Not a minute had past after they had left the Adventurer's guild, that Sneed had walked up to stride next to Rin with a confused and unsure expression.

"W-What was that back there?" Sneed asks as he waves a hand back towards the guild they're departing.

"What was what?~" Rin replies coyly.

"Y-Y-You know d-d-damn well w-what!" Sneed argues. "W-W-Why did you ki-kiss that receptionist?!"

Rin shrugged her shoulders.

"She was cute," Rin answered honestly. "I thought it might make a good impression of me on her."

"I-I thought you wanted a l-low profile?!" Sneed reminded her. "K-K-Ki-... Going around and kissing the same gender, i-i-isn't ex-exactly k-keeping a low profile!" He told her.

         

Rin stop and whirled around on Sneed. Grabbing him by the front of his jerkin with one hand, with a sideways sort of hold; Rin was more or less just trying to hold him in place, rather than lifting him where he stood by the front of his shirt.

"I'll ask you this only once, Sneed:" Rin said in a stern tone. "Do you have a problem with me kissing girls?!" She nearly shouted at him in the streets.

Sneed had to swallow a dry throat, that almost choked him on the way down; he was absolutely terrified.

"O-O-O-Of co-course not!" He answered with both sincerity and terror.

"Good! Because I'm not planning to have any sort of bigot being a follower of mine: if you have a problem with me liking other women," She said with a shove. "Then you can leave and get, the fuck out, now."

"........" Sneed was silent at first, as he watched the person he once thought he knew and watched over turn around to continue walking ahead of him. "I-... I don't have a problem with it..." He murmured to her back. "......Y-... You j-just never showed an in-interest in f-f-fe-... girls before..."

Rin snorted at his response.

"Yeah well, some times, people change." She informed him.

       

"..............Is that why you have a different name then? Because you've become an entirely different person." Sneed accuses in a firm and clear tone of voice. One that makes Rin stop in place from where she was walking to turn back to look at Sneed.

Who was staring at her with slanted judging eyes and a hardened expression.

     

"*SIGH*"

              

Rin lets out a sigh of resignation.      

                  

Guess it's time to come clean, I suppose.

But right before she started speaking. She smirked at him and said.

"Well? What will you do if I say yes?" Rin answered him, much the same way Sneed had earlier that day in the alley.

This got a chuckle out of Sneed, which made him lower his guard a bit.

"Before I answer that, I'll ask you something first:" He rephrased what Rin had said earlier in the alley as well.

"What happened to Ava?" Sneed's face growing harder and more firm as he asks Rin his question.

                       

             

                

Rin realized that Sneed, wasn't really asking if she really was Ava; or that if Ava was alive somehow.

What he really wants to know, is if I had anything to do with me being inside her body.

                  

                    

             

“I don’t know.” Rin answered.

“Y-You!—…… *GULP* …You don’t know?!” Sneed asked in disbelief.

Rin shook her head remorsefully.

"I don't." She repeated. "I'm as much in the dark about this as you are; I don't know why I've ended up inside Ava's body."

"L-...Lies!" Sneed said with hopeless desperation in his voice.

"It's very true:" Rin affirmed. "I came home from work one day, did some... Um... let's call it light reading. Then afterwards, I had gone to bed. The next thing I remember is waking up as Ava, inside her own body."

"T-T-Then?!-... Does that mean? She's just gone? You're not her at all? D-Don't you have her memories, or s-s-something?!" He asked Rin desperately.

            

Rin shook her head once again.

               

"I wish I did, in one way: because it would have been easier for me to blend in then, if I knew Ava and her past." Rin reached up with her hand to scratch at her scalp inside her hood as she spoke honestly to Sneed. "I would have hated lying by pretending to be her; I hated how much I had to pretend, as it was; but, it wasn't like I wasn't in a situation where I could just reveal, that your boss had become an entirely different person altogether: it would have been best if she had just gained my memories; or we, had, somehow merged. But we-...... ...I wasn't given that luxury." Rin corrected herself at the end.

             

"............................"

             

Sneed looked away, having nothing to say her; nothing that he could say to what the person standing in front of him had said.

     

*pat*

       

Sneed felt a large hand grip his shoulder, which gave him a squeeze of comfort.

He looked back up at the person in front of him, who was looking down at him with a sad smile of sympathy.

"I've come to realize that you're not just some average henchmen who just worked for Ava; both of you have family names, which means that you both were nobles or of some sort of prestigious family lines, correct?" Rin asked for confirmation.

Sneed didn't say anything, but just gave a single nod of his head.

"I... I understand that Ava-... ...-That Avalin was important to you; that you were watching over her, in a way."

"She- *HIC* -... She was my partner's daughter..."

His wording of how he mentioned Ava's parent confused Rin.

"So you're not her father, are you?" She asked for clarification.

But Sneed just shook his head while letting out a small chuckle.

"N-No... I... A-... She and I weren't like that to each other."

Rin looked at him in confusion.

"But you wanted to be, right? I mean! Why else would you take care of someone else's kid and watch over them."

       

Sneed released a nervous laugh at her accusation.

"Y-Yeah, I guess you're right... But... It's pretty weird. Talking with the body of my former partner's daughter, whom I had affections for."

"AH!" The light bulb went off within Rin's mind, as she realized why this was awkward for Sneed. "Sorry about that... I-... I didn't even think about it, since I'm-"

But Sneed held up a hand to forestall her from finishing.

"I-I-It's alr-right...... It's just........."

"Weird?" Rin supplied helpfully.

Sneed gave another nervous chuckle.

"To say the least..."

Rin gave Sneed's shoulder another comforting squeeze before letting go.

"Take your time; you don't have to tell me everything, or tell me it all right away. I do want to know more about Avalin; more about where she came from, and who she was."

               

                        

Then Rin leaned forward towards Sneed, looking into his face and eyes with her own.

"Because I know, that the name Parallax, is not a name that can be normally inherited."

Sneed felt as if his heart was about to beat out of his chest, as he heard this person start to speak of his partner's name.

"It's normally a name reserved for a certain person; a person who's done something worthy of recognition by the King of Osmori."

Sneed could barely hear, as the pulse in his ears from the beating of his heart was so loud.

"And that person must have been... The one you hold dear enough in your heart."

                       

                         

*BA-DUMP*

                   

"...Arvania..."

             

*BA-THUMP*

                              

                              

"That's her mother, isn't it? Avalin's mother, Right?"

                       

                         

                          

"Arvania?"

                          

                         

                               

"Arvania Parallax?"

                   

                                      

                    

"H-...How did you know?-... I thought you didn't have Ava's memo-"

"I don't." Rin answered Sneed quickly to cut him off. "But I have something else."

She then reached inside of her cloak to pull out and lift up the crystal reader.

                                                                  

                                                                 

                                      

                                      

"As you can see," Rin began as she showed off her stats. "I have a special trait called the, Third-Eye." She told Sneed. "It's bacially a crystal reader, and has slightly restored the lost vision of my missing eye."

"...................." Sneed couldn't form any words, as he stared a gap at the woman in front of him, as she casually showed off and explained her unique abilities to him.

"One major draw back of the Third-Eye, is that it can't show me my own stats: which I desperately needed to know."

"......That is why you need to come to the city......" Sneed murmured as he began to put this woman's plans together for why she did things.

 

Rin nodded her head in agreement to Sneed's assessment.

"That's right." She confirmed. "But mine shows off a little more than just basic stats: it also show's me your likes and dislikes."

                   

This made Sneed's eyes go wide.

                      

"You-... You mean that-"

"Yes!" Rin answered with a wicked smile. "That's how I knew you liked, Arvania; or how I knew you hate, King Helios." Rin put the orb away, while looking at Sneed with a smugness present on her face and in her eye. "That is also how, that I guessed that Arvania was Ava's mother...... But what I don't know, is how she obtained the name, Parallax...... I thought that was only given to a hero of the realm?"

And according to the game, only two people in history had ever been named heroes of the realm before.

"Y-... Yes.... She was...- -... Or I should say, we both were, at the time; we were each other's adventuring partners in crime."

           

AH-HA!~

               

"I see... You and Arvania partied up together while adventuring."

Sneed gave a sniffle as he nodded his head in answer.

"Th- *HIC* -That's right..." Sneed spoke through memory laden tears. "She!- *HIC* She was the greatest in the realm at the time... The King had set her on an impossible task and- *HIC* -"

"Let me guess," Rin interjected when Sneed had trouble speaking through his tears. "Arvania succeeded in her task, but she died in the process. Thus leaving her child behind to obtain the title?" Rin finished for Sneed.

                         

What a sad tale-

                             

"What? No!" Sneed chuckled through his tears at Rin's horribly misplaced speculative thoughts. "No, you missed the mark on that one. Arvania succeeded n her quest. She returned a champion; a hope for the common people of the realm."

"Ah! I see..." Rin was shocked to hear about such a figure.

I knew there were two previous people with the Parallax name in the history and lore of the game...... But who would have thought that Ava's mother would have been one...

Sneed watched as the woman before him became introspective at his words.

"A-Are you finding my words hard to believe?" He asked her.

"Frankly? Yes." Rin told Sneed honestly. "I hadn't expected that Ava had that kind of history...... How did she end up a bandit?"

"A-Ah!.............."

                     

                  

".........................."

                       

                     

When Sneed refused to speak up after that. Rin realized that they had come to the end of what would an encounter in Records of Ellemoryss.

                                                  

I've realized that, while life is not an Otome-game. There are somethings to learn from them; Like learning to read ques and signals from people. Or what might be the correct response in a situation.           

                       

These lines of questions are obviously making him uncomfortable... Time to change tactics.

                                          

"You know what, Sneed. Forget it." She tells him.

"H-Huh?"

"What I'm saying is: is that it's alright if you don't want to share, or if this is a touchy subject... I realize that you and Ava, have probably been through a lot; and I'm willing to wait to hear about you and Ava later on." Rin assured him.

Sneed's eyes opened wide as he heard her say this.

"D-D-D-Do you mean that?!" He asked in disbelief.

"Yup, believe it." Rin told him.

She gave him another pat on the arm to reassure him.

"When you're ready to talk about it and tell me more. I'll be here to hear you out."

               

Sneed looked down to hide his embarrassment at having been comforted by someone so junior in age compared to him.

"T-T-Th-Thank you-......." Sneed hesitated, not sure what to say to her. He looked back up at the woman in front of him, and decided to just ask. "S-S-So?... Should I s-still refer to you as, A-Ava?..."

Rin hadn't thought about that herself. She was fine with people calling her that.

But I doubt this guy still want to call me that, after finding out I'm not the same personality inhabiting his crush's daughter's body...... Which is the weirdest sentence I have ever thought of...

"Hmm... No... That really wouldn't be fair to you. And, if I'm at all honest, not fair to either Ava or myself." She gave him a big smile before sticking her hand out towards him.

               

"Just call me, Rin."

                       

"Rin huh?" Sneed repeated the name she- That Rin, had told him. "I-It's a nice name... Short for Kathrine then?"

"Y-Yeah..." Rin reached back into her hood, to scratch at the back of her head in embarrassment. "I'm-... Um... Not a fan of it... It's a pretty unfortunate name, at least in modern terms from where I'm from..."            

"...While I don't understand what you mean exactly, I do sympathize with having a cursed namesake."

"Hahahahaha!" This made Rin burst out laughing at his choice of words. "What a way to describe it! Hahaha!"

"...So? Now that we have the crystal reader. What is our next move?"

After Rin composed herself. She pointed towards the top of the hillside.

"Our next stop: Coriolis Mansion!"

               

"......... *SIGH* ......... I was afraid you were going to say that?........... Are you sure you're not really Lady Ava, and have just gotten smarter?" He quipped.

This made Rin laugh out loud again.

"No, I'm pretty sure I'm not." She assured Sneed. " And don't worry so much. We shouldn't cause to much of a ruckus while we're there. I'll even get you a cream-cheese parfait afterwards."

"R-R-Really?!.... How did you know I liked-"

Rin's only response was to tap her eye patch.

"Magic."