Despite the immediate obstacle being eliminated, a strange feeling still permeated the air. Too much was left unsaid, and too many things still didn’t make any sense. I stood there in a daze processing what had just happened for a good while.

  When I came back to reality, I saw both Ayumi and Hikari surrounding Shiina, who had since collapsed on her knees.

  “Shiina, are you okay?” Ayumi asked as she helped her get up.

  “I-I think so,” the former angel replied.

  “I’m so sorry that you had to lose your powers and memories because of me,” the girl said with weight in her words.

  “N-No… it wasn’t your fault,” she said weakly.

  Ayumi’s expression slowly turned inquisitive; she approached me and asked a question to my ear.

  “What’s going on here, Takkun? I remember Shiina having a much different personality before.”

  “That is because she wielded her powers to change her personality,” Hikari responded, somehow managing to hear Ayumi’s question. “So when she became a human, she was unable to sustain that ‘fake’ personality.”

  “Ohh, that makes sense. Hmm, hmm, yes.” Then, Ayumi stared hard at the girl wearing her former classmate’s face. “I have another question though.”

  “What is it?” The angel asked with a devious smile.

  “Is that you, Kotori?! What are you doing here?!”

  Took you a while.

  “Hello again, Ayumi. It is with great pleasure that I can finally meet you properly,” Hikari said. “To cut a long story short…”

  After a brief explanation from Hikari about the events that had happened since the first time we saw Michael, Ayumi seemed focused on one detail. Her spirits sank so low it hurt to see.

  “So Kotori was an angel all along…” she whispered, crestfallen. “All that time, right under my nose. Oh, such irony.”

  “I was not going to let myself be exposed, so do not fret. But let me tell you, our conversation about angels in the classroom was refreshing.”

  That conversation… if I remember correctly, wasn’t Kotori the one who came to us?

  Despite the tease, Ayumi still had her head in the clouds. “Even the way she talks is different… tricked to the extreme…” she mumbled to herself.

  “Well, you’ll get used to it eventually,” I commented, prompting an almost imperceptible giggle from Hikari.

  “Sigh. No point in dwelling on it now,” she said after finally snapping out of it. “It’s a pleasure to meet you as well, Hikari. I wish it were under different circumstances, though.”

  The angel replied with a pleasant grin, which Ayumi answered with a weak smile. Clearly something was on her mind.

  “There’s something bothering me, but I think I know the answer to that question already, to be honest. What were you doing undercover at our school, Hikari?”

  “My mission was to observe you closely. There was no specific directive beyond that; I was merely assigned to monitor your activities.”

  “I knew it was something like that. It would be too much of a coincidence for an angel to be hanging around our school. And I guess Michael put you up to that?”

  “Indeed, he did. Naturally, at the time I did not harbor any suspicions. It is not unusual for angels to undertake such missions. For me, it was just a simple relaxing mission to unwind. But the fact that I was never asked to intervene, despite your dubious activities, did make me somewhat suspicious.”

  “And you know why he had Hikari spy on you, right, Ayumi?”

  “Well, guess I have some explaining to do, eheh.” Then her smile vanished. “Like I said before, back on Earth, I’m not a normal human. I’m what we in the outside world call a ‘Diver’—a human who spends some time connected to a virtual world. That was why Shiina could not erase my memories back then.”

  “Makes sense so far. So do all Divers have an angel shadowing them or something?”

  “I don’t think so, no.” We both looked at Hikari, who shook her head. “Even among Divers, I'm somewhat of a special case.”

  Of course she had to be.

  “I have some… special permissions that rival those of the archangels, and in some cases even surpass them. I believe that was why they couldn’t let me run amok, in the off-chance I would do something to undermine their control of the simulation. Of course, I was never planning on doing such a thing. I just wanted to live my life in peace.”

  “And those special permissions… I bet they are related to the reason why the password to enter the Shrine is your name, right?”

  For a brief moment, Ayumi paused. “Yes. Although I had no idea what the password was until just now. Really, for them to do something like this…”

  A word she said caught my eye.

  No, ever since we got back Shiina’s memories.

  It’s always been them, them, them.

  So who are these “them”? Who’s behind all this?

  Once again, Ayumi hesitated when I asked. “My parents. The creators of the angels and the ones who made this world—Gaia—possible. It was all my birth parents’ work.”

  “Wait, you mean…?”

  “My birth parents did really die in an accident. Just not on Gaia.”

  Ever since I first met Ayumi, I knew her parents weren’t her birth parents, and that they had died in some sort of accident. But the fact that her parents here, the ones I knew, were too, just NPCs, was somehow quite disconcerting.

  However, I didn’t have enough time to pursue that thought for long, because someone else spoke up.

  “Ayumi, I apologize for this question, but I have to be sure of something. Your parents passed away eight years and three months ago, correct?” Hikari asked.

  “Actually, it was a bit earlier than that. I didn’t come into this world right away,” she explained.

  “As I thought…”

  “What’s up, Hikari?” I asked.

  “Ever since we found out about Ayumi’s proxy, I thought the timing was a bit odd. Now, however, I am convinced; it cannot be a coincidence.”

  Next to her, we heard a gasp. It was Shiina.

  “N-No way…” It seemed Shiina had figured it out.

  “Eight and a half years ago, give or take… the previous archangels disappeared.”

  “W-What?! Are you saying…”

  “Yes, Takeya. I believe the previous archangels—a man and a woman—were Ayumi’s parents. Considering that the archangels were in fact ‘Divers’ keeping the angels under control, and that Ayumi’s parents were somehow involved in the creation of angels, I see this as exceedingly likely.”

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  This is crazy. So all this time, before I even met Ayumi, her real parents were already leading the angels?

  “I assume you had no idea about this, Ayumi?” I asked her.

  “No, not at all. It’s complete news to me. In fact, I had very little idea of what they were working on before they passed away. I just heard them talking about ‘angels’ all the time, that they would one day protect me as well, so it got stuck with me growing up.”

  “So that’s why you were interested in the angels in the first place.”

  “Yeah. In a way, they are my parents’ legacy. Their final work. That’s why I wanted to meet one. A silly thing, right?” She said with a weak smile.

  All this time, her obsession with that darn urban legend was all just a way to get closer to her parents’ legacy. In a way, they are a piece of them, and also a piece of her.

  It’s no wonder she got so angry with me when I “didn’t get it”.

  Darn it, Ayumi.

  “Hey, Hikari,” the girl with disheveled hair began, “you met the previous archangels, right? How were they? My parents…”

  “Yes, I conversed with them many times. They were both wonderful people who generously extended their personal assistance to me, even when it went against their duties,” she said with a genuine smile. “Nothing like these goons who replaced them.”

  “I see. I’m glad to know that. In a strange way, you probably knew them better than I ever did. I was very young when they passed on.”

  Hikari looked away from Ayumi, in the direction we’d come from. “Now knowing that they always kept you in their mind as they built the Upper Realm sheds some light onto their actions. It always appeared to me that they were building up to a greater purpose.”

  Ayumi’s parents created the angels. And they also set up the password in the Shrine for every time they wanted to access the Controller. Every time, they reminded themselves about the most important thing in the world for them, their guiding star: this girl right here.

  In a strange way, our shared affection for Ayumi connected me to these two people I’ve never met and will never meet.

  “So your ‘special permissions’—” Hikari began.

  “Yes, that’s also something my parents left me before they died. A little back door, if you will. The right to enter this world as I pleased… and also to continue their work, if I so wished.”

  With the mystery about Ayumi’s connection with the angels and the Shrine cleared, there was just one big thing left to explain.

  “There’s something I’m still not understanding about all this. Why make such a massive, incomprehensible world? Why make so many virtual humans? What is even the purpose of all this?”

  “This world, Gaia, is an ancestry simulation, an extremely faithful recreation of the past. Well, the past from my perspective. I guess that means I’m something like a time traveler to you. Huh… I never thought of it that way,” Ayumi said as she drew a small smile.

  Even in this situation, you just can’t help but be light-hearted, can you? Classic Ayumi.

  “Its purpose has changed many times over the years, but nowadays it’s used by people who want to live and experience this specific epoch of human history.

  “The Gaia Project was, to put it mildly, ambitious. This is by far the largest and most complex simulation ever created. Not just because of the number of humans living here, but also because of the logistics of making sure the recreation is as exact as possible.”

  My face made the question that Ayumi immediately acknowledged with a nod. However, instead of answering, she looked straight at Shiina and Hikari.

  “And that’s where angels, or rather, the ANGEL System comes in.”

  “The… ANGEL System?” I asked dumbfounded.

  “Yeah, that’s what my parents named it. I have no idea what it means though. Knowing them, it might not mean anything at all.”

  Were Ayumi’s parents just as scatterbrained as she is? Don’t tell me it’s hereditary.

  “The ANGEL System was their main work in the Gaia Project—find a way to sync the simulation with the real world. And the method they came up with was the angels. An angel’s actual purpose is to alter global events and influence human behavior to guarantee this world follows the history of the real world. The missions angels follow are, in reality, a dressed-up version of those instructions. Built around it is the entire angel society and their mythology. Those were created to ensure that they would continue this vital process, year after year. Eventually, my parents figured out that glitches were beginning to occur, so angels got tasked with fixing those as well.”

  “But as more and more Divers came in, the simulation started incurring more and more glitches. Those glitches caused an exponential increase in new glitches, until we were left with the current situation,” I added.

  “Right. And those goons, after they took over Gaia—” She cut herself short. “They weren’t as concerned about safety as my parents were. They just wanted to maximize the number of Divers inside Gaia, no matter the cost.”

  Which brings us right along to the crux of the matter.

  “Ayumi, can you tell us what your plan is? Did you find a way to save us?” Hikari’s tone was strained, exposing her concern for the matter at hand.

  “Of course I did. I searched for help, pulled some strings, and with the people I found, we figured out a way to make everything right.”

  “So you can stop what’s happening? Because the AI said the installation of the new firmware couldn’t be stopped.”

  “Well, that is technically true. I’m not going to stop the installation itself.”

  “But that means…”

  “Relax, Hikari.”

  At that moment, Ayumi’s smile held the entire weight of the world in it. She held on gallantly, unfazed by the enormous pressure.

  “Unfortunately, the archangels let things progress too far. The glitches are already too widespread, and so recovery is near impossible. So I’m going to have to resort to some emergency measures.”

  “Emergency… measures?”

  “My parents hid a little program that automatically backs-up Gaia. Not even Michael and his gang knew about it. Otherwise they might have messed around with it since then to save on costs. Fortunately, my special permissions can access this program. So I’m going to use it now. I’m going to reset Gaia back to a time before the Illumination occurred. I’ll also recover Shiina’s permissions, turning her back to an angel.”

  Then she paused. A severe pause.

  “However, as a tradeoff, there will be no more updates to Gaia. There'll be no archangels from the outside to monitor you, nor any more Divers coming. You'll be on your own from now on.”

  That’s… a pretty hefty responsibility, you know?

  “Huh? What do you mean, Ayumi?” Her tone had given me a very bad feeling. “You aren’t… leaving, are you?”

  Her face was placid, but I knew Ayumi well enough to understand she was still hiding something. “Yes… and no. That’s the best answer I can give.”

  “How can that be?”

  “Unfortunately, what I’m about to do is going to anger a lot of people, even though it’s the right thing to do. Even if angels don’t legally exist, this backup… if it became public, we’d be in serious hot water. For you to survive, we need Gaia to stay hidden. That’s why I and all the other Divers will have to leave this world.

  “However, all Divers can’t disappear all at once. In my case, imagine the grief I’d cause my surrogate parents, all my friends, and you if I went away.”

  Only then did I realize I had greatly misunderstood Ayumi this whole time.

  It didn’t matter whether it was real or fake; the fact was that she spent almost half her life in this world.

  For her, Gaia wasn’t just make-believe.

  This was her home and she cared about it more than anything.

  More than anyone.

  “Thankfully, there’s already an easy solution to this problem.”

  “You mean your proxy?”

  “That’s right. Each time a Diver leaves Gaia, their proxy is left behind. Then our memories are reunited when we come back,” she explained. Then her tone turned a bit lighter. “So right now, I remember the incident in the gym, and also that you and Shiina were about to go on a date behind my back.”

  Shiina looked down at the stone floor, as if embarrassed. I, too, didn’t quite know what to say, but fortunately for me Ayumi didn’t focus on this.

  “This system is exactly what I'm going to exploit to keep a version of all Divers in Gaia. That means the me who’s currently speaking with you and the me that’s staying here are going down their own paths and become two different people.”

  “You can’t say proxies are just a copy of the Divers. That’s bullshit. That Ayumi… she’s nothing like you at all!” I shouted, my voice slightly breaking at the end.

  She was surprised, but just for a split second; I was the only one who noticed.

  “What you’re saying is partially true. After all, she doesn’t know I’m a Diver. Every memory we have related to being a Diver, including knowledge about the outside world, gets erased each time the proxy is created. That’s why she seemed so strange to you, Takkun. She acted without that knowledge.”

  Is that it?

  I wonder. Something else about Ayumi’s behavior was odd. It wasn’t just her weird memories. Hikari gave the same explanation, but I’m not so sure. I can’t pinpoint it exactly, but there was something else going on. At the very least, I know her eyes weren’t shining like they used to.

  The only confirmation I needed was Ayumi’s expression. Her current smile looked… fake. Just like her proxy was.

  “No, Ayumi. There’s something else going on here.” She couldn’t contain her surprise from betraying her otherwise neutral face. “Something about your proxy. There’s some other difference you’re not telling me about. It's not just the memories. There’s something else going on here. Please tell me. I need to know.”

  After a few moments of holding her breath, Ayumi exhaled deeply, releasing all her pent up emotions.

  “Do you really know me that well? Or am I that bad at lying?” she asked with a trembling voice.

  “I’d guess both, to be honest.”

  She sighed. “I wasn’t going to confess this, but you forced my hand, Takkun.”

  At that very moment, Ayumi’s cheeks reddened.

  The voice she produced was filled with bliss.

  No, that’s not it.

  “Earlier, I said I didn’t use my special permissions for anything, but… that was a small white lie. I apologize. I… actually used them to alter my proxy’s settings a tiny bit.”

  Ayumi paused.

  “She, my proxy, cannot love you, Takkun. She doesn’t now, nor will she ever be able to.”

  Her voice and face were filled with love.