Editing City Series:Volume8b Chapter12 (section)

===Aoe’s Continued Sight Mode: In DT Castle===

'''<Aoe’s Over Reload>

The next thing Aoe knew, he was staring up towards heaven.

He wasn’t sure if he had been unconscious or asleep.

He simply felt a sense of loss bordering on emptiness permeating his body.

He only saw the color black with a single point of white in the center.

The white was a small light seemingly shining down from heaven. It was actually the light coming from the hole in the audience chamber floor.

He didn’t know how far he was from that heavenly light.

He only knew he was at the bottom of a pit located below the audience chamber.

“Mh.”

He nodded and checked to make sure he was in one piece. He had the usual complement of arms and legs, but he was lodged in some kind of ditch. He couldn’t twist to either side or do much of anything.

“Mh,” he grunted as a new shadow appeared in his vision.

He could see the outline of a miniature dog in the heavenly point of light.

“Is that you, Monkey?” he muttered and Monkey nodded.

'''<Aoe’s Over Zoom>

He sensed Monkey sitting on his chest, but Monkey’s size and weight seemed to have changed. He was bigger and heavier. It was like Monkey had grown giant without changing his miniature proportions.

Aoe held his right hand up to get a look at it.

The hand he held in the white point on the ceiling had small, stubby fingers.

He stared at the hand and Monkey rubbed his wet nose against it. That tickled and gave him a look at Monkey’s face.

Monkey’s cheeks were bulging close to bursting, indicating he had program trigons in there.

<This is high performance mode. Was that your decision, Monkey?>

His thought appeared in a window which he could only see as a silhouette in the darkness.

Monkey reached a foreleg toward that window.

'''<Window Display Settings: Pseudo Backlight: This will exhaust your eyes, so focus on a distant object once every hour.>

The window became a light-emitting panel, palely illuminating his surroundings.

He saw several sharp cones jutting upwards. He was currently lodged in a gap between two rows of giant dusty spikes.

He looked back to Monkey on his chest.

Monkey appeared to be about as big as his torso.

Aoe nodded once to accept that he had shrunk.

The window overhead began to flash.

After five flashes, the light-emitting thought panel vanished.

'''<Aoe’s Over Zoom>

He again couldn’t see a thing. Silence and motionless surrounded him.

Monkey curled up on his chest and stopped moving.

Aoe filled his lungs with the dark air while lying between the spikes.

He looked up and stared at the white point of light.

He released his breath and placed words on it.

“Why…can I never win?”

He could not come up with an answer for his question.

He simply asked the question.

And a new question came to him.

“Why am I always too late?”

His voice faded away and vanished.

His audible exhalation soon changed to an inhalation.

'''“Yuo.”

The breath caught when that girl’s name came to mind.

A sandy sound came from Monkey’s mouth while the Mouse sat on his moving chest.

Then the point of light overhead blurred. His vision was distorting and bending.

''Oh, no,'' he thought, but it was already too late.

A warm dampness fell from the corners of his eyes and toward his ears.

Monkey remained curled up on his chest.

He did that to hide himself from Aoe. He remained entirely still, as if to say he would play no part in his master’s emotions.

Aoe was surrounded by a vague darkness.

It was a false darkness. In truth, it was nothing more than the brightness setting being set to zero.

But he wept within that false darkness. He placed his feelings in the subprogram in charge of the tears and left them there.

He didn’t even wipe the tears away.

He exhaled and inhaled while his limbs trembled from the pain remaining in his body.

All of his movements were fake, but they managed to express a certain emotion.

He spoke through his trembling lips.

“Why…am I crying?”

He exhaled.

“If I could express it in words…would the tears dry up?”

He inhaled.

That was when a somewhat withered woman’s voice spoke from the previously silent darkness.

“Yes. So much would go so much more smoothly if we could express everything in words.”

'''<Aoe’s Sight Mode has ended>