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Last Embryo Volume 6 Chapter 2 Part 2

Asuka said, accepting You’s half-assed reasoning without batting as much as an eyelid.

As for Ayato herself and the reason for why she was looking as awkward as she did, well. . . . .  the reason behind that was pretty obvious. As anyone could have expected, she was not calm at all, and the tension she was feeling across her entire body was so dense that if someone were to try and stab a knife into it, that knife would have probably broke in half at the slightest contact with it.

In her previous life, Kudou Ayato was Kudou Asuka’s twin sister. Or rather she was supposed to be, because she died as a stillborn baby, after which her soul was picked up by Queen Halloween in Little Garden, where she raised her to become one of her 「Queen’s Knights」under a new identity. . . Faceless. However, that girl, who wanted nothing more than to kill Kudou Asuka and even fought against her no longer existed in this world as well, because when they faced each other in the duel to the death, it ended in Faceless’s. . . . Ayato’s loss, and instead of cursing her this result and her fate, she chose to accept and embrace it, making peace with the fact that she was going to disappear forever. That is why, even though she was Asuka’s twin sister at some point, that relationship was in the past and should have ended there, having no impact at all at the life she was currently living. When she was reincarnated, her slate should have been wiped clean, so technically she should not be wasting her time worrying about things such as her past relationships with others and how they might end up affecting her current life so that she could focus on enjoying the present. . . . .  but for some reason, whenever she was looking at Asuka, she could not help it but to feel that her heart and mind just refused to be at ease no matter how many times she tried to calm both of them down. She knew that technically she had no reason to feel so uneasy around her, but maybe letting go of her feelings from her previous life was truly not as simple of a matter as she thought it would be.

(. . . .Even if we are still sharing the same name, then what about it?! Right now I have my own companions, just like she has her own companions, so everything that might have connected us is gone! We do not even have the same parents anymore!)

Those were the thought that were currently on her mind as she was wondering what she should be doing and how she should be behaving in this bizarre situation, because she honestly had no idea what to do, and it made her feel so frustrated that she could barely contain her urge to grab her own head, fall onto her knees and just start shouting right where she stood. In the first place, how could she not feel awkward about being around Asuka so casually now when they literally tried to kill each other in the past?! Granted, each of them wanted to do so for a different, personal reason and they both accepted the final result that they have arrived at when their duel was done, but it does not change the fact that, showing up so casually around the sibling that killed you even though you also wanted to kill them but failed to do so would be the height of awkwardness, all the more so if Asuka learned that after she killed Faceless she got reincarnated and enjoyed her new, peaceful life in the Outer World.

Also, she might have only realized it after the fact, but her desire to cut down someone who was supposed to be her blood-related twin sister was not an undertaking that she could have approached in a half-hearted manner, but even when she thought that she would not waver in her conviction to go through with it, she still discovered that it brought her heart no small amount of pain. And if she felt like that even after she was the one who lost both their battle and then her life, then Asuka must have felt the same as she was feeling, if not even worse, and she was probably carrying those worries inside of her heart on top of any additional worries that she might have had throughout the last two years.

So imagine now, if you will, a situation where Kudou Asuka learns that all of her worries and possible guilt and regret at killing Kudou Ayato were completely misguided, because through death she managed to obtain the thing that she wanted the most: a chance at living a relatively normal life. If only she knew that, just imagine how truly uncomfortable any future interactions between the two of them would have been. That is why Ayato decided that it would be best for both of them if she kept her identity hidden from her and maintained only the bare minimum of interactions between them so that the relationship between them did not progress beyond that of mere acquaintances. . . . . but almost as if she was reading her mind, Asuka turned back towards her with a flutter of her long skirt and attempted to strike up a conversation with her, opening it up with a:

「Hey, Miss Blonde?」

「Eh? W-Who? M-Me? Y-Yes?! W-What is it?!!」

「You do not have to be so surprised. I just thought that it would be high time for me to hear your name, because I do not want to keep referring to you as 「Hey you!」or 「Miss Blonde」all the time, because that would be the height of rudeness. So with that in mind, could you introduce yourself to me properly?」

「N-Name? You. . . .you wish to know, my name?」

「Yes, that is right. If I remember correctly, Miss Suzuka refereed to you as Aya. Is that your name? Or perhaps it is just a diminutive, or perhaps a nickname?」

She smiled, thinking that she was asking her about one of the most obvious things in the world, but she had no idea how difficult of a question that was for Ayato right now, but since she has already heard Suzuka calling her Aya, then any hope of deceiving her by coming up with some random name just went out the window. And if there were Gods of Fate here in Little Garden, then Ayato thought to herself that they surely must have been in a pretty mischievous mood since apparently all of them decided to torment her by asking her what she was going to do with that question.

(What am I going to do?! What am I going to do?! I do not know! I do not know, I do not know, I do not know!)

「. . . . Hmm? What is wrong? You do not want to share your name with me?」

「N-No, I assure you that this I not the case. It is just that the reason for me not being able to tell you my name may or may not have something to do with a condition of my on a base particle level. . .  」

「My oh my, I. . . . I cannot say that I know what exactly does that mean, but whatever it is, it is actually that big of a deal to you? Well, in that case I beg your forgiveness, because I had no idea.」

As Ayato went into a small-scale panic attack, Asuka had a number of question marks pop up all around her head as she was trying to process what she just heard. Being able to tell that with the current course this situation was heading towards a full-blown disaster, Kasukabe You decided that it was high-time for an intervention, and so she broke in between the two of them.

「Ah~~ Asuka? Can I please have a word with you in private?」

「Yes? What is it, Miss Kasukabe?」

Asuka asked You when she pulled her to the side, far enough so that Ayato could not hear what they were talking about.