Chapter 111: Investigation Report
—February 12th
The day after Alicia returned and we celebrated her birthday.
Since Alicia now had to sever synchronization every other day, today was one of her rest days.
It was Sunday, meaning I could dedicate the entire day to Alicia. Honestly, I had wanted to take a leave of absence from school to fully focus on helping Alicia, but both she and Mom firmly rejected the idea.
『I’m really happy that you want to help me. But I don’t want you to ruin your own daily life for my sake.』
“We’re all working together as a family to investigate this, so leave it to me during the day. You, Alice, need to fulfill your responsibilities as a student.”
With both of them saying that, I backed down.
I didn’t have a concrete plan for what I could even do if I skipped school, after all.
“If you ever find a clue that could help Alicia, tell me. I won’t object to you taking time off to pursue it. I’ll help in any way I can.”
So, in any case, I had to find a clue.
Knowing Alicia’s soul was fading, my family had been looking for a way to save her for quite some time.
I had received a report summarizing their findings the night before last.
The report covered all sorts of possibilities, and it really hit me just how much effort Dad and the others had put in for Alicia.
After reading through it, I immediately called Dad to apologize.
“Dad, I read the report… um, I’m sorry. I said some terrible things without even knowing how much you’d been doing…”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s true that we kept things from you. And even with this report, we haven’t actually found a way to save Alicia—most of it’s just confirmation of what we already know… But you’ve gained plenty of experience in the other world. You might be able to find something. We’re counting on you, son.”
“…Yeah.”
“We’re family, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes. If you ever need anything, just say the word.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
Today, I’d start by rereading the report and organizing everything again.
The whole thing began when my soul transferred into Alicia’s body upon returning from the other world.
Having two souls in one body was something that shouldn’t happen.
As my soul grew more accustomed to this body, Alicia’s soul began to fade away. She apparently realized this pretty quickly.
『At first, Alicia said something like, “I’m just like a migratory bird, so please let me stay here temporarily.”』
That was something Yuna told me the night before last.
Back then, I was just relieved to be home and reunited with my family, so I’d naively assumed everything would be fine as long as Alicia and I stayed together, even in a changed body.
Learning how determined and resigned Alicia had been hit me like a punch to the gut.
“At first, I only saw Alicia as the person who saved my big brother. But as we kept living together, Alicia became just like Alice—a troublesome little sister… no, family.”
I wasn’t sure how to feel about being lumped in with the ‘little sister’ category myself, but it still made me happy to hear Yuna call Alicia family.
“That’s why I absolutely want to save her. From now on, let’s work together, Alice!”
The report clearly had plenty of sections where Yuna’s knowledge of fantasy had helped. She seemed to be the main one asking Alicia about magic in particular.
As for matters of the soul, most of the explanations came from Hisui.
『The soul constantly receives energy from the body. When someone dies, their soul can’t get that energy anymore and just disappears. So, the whole idea of lingering souls after death isn’t actually real.』
That’s what Hisui explained to me last night before the party.
『Alicia’s connection to the body is weakening. That’s why she’s getting less energy from it and can only synchronize for shorter periods.』
“So… if we could supply her with energy in some other way, would we be able to live with her like before?”
『…It wouldn’t be that simple. Alicia’s issue isn’t just about energy. Her soul itself is becoming more fragile. Even if we secure energy for her, she’ll still disappear if things keep going like this.』
In other words, it was impossible for two souls to keep coexisting in the same body.
To save Alicia, we’d have to transfer her soul to another body.
Dad had apparently been considering that possibility too.
First, we considered whether it might be possible to transfer a soul into inorganic objects like dolls, stuffed animals, or androids, but it was deemed unrealistic. At a minimum, the body would need functions equivalent to the five senses, or else living as a human would likely be impaired.
Also, clones created from genetic material pose not only technical challenges but ethical issues as well, so replicating a human body is still out of reach. Regarding this, Dad apparently tried various approaches, but he judged that getting involved with illegal organizations and using Alicia’s genes—since she’s a mage from another world—was far too risky, so he removed it from the list of options.
Something similar is the artificial human homunculus. This also faces the same problems and risks as cloning. Alicia said that even in the other world, research was done on this, and several mages tried to create artificial humans in the past, but she had never heard of any success stories.
Then, the relatively more feasible option was to use another person’s existing body. However, this would require sacrificing someone and would definitely cross into illegal territory. Additionally, that body would have to be without a soul. It was believed that even if Alicia’s soul was transferred into a body with a soul, hers—already weakly connected—would disappear.
But even that was difficult.
Souls are said to take residence when a fetus’s heartbeat begins and vanish when a person dies. In other words, a body without a soul cannot exist. Hisui confirmed that even in brain death, the soul remains inside the body and is not lost.
However, if we don’t consider extracting the soul, securing the body itself seemed somewhat possible, according to the report. Though it was unsettling that it didn’t mention any concrete methods, for now, we’d set that aside.
Still, even if we could prepare a substitute body, that alone wouldn’t solve the problem. We’d need a way to transfer the soul inside me. At present, there were no clues about that.
Yuna was researching various things online and at libraries, but most were dubious occult sources, and no reliable information had been found. She complained it felt like searching for gold dust in a desert, verifying one suspicious occult piece of information after another.
Hisui also checked with shrine-related contacts, but again, no promising leads were found. Alicia said that no magic involving handling souls existed either.
Without discovering a method to remove and insert souls into bodies, there was nothing we could do. But if we could find that, maybe we could manage somehow.
That was the conclusion of the report.
“Soul, huh…”
How exactly am I supposed to search for ways to manipulate souls in modern Japan? Honestly, I just stared blankly at the daunting mountain my family had already been trying to climb.
But I had one person in mind who might know about things like this.
Aymok, the dark priest. He might know magic that Alicia doesn’t.
There are risks, but meeting and talking with him seemed definitely worth it.
...But how the hell am I supposed to meet him?
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