“The Shell was only the second circle, Reiji. Lust. The storm of self-destruction. But Paradiso…” Her voice dropped. “Paradiso is the real trap. Because in Paradiso, you don’t suffer. You remember . Every happy moment. Every laugh. Every kiss. Looped forever, until the joy becomes a blade.”
“That’s the story they tell children,” she said. “The truth is worse. The ninth circle isn’t ice. It’s love. Frozen love. Love that has nowhere to go, so it turns into a crystal that cuts you from the inside.” -ENG- The Shell Part III- Paradiso -V1.0.0H-
One wore a detective’s coat, but his eyes were empty sockets. Another held a woman’s hand—a woman whose face Reiji could not recognize, because it kept shifting between Toko, his mother, and someone else. Someone he had never met but felt he had mourned for centuries. “The Shell was only the second circle, Reiji
It was a theater. A small one. Red velvet seats, a stage, a single spotlight that illuminated nothing. But the walls—the walls were mirrors. And in each mirror, a different Reiji stared back. But Paradiso…” Her voice dropped
His own reflection. But not his. The Shell’s Reiji. The one who had chosen to stay in the drowning manor, to hold Toko’s hand as the water rose, to become a ghost in a memory that had no end.