"Pardon the intrusion."

I spoke on auto-pilot as I entered the nurse's office on the ground floor, without even bothering to knock beforehand.

"Oh. It's you, Lord… I mean, Leonard Dunning," our new school nurse snapped to attention, only to belatedly greet the rest of my company. "Welcome."

"Good afternoon, Mr. Arpachshad," Elly returned the greeting with a polite smile, while my dear assistant only nodded and ever-so-slightly raised a brow at the other occupant in the room. Mountain Girl was in the middle of scarfing down one of those instant ramens, and hastily hid the paper cup behind her back, as if embarrassed by it. Which, by the way, she definitely should've been, considering that as a teacher, she had an outrageous eighty percent discount in our needlessly fancy cafeteria, but I digress.

It was the tail end of the lunch break, and we came to visit the nurse's office with various things in mind.

"How are you settling in?" my draconic girlfriend continued to converse with Jaakobah, and he seemed rather taken aback by her attitude. What he didn't know was that, since he was the one who healed my hand a while back, he was categorized as a 'good guy' in the princess's book, and she was immediately willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

"I have to admit, when I accepted the Magi's suggestion for a cover identity, I wasn't aware it was so involved. I'm also unfamiliar with some of the equipment related to the job, but I should manage."

"Equipment?" I echoed him, and the dour agent pointed at the wooden mallet on top of his desk.

"Until now, I was under the impression that I was familiar with mundane medical technology, but even so, I'm afraid I have no idea what this item is used for."

"Oh. That takes me back," Judy noted with just a hint of wistfulness. Of course, Jaakobah was hardly able to recognize it, so he only stared at her questioningly. Unfortunately (for him), my girlfriend refrained from any further elaboration, and headed to the back of the room, to the closer of the two neatly set medical beds.

Meanwhile, Rinne used the time nobody was paying attention to her to finish up her ramen and stealthily disposed of the cup into a nearby trash bin. She then walked up to me like none of that just happened, and cleared her throat to get my attention.

"Leonard-dono? Rinne has a report to make."

"Then do so," I prompted her, and she crossed her arms in front of her chest.

"Rinne attempted to trace back the rumors about Leonard-dono to their source, but so far, Rinne was unsuccessful in finding their origin."

She was talking about the weird and varied gossip floating around in school, mostly concerning the reason behind my month-long absence. They were just way too over-the-top to be explained by the rumour mill. I mean, for goodness's sake! There was a story saying that I wasn't hospitalized, but had a fatal car accident, and I was replaced by the winner of a lookalike contest set up by the Critias equivalent of the CIA to avoid panic. According to the classmate telling me about this, there were clues about what truly happened on the upcoming Dragon Prodigy album cover on Ouroboros or whatever, and I couldn't convince her otherwise. Not that I was trying really hard, considering I was too busy cringing, but still.

In any case, I was about seventy-nine percent sure someone was having fun at my expense by seeding these rumours, so I put Mountain Girl and the Kage ninjas on the case. Of course, I didn't expect her to show any results in half a day, so I wasn't holding it against her, yet by the looks of it, she took her 'failure' personally."

"Don't worry, Leonard-dono! Rinne will turn every stone and pebble until Rinne finds the perpetuator!"

"Perpetuator?" Jaakobah echoed her, looking at her sideways.

"She meant 'perpetrator'," I came to the rescue, and the man let out a soft hum.

"Huh. I see. So you have difficulties expressing yourself in our language. Was that the true reason behind your silence in Elysium?"

"No, of course not!" Mountain Girl protested with unusual fervour. "Rinne already told Jaakobah-san that Rinne didn't speak because of Leonard-dono's orders. Rinne has no problem with the local vermicular."

"Ver… mi…?" my guard captain repeated after her, but when he couldn't make head or tails of her, he glanced at me, obviously asking for help.

"It was supposed to be 'vernacular', I think." After a beat, I turned to Mountain Girl and added, "You aren't helping your case."

Rinne let out a displeased huff, but instead of responding to me, she continued to argue with the phlegmatic man in the white coat. I didn't pay much heed to them anymore though, as my attention was drawn to my girlfriends, or to be specific, Elly's uncontrollable giggles.

The two of them were sitting side by side on the bed and engrossed in discussing something, only looking up when I was right next to them.

"At least the two of you are having fun," I noted a touch absently, and I was rewarded by another chuckle from the princess.

"We're reminiscing," Judy told me, her deadpan voice mixed with just a hint of amusement.

"Now that you mention it, the nurse's office holds a lot of memories for us, doesn't it?"

"It sure does!" Elly stretched out her right leg and waved her feet left and right. "This is where I fell for Leo, you know?"

"Wasn't that on the rooftop?" I asked, but she shook her head.

"No. It was here. After we fell down the stairs," she declared authoritatively, and let out another giggle. "I was sooo mad at you back then, I didn't even notice I had a crush on you!"

"The Chief certainly has a talent for that," Judy noted with a shallow nod.

"Making people mad, or making people lo—?" I wanted to ask, but then I bit back the last word, and instead said, "You would just tell me 'Yes', right?"

"You know me," my dear assistant responded with an actually visible smile.

In the meantime, the princess got her giggles under control and grabbed her hand. I didn't know why; it wasn't like she was about to run away.

"So, what's your memory? Did you also fall for Leo here?"

Judy's face slacked for a long beat, and then she shook her head.

"No. I can't recall a time when I wasn't in love with the Chief." Hearing that, Elly smiled so sweetly at her that I was afraid she would give us cavities. Yet, my other girlfriend let out a troubled sigh and told us, "My memory is from when I collapsed after having an existential crisis all night."

"Oh, I remember that." I crossed my arms and put a finger on my chin. "It was because I threw you in the deep end too soon. Sorry about that."

"You already apologized for that, and I'm over it." I thought that was the end of it, but then she added, in a tone that was infinitely approaching being cheeky, "I also got a date out of it, so it wasn't all that bad."

"Ah, your date in the amusement park!" Elly nodded sagely, as if figuring that out was hard, and then her brows descended into a frown. "That wasn't a good memory for me."

"Was it because of the haunted house? Where you punched an animatronic vampire?" I asked, and she flushed beet red.

"A-Awawa! Don't remind me of that!"

"Ah, Chief. She did the thing," Judy pointed out, one finger literally aimed at the princess's face.

"I've heard. They are so rare nowadays."

I sighed theatrically, for extra emphasis, and Elly used her still-outstretched leg to poke me.

"Stop it, you two! Stop teasing me!"

"We only do it because we love you," I said, but then I had to let out a hiss. "Ouch. Careful, princess. That hurt. Why are you only focusing on me, anyway?"

"Because Judy is fragile," she answered after lightly kicking my knee one last time.

"She's right, you know?" Judy agreed, and the two of them nodded in perfect harmony. However, the light-hearted atmosphere soon took a turn for the serious when she linked her fingers in her lap and exhaled hard. "I wasn't entirely honest before. I'm not completely over it."

"The existential crisis?" I blurted out, and she nodded.

"Lately, there's been this sense of… unease." Judy sounded unusually earnest, and it caused the princess's head to cool down in record time. At last, she let out another sigh, and explained, "I can hardly put into words how happy it makes me to have you back, Chief, but I also can't shake off the feeling that your return signals the beginning of the last act of the Angie Route."

I reflexively glanced over to Rinne and Jaakobah, to make sure they weren't listening in, but the two of them seemed to still be bogged down in an argument about linguistics. Nevertheless, I lowered my voice, just to be safe.

"Yeah, although I have no idea how it will play out."

"I'm more worried about what comes after," Judy continued soberly. "Once the route is over, it will necessarily have an ending, and we have no way to tell what will happen after that. Let's say Joshua and Angeline will have their happily ever after, complete with a final CG image with the words 'FIN' written on it in a cursive font. What then? Will the Simulacrum keep going? Will the 'story' continue, or will the whole world get wrapped up and return to the main menu, metaphorically speaking?"

"Uh. That's a heavy subject," Elly muttered, but then she shook her head. "But we can't know for sure if that will happen! Maybe things will just go on but without the Narrative."

"That would be, arguably, the best-case scenario," I noted, nodding along, but Judy remained pessimistic.

"But that's the problem. We can't know for sure. While we have made progress in understanding the Simulacrum, at the end of the day, it remains a black box. We still don't know why it exists and what it does, so we can't be sure that once it wraps up, it won't just get reset and erase all of us."

"Sure, just like how we can't be sure that a solar flare won't hit us tomorrow and wipe humanity off the face of the Earth," I argued back, but at the same time, I got down to one knee and reached out to grab Judy's hand. "The difference is, we can't do anything about a solar flare, but the Simulacrum? That's something else entirely. If push comes to shove, at least you can bet on me stopping any potential universal reset, or die trying."

"I would personally prefer if neither of those things happened," Elly interjected, and Judy also nodded in agreement.

"You know what? Let's do this," I proposed, still on one knee. Normally, those words in this context would've implied there would be rings involved, but that was for later. Instead, I reached out to Elly and squeezed both their hands. "Let me make sure things are stable on the island first, and once we've got some breathing room, let's focus on the Simulacrum itself for a while. Do you remember what I told you a while back about the best way to combat existential dread?"

"We collect data and construct hypotheses because we are uncertain. Being uncertain about our existence is scary, so we are combating this dread by taking the thing that makes us uncertain, observing it, picking it apart, poking its innards, putting it back together, and ultimately attempting to figure out how it works. Then it’ll no longer be uncertain, and thus we’ll have nothing to fear."

For a solid five seconds, I wasn't entirely sure how to react, but once I managed to take my mouth off the floor, I whispered an impressed, "That was more or less word-for-word…"

"I don't forget anything, but I especially don't forget anything that you say," my dear assistant told me as she squeezed my hand back, and yet it was Elly who had a dopey smile on her face and let out a soft 'Dawww!'

"Shouldn't have expected any less from you." With those words, I stood back up, and proclaimed, "My words still stand. If the world makes you uneasy, just say the word, and I'll take it apart for you."

I considered that a pretty dramatic moment, which of course meant that the Simulacrum was probably obligated to undercut it by making my phone ring at this very moment, and the guitar solo of my ringtone definitely didn't fit the mood of the scene.

Nonetheless, I didn't let that set me back, so after I slipped my hands out of the girls' grasps, I theatrically added, "After I'll take this call. You hear that, world? You're not off the hook just yet!"

That got the expected reaction, at least from Elly, and after another beat, I reached into my pocket and accepted the call.

"Hello, Mike. Is there a problem?"

"N-No! Not at all!" The hapless Celestial's voice on the other side was nearly drowned out by the background noise of a crowd, and made nearly unintelligible by the sound of a loud announcement, calling people to gate seven or what have you. "We're here, at the airport!" he yelled, trying to be heard over the cacophony. "What are we supposed to do now?"

"Moose's plane landed without issues, right?"

"Yes! He's right next to me! We are waiting for the luggage! What should we do after that?"

"I gave you operation funds, didn't I? Take him to a restaurant, have a hearty lunch, and bring him up to date."

"R-Roger! I'll do that! We'll meet you in the evening!" There was some commotion, and then I could hear Mike yelling, "Look, there's a big green bag! Over there! Is it yours?" before he cut the line.

I was just a tiny bit worried about the situation with those two but decided to ignore it for the time being. I had a bad habit of trying to micro-manage everything and then missing much more important developments in the process. I should just trust Mike. He got this. Or so I hoped.

Anyhow, I pocketed the phone and turned back to the girls. To my immense relief, I found the previous sombre atmosphere completely vanished into thin air. Elly, in particular, seemed to be excited about something.

"Sorry for the interruption. What did I miss?"

"We continued the previous topic," Judy answered, and that made me raise a brow.

"About the ending?"

"No, the previous previous topic," Elly stressed. "About the places with the most memories."

"Oh, that makes more sense," I mused, and after some thinking, I spoke the first word that came to mind. "The roof?"

"Yes!"/"There's no contest."

My girlfriends spoke at once, and Elly barely managed to stifle a laugh.

"I can't wait for the weather to get better and we could eat lunch outside again!"

"The only part I'm not looking forward to is preparing the lunch boxes," Judy noted, and suddenly the princess was looking at her like she was a space alien.

"Why? That's the best part!" She clenched her fists with starry eyes. "Making a lunch box with the boy you like in mind, and then eating it together, is the pinnacle of school romance!"

"Is it? I never put that much thought into my lunch boxes," Judy admitted, and once again, the princess gave her an odd look.

"It's because you only make sandwiches. You should branch out," she pointed out, and my dear assistant looked as stumped as if someone told her it was high time she finally learned how to fly by flapping her arms really hard.

"But the Chief likes my sandwiches. Right?"

That was clearly aimed at me, and responding with anything other than a hearty nod would have been high treason, so I didn't even attempt it.

"That doesn't mean you can't try something else! I know you can cook well," Elly insisted, but then unexpectedly added, with a smug smirk, "I mean, not as well as me, but you're pretty good."

At once, my dear assistant's eyes narrowed, and this time, I didn't even need to add 'by Judy's standards' at the end of the sentence.

"Was that a challenge?"

"Maaaybe?" the princess responded with the same, oddly cute smirk. However before they could've gotten any further than that, Mountain Girl called out to us.

"Leonard-dono? The next class is starting soon."

She pointed at the large, fancy clock on the wall. It was branded with the mascot of a pharmaceutics company or something (I never looked into it), and just as she said, there were less than ten minutes left of the lunch break. Normally, that would have been plenty of time, but in this case, things were a little different, and it was related to Rinne as well.

"Let's go, girls. We'll have to change," I paused and looked at our resident highly-visible-ninja-cum-PE-teacher. "So, what's the plan for today's class, teach?"

Mountain Girl looked downright startled by my question. Or was it the tone? In either case, she cleared her throat and told me, "Joshua-san requested basketball."

"… Of course he would," I whispered with a mounting sense of trepidation. I was pretty sure his goal was to use his newfound Deus-ness to have a leg up on me on the playing field. He was weirdly competitive about that, for some reason. "Oh, well. Let's not make him wait then."

With that, we bid our farewell to the incognito Celestial Prefect, and left the nurse's office, all the while I did my best to pretend I wasn't paying attention to my girlfriends' increasingly competitive boasting about their culinary talents. No matter how I looked at it, I had a hunch I would soon be forced to become the judge in yet another instalment of the old 'love interests compete in cooking' trope. Oh, how I wished all the troubles the future undoubtedly had in store for me were so wholesome…