Chapter 35: A Walk in the Celestial Garden

The revelation left me reeling. The weight of the universe's impending doom, caused by cosmic clutter, was a heavy burden. I couldn't focus on work. Every soul file seemed trivial in the face of systemic collapse.

I did something I rarely did. I left my office and went for a walk.

My destination was the Elysian Gardens, a shared celestial space for deities to relax. It was a park of impossible beauty, where the flowers were made of crystallized starlight and the grass chimed softly when you walked on it. The air smelled of nebulae and fresh, clean creation. It was supposed to be relaxing.

Today, it just made me feel small.

I sat on a bench carved from a fallen moonbeam, staring into a pond that reflected the birth of galaxies. And for the first time since my return, I let myself truly think about them. Kenta, Rina, Luna, Chloe. My ridiculous, chaotic, wonderful family.

They hadn't faced a cosmic janitor program. They had faced a dragon. A real, tangible threat. They had been scared, outmatched, and probably doomed, but they had stood together. They had won with teamwork and glitter.

I, on the other hand, was alone. And I missed them. I missed Rina's loud laugh, Chloe's boundless optimism, Luna's quiet strength, even Kenta's dumb jokes. I missed the feeling of being part of a team, of facing the impossible together.

A single tear, a real one this time, traced a path down my cheek.

"A goddess weeping. How very poetic."

The voice was soft, right beside me. I looked up to see Isao. He wasn't smiling his usual smirk. He looked… calm. He sat down on the bench, leaving a respectable distance between us.

"Come to gloat?" I mumbled, wiping the tear away.

"No," he said quietly, looking out at the pond. "I came to apologize. My little prank with the baker was ill-timed. I didn't realize the scope of the problem you were facing."

I stared at him. An apology. From Isao. "You knew," I said. "About the system. The Defragmentation Protocol."

He nodded. "I've been tracking its progress for centuries. It is, for lack of a better word, Death on a cosmic scale. My area of expertise."

We sat in silence for a while. A few other deities floated by, offering me bland, well-meaning pleasantries. "Feeling the existential weight, are we, Akane? Happens to the best of us!" one of them chirped before drifting away. They didn't understand.

"Why didn't you just tell me?" I asked Isao.

"Would you have listened?" he countered gently. "Or would you have assumed I was messing with you and kicked me through a wall?"

He had a point.

"You miss them," he stated. It wasn't a question. "Your mortals."

I just nodded, not trusting my voice.

"Good," he said. "That feeling? That connection? That's the one thing the system can't quantify. It's not a bug, it's a feature. And I have a feeling it's the only thing that can stop a mindless program from deleting everything."

He stood up. "The Defragmentation Protocol is slow, but it's thorough. It's currently targeting older, more 'corrupted' worlds first. Worlds with a lot of history. A lot of… stories." He looked at me, his amethyst eyes serious. "My point is, you have time. But you can't fix this alone, Aka-chan. Not even you."

He turned and began to walk away, his black robes making no sound on the chiming grass.