“Well… wasn’t that an interesting show?” Rakna said blandly and waved his hand. The scenery of the garden returned as the wind returned and Céraiste petals flew up.

Ceres tilted her head. “I detect something… forlorn in your voice. What is it?”

The therian smiled faintly and sat down in the middle of the flowers with a sigh. “What I showed you still haunts me for two reasons. The first; the plain and simple wound left by the experimental blood. That’s something I hope my Alkahestic Physique or the Sage can fix. The second; what I did when I was under its influence.”

“But it is not-”

“My fault? I know. When I woke up a week later, I remembered everything. It might be surprising to you but I had a relatively clear memory of cutting through all those people. Do you know what I thought of it?”

“No…”

“Nothing,” he stated. “And that’s exactly why it haunts me.”

Ceres opened her mouth, only to close it afterward. She was lost. “I do not understand.”

“Neither do I,” he said. “You seem to be under the impression that humans have full understanding of their feelings. It’s not the case. You would need to be a… logical monster to do that. I like to think that I’m way up there. But not at the top.”

“A logical monster… you say?”

“Yes. I met someone like that before,” Rakna hummed. “You could say it’s an old friend… but then again, I didn’t interact with him too much. Along with Allan, you could say that he was the second unofficial student of my old man. But he wasn’t that close to us. It was a guy a year older than me; he went to our school but he graduated before all this mess happened.”

“How was he like?”

“As I said; a monster of logic. A devil of reason, rationality, and expediency. He would reveal things about you that you wouldn’t be aware of. What we feel or think; there was no escape. I tried to do it but even with my apathy, it was as if he could read my brain. It was far worse than Fray.”

Ceres tilted her head. “He sounds… unique.”

“No…” Rakna said and made a small smile at the look of confusion she gave him. “He was ordinary for the most part. His behavior was normal, his relationships were not unbreakable but they were healthy, his social status wasn’t exceptional but it was good, and unlike me, he still could smile at people and laugh at his peers’ jokes. Seriously though, do you want to know what truly makes him special?”

“What is it…?”

“A minute after meeting my uncle, he looked at him in the eyes or, well, the closest thing to it he could do, and said ‘I guess even demons can grow old, huh?’ without hesitation.”

Ceres subtly covered her mouth with her hand. “That is… a courageous human.”

“And a keen one. Allan and Flavia have known the old man for years but didn’t discern his identity and yet, that guy discovered it in a minute. Or maybe he gathered enough hints from me as well before coming to that conclusion.”

“I see… may I ask what you meant by ‘the closest thing to it he could do?’”

Rakna smiled faintly. “Let’s say that it’s something that makes him ten times more impressive. In any case, I wonder what he would have thought if I had told him the same story. Would he pity me? Doesn’t sound like him. Would he be disgusted? That’s not even remotely in his nature. Would he be impressed? No, he wouldn’t care.”

Ceres listened to her Host with widened eyes. He didn’t appear to be just imagining a situation, he was coming to a conclusion of his own by just reminiscing someone. ‘That person must have been outstanding to leave a mark so significant… Perhaps a terror on par with Rakna if he had entered the System. This Earth is truly extraordinary…’

“All things considered; he would most likely tell me that I’m pathetic,” Rakna quipped and glanced at something. Ceres followed his gaze and widened her eyes when she saw someone standing a dozen of steps away from them.

He didn’t look remarkable and most of his features seemed shadowed. But she could tell he was wearing a sort of uniform and had messy black hair that somewhat covered his eyes and the sides of his face.

“Haunted?” The figure spoke and she blinked in surprise. “Hah, how pathetic can you get?”

Rakna attentively watched while Ceres grew more and more puzzled.

“Xiorra, let me tell you; if you’re really that damn guilty and troubled, why in the fuck are you still alive then? If you plan to feel bad about something you don’t even truly care about, why don’t you just kill yourself off a bridge and be done with it?”

Ceres gaped and Rakna snickered, “Yes, I forgot to say he had no filter.”

“You don’t give a crap about those you killed because we both know you don’t care about people that are not close to you. But because you’re so respectful of that old fuck’s way of life, you try to force yourself to feel something, even though you’re not accountable. Listen, I probably dropped a banana peel before that may have had a tiny chance to kill someone if they slipped on it. Yes, I despise that fruit, so there’s no chance it happened, but that’s irrelevant.”

Rakna rolled his eyes and Ceres was completely dumbfounded at that point. The figure turned to them and a white unfocused eye gleamed through his bangs.

“Am I supposed to feel guilty for that if it happened? Instead of tying your feet with an imaginary rope, if you are not going to jump off a bridge, then stop whining. Who cares if you don’t feel for the strangers you kill? As long as you don’t have a fucking orgasm when you do it, I might just conclude that you are not an asshole and deserve to live unburdened.”

With those words of parting, the figure turned around and disappeared whilst walking away.

“Pardon me but… what just happened?” Ceres raised her voice.

“Dreams,” Rakna said with a glazed look. “They are dependent on you… but at the same time, they are the product of an eluding intent. A dream can go beyond what I can imagine on my own, it can even replicate someone from my memories into something like this. Just like Aster when I entered his dream and encountered a living replica of his mother…”

“So… your own dream just lectured… yourself?” Ceres asked tentatively.

“I guess it did.”

“…was it effective?”

“I guess it was,” he said with an invisible smile. “Eizen was just like that; effective. Anyway, we still have some time before I wake up, do you want to do something until then?”

“Eh? Do we have to wait that long?”

“Well, I could end the dream now and I would just wake up. You would probably return to your normal state as well. But I like the peace here. I can even make it last longer. The downside is that the longer I stay, let’s say 48 hours in the span of 10, I will have to compensate by sleeping more in the real world and it would make me too tired to do anything. I’m not sure how that would be converted with Eye of Symphony though. Better not to try right now anyway.”

“I see… If that is so, I would not mind staying. It is an agreeable experience to have a body,” Ceres said with a slight smile on her dollish expression. “I should appreciate it, no?”

Rakna snorted. “Of course. We can do this whenever I sleep if you want. Now,” he mused and with a flick of his hand, a table materialized along with a chessboard on top of it. “How about this?”

* * *

In the morning, Rakna opened his eyes with an annoyed scowl. ‘In retrospect, I should have known trying to play chess with an AI was a bad idea. I never lost so bad; even to the old man. I couldn’t even use Eye of Symphony in my dream to cheat a little.’

[But you were really good for an organic being,] Ceres gently provided.

‘Don’t act as if you weren’t having fun seeing me struggle.’

[Oh, so that was how ‘fun’ feels.]

‘Well, amusement would be more accurate… why am I stirring my own wound?’ He said in his mind and sighed as he shifted his eyes to the mop of red hair on his shoulder as well as the tails wrapped around his body as if they were hugging him. ‘Of course,’ he deadpanned internally.

“{Indeed,}” Fray suddenly spoke up. “{How could she resist the temptation?}” He teased.

Rakna rolled his eyes and mumbled something under his breath, “[Neglect My Reality, Enkata.]”

As soon as those words left his mouth, he felt as if he was freefalling. ‘Oh crap,’ he thought as his body turned into a shapeless shadow before phasing through the bed. Before he slipped past every single cranny in the floor below, he quickly got control of his form and floated upward.

He went through, or to be exact, ‘around’ everything in his way until he was obscuring the entirety of the ceiling under a sort of gaseous form. From there, he had his vision expanded to the point he could see every inch of what was below him.

That also included the shameless vixen that was lying on his bed and who flailed around sleepily before grabbing his pillow as a substitute to hug. She smiled in her sleep and her nine tails waved around.

Rakna quietly watched.

“{Haha, isn-}”

‘Shut up. I know she’s adorable. You don’t need to tell me.’

“{…how did you know?}”

‘You’re predictable.’

“{…that is genuinely the vilest insult someone has ever used on me.}”