Chapter 225: Mineva: Rebellion Against the Glittering Reversal
Ade opened his eyes and picked up his phone on the bedside table and looked at it, the time was 8:50 am. Although he didn't fall asleep until after 5:00 a.m. last night, that didn't stop him from still being refreshed early in the morning. Since he had a meeting with Ayanami Rei, he had informed Momoka at dinner yesterday that he was going out this morning, so now he had to get up no matter how much he wanted to spend some more time with Ange.
"Well, you're awake so early?" Ange said in a dazed voice with a thin slit between her upper and lower eyelids, "Ade, do you want good morning—"
"No, you should sleep a little longer." Ade gently moved her hands and legs that were wrapped around his body away, placed a gentle kiss on Ange's lips, and then rolled out of bed.
The Wheel of Angels has entered the closing stages, and he has been working overtime at the project site for some time recently, until yesterday when he was able to go home.
Ade again unconsciously sighed. Seven years have passed, although Lacus and the girls don't mind his physical defects and are even very tolerant of him, every time he made out with his lovers, he was forced to think that he had been deprived of one of the most important symbols of being a male — his "post-fap-clarity" function was removed.
"You can't use it yourself anyway, so what's the point of getting into all these technical details?" This was something he had bellyached countless times, only to be unable to say it to "her".
Ade washed up and went down to the first floor, where Momoka was cleaning up, as expected, and shouted sweetly "Good morning, master" when she saw him. The only person in the living room was Lacus, tapping something on her laptop.
"Morning." Ade walked up behind Lacus and glanced at it, only to see a screen full of dense words, "What's this about?"
"Ade?!" Lacus reflexively closed the screen as soon as she could, and redness flashed across her face, "It's nothing, I'm just writing something for fun."
Seeing her reluctant look, Ade didn't press the issue. Maintaining a certain degree of absolute privacy is necessary for everyone. He looked around casually and spotted someone's skirt and stockings scattered on the sofa, "Mineva is up too?"
"Up, she said Hathaway was coming back today and she and Ple had a noon appointment with him." Lacus nodded in the direction of the bathroom, "She is in the shower now."
As Lacus said, Mineva's wet head had peeked out from the bathroom, along with half of her naked shoulder.
"Uncle Ade, you're up?" Mineva said cheerfully, "My nightgown is wet, can you help me go to my room and get another one? I think there is one on the bed."
Ade calmly put his head down and started reading this morning's news, "Momoka, go get Mineva a clean shirt."
A few moments later, Mineva, who had dried herself and changed her clothes, stood playfully in front of Ade and shoved the hair dryer into his hand. Her big watery eyes were full of dissatisfaction, "Uncle Ade, you haven't helped me blow-dry my hair for a long time."
Speaking of this, Ade could not help but feel a softness in his heart. He was too busy with work over the past few years, and he had to arrange the rest time to accompany C.C. and the other girls. Maybe that's the reason why the young girl was so attached to him. He thought that if he spend more time with her, everything would gradually get better.
With that in mind, Ade greeted Mineva and asked her to sit down, while he stood behind her and began to blow-dry the girl's hair with ease. The only sound left in the living room was the whirring of the hair dryer and the tapping sound on the keyboard, as if it were ten years ago.
Ade expertly stroked Mineva's long, silky hair, and his downward glance naturally crossed the young girl's neckline and slipped into her excessively wide neckline…
"Momoka," Ade decisively turned around and handed the hair dryer to the little maid, "I'm going out soon and I don't have time, can you help Mineva dry her hair?"
"Oh." Momoka nodded and took it good-naturedly, "Yes master."
"Not good at all!" Mineva bounced up from her chair and stared at Ade with aggression on her face, "You won't even give me that time? That's too much! That's outrageous!"
Ade glanced at Lacus for help, but the latter continued to tape on the keyboard without looking up, so he could only try to control the situation himself, "There was a meeting with Rei at noon to discuss—"
"Don't change the subject! Who cares what you discuss in your meetings? I just want you to give me half an hour, is your daughter not worth wasting even half an hour in your heart?" Mineva's big watery eyes were clouded with a layer of mist, "Since the age of fourteen, you don't bathe me; since the age of fifteen, you don't sleep with me; since the age of sixteen, you refuse to even hold me and watch TV, and now even the right to blow my hair is taken away from me? What am I in your heart? A burden to be married off and everything will be fine?"
Ade knew that he couldn't appease Mineva with his emotional intelligence, and all he had to do now was to delay the point of the outbreak and find a reliable family ethics counselor before then, so right now he sighed, "You are very important to me, you know that. Let's talk it over tonight. But now I really have to go out, and just let Momoka help you dry your hair. It's the same."
"It's not the same at all!" Mineva pointed indignantly at Momoka, "She's just a maid, how can she be the same!"
"Mineva!" Ade's expression instantly became serious, "Apologize to Momoka, immediately."
"Apologize?" Mineva laughed lowly to herself, laughing so hard that tears came out of her eyes, "So in your mind, even the maid has a higher status than me?"
"You know it's not about that." Ade said sternly, "Momoka took care of you when you were a child, how could you talk to her like that? What do you mean, a maid? Who taught you such uncultured words?"
"You are just good at talking, do you think that I don't know the real reason?" Mineva's eyes were so red, "Of course it's because you slept with her. Oh, the woman you can sleep with and the daughter who will get married sooner or later, who is more important? I think you have figured it out, right?"
It was Ade's turn to freeze, "How do you-"
"How did I find out? Which woman in this house other than me you have not fucked?" Mineva hysterically shouted with tears dripping down desperately, "You don't often come home these years, and when you come back, you always have sex with them, the sound of screaming at night can be heard through the wall! As a daughter, what do I think? How can any person grow up healthy and normal in this environment? Uncle Ade, I tell you the truth, I will become this way all because of you! It's your responsibility!"
Every word of the young girl was like a heavy hammer hitting Ade's heart hard, shaking his mind heavily that he couldn't say a word.
Mineva silently moved to the wall and opened a drawer, from which she took out a chic knife, and then silently walked back to Ade. Then the girl grabbed her long orange hair with her left hand, and her right hand placed the blade against the middle of the hair.
"So now you think I'm a pain in the ass, huh? You don't want to blow my hair, do you?" The young girl's right wrist waved down hard, and her long hair was chopped into two pieces, "Why do I keep my hair? Don't you know the reason in your heart? If no one wants it, then throw it away!"
After saying that, the girl will throw away the knife, turn around and go upstairs, leaving only broken hair all over the floor.
Ade was frozen in place as if his brain had not yet understood what had just happened.
Only then did Lacus unhurriedly lift her eyes from in front of the screen, "Did you feel that the Mineva just now was as strange as a different person? Did you feel like the cute little girl's image was suddenly shattered by reality? Did you feel like the sense of distance between you and her has suddenly been completely lost?"
Ade nodded dumbly.
"What a smart girl." Lacus muttered, "I couldn't have done better."
"What did you say?"
"I say that's great, it's long past time for you to stop kidding yourself and face reality, something is clearly wrong with Mineva's education." Lacus came over and picked up the knife, "Huh, isn't that the one I brought back from Dakar? Where did she turn it over from."
"Momoka, please clean up." Ade walked towards the door, lost in thought, "I'm going to a meeting."
…
"So … Ade? Ade? Ade?" Ayanami Rei woke him up from his daze for the unknowable number of times, "So I want to take three days off at the beginning of next month. "
"I'll give you half a month." Ade replied casually and absentmindedly, "After all, Shinji-kun is getting married."
The air was instantly quiet, and the scene was once very awkward.
After a few seconds, Ayanami Rei sighed softly. Her taut facial lines softened, her frozen shoulders relaxed naturally, and her hips twisted imperceptibly to bring a slight angle to her upright sitting posture. However, although these changes were almost imperceptible to the naked eye, her aura had changed dramatically from that of an untouched girl to that of a gentle and lovely young woman.
"How can I put it, there is a sense of relief that I don't have to act anymore." Ayanami Rei chuckled lightly, "Tell me, when did you find it?"
"You took a leave of absence during Shinji-kun's high school graduation ceremony, and it was suspicious from then on." Ade was also very direct and honest, "When he graduated from college, you took a leave of absence again, and at that moment, I was finally convinced that your memory was restored."
"You… ah, obviously very dumb, but in this strange place, you are very keen … It was one year ago when Shinji graduated from college, then Ade, you are looking at my joke for more than a year?" Ayanami Rei shook her head, "Still calling me Rei?"
"Yeah, can't I?" Ade asked rhetorically, "From the time I met you in the Petri dish until now, every conversation between us has belonged to only two people, Adrien Lingus and Ayanami Rei, and there is no character called Ikari Yui in our overlapping life paths. I will of course cooperate if you wish me to change my mind, but to me, you are just Ayanami Rei and no one else."
Ayanami Rei closed her eyes and pondered for a short while. When she opened her eyes, a faint smile crept up to the corners of her mouth again, "It's good to keep it simple, I like the current atmosphere, I'd rather not change it."
"Then Miss Rei." Ade coughed solemnly, "To celebrate the return of our relationship from the brink of ruin to normal, will you grant me a small wish? I'm not going to lie, I've been holding it back for years until now."
"Yeah." Ayanami Rei smiled and nodded, "If only I could do it."
"To prevent people from eavesdropping, let's talk like this." Ade's voice rang out directly inside her head, "I'm baffled, how on earth did you make Alice into an obedient baby?"
"That's easy." Ayanami Rei replied blandly, "I deliberately let her accidentally see Nono's project book, and while she was eavesdropping on me, I said to myself, 'The old AI really doesn't have enough initiative, so I have to design Nono as a new AI to help Ade, right?', and since then, she has been very cooperative with my experiments."
"… Let's get down to business."
"Then you should read this first." Ayanami Rei kindly took out three stacks of documents and put them in front of Ade, "I've finished processing the left one, you just need to sign it; I can't make a decision on the middle one, but the key points and suggestions are all marked out for you to understand once you read it; the key is the right one, there is something wrong with your plan to cut the earth."
"No way." Ade subconsciously blurted out, "How could I possibly—"
"Then maybe I was wrong." Ayanami Rei immediately took the right one back, "Although you gave me the right to make decisions and wanted me to exist as your error correction module, I feel that I am really still too young. Why don't you let me return to being a mere student first? When I'm a little more mature, I'll definitely be able to help you out, and then you can—"
"I'm sorry, Rei, I was wrong." Ade quickly pulled the documents out of her hand, "The ironclad evidence is in my hands, losing you I'll be self-destructing in minutes."
"Not a bit of academic hegemony majesty, that's not good, Ade, Doctor Aeolia's much more stubborn than you." Ayanami Rei looked at him with a smile as he frowned and read the documents, "But you are cuter."
It turns out that he was wrong. Earth is essentially a liquid sphere, simply cutting from its middle part can only destroy the crust, the core and mantle will remain intact because of its gravity and liquid properties, so how to cut Earth open is a delicate job, not to mention how to guide the cut pieces of the Earth.
Ade under-considered a boundary case, which led to a situation where he would have been completely unable to control the situation once it was actually performed. Fortunately, he has a superb Error Correction Module at his side.
"Ayanami Rei is just so good." Ade exclaimed inwardly for the umpteenth time.
Ade then devoted himself to calculating the model, forgetting Mineva for a while, while Ayanami Rei gave him her opinions from time to time, and was there to serve him tea and organize his tools.
By the time Ade returned home after updating his program and saying goodbye to Ayanami Rei, it was completely dark. As soon as he entered the house, he saw the whole family sitting in the living room in a full circle, each one looking strange.
Except that Mineva is not there and cannot be found in perception.
"Master, you're finally back!" Momoka hurriedly greeted him, "Everyone couldn't find you anywhere, I don't know what to do."
"I was in a meeting with Rei and my phone was off." Ade handed her his jacket, "What's wrong? Did something happen? Where is Mineva?"
"Get your phone out." C.C. said lazily, "Open a random news website."
Ade took out his phone in confusion and casually clicked on a website where a large photo of Mineva took up the entire screen. A sense of foreboding rose, he gulped, shuddered, and clicked on the video below the photo.
"Hello everyone in the world, I am Mineva Lao Zabi, not Audrey Lingus, that's the fake name that man gave me after he adopted me, my real name is Mineva Lao Zabi.
"I have the courage to stand here today because of reason, because of conscience, for freedom, for justice, to expose an appalling and shocking conspiracy to innocent people around the world. But before that, I must first make a difficult decision —"
"I announce that I am severing all ties with Adrien Lingus!"
