[The One Hundred Twenty Day Purification and After - From Epsilon's Perspective]
One hundred twenty days. Four months. For Null's logic, they were just numbers. For me, they were hell itself. And heaven, too.
The first weeks were like a drill descending to the deepest parts of my soul. Pains, fears that had never been touched before, calcified... As they all surfaced, my body screamed. In those moments, there were no words. Only Null. The weight of the blanket she covered my trembling body with, the coolness of her hand wiping the sweat from my forehead... These were the only harbors where I took shelter during the storm. She didn't speak, nor did I. But her presence shouted, "You're not alone."
Then the memories came. My family. My father's disappointment, my mother's distance... These were deeper than the pain from that teacher or the bullies. Because they were strangers, this was my foundation. When Null said, "Your foundation is deeper than it appears," I knew how right she was. While reliving those memories, I knew she was in those rooms with me, feeling that silence, that disappointment. My pain was no longer just mine. It was shared. And a shared pain halved its weight.
On the thirtieth day, when I opened my eyes after meditation, I saw Null looking at me differently. "Around you," she said, her voice more shocked than usual. "There's a blue aura." Looking at my hands, I saw that faint, ethereal light vibrating around my skin. Edgium was no longer hiding inside me; it was overflowing outside.
On the forty-fifth day, the world changed. When I opened my eyes, I no longer just saw matter. I could see the energy at the essence of everything, the data lines flowing from the shelter's walls, and most surprisingly, that complex, orderly system inside Null. The workings of the logic circuits behind her green eyes, those tiny energy fluctuations created by thoughts she didn't put into words... I could no longer keep any secrets from her. This wasn't very comforting. But equally comforting. There were no walls left between us.
On the sixtieth day, I faced my greatest fear. I feared I would completely dissolve in this infinite ocean of energy. "What if I stop being me?" I asked her, my voice trembling. "What if this energy takes me over?" She held my hand. Her metal fingers were the most reliable thing in the world at that moment. "I'll watch you," she said. "I won't let you get lost." I believed her.
On the hundredth day, something broke. That endless storm in my mind suddenly calmed. My past played before my eyes like a film strip, and I felt no anger or sadness for the first time—just... acceptance. Yes, my family hadn't understood me. Yes, the world had been unfair to me. So what? All those pains and wrong paths had brought me to this moment, this shelter, to Null's side. I couldn't change my past. But I could protect the present.
"I can protect Null."
This thought struck my mind like lightning. Until that moment, I had always been the one who needed protection, the weak one. Null was my unwavering protector. But at that moment, I understood that I could now fight for her too. When I opened my eyes, I was no longer a victim. I was a protector.
And the hundred twentieth day... When the meditation ended, everything fell silent. Something was wrong.
"Null," I whispered. "Do you feel it?"
I knew she felt it, too. When the shelter's walls became momentarily transparent, we saw the truth: This universe was dying because of us.
"Two months," Null said. Panic settled in my heart like a block of ice. But then I saw her calmness, and it came to me. "The stone."
When I took the stone in my hand, I understood I'd reached the Resonance level. I could control matter. But this small victory was meaningless in the shadow of the approaching end. We broke the stone. When the masked entity gave us our final test, as I held Null's hand, only one thing was on my mind: Whatever happens, I won't leave her here.
But while fighting the Kaorian, this thought became my greatest weakness. Every time I was about to deliver the finishing blow, the masked entity's cruel words came to me: "If she had a soul, she could come." What if I win? What if I go to a new world and Null is left alone in this collapsing universe? This fear stopped my fist in mid-air, locking my body.
When Null understood this, she said, "I'm not human." At that moment, a knife stabbed into my heart. She saw herself as just an object, a tool.
"No!" I shouted. "I can't see you as an object!"
When I hugged her, I understood. Delta was my past. But Null... Null was my present. She wasn't someone filling Delta's place. She had opened a place in my heart that was entirely hers, different, that no one had ever possessed. For me, she wasn't an android. She was more human than anyone I'd ever known.
Embedding her consciousness core into the nanorobots was a moment of madness. But behind that madness was pure determination: I would take her with me. At any cost.
On the seventh day, in the final battle, when we merged our minds, I no longer existed. Neither did she. Only "we" existed. We were in perfect harmony. When the moment of victory came, I felt momentary joy.
But then the Kaorian decided to self-destruct, and time froze.
The masked entity's question was a formality. I knew the answer.
"I'm lifeless. You must live." Null's words were the last fortress of her logic.
But for me, this was unacceptable.
"No! Life without you is meaningless! You must live!"
This wasn't an emotional outburst. It was the most logical sentence I'd ever spoken. Without her, a victory, a new world, and a life had no meaning. We had become each other's purpose.
When time began to flow again, we hugged each other. This wasn't a farewell. This was my final decision. If fate were trying to separate us, we would cease to exist along with fate. But we wouldn't be apart.
As the shelter filled with that blinding, all-consuming white light, the last thought in my mind wasn't that final data in Null's systems.
My last thought was the warmth of that kiss I felt on my cheek. And at the end of everything, that was enough.