And standing amongst this gra.s.s was the figure that I have just seen lying motionlessly on the crio-bed with my own real eyes, but this time, her face wasn"t frozen in the never-changing peace akin to the final rest but was torn between great happiness and great horror.

"Eve…"

Whispering softly with just my lips alone, with no more than a gust of air escaping from my lings to create this silent voice, I was unable to make even a single step forward, to close the gap that separated us. Only now did I realise the weight of the emotions that could pin someone down in such an emotional encounter, something I always made fun off when watching romance dramas in my spare time between playing, watching anime and jerking myself off.

"Don"t tell me… Did you…"

Reaching with her fingers for her lips, she covered her mouth, as if that could allow her to hide the depths of her despair that twisted her beautiful face.

"No, I"m still alive!"

Despite how stuck I was in my own quagmire of feelings, my inability to stand the look of sorrow on the face of my beloved was something that managed to jerk me off my daze, and finally push my legs forward. After crossing just a few meters, I could finally grab her hands, pull them out of her face and just continue staring at her eyes.

"That"s a relief…"

Hearing my words, all the tension disappeared from Eve"s expression, with her eyes once again turning warm as she accepted my hands, entangling her fingers with mine. 

"How come are you here, then?"

While her moves were most likely aimed to be just as graceful as she always was with everything she did, despite this entire plane and both of our bodies being nothing else than an illusion, I could still tell that her hold on my hands was far stronger than usual, as if she was worried that the moment she relaxed, I would disappear once again, leaving her in this place all alone again.

"I"m not really sure… I have so many things to tell you, I want to explain everything about me to you… But I"m worried we don"t have much time now. Tell me, what was happening to you ever since I put you in a coma?"

At first, I wanted to tell her everything. About my reincarnation, about Bonger, about my exploits and ideas about how I wanted to save her… But seeing the pure elation in her eyes when she drove her fingers through the skin of my face, seeing how her pupils shone with a strange light, as if this meeting saved her from insanity, I didn"t want to start such heavy topics.

"Not that much really. This place… As soon as I closed my real eyes, I appeared here. Whenever I felt like it, I could change it to a beach, sea, forest, anything my imagination would let me… Yet this is the very first time when I get to see you when I got to see anyone besides myself here."

With a hint of sadness reappearing on her face, I felt my heart stop for a moment, with all the things I did back in the real world. The scenes of me lying down with Helia, enjoying my time with the sisters back at the deceased Overlord"s place… While I was having the time of my life, she was confined to this illusory place, patiently waiting for my return, waiting for me to save her!

"I"m sorry…"

While she couldn"t know the meaning of my apology, I infused it with all the guilt I felt about everything I did wrong on the other side. With how I cut myself some slack, with how I played around, with how I dared to focus on anything else than saving her! 

As soon as I said this word though, the expression on Eve"s face changed, from something akin to enlighted loneliness to a deep curiosity, mixed once again with worry. Untangling her fingers from my hold, she reached for my face, pulling it down to the place where she could touch my forehead with her own.

"Can I?"

Hearing the soft whisper escaping from her lips as she continued to caress my cheeks, I once again felt a tingle in my entire self.

"I don"t know what you are asking for, but you know I would never refuse a single request of yours."

Reaching with my hand up, I grabbed her small palm, and held it on my cheek, enjoying the sense of safety that came from her proximity.

With my eyes still open, I could see how my dearest Eve closed her eyes as if she wanted to focus on something, only for my own hand to hit my own cheek! Scared to no end that this place would collapse, and my time with Eve would come to an end, I felt a wave of panic bursting out in my soul, only for Eve"s soothing voice to calm it down again.

"Calm down, dear, and don"t worry about me."

With her entire body coming closer to mine, only to turn noncorporeal and simply merge with mine, if not for her words, I would lose my mind at this very moment. Yet as soon as our bodies finally turned into one in the truest sense of those words, rather than her words, the feeling of her own confidence in the matter cleaned all my worries about this place collapsing out. 

"I missed you so much!"

Standing on this strange plain alone, there was no point for me to keep my position with how Eve"s voice continued to soothe my soul from the inside of my own body, so without even a bit of hesitation, I fell to my back, allowing the gra.s.s to soften my fall and hide me from the face of the illusory sun of this place, s.h.i.+elding my closing eyes from the now unnecessary light.

"And so did I. But I need to say it again, I"m sorry, Eve."

Unable to hug her nor kneel down at her feet with how our bodies and souls mingled together now, I could only infuse my words with the deepest regret I felt from all the wrong choices I made in the real world. 

While I couldn"t say it for sure, I was almost perfectly sure that the moment I pushed those emotions in the open, with how connected we were right now, Eve could see every single event that caused this grief of mine to appear as if with her own eyes. Yet instead of getting angry or even her soul taking a shade of sadness, I felt something different in her. Rather than brooding or blaming me for everything wrong I did to her while she suffered from her loneliness, her entire self burst out in resolve, as she shuffled through all sorts of feelings of mine, making them surface in my own mind.

From the cold resolve, through hateful determination, past the sorrowful motivation, she was shedding all the layers of my emotions that I allowed to start shaping my true self, taking me on a ride of how my outlook at the lives changed through time after I had to put her to the cryosleep. 

"There it is!"

After more and more layers got thrown aside as if she caught a ripening onion and decided to reach its core, Eve was pus.h.i.+ng aside all the feelings that I experienced ever since the tragedy, all the way until she finally reached the source of it all, the source that was soo painful, I decided to forget about it myself.

Grief.

Sea… No. Ocean and universe of grief. 

It was like all the emotions that covered it, were nothing more than a layer of vegetation above earth"s cruts, compared to the entirety of the planet below it. Unending, undying and unyielding, the grief that was constantly burdening my soul, even without me noticing it.

"This… Oh poor you… Allow me to take it all away."