The first place Eden-san took me was the uninhabited island we had discussed a short while ago. It wasn't very large, feeling like a solitary speck of land abandoned in the middle of the ocean.
True to her word that almost no living creatures resided there, there were no forests to speak of. Instead, grass and flowers grew in sparse patches, leaving the bare earth visible in many places.
Unlike the famous vistas of a tourist destination, it wasn’t a particularly striking or beautiful sight. Even so, I found that I quite liked this view.
Years ago, back when I was in elementary school, I used to visit my mother's childhood home. It was deep in the countryside—a place where the nearest convenience store was several kilometers away and there was absolutely nothing to do—but the scenery, so different from the city, had been a novelty to me.
During one of those visits, I climbed a small mountain behind the house. Well, it was less a mountain and more of a hill. I walked up a bumpy, grass-cleared path to the top and simply gazed at the view.
All I could see were clusters of houses, rice paddies, and other distant mountains. Looking back, the elevation wasn't even that impressive. It wasn't a "beautiful" sight by conventional standards, nor was there anything eye-catching about it, but looking at it filled me with an indescribable sense of peace.
While witnessing magnificent, breathtaking landscapes is wonderful, constantly staring at such beauty can eventually become a bit exhausting. That was why I enjoyed this kind of deeply relaxing atmosphere, where I could just idly stare at a landscape that was nothing special.
"Eden-san, it’s nice and quiet here."
"Yes, the atmosphere is truly lovely. I especially like the lack of other meat slabs. It is wonderful to have nothing but nature and my beloved child in my field of vision. Of course, compared to you, no other scenery could ever truly catch my eye, but I would evaluate this as a decent backdrop to accentuate my beloved child’s presence. I personally have an attachment to small islands like this, and knowing that I am here alone with my child makes it impossible to restrain my overflowing love. I feel as though I want to preserve this very moment for eternity—and while I certainly could execute such a plan, it would be a significant loss to lose the chance to see my beloved child’s ever-changing forms, so I find myself quite conflicted. In the first place..."
You’ve got to be kidding me. I only looked away for ten seconds! She was at Phase 2 just a moment ago! She skipped everything else and went straight for the rampage switch?!
This was bad—way too fast. It was a total lost cause. I needed to call Kuro for help and end this date—
"Wait... what?"
Just as I thought it was all over because Eden-san had lost control, the scenery suddenly shifted. The surroundings transformed into a space resembling the cosmos, and a colossal laser beam abruptly streaked across the void, vaporizing Eden-san without leaving a single trace behind.
"E-Ehhhhh?!"
Stunned by the sudden turn of events, I looked around and saw a gargantuan celestial body—a huge Iron Star—floating far in the distance. It was likely the source of the laser.
Before I could even process what that was, Eden-san reappeared in front of me, vanished again without a word, and a moment later, the scenery returned to the original uninhabited island.
Then, after a few seconds of silence, Eden-san returned once more.
"That was a close call. My apologies for startling you, my beloved child."
She was back to Phase 1? What happened? What did she do this time?
"Um, Eden-san... what was that just now?"
"It was one of my countermeasures. I have it set so that if my love for my beloved child exceeds a certain threshold, this body is to be obliterated instantly and without question. While it isn't foolproof, shutting down my thoughts for the brief period it takes to regenerate allowed me to recover a faint shred of my reason. I then immediately moved to a separate space to undergo a cooldown."
"I... I see. You actually went as far as preparing a measure like that?"
"To be honest, it isn't a trick I can use repeatedly. I have prepared one more 'final countermeasure' just in case, but that was certainly a narrow escape."
"..."
I didn't know how to feel about this. I had no idea how to even respond. Should I be impressed by the sheer dedication she showed in preparing these measures? Or should I be exasperated that, despite the life-or-death atmosphere, the "crisis" was entirely caused by her own lack of self-control? Or should I be terrified by a love so heavy it couldn't be stopped without planetary-scale weaponry? I was deeply conflicted.
"Um... shall we pull ourselves together and look at the scenery while we walk?"
"Yes, let us do that. When I am with my beloved child, my motherhood inadvertently surges to the point of near-explosion."
"That... sounds like a lot to handle."
"Though as a mother, it is a blessing..."
Was "motherhood" really something that was supposed to "surge" or "explode"? And for that matter, could her behavior even be called motherhood? I figured that trying to point any of that out would only be exhausting, so I decided to keep my mouth shut.
Still, she mentioned she had a final countermeasure. What on earth could be more extreme than a system designed to vaporize her own body?
It was a terrifying thought, but I could already predict with absolute certainty that we would eventually reach that stage before the day was out.