Chapter Text
This is a tale about versions.
Wavy hair resembling amber grains and innocent eyes resembling turquoise lakes. Shiryu remembers having seen this girl in a version before, "Princess Freya... Your Highness?"
However, she is not.
The amber grains don't match goddess fertility and the turquoise lakes are not purely clean. A lame imitation. In comparison to the original, everything of this copy is subtly yet critically worse, particularly the color scheme in a bright pink and vulgar green mixture, which could be described as dreadful. The man beside her hurriedly presses the Invert Colors function for adjusting her eyes to purple and hair to blue:
"No no no, her name is Lyfia!"
─The dreadful becomes deadly. Does this person only know Contrasting Colors?
Refers to himself as Daedalus the Cepheus, but he is nothing like Shun's master. Pockmarks from injections and scars with sutures occupy his plastic-like bumpy muscles. The skin over his frontal bone had been completely cut off, two points of Jamir's distinctive eyebrows─and perhaps even some brain tissue underneath─were transplanted onto his forehead. The unequal sizes are so stretched that grafts are nearly bursting with the redness and festering of rejection. Behind a stereotypical pair of glasses, he's complacent.
"Don't doubt us. We both have official ID cards."
Shiryu opens spiritual eyes. Lyfia is a daughter of the copier, while the impersonated "Daidaros" is a monster of silicone for injecting. An alert is triggered in Shiryu's mind: since Shun's school has been replaced, he might be in this danger, too.