Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 134: A Little Mirror World

Having a memory wiped from your head and then replaced with something else... yes. Even within the bizarre context of his life, this was fucked up.

Eastiel remembered everything. Not just his identity outside this makeshift, plasticine alternate universe, but his identity within it as well. It was a horrific double exposure. The cosmic horror of it...

Was it the forgetting? No. It was in the merging.

No. Actually, it made a kind of sense. It felt like he was still perfectly, entirely himself. He was Eastiel. But the prompt was different.

Eastiel, but a bully. In a high school setting.

A simple directive, and his own mind, his memory, his own soul, had rushed to fill in the details, the gaps, grafting the raw data of his real life, his brother, his rivalries, his Cecilia, onto this alien framework.

Everything was still eerily the same, yet the context made it feel like a funhouse mirror reflection, warped and mocking. Entirely different.

But what kind of entity... possessed the power to do this? To reach into his consciousness and recontextualize him? Then built... an entire world for it?!

Was Cecilia’s patron—

Whatever god it was—

"Cecilia..."

He saw her flinch back from him.

The sight was a physical blow. What? Was he not himself? Why was she afraid? Who was he in this moment? What was he? The existential dread intensified the rage already boiling in his veins until his visage was of pure fury.

"What in the world," he hissed, the words tearing themselves from him, "is this?"

The moment he saw Ruby, Arzhen and Nikolas a moment ago, his eyes saw red. Puppets in this play, yet wearing the faces of his deepest wounds. A surge of painful, wrathful emotion, followed by a bone-deep grief, swallowed him whole.

"AAAAAAAH! I CAN EXPLAIN!"

Cecilia launched herself at him. Her arms wrapped around his waist, her face buried in his chest. Her next scream ripped through the fog of his horror.

"PLEASE DON’T BE MAD!"

The shriek was so piercing it jolted him, but it didn’t dispel the underlying dread, only sharpened it.

"Aaaaahh, Eastie, pwease, lemme explain? Okay? Okay? Okay?" she babbled, her voice a frantic, ringing sound in his ears. "I can explain it! Don’t be mad? Don’t be mad or I’ll be mad! Don’t be mad! DON’T BE MAD!"

No, baby, I’m not mad... but—

"Hubby, I know...! It’s my fault! I should’ve warned you!" she cried, shaking him slightly. "Awwww, don’t be mad! DON’T KILL THEM PLEASE! I WANT THE REWARDS!"

...I’m scared.

THUD—THUD-THUD—

The sound of Ruby’s books hitting the floor again, a hallway away, was the trigger. Eastiel’s arms snapped around Cecilia’s body, embracing her back with a force that knocked the air from her lungs in a sharp gasp.

"Baby, don’t cry," he rasped. He pulled her even closer, as if he could absorb her into himself and shield her from the unreality surrounding them. "Let’s go. I’m here."

If he was this terrified, surely she was, too, right?

She was the one who lived with this... this. The entity.

Scooping her up into his arms, he turned and walked away, unceremoniously, his broad back the only thing between her and everything else. He didn’t look back.

...

...

...

...

...

The moment they disappeared around a corner, the spell of stunned silence in the hallway shattered.

Immediately, the hallway was engulfed in a wave of gasps, shocked whispers, and then a full-blown, gossipy uproar, entirely unrestrained. The social order of Scholomance Athenaeum had been tilted. But also... it had been blasted to smithereens.

"Oh my god—WHAT JUST HAPPENED?!"

"Fuck that was CRAZY!"

"Goddamn... I thought I was just seeing Cecilia get humbled by her fiance again, what the actual fuck was that?!"

"Hey, hey, hold up, technically, Cecilia isn’t his fiance, okay?" a more pedantic voice cut in, buzzing with the thrill of correction. "The rumors only ever said it’s just that Lord Anton Vasiliev wanted her to be the next madam. They never officiated anything!"

"Oh, shit—could it be Cecilia’s real boyfriend was Eastiel, then? Ohhhh that’s mad! That’s mad!"

"What do you mean ’that’s mad’? Didn’t you hear what they were calling each other? Hubby and baby!"

"Are they going public, then? I’ve never even heard a whisper that they were dating...!"

"I guess this is how they’re doing it! Damn! But what a way to go public... dropping a bomb like that right after the drama with Ruby...?"

"Shows you what’s real, I guess. Man, the whole Ruby and Arzhen show is starting to feel... overrated."

The whispers and murmurs swirled, no longer hushed but openly dissecting the spectacle.

Hearing it all from where she stood, frozen amidst her fallen books, Ruby’s face went from flushed to a sickly, bloodless pale.

This was how people saw it. Their carefully managed lives, their intricate dances of affection and alliance... reduced to gossip fodder. It was the price for status, for reputation, she’d always told herself. To be the center of the narrative, even if the narrative was written by others.

But right now her role in it was being recast from the tragic, beloved heroine to a supporting player in someone else’s more explosive, more real story.

The foundation of the reputation she’d so painstakingly built... was being dismantled.

Brick. By. Brick.

Ruby took a deep breath, forcing air into her tight lungs. She had to calm down. She had to regain control of the narrative, of the room, of something. This was just a temporary setback, a bizarre outburst. She could spin this. She could—

Her gaze found Arzhen. And what she saw there made her flinch, the fragile calm shattering before it could fully form.

Rage.

Not the performative, possessive anger he’d displayed moments ago when defending her. This was different. It was cold, seething.

A fury that seemed to leech the color from his face and sharpen every line of his body into a blade. His jaw was clenched so tight the muscle in his cheek twitched. His eyes, fixed on the empty space where Eastiel had carried Cecilia away, held a dark intensity she’d never seen directed at anything but a true enemy.

...What?

Huh...?

Why?

Her mind scrambled for a reason. Was it just because they’d stolen the scene? Upstaged their drama and redirected the entire school’s attention in one chaotic, humiliating burst? Yes, that was part of it. The public loss of face would sting his pride terribly.

But it seemed... deeper than that.

There was something else coiled beneath the surface.

A chill traced down her spine.

Everyone who walked past them now did so with hurried steps and sidelong, weird looks. No longer the admiring or sympathetic glances she was used to.

These were looks of curiosity, pity, and a fresh, gossip-fueled reassessment. Ruby wanted to grab Arzhen’s arm and flee, to retreat and strategize away from these prying eyes.

But Arzhen remained frozen. He didn’t look at her. His entire being was focused on that vanished point down the corridor, as if he could still see them, as if he were replaying the scene—

Cecilia’s desperate cling, Eastiel’s possessive carry, the intimate, world-excluding names they’d used.

The invisible string Ruby had always felt between herself and Arzhen... in that moment, it felt thinner than ever.

Stretched to transparency. Fraying at the edges.