Chapter Text
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Prologue: A Distant Dream of a Withered Flower
"Leaf it to me!" A voice full of confidence… and, at the same time, a voice that was already at its limit.
"You really think you can escape from a flower?! Huh?!"
Even at full speed, he couldn't reach the darkness carrying away his light.
"Damn it…"
A flower. Just a flower, giving everything he had as he tried to reach—and, at the same time, avoid—something he could never forgive himself for.
"N-Never underestimate…!"
Even against all odds, he confronted destiny.
And yet…
"The dream…" he murmured, even though it went against his very existence.
He was only a flower.
"Never underestimate the dream of a flower!" A last Cry, which could only be heard by himself alone and the darkness itself in front of him
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Miss Flowery, please proceed to Room 2. The doctors are waiting for you." A voice echoed throughout the waiting room.
Even so, no one answered the call. Several people had already turned their attention toward a student who was deep in sleep.
"Hmm… ugh… Asgore… wait…"
The people sitting nearby exchanged glances. One woman decided to try her luck and slowly reached out her hand.
"Excuse me, miss…"
The woman approached the student and gently touched her shoulder, trying to wake her.
"You registered your name for an appointment? I think the doctor is already waiting for you."
"Ugh… huh? Who...Where am I? The doctor?"
The student gradually regained consciousness. Her eyes began to scan the room, and her expression slowly twisted into one of utter confusion.
"Asgore! Old friend, where are you?!" The girl suddenly sprang to her feet, startling both the woman and the people distracted by their devices. "Excuse me, ma'am. Where are we supposed to be right now? We're not dead, are we? I can't sense Knight's presence anywhere."
The student directed a peculiar and deeply concerning question at the woman beside her. The woman could only stare at her in alarm before hurriedly looking around for help.
"Listen, there's no time! If I don't hurry, my best friend's life could be in danger!"
The girl grabbed the woman by the arms, and startled by the sudden contact. The woman pressed both hands against the girl's torso and cried out:
"Help! Please! Somebody help me!" She cried in a desperate attempt to bring the attention of the people around her
"Hey… isn't she one of the students from the prestigious Tokiwadai? To think that even students from there could act so recklessly…"
'Huh.' Flowery froze for a moment, her eyes widened slightly, as if she had only just realized that she had been holding the woman far too tightly. She immediately let go and took a step back.
"A-ah…! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to!" She raised her hands awkwardly, trying to show that she had no intention of approaching any further.
"I just… thought you might be able to tell me where Asgore is." Her voice, which had sounded intense and desperate only moments before, became quieter and began to tremble. Flowery looked around, visibly uncomfortable, as though she had only just realized how much attention she was drawing.
The woman, still shaken, moved away from her as quickly as she could.
'Sunflowers… It seems this situation has gotten completely out of hand. And what are they whispering about around me? A prestigious school… I don't understand any of this.' Now just a bit calmer, Flowery began absorbing the details of her surroundings again. This time, however, she tried to maintain—at least imperfectly—her "cool" attitude.
'Humans… They all look like Kris, yet this body feels and looks different. Is this what the great feeling of "being human" is supposed to be?' Flowery thought as she looked at the audience gathered before her, realizing that the "he" she had been before was no longer the same person she had become.
As the situation unfolded because of the student's unexpected behavior, the doctors who had been talking among themselves and taking notes on their clipboards abandoned everything to see what was happening.
Yet only one of them stepped into the situation, bringing the noises from the lobby to a halt, and then he approached the student.
"Could you be Miss Flowery?" A peculiar-looking doctor approached her.
He was an elderly man wearing a spotless white lab coat, without a single trace of dirt or stain. His scalp had stopped growing hair long ago, and what little remained had already turned gray.
"Hmm… yes, I recognize myself as Flowery. But I don't understand this 'miss' business, sir…" The "miss" narrowed her eyes and stared at him.
"Heaven Canceller. You may call me that." The doctor pulled one hand from his lab coat and pointed toward a corridor.
"Please come with me to my office. I'll be able to help you with whatever you need right now."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Inner Turmoil
The commotion caused by the student's confused and distrustful behavior gradually subsided. Little by little, the hospital returned to its ordinary routine.
"Come with me to my office, Miss Flowery. We can sort through your questions there." The peculiar-looking doctor, whose features vaguely resembled those of a frog, began walking toward the end of the corridor.
Flowery gave a small nod, acknowledging his suggestion. However, he did not follow immediately. Instead, he raised one hand to his neck and rubbed it slowly, trying to release the tension that had gathered there. His eyes closed for a moment.
'He's inviting me somewhere private… Hmm. Considering that I have no idea what's happening, following someone who clearly has authority here is probably better than continuing to frighten everyone who comes near me.'
Flowery opened his eyes.
The doctor had stopped several steps ahead and was watching him with a neutral expression. His patience seemed almost limitless.
'Right. Let's try this again.'
He released a deep breath and allowed the tension to leave his body. Then he took his first step with a single objective in mind:
Let's Find out where I am.
——————————
'What an unusual case.' Heaven Canceller observed the girl as they continued down the corridor. 'Her ability had already demonstrated abnormal behavior some time ago, particularly during that incident involving a young member of Judgment. Still, this does not match the profile I have on record.'
The doctor's eyes narrowed slightly.
'The latest System Scan placed her at Level 3. No significant increase. No significant decrease. Her output fluctuates with her emotional state, but that alone does not explain this.' He glanced toward Flowery.
The student walked beside him with a strange combination of curiosity and confusion, as though she were trying to reconstruct the world one detail at a time.
'Her AIM Diffusion Field has always been unstable when her emotions change. That is one of the reasons her ability has never developed consistently. But this is not merely a matter of control.'
Heaven Canceller studied Flowery's movements.
'She is behaving as if she does not fully recognize her current circumstances.'
That possibility was not unheard of. Certain patients displayed confusion after severe trauma, neurological damage, or psychological shock. But Flowery's case did not completely resemble any of those patterns. Her file was familiar to him. He had examined her before, and he knew about her unusual ability, her unstable emotional readings, and the way Quantum Imprint responded to fear, pain, and the instinct to survive.
Yet the student walking beside him did not seem to be suffering from simple memory loss.
'Her memories appear to be present. Her reactions are not random. She recognizes names, emotions, and certain situations… but the meaning behind them seems displaced.' He did not take his eyes off her. 'She is not acting like someone who has forgotten who she is. She is acting like someone whose memories belong to her, but whose current life no longer fits around them.'
That distinction was important. Since Flowery had lived in Academy City for more than a year. She had a file, a school record, medical examinations, a registered Level, and a history of incidents that the city had already documented. But the person in front of him seemed disconnected from that history.
'If this is a relapse, it is unlike any relapse I have seen. If it is not… then there is still a missing piece.' Heaven Canceller decided not to question her immediately.
'Observation first. If I press her too soon, she will become defensive. Whatever is happening beneath the surface, it will reveal itself eventually.'
The corridor ended a few steps ahead; a sign protruded from the wall above a door.
HEAVEN CANCELLER'S OFFICE
They were almost there when a sharp sound echoed through the hallway.
Heaven Canceller turned slightly; by then Flowery had already stopped.
Her eyes had widened, and her mouth hung slightly open. Without warning, she moved toward the nearby window and placed both hands against the glass. Beyond it, Academy City stretched across the horizon. A colossal tower dominated the skyline, surrounded by countless buildings, elevated roads, and layers of artificial light.
Flowery stared at it as if she had never seen anything so impossible.
"W-w-wha… What is this?!" Her voice rose several octaves.
'That reaction is common among first-time visitors from outside the major cities,' Heaven Canceller thought. 'But she has lived here for more than a year.'
She studied Flowery from the corner of his eye.
'Why is she looking at it as if she has only just discovered the existence of civilization?' This observation added an important new distinction to his clinical assessment of the student in front of him."Hmm? Has something caught your attention?"
"Er… well…" Flowery continued staring through the window. "I wasn't expecting the buildings to reach so far into the sky. Something this incredible… Something made by human hands…" Her voice gradually lost its initial intensity, and she also seemed to realize that she was drawing attention to him again
'Something made by human hands…?' Heaven Canceller kept his expression neutral, but he couldn't stop his head at all. 'That wording is strange. She is not simply impressed. She is comparing this city to something else.'
Flowery slowly straightened her back while keeping one hand against the glass. Heaven kept his gaze following hers as her gaze shifted from the skyline to the reflection staring back at her....
For several seconds, she said nothing; the person in the window had the same face. The same eyes. The same unfamiliar body. But the reflection did not feel like him at all.
----
'This body belongs to me?' His fingers moved slightly against the glass. 'At least… I think it does.' He studied his own face. There were memories in his mind. Memories of a life that was his, of people he had known, and of emotions that still carried weight. They had not been erased.
But those memories did not explain the hospital, the city, the school, or the body he now inhabited.
'The memories are mine. The feelings are mine.' His fingertips pressed gently against the window, and the glass responded.
At first, the change was so subtle that Flowery thought it was another trick of the light. A faint shimmer spread outward from beneath his fingers, delicate and almost weightless.
Then thin lines began to appear inside the glass. They did not crack or produce any sound.
They unfolded; the transparent surface softened beneath his touch and rearranged itself into a pattern of fine, translucent petals. Each one formed slowly, layer by layer, as though the window were remembering how to become something else.
A small flower blossomed beneath his palm. Its petals were made of glass, but they curved with the softness of living leaves. Pale light moved through them, catching the colors of the city beyond the window and scattering them across the floor.
Flowery stared.
"…What?" He lifted his hand.
The flower remained attached to the glass, trembling faintly.
Heaven Canceller stopped his analysis. For the first time since they had left the waiting room, his expression changed; it was not fear, and it wasn't either surprise, at least in the ordinary sense.
It was recognition. Not of the phenomenon itself, but of the fact that it should not have been possible.
The doctor stepped closer to the window without touching it.
'No fracture. No heat distortion. No pressure damage.' His eyes followed the delicate structure spreading through the glass. 'The molecular arrangement has changed… but the process was not destructive. She didn't break the window. She caused it to become something else.' Heaven Canceller glanced toward Flowery.
The student was staring at the flower with genuine astonishment. There was no sign that she had intended to activate an ability.
'She doesn't know that she did it.'
The crystalline petals continued to expand by a few centimeters before gradually coming to a stop.
Flowery brought his hand closer, but did not touch the flower again.
'I didn't make that.' The thought came with absolute certainty, and yet, somewhere beneath it, another feeling answered. '…Didn't I?' The flower pulsed once. A faint warmth traveled from the glass into his fingertips.
Flowery recoiled and took a step back. The crystalline petals immediately began to fade. They softened, became transparent, and slowly dissolved back into the window until only a faint floral outline remained. The city's lights shone through it as if nothing had happened.
Heaven Canceller watched the last traces disappear.
'A spontaneous transmutation triggered by emotional fluctuation?' His gaze moved from the window to the student standing in front of it. 'No. The response was too precise. Too stable. There was no explosive release, no uncontrolled deformation, and no visible recoil.'
He narrowed his eyes.
'Whatever this is, it did not behave like a Level 3 ability should.'
Flowery looked at his hand, then at the window.
"Was that supposed to happen?"
Heaven Canceller did not answer immediately.
He examined the glass again. The surface appeared intact, but the faint floral pattern remained embedded within it, like a memory that had been pressed into the material.
"Did you feel any pain?" he asked.
"No."
"Dizziness?"
"Not exactly."
"Then what did you feel?"
Flowery hesitated.
She looked toward the city, then down at the flower hidden inside the glass.
"…I don't know. I just felt like it should be different."
Heaven Canceller's expression remained calm, but his attention sharpened.
'Not "I wanted it to change." She said it should be different.' That distinction mattered.
Flowery looked back at his reflection. The same face stared back at him. The same eyes. The same unfamiliar body. But now there was a flower between them.
'The memories are mine. The feelings are mine.' His fingertips hovered a few centimeters from the glass.
'But this is not the life I remember living.' A strange thought surfaced: his memories were not false. Neither were the emotions attached to them. They belonged to him, just as the instincts that shaped his reactions belonged to him.
But another history now existed around them: A different body. A different world. A different life.
'So what am I supposed to do with all of this?' Flowery narrowed his eyes, looking at his own reflection, also being "uneasy."
Heaven Canceller finally turned away from the window.
"Come along, Miss Flowery." His calm voice pulled him back toward the corridor. "This is my office. Let's go inside, and I'll help you understand what is happening to you."
Flowery looked once more at the faint flower embedded in the glass.
He did not remember creating it. He did not know why it had appeared.
But a part of him already understood that it had not been random.
"…Thank you."
Heaven Canceller opened the door.
Flowery followed him inside.
Behind them, the city continued to shine through the window. The delicate flower remained in the glass, almost invisible beneath the artificial lights.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------