I’ve never heard of anyone needing a mirror to search for something, but since Aries said so, he must have his own reasoning.
Although it wasn’t easy to find, I managed to locate a tiny loose powder case by the next day. It looked avant-garde, even from a brand I’d never heard of before.
The fact that it was left behind in a small building and still functional meant it wasn’t something that appeared when the city did—it had been brought here by a “participant.”
This place recorded the state of the girl carrying cosmetics, meaning she was reborn with them every time. I was almost envious of her.
When I brought the powder case with its small mirror to Aries, he was sitting by the door reading a book.
Just as he’d said, he had somehow gotten his hands on books directly from the Earth Serpent.
Seeing me approach, he closed the book and looked up. “Did you find a mirror?”
I nodded and handed him the tiny powder case.
“*This* small…?” Aries took it skeptically, opening it to inspect. “Is this makeup?”
“Yeah, larger mirrors are hard to come by—most of them are shattered. But this should work.”
Aries studied the mirror closely before murmuring, “Too bad… I can only see my eyes.”
“What?” I asked. “Is the mirror too small?”
“No, it’s because I’m wearing a mask,” he replied. “What a shame… I’ll have to find a way to rank up soon.”
I was completely baffled.
“Aries… what exactly are you trying to do?” I voiced my confusion. “Isn’t your ultimate goal to forget you’re human? What does that have to do with the ‘motive to leave’? Or mirrors?”
After a moment of thought, he answered, “It’s complicated. If I truly want to ‘forget I’m human,’ then I must first become a real, flesh-and-blood person with bonds—using these things to forge the strongest psychological defenses within myself. Then, in one devastating moment, I destroy them all. If I still don’t break down after that… then I’ll have transcended humanity.”
Alright, I admit this method was so abstract I could barely grasp it.
“And the mirror?” I pressed.
“The mirror…” He lowered his gaze to the small mirror in his hand. “I… have something to say to myself. That’s why I need it.”
“Something to say to yourself…” I blinked, feeling uneasy. “So the reason you want to rank up to ‘Earth-level’ as soon as possible… is because you want to…”
“I want to see my expressions,” Aries turned his withered ram-masked face toward me. “Like this, I can only see my eyes. The success rate is too low—I need to capture every microexpression.”
“But why do you need to capture them?” I asked again.
“I need to understand myself,” he replied. “Do you know what ‘hypnosis’ is?”
“I’ve… heard of it,” I said. “But at best, hypnosis is just a form of ‘suggestion’… It’s nowhere near as powerful as movies make it out to be.”
“True, but it *does* have a subconscious effect on people. The problem is, I’ve shielded myself.” He tugged at his mask. “The most crucial prerequisite for hypnosis is complete trust in the hypnotist. But no one would trust someone wearing a mask.”
It finally dawned on me—Aries wanted to hypnotize *himself*?
“So I need to rank up to ‘Earth-level’ as soon as possible,” he continued. “Then I’ll have expressions again. I can observe my own microexpressions and reinforce powerful psychological suggestions.”
Just as I was about to nod, a chill ran down my spine.
Something… didn’t add up.
After becoming an “Earth-level”… he’d observe his own microexpressions?
“W-Wait a second, Aries,” my voice went hoarse. “Once you become an ‘Earth-level’… you won’t have human expressions anymore. Your face will turn into a cold, lifeless ram’s.”
“Even a ram’s face must have microexpressions,” he insisted. “I’ll use that face to reinforce my suggestions.”
The idea was terrifying. Whatever psychological suggestion Aries planned to implant in himself… if he had to stare at a ram’s face while doing it, constantly analyzing its expressions…
The strongest suggestion he’d receive would be: *I am a ram.*
“Wait…”
I froze.
Wasn’t that… exactly the point?
Wasn’t this Aries’ original goal all along? The suggestion he wanted to implant was *I am not human*, wasn’t it?
I racked my brain trying to predict Aries’ next move, but it still felt like I was missing something.
From then on, nearly every time I visited, Aries was talking to himself in front of that mirror.
I feared he’d go insane before the suggestions even took hold.
According to him, his life now revolved around three things: talking to himself, playing games, and reading.
He had already achieved the first step in shedding his humanity—eliminating sleep.
Now he stayed up all night reading, feeling like he had twice as much time as anyone else.
And because we were both in a state of lingering souls, once he began believing he wasn’t human, the sleeplessness didn’t fatigue him—though it was unclear how long that would last.
“Eating,” however, was a trickier issue. Aries said that whenever he returned to the “train,” almost all the “Zodiacs” were eating. The entire carriage was steeped in an atmosphere of “hunger,” making it nearly impossible to resist.
Despite countless self-suggestions that he “wasn’t human,” the hunger persisted, so he still ate—consuming nothing but air.
Aries also told me that the lavish feasts on the “train” didn’t actually satiate anyone. They were mostly illusions conjured by “Echoes.”
Some food was transformed from sand, while others were pure mirages. Every day, countless “attendants” delivered these dishes to the “Zodiacs’” rooms.
In essence, the food’s only purpose was to make you *go through the motions* of eating, tricking you into feeling “full.”
It was like raising livestock. From the very beginning, “Heavenly Dragon” had treated all the “Zodiacs” on the train as mere animals—and he had always known the power of the subconscious over them.
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