Serialized Novel (42) The Drifter

"This will do. I think it's best if we just have the Director stay silent from now on."
Eva said coldly, smiling faintly.

"Did you shut down the Director again?"

"No, there's no need to go that far. If I stop the Director and that ends up shutting down the town's functions as well, it might cause unnecessary confusion."

She didn't shut down the Director?
What on earth had Eva done?

Eva began to speak again.

"We don't need to shut the Director down; we just need to stop listening to what it says. I only turned off the Director's speaker. That is enough."

Holding Isaac, Eva began to tell me about the movements of her heart up until now.

When she lived in the Yayoi period, Eva was blessed with shamanistic talents. Because she predicted the future so accurately, people came to believe strongly in what she said. As a girl with a genius-level shamanistic talent, she was even the object of people's worship.

"However, I am no different from any other woman. At one point, I fell in love. And then, the baby of the person I loved was conceived in my womb. But the joy was short-lived. Soon after I found out I was pregnant, he died in a war. And then, as if following him, our baby was miscarried as well."

"Ever since then, my shamanistic abilities vanished. I experienced the depths of despair."

I listened to Eva's story in silence.

"After that, I don't really know how I, who lived in the Yayoi period, ended up drifting into this town in this era. When I regained consciousness, I had already washed up here."

"The first thing I saw after drifting into this era was the sight of this basement. I still don't know how I was brought here. I asked the Director about it several times, but I don't know the truth. The explanation was that the guards found me drifting in the same river where you discovered Naomi, and brought me here."

Eva continued to speak calmly.

"After arriving in this town, I suppose I clung to the Director, who is an AI. Having lost the power to foresee the future that I once possessed, I blindly believed what the Director said. But in a sense, that was easy. If I followed what the Director said, I couldn't go wrong. If I believed that, I didn't have to think for myself. In fact, I never felt that the Director was wrong."

I asked, "Why did your trust, or rather your faith, in the Director waver?"

"As I started to say earlier, it was when I learned that Job was born between you and Naomi. I had the experience of a miscarriage in the Yayoi period, and the Director told me, 'A woman who has had a miscarriage can never bear children again.' However, there is no way such an absurdity could exist—that I could not have a child with you, whom I love more than anyone. At that moment, I wanted to prioritize my own feelings over the Director's rational words."

...to be continued

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