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“I’m sorry, Miss Sonia. It’s because of me you’re crying and suffering! I can’t stay here! I can’t stay in this house¹! I’m so sorry!”
“Susie, please! Don’t say that! Susie, please! Calm down! Please!!”

As Susie spoke through her tears, Sonia embraced her tightly, trying to soothe her. She whispered softly, “Susie, listen to me. I’m so glad you came. Your hair and mannerisms remind me of Lavi for some reason… but you know, I enjoy combing your hair.”

“Miss Sonia…”
“I was so happy when you ate and enjoyed our food. It’s always so much fun for me to pick out clothes and match outfits together. I am very happy to cook and do needlework with you every day.”
“M-Miss Sonia?”

“The night you returned from the temple, Howard told me about your past. You had no parents, were raised by your grandfather, and were already living on your own. In addition, you also came from a place we don’t know of.”
“?!!”
“You’re a child with no parents who doesn’t even know if you’ll be able to go home. And this child is standing before me right now. Hearing that, I thought to myself, ‘I want to be with her. I want to be her family.’”

Sonia held Susie even tighter, her embrace firm and unwavering.

“……”

She continued speaking gently, keeping Susie close in her arms.

“I want us to be a family. Lavi is gone… Nothing can change that. My heart still hurts whenever I think about it. But that doesn’t mean it hurts more because you’re here, okay? It’s because you’re here that I was able to feel happiness again. It’s because you’re our family. Because you’re our daughter, just like Lavi…”
“Family? Like Lavi? A daughter, just like Lavi?”
“That’s right! Yes! You are our daughter, just like Lavi! Another daughter of ours! We want you to be Lavi’s sister and a part of our new family!”
“Sister? My family?”

Susie’s story of an orphan being raised by her grandfather was the character’s story in the game. It was a role-playing setup where characters within the same account were presented as a family. However, the Soul Searcher apparatus had recognized it as reality.

And, in truth, his real-life circumstances were strikingly similar. His parents had separated soon after he was born, and his mother had raised him alone. She worked tirelessly, day and night, so he barely had memories of eating her home-cooked meals.

In reality, it was his grandparents who had cared for him. Before he entered high school, his mother remarried, and his new stepfather invited him to live with them. However, the year before, his grandmother had passed away, leaving his grandfather alone. Unable to bear the thought of leaving him behind, he chose to stay, wanting his mother and stepfather to start their new life together without feeling burdened by him.

His grandfather had passed away while he was still in college. At the funeral, his parents invited him to live with them once again, but he felt it would be wrong for a man in his twenties to rely on his parents for support. Instead, he chose to continue living alone, a decision that remained unchanged until he turned 32.

He had not seen his mother in over ten years, yet from what he heard, she seemed to be as healthy as ever.

He had never considered his circumstances particularly unhappy or unusual. To him, that was simply the norm. His grandparents had been kind, but he had never fully understood what others meant when they spoke of family.

Perhaps the reason he felt no strong urge to return to his original world was that he had no family waiting for him there.

But now, when Sonia spoke the word family, Susie felt something inside her tremble.

Her memory of not having a family did not belong to this world. It did not belong to this body, nor to this mind. It was merely a memory that had no connection to this world.

And this body, too, did not belong there. Originally, it had been nothing more than data within a game world. Yet now, it had flesh, and it existed in reality.

Where did this body truly belong? That was the question she could not answer.

She had wrestled with the doubt of whether it was okay for her to be here ever since the moment she realized this was not a dream.

And the more she grew attached to the Cloud family, the closer she became with the village children, and the deeper she fell in love with this village—the stronger that doubt became.

But Sonia had called her family…
“Family? I’m Miss Sonia, and Sir Howard’s family?”
“Of course you are. You are our second daughter. So, we will always be together! So, let’s go live together!”
“Family… Miss Sonia’s daughter… in this house… together?”
“Yes! We’ll live as a family in this house! This is your home!”
“My home… Can I really stay here? Is it really okay for me to be here?”
“Of course. Aren’t we family? This is your home. It’s the place you can return to. Of course, you can stay.”
“My home. The place where I can return to. A place I can stay.”

Susie repeated the words over and over again as if trying to confirm them for herself. Sonia patiently replied positively each time, reinforcing them with warmth and certainty.

She could feel that the tension was slowly leaving Susie’s rigid body. Susie wrapped her arms around Sonia, clinging to her tightly. Her frame leaned against Sonia’s, and finally, she buried her face in her embrace.

“The place I can return to… The place I can stay…”

Sonia gently patted Susie’s back and spoke softly, her voice carrying the warmth of a mother soothing a child in her arms.

“It’s okay. Stay here. This is your home. No matter where you go, no matter where you come from, you can always return here.”
“My… My…”

Susie pressed her face deeper into Sonia’s shoulder, trembling slightly.

Sonia ran her fingers gently through Susie’s hair, cradling her head with tenderness. She simply held her, as if holding her own child, while Susie sobbed and cried her heart out².

1. Robinxen: No seriously why would you jump to this extreme immediately?
2. Robinxen: I understand what the author is doing and the justification for it, but I guess it just doesn’t gel with me, the incongruence between someone supposedly having thirty years of life experience acting exactly like a child feels off even with the explanation. Of course, I know this is just my personal preference. I might reduce my commentary in the future just on account of the fact that this novel is clearly not aimed at me and it would be pretty unfair to keep lambasting it on my personal preference. That said I still will never let the author live down that fever dream of a chapter THAT SERVED NO PURPOSE with the boy trying to confess.

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