Are Those Tears?

"Well, I surely want to..."

She said it while drooling, despite still being held by me, her whole body lying limply across my hand.

I guess she really wanted to eat me so badly.

 I shook my head in disbelief, witnessing her feral behavior.

"If that’s so, don’t say that while your saliva is dripping onto the floor."

"Hey, I can’t help it!"

Can’t help it? 

Or can’t help that you won’t resist if the chance is offered?

Which one, Clarisse you hypocrite?

There was something absurdly funny about calling out a cannibal for being a cannibal. What stood out wasn’t the act itself, but the denial—the way they would never admit it directly. Instead, they’d deflect, excuse, twist the conversation into anything but their own hunger.

And apparently, this was what happened to her as well.

[YOUR LAST CALL, YUI KATAGIRI]

Oh, so it’s finally time for that kind of thing...

I had been stalling the deal for so long that I almost forgot the system existed, at least in the sense that it was waiting, watching, and pushing me toward this decision. I had been delaying, circling around, testing its limits, trying to discover something beneath its surface. In doing so, I hadn’t even realized that the system itself was practically begging me to just finish the deal already.

And then, just like that, the time stopped for me once more, as if trying to help me.

No warning, no moment to prepare myself—simply a full halt, with my surroundings frozen in place. I wasn’t given the luxury of thinking it through at all.

Even if Clarisse might have been able to slip into the conversation somehow, I doubted she would have understood. Especially since she once mentioned that the panel I kept seeing looked like nothing more than a mirror to her. If that was the case, then she probably couldn’t see the layered text and structures the way I could. Another layer of absurdity, and again, something funny in its own way.

"Alright," I muttered, "what’s the deal?"

[I WILL OFFER YOU WHAT IS POSSIBLY THE LAST COMMAND HERE.]
[SO, ARE YOU GOING TO REMOVE THE SYSTEM OR NOT?]

There was no hesitation in my response. Not even a slight doubt left.

"I don’t want to depend on you," I said, plain and direct.

"But you have been really helpful to me. Thank you."

"So, from now on… let me try to do this by myself."

As soon as I spoke, something strange happened.

Water began to flow from the system.

Wait. Tears? A system could cry? No way.

"Are those tears?" I asked aloud.

[NO, THEY ARE NOT]

The words came, rigid as always, even as the water continued swelling and spilling from what looked like a mouth. It appeared to be quite a strange phenomenon, if you were to ask me.

I had no idea why this was happening, or even what exactly I was seeing. The contradiction gnawed at me: a system insisting nothing was wrong while performing an action that screamed otherwise.

But I couldn’t dwell on it. Not now. This wasn’t the right time to get lost in curiosities.

If I wanted to push forward, I needed to be more concise with what I demanded, more careful in my choices. Otherwise, I risked letting the system twist things to its own advantage—or worse, letting it manipulate me into a corner I couldn’t escape.

[KATAGIRI-SAN, MAY I OFFER YOU SOMETHING FOR THE LAST TIME?]

The message cut cleanly across my thoughts.

"What is it?" I asked.

[I WILL HELP YOU DEVOUR CLARISSE USING THE CHEAT PROVIDED.]

I froze.

That… sounded awfully convenient. Suspiciously convenient, in fact.

But how?

[YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS WILL BE INTEGRATED WITH HERS.]

"No, that cannot be…" The words escaped before I even thought about them.

"Is there any better alternative?" I asked, voice sharp, almost pleading.

[WHAT, YOU’D RATHER GET DEVOURED INSTEAD?]

Absolutely not.

The idea of being consumed—of my entire existence erased and folded into someone else’s hunger—was unacceptable. Yet at the same time, the system’s offer wasn’t any better. Integration, merging, devouring… all of it felt like the same kind of loss, just painted differently.

There had to be another way. Something else. 

Some loophole, some advantage I hadn’t considered yet. I searched for it, running through every possibility that might let me step out of this trap with more than just survival. I wanted a choice that wasn’t a compromise, a decision that didn’t sacrifice everything.

Something that might help me to go for such a length to discover the truth.

And then, suddenly, it came to me.

A spark of clarity, absurd yet perfectly fitting.

Aha.

"I wouldn’t want that," I said slowly, carefully, every syllable deliberate. "But…"

I leaned in, as if speaking to something human, as if the system itself could be persuaded by words alone. Well, not that I genuinely thought that. But perhaps, I could pull this off.

"Could you just die?"

The silence after that was sharp enough to cut through the frozen air.

I had turned the question back onto the very thing that claimed to be offering me choices. Instead of choosing between consumption and survival, between dependence and integration, I had simply asked for the existence of the system itself to end.

It wasn’t just defiance. It was reclamation. A refusal to let the system define the terms anymore.

For a moment, the water—those so-called not-tears—continued spilling from its mouth. The panel flickered. The letters wavered, blurring at the edges.

And though I had no certainty about what would happen next, I couldn’t help but smile at the absurdity of it all.

Because in the end, it wasn’t about devouring, or being devoured, or depending on a structure that pretended to be my guide. Or what ever layers of panel these really are.

In the end, I couldn't careless. And no, it was not about cutting free. No, not at all.

And so, if that meant asking a system to die… then let be.