Blub, blub. Bubbles gathered at the corners of Eve’s mouth.

She had fallen into the water, but strangely, she felt no suffocation.

Breathing in and out without effort, Eve sank deeper, chasing the old memories dissolving around her, the images of her mother and father.

Why, Father. Why did you do it.

The memories, the two of them, no matter how far she reached, they stayed just beyond her grasp.

What did I do wrong. What did Mother do wrong.

To kill Mother, the woman you claimed to love. To kill me, your own daughter, with your own hands.

Sinking into a deepening darkness, Eve asked and asked again.

Did you want our place that badly?

No answer came.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Silence settled over the bridge.

The man stared down at the broken yellow ribbon caught between his fingers, his expression blank.

“D*mn it!”

There was no other choice. He closed his fist around the ribbon and jumped in after Eve.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

The image of Pieta receiving a teacup from Hybris.

At first it had burned itself into Eve’s eyes and refused to move, as though time had stopped. Then, at some point, it began to slowly recede and blur.

The two figures faded entirely into darkness, and Eve was left alone in a space filled with nothing but silence.

It would have been better not to know.

Things she had only learned now, when there was truly nothing left she could do.

That Pieta, too, had died by Hybris’s hand.

Why……!

The breath went out of her. Eve let out a faint groan and clutched her chest.

I want to save her.

Eve murmured without sound. White bubbles frothed softly at the corners of her lips.

If I could go back, I would.

The bubbles that had been rising gently with her breath turned rough without warning.

A murmur of voices. The space that had felt entirely empty began to fill with the sounds of other people.

‘……!’

Her breath, steady until now, seized up all at once. A cold, briny rush of water flooded her lungs with an involuntary inhale, and her chest ached.

Strength drained from her body. She tried to struggle, but her waterlogged clothes were too heavy, and she could do nothing.

Her mind began to slip, little by little.

She remembered wondering, not long ago, whether it was possible to die again after already dying once.

Ah. So it was possible after all.

‘Hey!’

A familiar voice reached her then.

Eve forced her slowly closing eyelids open.

In the space where only deep blue darkness stretched endlessly around her, someone was approaching.

It should have been an abyss where no light could reach, yet the gold white hair drifting like a heat shimmer looked just like sunlight.

Right. The undertaker was here too.

Thinking that, Eve reached a hand toward the man. His hand, the yellow ribbon still wrapped around it, met her fingertips as they slowly lost their color.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

What Astero had set out to do today was not so different from what he always did.

Like sand cupped in both hands that cannot quite hold it all, a little slipping free no matter how carefully one tries, his task was to guide souls that had lost their way and were wandering, and lead them to where they needed to go. That was the work entrusted to Astero.

The work itself was simple: take the soul across the Styx bridge that spanned the river of memory called Cocytus, from one end to the other.

Occasionally a soul would become caught in the memories it glimpsed on the surface of Cocytus and refuse to move on, but no matter how stubbornly it resisted, it would cross the Styx bridge in the end. That was the fixed law of things.

Eve had been one such soul. When she jumped into the Cocytus river, he had been startled, but it was something he encountered every so often, and he had expected to catch her without trouble.

This time, he had not managed it.

He had been thrown at first, but even so, he thought he could pull Eve up from the depths and finish crossing the Styx bridge as planned. That would be the end of it.

Except—

“Hah……”

Strangely, when Astero broke the surface with Eve, the scene that greeted him was nothing like what he had expected.

“Good heavens…… what do we do!”

“Call a doctor. Quickly, hurry!”

What Astero saw before him was not the crumbling Styx bridge. It was people who, as far as he knew, had absolutely no business being there.

“Ugh…… cough, cough!”

Eve, limp and unconscious in Astero’s arms, burst into a coughing fit and opened her eyes.

“Help us, please!”

Someone’s shout rang out, followed by the sound of splashing.

“Over here, take my hand!”

Astero’s head was spinning. Someone reached out offering to help, and others grabbed hold of him and Eve and began hauling them out of the water.

“Hah……”

With the help of the people around him, Astero barely managed to drag himself out of the water, braced his hands against the ground, and drew ragged breaths.

His waterlogged clothes and jacket hung heavy on him. His hair, soaked through and plastered to his face, dripped steadily, leaving spreading dark circles on the neatly laid stone beneath him.

He disliked water and made a point of keeping his distance from it in ordinary life. This had been his first time swimming since the day he was born, and the only thought in his head was that he would never do it again.

“Hff……”

Astero looked over at Eve, who had slipped from his arms the moment he came out of the water and lay sprawled beside him.

“Cough, cough!”

Eve had collapsed like a heap of soaked laundry and was doing her best to push herself upright.

“You could have just come along quietly……”

Irritation surged without warning. Astero muttered under his breath and grabbed Eve’s arm hard.

Eve had just braced her hands against the ground and was about to stand when the sharp grip yanked her back down and she fell face first.

A minor mishap, but nothing more. All he had to do was take Eve back to the Cocytus river and finish crossing the Styx bridge, and this whole nuisance would be over.

Astero was thinking exactly that, pulling Eve up to get to his feet, when it happened.

“Miss!”

“Miss Eve! Are you all right?”

Several women who looked like maids came running with near screams, surrounding Eve and Astero.

One maid pried Astero’s hand off Eve and pushed him aside. Another wrapped a blanket around Eve’s shoulders. Another turned her face this way and that, checking her color.

“Has the doctor not arrived yet?”

The maids shoved Astero back as though he did not exist and fussed over Eve alone.

Pushed aside, Astero sat back and stared at the scene with a blank expression.

“……Something’s wrong.”

Something was off, but he could not put his finger on it.

His already half scattered thoughts grew hazier by the second from the maids’ commotion, and then Astero’s face went pale.

“Oh……”

He had finally understood what was wrong.

Eve, who should have been dead with nothing left but her soul, was here in a perfectly living body, in plain sight of other people.

“How, how is this—”

The maids handled Eve’s body without a second thought, and Astero pointed at her, stumbling over his own words.

“E…… not that, where is the young lady!”

A booming shout came from behind Astero, accompanied by heavy, thundering footsteps.

“Miss! Miss Eve!”

“Ugh!”

Again, a large man barreled through as though Astero were not there, nearly trampling him, calling out for Eve.

“Miss!”

“Sir Ophiucus, over here!”

The maid holding Eve bundled tight in a blanket turned to show her to the man she called Ophiucus.

Eve had lost consciousness again and hung limp.

Ophiucus held his hand beneath Eve’s nose to check her breathing, then stood up sharply.

“Get her to her room at once!”

The crisp order sent the maids moving again in an instant.

The tallest maid scooped Eve up onto her back and left the pond side. The others filed after her, and Ophiucus went with them.

“Tsk, tsk. Of all days, on the day of the engagement ceremony.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“And to think he had no idea his fiancée was in that state.”

“Or perhaps he knew and pretended otherwise. You know, there was that rumor. Apparently—”

The people lingering behind shot glances at Astero and at someone else nearby, whispering among themselves.

Astero followed their eyes. A man with a face just as pale as his own stood staring only at the direction Eve had been taken.

Engagement ceremony? Fiancée?

They seemed to be talking about Eve, but as far as Astero knew, there was no way to make sense of why those words were coming up at all.