Volume 4—Chapter 108: My Other Self
“You should wake up.”
A voice.
Not loud. Not distant. It feels close, like it is speaking from inside my own head.
Why should I wake up?
The thought barely finishes before confusion washes over me.
…Where am I?
Just a moment ago, I was… fighting? Arguing? Something intense, something important. The image slips through my fingers.
Her name was… Emilia.
Right. Emilia. The witch.
So where is she now?
The space around me is wrong. Not dark, not bright. It feels unfinished, like a place that exists only to connect two thoughts.
“Welcome to the world between the conscious and the unconscious, my other self.”
I turn toward the voice.
There is a shadow standing there. Humanoid, but unclear, as if reality itself refuses to focus on it.
As my eyes adjust, the outline sharpens.
It looks like…
“Me?”
The shadow steps forward, and the doubt disappears.
It is me.
Not the current me.
The me from my previous life.
“Hello there, sunshine,” he says, smiling with exaggerated warmth.
That smile.
The way he carries himself, casual and amused, like everything is already under control.
That mannerism is unmistakable.
It is me.
The version of me I despise.
“What is this? A scenario where I’m forced to face my true self?” I ask.
“True self?” He laughs, light and mocking. “Hahaha… I am your true self. I assumed you were already aware of how fake you are.”
The words sting more than I expect.
“Aria, was it?” He continues. “You present yourself as a happy go lucky girl, dense, carefree, unaware of what is happening around you. But the truth is, you are always aware. You just choose to pretend otherwise.”
“…That part is true,” I admit quietly. “I can’t deny that.”
“Yet,” He says, his voice lowering, “you fail to realise something far more important. It is not only you who lies to them. Everyone lies to you as well.”
Everyone… lies to me?
The thought unsettles me. What does that even mean?
“Shall we wake up?” she asks gently. “And see the truth together.”
Her form begins to change.
The man’s silhouette stretches, softens, and reshapes itself. The shadow becomes feminine, long hair flowing down her back. For a brief moment, she reminds me of Irana.
Then the image sharpens.
Her face becomes clear.
It is mine.
The same features, the same eyes. Only her hair is long, flowing, and a strange platinum green.
“Fragment of my other self,” she says calmly. “Allow me to introduce myself… to myself.”
Her gaze locks onto mine.
“I am the embodiment of deceit. In my era, I was known as the Witch of Deception. My name is Noesha. Noesha Wranris.”
Noesha Wranris.
That is the name Emilia called me.
“Miyazaki Aria, was it?” Noesha continues. “I welcome you to wake up… my other self.”
She reaches out her hand toward me.
Like an invitation.
Should I take it?
I know she is me. There is no doubt about that. Not a single part of me questions it.
And yet…
Should I accept it?
Every version of myself before her seems to have reached out and taken that hand.
So then…
Should I?
…
…
…
Why should I?
I remember the vow I made long before I became Aria.
Before this name, this face, this life.
Without thinking, I slap her hand away.
“No,” I say. “I won’t accept you.”
I am not going to walk the path she chose. I vowed to walk a different one, even if that path leads away from every version of myself that came before.
So…
Something surges inside me.
A pressure. A heat. Power, answering a decision I did not even realise I was capable of making.
“I hate deceit,” I say, staring straight at her, “yet I am drowned in it.”
I said to my other self.
No. She is not my other self.
She is not me.
I am myself.
There is no previous me.
“I declare this,” I said with a calm voice despite the tremor in the air. “I sever ties with you. I will create my own path. You have no place in it. Begone.”
For a moment, there is silence.
Then she laughs.
Maniacally.
“I see…” she says, her smile widening. “So this is the line. The moment the seal breaks.”
She lunges for me.
I barely manage to dodge, her fingers grazing the space where I stood a heartbeat ago.
“That damn witch,” she snarls. “Emilia is always so meddlesome. She will regret this one day… and I will laugh right in her face when that day comes.”
Before I can respond, her form dissolves.
The space around me blurs, melting, losing shape.
Everything collapses into white.
“Welcome back,” a voice says. “Did you wake up?”
I open my eyes.
Emilia stands in front of me.
I am back.
So that is what she wanted. For me to wake up. For me to connect with that thing.
With my so-called other self.
The realisation makes something twist inside my chest.
I open my eyes fully.
Emilia is already there, standing a few steps away from me, her expression calm in that irritating way, like she knows something I do not. The ruined Times Square stretches around us, frozen between collapse and chaos. Monsters are still crawling out of those cracked portals, glass fractures in the air that should not exist.
“So, have you woken up?” Emilia said.
I stay silent.
She smiled faintly. “As expected.”
I moved first.
The ground beneath my feet warped as I stepped forward, not breaking, just… accepting my movement as if this was always how it was supposed to be. Emilia raised her hand, and light condensed in front of her, sharp and dense, not an explosion this time, more like a blade made of compressed radiance.
We clashed.
Her light met something invisible, something I did not consciously shape, but the air between us distorted, rejecting the attack before it could reach me. The impact sent a shockwave through the street, cars lifting, signs tearing loose, monsters stumbling like toys knocked aside.
“So you are aware now,” Emilia said, her voice sharper. “Not fully awake, but no longer asleep.”
“I told you,” I said. “This is my dream.”
She shook her head. “That excuse...”
She attacked again, faster this time. Light rained down, spears, arcs, cutting lines that carved through concrete and steel. I dodged, redirected, and erased some of them without even realising how. It felt less like fighting and more like correcting errors in a scene that refused to behave.
Then I heard it.
“Hey, seriously, can someone help me here?!”
Carol’s voice.
I turned my head without thinking.
She was further down the street, backed against a shattered storefront, struggling to keep a monster at bay. Its shape kept changing, tentacles folding into armour, limbs reforming mid-motion. She looked overwhelmed, barely holding on.
And then something clicked.
A sensation.
When I looked at Carol, the world felt… misaligned. Like she was slightly out of place, not wrong, just offset, as if she existed half a second away from everything else. The monster lunged, and for the briefest moment, its movement stuttered near her, not stopping, not slowing, just hesitating.
“That’s interesting,” Emilia said softly.
I snapped my gaze back to her.
“You feel it now, don’t you?” she continued. “You don’t know what it is, but your instincts are finally paying attention.”
“What did you do to her?” I asked.
Emilia did not answer. She looked past me, toward Carol, her expression unreadable.
“I didn’t do anything,” she said. “That is the problem.”
Another monster closed in on Carol, and the air around her trembled again, reality hesitating, unsure how to proceed.
My heart skipped.
No. That was not right.
Carol was not supposed to be here, not like this. And yet, the moment I noticed her properly, the battlefield felt different, unstable in a way I could not explain.
Emilia raised her hand once more, light gathering, aimed not at me this time, but angled just enough that I could not tell who the target truly was.
“Now,” she said, eyes locking onto mine, “what will you do with that feeling?”
I did not answer.
Because for the first time since all of this began, I realised something important.
Carol was not just caught in the fight.
She was part of it.
And whatever she was, whatever she carried, it was reacting to me.
Author's Note
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