2022-06-10: Layers

Cutscene: Layers

Cast: Nidaime

Where: Tsutsujidai

Date: 2022-06-10

Summary: Nidaime is, as ever, caught between two worlds and two terrible options.

BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-O9yMcUAqE&ab_channel=HiroyukiSawano-Topic

Nidaime returned to the park and didn't see Anti there. She hadn't called for him. Every time she thought about calling him she couldn't bring herself to do it. The closest she could get was to bring her hands to her mouth--

--and then let them drop.

A street musician played a light melody on a guitar, an open guitar case open to collect tips. Her eyes were closed as she let the melody take over. Nidaime slowly removed her earbuds and rolled out her sleeping bag, lying down on top of it as she listened to the musician play.

Over the guitar melody she could hear her mother whispering to her. Nidaime wasn't sure if it was to be reassuring or simply bemoaning that which could not be changed.

'Humans have fallen to the Cognitive Layer before many a time. Not an issue in of itself but...'

'There was something incomplete about this transition for Akane,' Nidaime thought. And thinking in this place could be as loud as screaming.

'She still has lingering attachments. It is best to think of her like a ghost still haunting her old world.' Mother explained patiently. 'But she isn't dead.'

'You can finish the transition.' Mother says. 'That would be ecologically preferred but...'

But that is basically killing Akane, Nidaime thought to herself. People who still have a chance to live should live.

She thought of Sayla and the way she was crying when she told her, begged her that she was too young--returned too soon to leave the way she came back. The powerful unstoppable super cool aunt was crying and Nidaime was responsible. She gripped her small hands tightly, curling them into helpless little fists. How could doing the right thing feel like such a cruel thing?

And Akane rejected that solution. She's still going to kill repli-compoids as she sees fit. She still holds ties to the outside world. A person like that cannot complete the transition into this Layer.

'Removing Akane could destabilize Tsutsujidai.'

And that could result in the erasure of many repli-compoids. If she was willing to do that, she should have just figured out a way to close the entrances to Tsutsujidai. Maybe that's what she should have been doing all along. It's sad but sometimes existence is sad.

Hurting Akane like that would be catastrophic. And more than that, she doesn't want to.

But what does she do? The melody continued to play gently. It was such a nice melody and yet here she was thinking such painful things.

Kaworu had given Nidaime so many strange terms. Lilim. Vessel of Light. When someone says these things they eventually become real here, even if they are real nowhere else. And sometimes, it even becomes real in their world.

There was no answer that could come to her. And maybe the difficulty of finding one is why Nidaime hadn't moved yet. The news that Alexis Kerib himself was just another hurting soul.

Should she just leave it to Gridman? She told him everything she could except for the thing only Kaworu could.

Was she just hesitating because she enjoyed having a reason to visit the real world, to eat ice cream, to hug human beings, to enjoy their company.

'Oh Ano... I know it feels like you're apart now, but one day you'll see... There is nothing separating anyone.'

There were many sound spirits. And then there was mom. And mom was a sound spirit. And if nothing separates them, then... It was hard to conceptualize even for Nidaime but perhaps it was best to consider Unison the face of the Sound Spirit. They were all and one but mother was when they chose to speak back. Unison. That is her name because it is what she is.

She told Gridman. Maybe she should just be patient and see where that goes. Maybe real friends could find a compassionate path forward that protects the world that she cannot see.

She curls on her side, turning away from the musician. She wondered what it'd be like going to school, making friends, caring about little things like that and eating what she wants to eat, living as big and proud as she could instead of staying as small as she could. These Layers were not hers and some Layers were never meant to meet no matter who might be stuck between them.

She already missed Sayla. She misses Sayla when seeing Sayla because she knows it's not forever. It's not even for very long.

Should she talk to Akane now that she has a better understanding of Alexis Kerib?

Should she call Anti?

She couldn't do it yet.

Maybe tomorrow, she told herself. She wanted to see him. She slid back and into the sleeping bag itself, hiding her head underneath like a turtle into its shell.

She wanted to see him.

There was no objective for it that she could think of anymore. She didn't like thinking about Anti and the mission together.

She wanted to see him.

She wanted to see him.

But she didn't call for him. Not today.

Perhaps courage could come tomorrow. Tomorrow seemed less impossible with him near.