting back books that I see, every book that piqued my interest as I take and read them one by one, with every of my footsteps echoing throughout the library, the silence of it gave me a little mix of both calmness and anxiousness that I never felt in my life, it's like those sensory deprivation rooms. After a while I heard something bubbling, but I couldn't really pinpoint the sound source though.

I keep walking, and walking and walking, until I found something, or someone, a girl, with the appearance of approximately age of seven to eight, sitting down on a white chair and a white table, humming to herself with her both of arms on the table and her hands on her cheek, while looking around at the endless hallways, seeing the mosaic paintings spread across the walls. Curious, I decided to walk towards her.

After halfway there, she turns her head and notices me with her face in a state of confusion, seconds later, she brushes that off and starts to walk towards me, with which I can finally see what she's wearing. From what I see, she's wearing from what it looks like, a One-piece black dress with white shirt collar and long folded sleeves, with a black bowtie and a white apron, a brown belt across her waist and a black pair of socks and shoes, I stopped for a while to process all the things that I just see before-

"Why are you even here?", She asked softly and curiously while holding my hand with her small fingers that somehow calmed me down a bit from the insanity to perceive a library that spanned to infinity. With this I looked at her face and saw an adorably confused face with her head tilted a bit to the left.

"You shouldn't be here you know?", She asked again, saying it with a soft voice once again. Clueless on what to say next, I said:

"Where is even this?". To which she replied with:

"You don't need to know", With her finger on her mouth and make a shush expression with her eyes closed and grinned at me.

Watching her reaction, I can feel a sense of familiarity that's keep bubbling inside my head, I know that there're some memories in my head that somehow lost from something, from one certain incident, I still try to wrap things all around and explain this weird sense of nostalgia but got interrupted by this little girl saying.

"Sssssh, don't think too much, just take it slow, okay?".

"𝘑𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘴𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘭𝘺?", My mind reacted to the girl's suggestion, with this, I'm trying to search for maybe a malicious intent behind all of this setup, but all I find is an empty explanation, no signs of anything at all behind the girl's words except...

"𝘐𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘬𝘪𝘥...𝘵𝘳𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘵 𝘮𝘦?", I arrived at that conclusion, I don't even know how and why I got there but, when my mind reached that conclusion, I saw the girl nod her head slowly and also cutely, with still a closed eye smile expression on her face. After this, she pulled me with her holding my hands, to the set of a table and two chairs that I saw earlier.

As this was happening, my heart strangely filled with joy and nostalgia that I haven't felt before in a long while. After both of us sit at set chairs, I can see her face seems satisfied for bringing me here onto the table and sitting with her.

Tranquility and serenity were all the things and the only things that I could feel for that moment. The birds chirping outside the windows, the sun shines through the dome, with gentle winds swept through the library, with trees from outside the windows rustling their leaves. It felt so peaceful, that it slowly drives me to sleep, one by the seconds, my eyes getting heavy and heavier to open to which I finally close my eyes and went to slee-

𝐁𝐋𝐔𝐁

The sounds of bubbling water were heard again, this time a little bit clearer than last time, I immediately opened my eyes to which I found my hair was getting stroked by the girl, peacefully humming. The song that she's humming was so soothing and so familiar, that my eyes got heavy again and for the second time, I drove off to sleep, with her whispering something before I slept.

Before I knew it, I heard a very familiar melody, played in my head, as I saw an empty white void right before my eyes. As I step on the void's surface, I can see floating books, circulating and flying through the air, with the sounds of the melody still heard throughout the void.

Slowly but surely, I hummed to the sounds of the melody, I can feel the sweetness of the aria charmed and softened my heart a little by little, as I walked closer and closer to the edge of the void, and then without noticing, I freefall straight inside the white void.

As the music fades away into nothingness, with the bubbling sound gets more and more clearer, out of nowhere, I can smell the scent of blood as I got deeper and deeper into the void, with my breath slowly get shallower and shallower and I can see my fingers getting more and more blue every second I feel passing, I quickly got up and-

***

A splash of water, as my heartbeat get faster and faster, and I took my breath as deep as I could, I opened my eyes to see.

Lying in a bathtub with water mixed with from what I presume, my own blood, I'm both disgusted and clueless to what just happened. With my body still from what I see, in a trance like state, I need to know what just happened.

"Master...", I heard faintly before-

"Master! Are you alive? Master!". Analysia screamed straight into my head, confirming that I was indeed, alive, Analysia continues with a sigh:

"Your body...is horribly damage", she stated the obvious before she asked:

"Didn't I tell you to not do anything dangerous before I came back".

When I tried to open my mouth and speak, I noticed that my voice box is broken, with this, I looked to the side and said in mind:

"𝘐'𝘮...𝘴𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘺". With face full of shame, I asked if Analysia could fix it, to which, she replied with another sigh:

"What a naive master...I honestly think you would be dead if I didn't make a dictionary made out of bullet proof materials at the last second, you know?".

Shocked, I want to ask for more information but too scared and frightened for I would be critically bombarded by questions that I probably couldn't answer. Seeing my change in attitude and mood, she slows her tone down a little bit and finally explains some things that I may or may not forget about and also addresses some things that I missed.

First, after Fuyuki-san left the house and sure knew that I was dead, he used the freeze function in the house that usually cleans up everything, from trash to corpses and finally disinfected the entire house.

Second, after Fuyuki-san left the house, soon enough Kazuto-san quickly arrive and confronts Fuyuki-san about the whole thing, and after Fuyuki-san told him the truth, he just stands there after Fuyuki-san and his team has already left the complex, maybe out of guilt.

After she told me all of this, she healed my damaged voice box and with that...I asked with a dead voice.

"Hey, Analysia...Why did you leave me alone?", To which she replied.

"I want to upgrade mysel-".

"What's an upgrade?".

"An upgrade, in which wher-".

"Why didn't you tell me about that before?".

"Master, please understand that I go just because I want to be pre-".

"IT'S EASY FOR YOU TO SAY THAT ANNA!", I screamed with such intensity, it caught her off guard.

"Why did you need to hide secrets from me? Isn't transparency the thing that's important for both of us to work together? You don't want to die right? Don't you trust me? Why can't you just trust me, Anna!? You're useless, Good-for-nothing gadget, you can't even save me from all the pain and suffering that I went through, you're nothing! Nothing!", As the water splashes from me hitting it, I can feel as my tears rolling down my cheeks...Am I crying again?

Realizing what I just said, I closed my mouth with both of my hands, with tears streaming down my cheeks, I just sat there, inside the bathtub, pondering and trembling about the things that I just said to her, with just sobs heard throughout the bathroom, and no words coming from Analysia, I just weep and weep as the clock ticking to 12 PM.

"Anna, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, I know that your attentions are good, and you just want to protect me, I swear I didn't mean it, Anna. I'm sorry that I said all of that to you, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm...sorry...I swear...I'm sorry...", I mumbled to myself as sobs were frequently heard throughout the desperate for forgiveness apology that I mumbled.

With the clock ticking more and more, I hug myself with my tears now dried out, waiting for Analysia's response that'll probably never come, I finally passed out inside the bathtub, out of exhaustion and words, I said to myself:

"I...hate this", with the last thing I heard was the splashes of water that was mixed with my blood, as I drove off to sleep, this time for real.