Harem Sync: Divine Edition
Chapter 133: Feelings
....
...GENIALS MANSION - BALCONY...
The notebook hit the wall and fell.
Genius stared at where it had landed, pages open, notes scattered that had taken hours to write, and made no move to pick it up.
"Okay." He said to the air. "Let’s see if I understand this."
Silence.
"I have no way to deduce them. Like, I can’t use logic for feelings."
He stood there.
"Shit."
"Sir." The butler Badru appeared at the balcony entrance, quiet as always, tray in hand, with the expression of a man who had seen this scene before and knew something specific had to be said now. "There is a saying my grandfather used to repeat. He said reason is a lantern. Good for lighting the road. But no lantern can illuminate what came before the darkness."
Genius looked at him.
Then looked toward the horizon.
"Nah..." He started, in the tone of someone about to refute it.
He stopped.
"Everything can be deduced using reason." He said more slowly. "Except what comes before reason. Like what existed before everything."
The butler nodded slightly.
"Holy shit." Genius muttered.
He pulled a chair close to the railing and sat down, arms resting on it, looking at the city beyond the mansion walls.
"And your Japanese friend." The butler said after a moment. "Did you find him, sir?"
"I saw him. We just didn’t get to talk." Genius drummed his fingers on the railing. "We’re both busy thinking."
He stayed like that for a while, staring at the horizon with the specific expression of someone calculating but unable to find the answer.
"If one day you told me you were a Gamer, Badru..." He began.
"Yes, sir?"
"I wouldn’t be surprised." Pause. "I’d kill you on the spot."
The butler remained completely expressionless.
"I am not a Gamer, sir."
Genius took a deep breath.
"I wonder how my..." He thought, without finishing. The thought reached a certain boundary and stopped on its own, just as it had every other time it had begun.
"I just need to beat the game."
"Sir." The butler’s voice was softer now. "A question, if I may."
"Hm."
"If you win... the real Master Genius’s body returns to normal. He comes back."
Genius didn’t answer immediately.
"Look, Badru."
"Sir."
"Before I transmigrated into this body, I already knew Genius’s whole story... a very short one." He said. "Your master, he was sick. He wouldn’t have lived until the academy opened. The original Genius... wasn’t exactly healthy..."
He fell silent.
"And if I win... I don’t know what happens to all of you. Honestly, I don’t."
The butler stood still for a moment.
Then he said, with an honesty Genius hadn’t expected:
"This may sound strange, sir. But I would rather it be you. The real Genius Genials was..." He hesitated. "He was different, arrogant... His parents were suspicious of the sudden recovery, of course. And of the change in personality. But they’re happy. I’ve never seen them like this."
Genius didn’t turn around.
"And his parents..."
"Your parents." The butler corrected gently. "They are your parents now too."
Feelings.
Genius kept looking at the horizon, thinking about a word that had once been just a category of analysis and now seemed like something completely different.
"So how do you actually beat this world?"
"There are several ways." He said out loud, more to himself than to the butler. "The best-known one is defeating Zathar, the Demon King. But I never played much beyond the beginning."
"The Demon King!?" The butler repeated.
"Yeah..."
"But didn’t Zathar already!?"
Genius looked at him. "Ah, no. He didn’t... For us Gamers, the calendar is Eldrath. Everything starts counting from here. And we’re still..." He paused thoughtfully. "Probably in the prologue. Chapter one at most. At this stage, demons don’t even exist yet, nor do real dungeons."
"Why?"
"Because every Gamer who transmigrates focuses on one thing first."
The butler waited.
"Getting into Eldrath."
Silence on the balcony.
"Wow." The butler said after a while. "In every scenario, only the Gamers are screwed. I’ve never been so happy to be considered an extra."
Genius smiled, small, genuine, the kind that appeared only rarely.
"I don’t think you’re an extra, Badru. Not when you know a Gamer."
The butler looked at him for a moment.
Then he picked up the tray and left, as quietly as he had arrived.
...ACADEMY, CATHEDRAL - SAME AFTERNOON...
"So, how have you been."
It wasn’t exactly a question. Father Elias did that, using the tone of a question without the structure, letting the other person choose whether to answer with depth or just the surface.
Lilithine chose the middle.
"Good." She said. "The corruption on my hands has almost completely disappeared. I think I’m regaining my holiness."
They were in the sanctuary’s side garden, small, with smooth stones on the ground and an ancient tree in the corner that every priest for two hundred years had tried to prune, and the tree had survived all of them. Father Elias sat on the stone bench beneath it with the naturalness of someone who had a reserved place in the universe.
Lilithine remained standing for a second.
Then she sat beside him.
"Good." He said. "Better."
He looked out over the garden.
"I’ve been thinking about the concept of holiness... What it actually means to maintain holiness. Not the definition. The act." she thought.
Lilithine stayed quiet.
"Don’t lie to him." The voice in the back of her mind said. Lilith, always Lilith, always at the most inconvenient moment possible. "That’s what you should tell your father. Don’t lie to him."
Lilithine said nothing.
"Look." The priest turned slightly. "You’re growing up. And worse, you’re... seventeen now, right?"
"Yes."
"Seventeen." He repeated as if the number carried a weight she hadn’t fully calculated yet. "You’re seeing things. Feeling things. Learning things that no Cathedral book will ever teach you because they were written by people who already forgot what it feels like to be seventeen."
Lilithine looked at the stones beneath her feet.
"When it comes to holiness..." He continued. "...don’t place artificial burdens on yourself. Holiness isn’t the absence of doubt. It’s what you do with your doubt."
"I understand, Father."
The priest looked at her for a moment with the kind of attention she had known since childhood, the kind that didn’t judge but also didn’t let things pass unnoticed.
"Do you have a boyfriend?"
Lilithine nearly choked on her own breath.
"What? No, Father..."
"What religion is he?" The priest continued, unfazed. "Know that I don’t care about religion. Any of them is welcome, as long as he’s a good person."
"She has a soft spot for a Gamer." Lilith said in the back of her mind, with that irritating satisfaction of someone who knows she’s right.
"No, Father. I’m focused on my studies and... and... and..."
Father Elias smiled.
It was the specific smile he used when he had asked exactly the right question.
"Let’s talk about the test." Lilithine said, faster than usual.
"Isn’t that cheating?" He replied. "It’s the same as asking a teacher to explain what to do before an exam."
"Yes and no." She said, with a conviction that surprised both of them. "Ever since the Living Map, the academy revealed one thing. It’s always about loopholes."
The priest looked at her.
The bell rang in the distance, marking the hour.
He sighed and picked up his hat. Time to go. There was always something to do.
"Loopholes, Lilithine?"
"Yes." She stood as well, walking beside him as they left the garden. "The professor in charge never said we couldn’t ask the teachers about the test. Or about the Twelve. Or about what to do."
"But I’m not a teacher."
"That’s another loophole too." She said. "You’re free not to tell me everything. Which is what I’d expect, considering we’re talking about a test."
The priest walked two more steps.
Stopped.
He stood with his back to her for a moment, looking at the gate ahead, not at her.
"The Twelve are not enemies." He said, his voice different now. Softer. "They are testimonies. Each one carries the weight of something they never resolved before becoming Anchored. A burden they chose to carry, which makes it different from ordinary suffering."
He paused again.
"Most students will try to defeat them. And defeating them works, up to a point." A pause. "But there are Knights who cannot be defeated by what the average student carries. For them... the question isn’t how to defeat them. It’s what they’re still trying to finish."
He gently ruffled her hair, a gesture he’d been making since she was eight.
"Sixty-four prayers to Saint Lilithine."
"For what?"
"Did you forget you were the first one in the confessional today?"
She stood there while the priest turned the corner and disappeared.
Sixty-four.
"That was a choice that surprised me." Lilith’s voice said, softer than usual, almost thoughtful. "You didn’t lie to him. Today in the confessional you confessed that you’re going to free spirits that don’t want to be freed. That you’re going to use my power."
Lilithine stood looking at the open gate.
"I’m there too, you know." Lilith continued. "I’m tired of being alone. You need to decide about yourself. About us."
"I know." Lilithine said quietly.