Ceres: "Hand Over Your Embarrassing Dark History Too!!"
Shhhhaaaaaa—.
"…………"
"…………"
Ceres stayed in a daze for a while, letting the shower water beat down over her body. Dizzy from the aftereffects of having her memories abruptly handed back, she took advantage of the lull to poke her head out of the bathroom and check the time.
"How many minutes have passed?"
"An hour and a half."
"An hour... and a half?"
It had felt like ten minutes, tops. In reality, over an hour had slipped away.
"Apparently time runs differently inside the barrier than out. The thirty-sixth floor was like that too — inside this Tower it seems to happen everywhere you turn."
"As expected of the Golden Tower... What manner of hell could possibly be unfolding beyond the fiftieth floor..."
From how calmly she was speaking now, it seemed she'd taken in the memories without anything seriously going wrong. I sat perched on the edge of the tub, and Ceres, cheeks flushed red, could not take her eyes off my cock.
"In the memories you received — anything that would tell us who's been interfering with Seongyeon?"
"One moment... most of the memories I just got back are nothing but me having sex with you, Oppa...?"
"Not all of it's sex, though?"
"No. There are plenty of other memories too. It's just that half of the life I got back is sex-related..."
When I pressed her further, she clutched her forehead again and let out a moan — "Ahhk!"
"There's even stuff mixed in that we could never imagine doing...!"
"What kind of play could it possibly be?"
"I-I couldn't possibly say. But that kind, gentle Oppa of yours treats me like a 'pig'...!"
Just what on earth had this girl received? What in the world had I done? Could the Ceres-side memories be a dud? The paste-in was complete, so I finished washing myself and waited for her to settle down.
But Ceres's reaction never changed.
"...Ugh! Ahh, ahhk, what kind of hardcore stuff is thiiis!? M-my belly got all swollen up like that! And my butt too...!? Hnngh~♡"
'Show me what you showed Ceres.' I delivered the line like a duelist from some card-game anime, but she never stopped fussing until the bath was over.
It was one of those stretches where I ached with longing for the cool, collected younger sister she'd been when we first met.
And then, another ten minutes later — an hour and forty minutes since we'd entered the room — someone hammered on the door. When I opened it wearing nothing but a towel, sure enough, the redheaded ginger poked her head in.
"Hey, you two. Your auntie here might look like this, but she's got a whooole lot of work piled up~? A busy woman like me made time for you, and if you're gonna ditch her so you two can screw around, I am seriously gonna lose it~?"
Having stuck her head in, Brigitte barged the rest of the way inside and vented her irritation. The two jerks who'd gone into the room to collect their memories showed no sign of popping back out — and they were stark naked together, no less — so her reasons to rage were stacked to the ceiling.
"Lady Brigitte. We did not have sex. We were looking through memories, and the time simply got away from us."
"Oh-ho~? Just as I suspected. You come out here naked as the day you were born, the two of you, and now you expect your auntie to believe THAT~?"
From Brigitte's standpoint, it had to look exactly like that.
Ceres protested that it 'really wasn't true' — and spread her pussy open with both hands.
"...What's this now? You want your auntie to eat this pussy?"
"No. It's proof it hasn't been used — and a chance for you to verify that yourself."
"...You want me to stick my hand in and check?"
"Yes. Do as you please."
Any reasonable person would have taken her at her word by that point, but Brigitte insisted on confirming it with an actual finger. She drove her middle finger in with surgical precision and crooked it back and forth~♡
"Mmmmmmh... uhh...!"
"...Aside from being a little damp, it's nice and snug the way it clings. Did you really not use it?"
"That is what I said, didn't I."
Where had the disgrace of moments ago gone? In front of Brigitte she was all prim composure. She'd handed her own pussy over and was having it groped without so much as a flinch. If it had been me touching her, she'd have been whimpering like a dog in delight — and yet she held out remarkably well.
"Big Sis. What about Seongyeon?"
"She got tired of waiting too, apparently, so she's off playing with Natalia. Said to come get her when you're done."
Come to think of it, she'd only just gotten here herself, right after Seongyeon's bath.
"I'm sorry, Lady Brigitte. We had no idea receiving our memories back would take this long."
"It takes THAT long~?"
"It's a matter of taking in the memories of every single loop. We thought it had been ten minutes or so — turns out an hour and thirty had passed."
"Over an HOUR~??"
"Again, my sincerest apologies for the delay. Did you have some other business, by any chance?"
"For me it's about Rhea. I did text my little girl saying I'd be back late. Still, a mother isn't supposed to be sleeping out this often."
Spending the night away right after finally making up with Rhea. Perhaps worried about how that looked, she stole a glance at me.
"I'll explain things to Rhea myself later."
"You'd do that?"
"Today's exactly the kind of day that calls for it, isn't it? But anyway — Big Sis. You being here means Seongyeon and Ceres sat you down and explained everything, right?"
"...Yeah. They did."
She dropped onto the bed with a plop and flailed her arms in exasperation.
"Honestly, I'm still only half convinced. Regression this, loops that — that our lives didn't play out just once — that's not a story you swallow easily. And at my age, no less."
"And yet you believe us?"
"Your auntie here is being pulled along so hard she can't just write it off as nonsense. Something deep in my chest went all warm and sad, and my heart kept racing — like maybe I have memories even I don't know about."
Stumbling over her words, she told us exactly what she'd felt. I'd been like that at first, too — no particular reason to it, just a sudden dream of the first loop and a bone-deep certainty that 'this was real.'
"Oppa."
She'd understood that much, at least. All that remained was to show her the proof. At Ceres's urging, I held up the bright-red piercing, set it on my palm, and brought it toward her.
"...Uh, uh, uaaah!?"
"——!? ———!!!"
As expected, the piercing resonated with the owner of the memories. Brigitte toppled backward, and the piercing, as if recoiling from her, retreated to the back of my hand.
"That's... your auntie's memory? Those old loops you two talk about — the memories from before death and all that?"
"You can feel it too, can't you, Big Sis?"
"...Yeah. Mm-hm. Though I don't know if 'scary' is the right word. I just get the feeling your auntie shouldn't go touching it carelessly?"
Just as she said, the memories were avoiding her too. Wondering whether some unpleasant recollection was behind it, I looked over at Ceres, who had absorbed her own memories only minutes before.
Whereupon she abruptly began to cackle like a proper villain.
"Kukuku."
"What? What? What is it? Why are you suddenly laughing?"
"Nothing at all. I simply thought it might be nice for you to have a taste of it yourself, Lady Brigitte."
"A taste of what?"
"The feeling of having your unwanted dark history dug up and laid bare before the one you love."
"???"
She clearly didn't follow a word of it. Determined to make her savor the same feeling she had, Ceres snatched the piercing from me and thrust it out toward her in my place.
"Go on. Take this. Receive back every last one of your lost memories, Lady Brigitte."
"Y-you? Are you sure you got your memories back properly!?"
"Yes. I received them just moments ago. And not one or two of them — dozens upon dozens, the countless memories of this Ceres, who lived so many different lives. Of course, I imagine I look remarkably composed for someone who's been through all that. But make no mistake: I am only just holding myself together. Whew... hnn... if my grip slips for even a moment... swept away by all those memories... ugh...!"
"Are you actually okay? You talk like someone peddling drugs, you know that!?"
"...It may well be something more dangerous than drugs. To think that without my even knowing, I did 'that sort of thing' and 'this sort of thing' with Oppa. I'm doing my best not to dwell on it, but it keeps surfacing all on its own."
"Did WHAT!?"
"Dangerous play that the present us could never indulge in. And there is simply so much of it... hnn, hnn, just picturing it makes me feel like the dam between my legs is about to burst...!"
"...Uuuuh?"
From the very hole she had so rigorously screened — sex or no sex? — water erupted in one huge splaaaash. It poured out without a shred of restraint, like a car wheel plunging into a puddle and kicking up spray, defiling the floor — a truly alarming sight.
"Ch-Changki! What on earth kind of memories did this girl just get back!?"
That's exactly what I wanted to ask. Judging by all that talk of pigs earlier, there was no doubt she and I had enjoyed some truly outrageous play.
"Don't you start giving me that look too!? Your auntie is not some lab guinea pig, you know!?"
"Say what you will — you have to receive them either way."
"Why should I!"
"You must take them quickly and find out who kept interfering with us and blew my head apart. Or would you rather leave me be until it gets blown apart again?"
"Still... a person needs time to mentally prepare for these things...!"
"————!!! ————!?! —!!"
She bounded onto the bed in a desperate bid to escape. The red piercing in Ceres's grip couldn't articulate anything intelligible, but it flailed right along with her, voicing its opinion all the same.
"Hey, hey. Changki. Isn't something off about that Ceres girl? What if getting my memories back turns your auntie into that mess too?"
"I am perfectly normal. Aside from being somewhat excited, I am in my usual state."
"It's precisely because you look nothing of the sort that I'm worried!"
Ceres, meanwhile, crawled up onto the bed and pounced on top of Brigitte. I watched from the best seat in the house as a dripping-wet blonde beauty pinned down a married ginger.
"Whoa whoa whoa whoa! Your auntie does not swing that way! So let's PLEASE settle this with words! Okay!?"
"I don't know what misunderstanding you've arrived at, but I'll be explaining things to my sister later as well — for now, let me inform you first, Lady Brigitte."
"Inform me of WHAT!?"
"In roughly ten instances, the [Vagabond] was involved right up to the moment of my death. In three, I was murdered through my entanglement with Natalia. And then... starving to death in the gutter after Oppa failed to save me, being shredded in a crusher, even taking my own life at one point — true to form for my life, I met my end in a wide variety of ways... but the most suspicious figure among them all was, without question, Lady Suni."
"Suni..."
Tension crept into her previously uneasy face. Ceres was still visibly worked up, yet even buried under that mountain of obscene memories, she had recalled the circumstances of her own deaths with pinpoint clarity.
"And this is only what I remember on my own. Lady Brigitte, please dig through your own embarrassing memories as well. Search for whoever interfered with Lady Seongyeon and kept killing Oppa, over and over."
"By cross-referencing them like this... we'll find the culprit...?"
"Yes."
"...Ngh! I know full well nothing decent is going to come of this! And yet you're telling me to look anyway!?"
"Whatever embarrassing things happened in your past loops, they are all things of the past now. Please enjoy the show with a smile."
"Nnnnnngh~~!!"
Her face was the very picture of reluctance, but she wrapped her hand around the piercing all the same, declaring there was no helping it. If she wanted to join our circle, getting her memories back was non-negotiable — the current had been flowing this way from the start.
"Oppa. Please come over here and watch with her. I'll stay back out of the way."
"The way that piercing is thrashing about, I'd honestly rather not watch this one."
"No! You watched MY embarrassing memories, didn't you!? Watch Lady Brigitte's too, and laugh at hers just the same!"
"That's what you really want, isn't it?"
Mocking her — was it really that embarrassing? — I climbed on top of Brigitte in Ceres's stead. Once she received her memories, she'd be able to recall everything anyway, including the very things we'd just witnessed; yet Ceres had gone out of her way to drag me onto the stage of this dark-history showcase.
"...What in the world is her deal? Is something wonderful supposed to happen if she watches it with your auntie?"
She didn't seem to know the details, so I filled her in on what had happened between us — that while the Download of returning memories was underway, one of the loops we'd lived through would be played back at random as a video, and that in the process we'd caught a glimpse of Ceres's dark history.
"If all it has to do is download, why on earth does it come with a preview feature!?"
Knowing the Tower Master's personality, it was probably a feature built for their own enjoyment.
Receiving one person's memories in full had taken an hour and a half. There'd be no room for dawdling beyond that, so I jerked my chin at her — hurry up and put it on.
"...Ngh! Come on — please don't let it be nothing but weird memories!"
I wouldn't count on that. Judging by how violently the piercing was trembling, there was definitely something in there...
For all I knew, we were about to see something genuinely entertaining. I allowed myself to hope for something that would outdo even Ceres's dark history.