POST_METAMORPHOSIS

Chapter V/6 - Hope to exist for

- ... U-ugh... ... "An unfamiliar ceiling..."

Nari woke up two days after Misa and Shouji brought her inside the facility. Her head hurt, and she was nauseous. Her vision was slightly blurry, too. She couldn't move her limbs.

- "Damn... Why do I feel so groggy? My head wants to split in two... My arms and legs refuse to work... What did they give me? What the hell did they do to me? ... What is this place? A clinic of some sort? It smells like bleach... Where are the others? Was even the transportation a success? Is there any nurse around?" ...?!

A screen appeared before her with a pop-up message: "Would you like to summon Emma?"

Nari looked at the affirmative option, titled "Yes." The screen had an eye tracker installed. It could register her eye movements as the cursor moves across the screen, whereas focusing on a single point would be the clicking function. She looked at that point long enough to register it and send a message to Emma, implying that she needed her to come over. All of these happenings surprised Nari.

A few seconds later,

- Greetings! - Emma appeared next to her. She looked at her with a friendly smile.

- ... Hi. How did you do that?

- The appearing?

- Yes...

- Simple: I'm an artificial intelligence, AI for short, with a human-DNA fundament acting as my looks, behavior, and other unique humanoid lifeform-related traits.

- ... I... I don't get it.

- Have you ever watched or read science fiction?

- No... Not really my cup of tea... "What the hell is up with this technology here? It's so advanced... and... sentient?!" Emma, right?

- Yup! Are you feeling any anomalies in your body?

- ... All my limbs were numb, but I can feel my legs a little now... I have a headache, and my stomach hurts... Like... I wanna throw up...

- I see, nothing too serious...

- ...?

- These are some side effects that may occur after the healing procedure. They will fade away shortly.

15 minutes later,

- Are the side effects gone?

- Yeah... - Nari said. She then tried to sit up.

- Do you want to sit up? Let me help, please! You don't want to go dizzy.

Emma helped the mother slowly.

- There we go!

- Thanks... <slow panting> My... my heart is-

- Fine? Yes. We healed it.

- "Strange... I was coughing blood all over the place... I couldn't even breathe... How did they restore me? And where the hell had they brought me to?" Um... Where am I?

- In one ward inside Division C of the Valkyrian Medical and Research Association.

- That's a mouthful... "Am I in another world?"

- Yup... To summarize, you are where you wanted to be, Ms. Yoshida.

- ... What? ... How do you know my...

Nari was about to ask Emma about how she knew about her. During that, she somehow realized if she knew her name, someone who had been before her must've told Emma about her, too. Someone who was there before Misa and Shouji brought her inside this place along with a young gal. That someone's name she was thinking about then, everything she had to go through, and the aftermath described in her letter. Her memories kept flooding in, filling her with guilt, making her more and more worried and breathing heavier, until: