Was she worried it wouldn’t be enough?
Or was she preparing for possibilities in the future?
A shelf life of 5 years might be long for us, but for Eden it seemed like nothing more than an unimportant number.
I couldn’t quite understand why it had produced so many.
I reached out and took a plastic box from the mountain of neatly stacked little plastic boxes that formed a cube.
Alice turned the box in her hands this way and that, looking it over from every angle.
After a round of pondering she pulled open the plastic seal on top, opened the little box, and found two sealed bags lying inside, one large and one small.
Thoughtfully, the sealed bags were labeled with instructions.
Simply put, you poured the contents of the large bag into hot water, stirred thoroughly, then poured in the catalyst from the small bag, and you could make a meal.
This kind of technology was like magic.
But Alice was not as surprised as I had expected.
She only looked excited.
For the people of this world, they seemed long accustomed to all sorts of novel, unimaginable things.
Closing the box in her hands, Alice began frantically stuffing the little boxes from the plastic mountain into the backpack.
Food was never too much, especially for us who had eaten dry bread for a long time.
Only when the backpack was stuffed so full by Alice that the zipper was almost impossible to close did she stop.
In one motion she hoisted the backpack and slung it onto her back. “Yulin-chan, I’ll carry this.”
“S-sure.”
Actually, my thoughts still hadn’t shifted away from the factory AI.
I took one last look at the dim factory.
Silence had once again become its dominant note.
I silently bid her farewell in my heart.
Although the backpack was heavy, Alice’s steps as she carried it were light.
This trip could be called a full harvest for her; her joy was visible even from her back.
She glanced back at me and said with a smile, “Yulin-chan, where are we going next?”
Ah.
That’s right.
We had healed Alice’s wounds and obtained more than enough food.
When the heavy cargo was on our backs and we stepped out the factory gate, facing the boundless gloom — we didn’t know where to go next.
“First… let’s go into the city and buy a wand. Alice’s wand got lost, didn’t it?” Walking slowly as if strolling across the solid ground, I said this to Alice.
But Alice looked a little startled by this decision I had taken for granted.
She raised her voice. “Eh? Yulin-chan is leaving here?”
“Huh?” Alice’s counter-question left me a little puzzled instead.
Alice went on. “Isn’t this Yulin-chan’s hometown? Is Yulin-chan leaving?”
“Y-yes.” There was nothing strange about that, was there?
After all, it was only an empty city, one that had been forgotten for who knew how long.
After thinking a moment, I continued, “Didn’t we still need to go into the city to buy Alice a new wand?”
A slight silence followed.
Alice beside me turned to look at me, then smiled faintly.
She seemed to have thought of something, but paused again before saying, “Yulin-chan is planning to leave her hometown and travel. I thought that once Yulin-chan came home, she wouldn’t intend to leave.”
“Eh?”
“After all, look. Even though no one lives in Yulin-chan’s hometown. There’s a subway, factories that can make anything, a water source, and a place to live.
“A place this good, a place that lacks nothing — if you leave…
“You won’t know when you’ll next be able to live such a carefree life.”
So that’s it.
Indeed.
Water, food, a place to stay, and anything you wanted delivered if you so much as lifted a finger or opened your mouth — that kind of life was nothing more than everyday reality in our world.
For Alice, it was already an ideal life.
I think that when this place had once been prosperous, Eden must have been even more convenient than I imagined, and the angels’ lives even more leisurely than I imagined.
But that was a thing of the past, after all.
“Then let’s work hard for a carefree life,” I said, not sure whether I was speaking to myself or to Alice.
If Eden was my hometown, then Lingyin, Luna, or… I had once known so many more angels.
They were all my family.
They had all once lived in the place where I now stood.
I wanted very much to see what Eden had once looked like.
Though I didn’t know where to start, or from which point to begin, then… let’s start by finding my family.
[Ring-Eden Line 4 Calling Approaching Arrival in 3 minutes 28 seconds]
Once again, we returned to this place I was tentatively calling a “subway station.”
Wisps of cold wind drifting out of the tunnel wandered across the pitch-black, silent platform.
Sitting on a step, I couldn’t help drifting off.
Once again, it still felt as if I were in a dream, especially when things grew quiet and I remembered the life I had once lived in that little city, remembered Aihua, remembered Uncle and Auntie, remembered the days in the house my parents had left behind.
It didn’t quite feel real, but… I really was here, standing in this gloom.
[Uncorrected Eden Calendar Year 8994 June 16 01:38]
Same as our world, a twenty-four-hour day.
If this had been a day at home, I would have been getting ready for bed around this time no matter what.
But deep underground, day or night no longer seemed to matter.
The screech of wheels on rails brought a stab of blinding white light.
Just like before we stepped through the doors, found a seat, and when the train started again, that long-ponytailed girl who should have been a robot came before us once more and said the same words:
[“Hello, two ladies. Is there anything you would like?
[“We have orange juice, lemon tea, strawberry slush, and chocolate cake.”]
“No thank you,” I said, looking up at her with a smile.
Beside me, Alice immediately hid the bag she had been holding — the one packed with the leftover cake and lemon tea from before — against the right side of her body, then raised her hand high. “Chocolate cake and lemon tea, please. Thank you!”
[“Very well. Please wait a moment.”]
Alice probably only knew chocolate cake and lemon tea.
In the quiet car, the train’s hum echoed in our ears.
Without a destination, and as if without an end, the train simply moved forward like this, passing tunnel after tunnel, platform after platform.
Outside the window there was only an unchanging gloom.
Occasionally lights flickered in the distance, but they were far away, as if we were traveling through the night sky and seeing distant stars.
This time Alice finished the cake and drank the black tea.
Her face almost pressed to the window, she gazed out into the darkness, looking very curious.
“I can’t see anything clearly,” Alice said softly.
“Mm, that’s true.” Alice’s face was reflected in the clean window, and so was the pure white of the carriage.
I turned to glance at her.
Then a blue silhouette appeared in the window.
She slowly came to my side and was looking down at me.