A dim seabed, a ruined city.
A white-haired girl placed her hand over her left breast. There were large patches of scarlet bloodstains on her white dress, and her clothes were tattered. The bloodstains looked like flowers in full bloom, with the flowing blood trailing down like stems.
The girl with white hair and green eyes clearly realized that she was the Dolores within the Memory. She curled the corners of her mouth, seemingly having guessed what was about to happen.
Before long, a tall figure covered in wounds appeared before her.
“Stirring one’s own heart with a knife… you won’t die immediately, but it feels very painful…”
Dolores looked at Grin, using these strange words as her opening line.
In this second Memory, Grin could still hear Dolores’s internal thoughts.
‘How much time has passed on your side?’
“One day,” Grin answered.
At the point where the toxin eroded him, the one-day cooldown for the System Memory had just ended. Everything was perfectly timed.
“I see… Progress is moving quite fast. As expected of my favorite person, it seems you’ve gone through a lot as well.”
Dolores saw the wounds on Grin’s body. Her fingers crossed slightly as she spoke gently, “Wounds cannot speak, but people can feel the pain. I want to know what happened, because I want to use this meager, illusory self to heal your real-world trauma.”
Grin remained silent for a moment before asking a key question, “You’ve always known what would happen, haven’t you?”
Dolores shook her head and answered sincerely, “I have a set of inherent, outdated experiences to speculate on the development of events. For most of the rest, I’m just making educated guesses.”
“I planned my future, but even I am not sure if my future will proceed exactly as I want it to…”
“However, if you are willing to tell me about your experiences, perhaps I can guess some things and give you some advice.”
“I will tell you some things truthfully. You probably wouldn’t stand by and watch me slit my own throat a second time now,” Dolores replied, looking as if she had expected this.
Dolores reached out her hand toward Grin. The latter was somewhat confused, but the former quickly added, “There is no one else here. I haven’t seen you in so long; I want to hug you… just like before.”
“Otherwise, I won’t answer your questions,” Dolores added, her voice and expression carrying a hint of a child’s stubbornness.
“I can probably guess. You must have suffered a loss because of me… Even though the Favorability is clearly displayed on the System, why was the reaction so strange?”
Grin froze. Although he wasn’t thinking that right now, what she said was indeed the point of confusion Grin had felt when interacting with the real Dolores not long ago.
He always felt that Dolores’s reactions didn’t follow the changes shown by the System, yet there were indeed slight changes in her overall demeanor.
She was like a spring—usually fine, but at a certain moment, she would react violently.
Grin subconsciously moved closer to Dolores, and she naturally buried his head against her chest.
Perhaps her figure wasn’t that great and appeared rather meager compared to other women, but Dolores knew something.
What she wanted to give him wasn’t a soft embrace that would physically suffocate him.
Grin still had feelings for her.
His mental state was unstable; he had encountered too many things.
He hoped for something to lean on, even if he wouldn’t say it aloud.
That was why.
Even a petite woman like Dolores could comfort a man as large as Grin.
The height difference of nearly fifty centimeters wasn’t an issue.
Temperament and behavior, gentleness and love, were not affected by the difference in body size.
Dolores’s actions were intended to convey a message to Grin—trust, reliance, and belief.
Dolores’s idea was to transmit this information to Grin through the act of a hug, because that was what he needed most right now.
Dolores could see many things, and she had a good idea of what Grin had gone through.
“Dolores, you…”
Grin’s voice choked up slightly. Not long ago, he had been lashing out in front of a Dolores who looked exactly like this, eventually saving her amidst her trembling gaze.
But now, in the blink of an eye, he was like a child buried in her chest, being held as she comforted him like a small boy.
Perhaps he should have been angry, but those feelings of anger were always torn to shreds by Grin himself.
He emphasized to himself over and over that he couldn’t forget what she had done, that he had to seek Revenge.
Once was enough, but it happened a second time, then a third.
Because Grin truly couldn’t accept using things that would happen in the future as a reason to inflict harm on the current person who hadn’t made those mistakes yet.
After a brief period of confusion, a sense of rational clarity usually followed.
If it weren’t for Dolores…
But he could only start with Dolores.
If Dolores were a stubborn, terrible child, she would have given him a reason to maltreat her with a clear conscience.
Instead, Dolores was a child full of kindness.
It was precisely because he believed that the future did not equal the present—and held the thought deep in his heart that Dolores was not inherently bad, but had only betrayed him because something had happened—that Grin’s attitude toward her was so divided.
No one would want to believe that the wife they had lived with for nearly fifty years was a villain.
They had watched each other grow up.
In this situation where pain was intertwined, Grin couldn’t be as direct as he was in battle. In battle, the goal was clear; he just had to keep fighting. This, however, was like cloth being piled layer by layer on a camel’s back, the weight constantly accumulating, approaching the threshold of “breaking.”
Dolores smiled slightly, feeling a bit of an itch at her chest. She gently stroked the back of Grin’s head as if soothing a big kid.
Grin’s movements seemed to quiet down.
Dolores didn’t think Grin looked pathetic like this, nor did she find anything wrong with it.
It was normal to be under high pressure, especially when she understood what Grin was facing.
Dolores could also understand the pain of high pressure and a rapidly declining mental state.
Although she had died in her previous life due to an accident, she hadn’t lost her memories.
Even men have a childlike, fragile side deep inside.
Performing childish acts, swinging wooden sticks, holding back tears to cry in a corner, or smashing things alone—these venting behaviors were all reasonable and normal.
Everyone was human after all—man or woman, Hero or Princess.
She couldn’t demand that Grin be like a saint; that would be too harsh.
Dolores should feel lucky.
She, who had no harbor herself, could become a harbor for others to rely on.
Dolores felt her chest grow slightly cold, as if it were being soaked by liquid.
However, she wouldn’t insist on exposing his fragile side.
Dolores’s eyes became maternal. Her loose white hair fell like a curtain, shielding Grin in her arms.
One hand patted Grin’s back rhythmically, as if soothing an infant.
The movements were light and made very little sound.
Everything started because of her, so… she had to properly take responsibility and bear the consequences.
Her eyelids lowered slightly, and the maternal look in her green eyes grew deeper and deeper.