Young Master's Regression Manual-Chapter 126: Helios Orbital Habitat [4]

"Doesn’t she seem odd, Julius?"

"...."

"Julius?"

"Ah, yeah?"

Isolde looked at him. "Are you listening?"

"Sorry," Julius replied. "I still haven’t gotten used to being called Julius again."

"Would you like some therapy?"

"How would that work?"

What Julius was experiencing was identity residue.

For an entire year, he had lived as someone else. Not merely pretending, but thinking, reacting, and planning as Dimitri, as if his survival had depended on it.

In that state, his mind had adapted accordingly, creating deep neural pathways tied to that role, the name, the routines, and the internal monologues.

They were not merely costumes he could simply take off, even if he wanted to.

So when certain triggers surfaced, like a name spoken aloud, a familiar pattern of thought, or a situation that mirrored his time in the USSR, his brain responded before his conscious self could intervene.

It defaulted to the version of him that had kept him alive.

As a result, his sense of self had been compartmentalized. Julius and Dimitri overlapped, and under pressure, the wrong one surfaced.

To an outside observer, it could feel unsettling because the change was seamless and instant.

But the danger was not that Dimitri existed.

It was that Julius had not yet fully reclaimed ownership of himself.

Until those experiences were integrated, acknowledged as part of his history rather than his present, his mind would continue to treat them as an active state instead of a concluded one.

The past would intrude on the present like a switch was flipped.

In other words, his body still believed the mission was ongoing.

At least, that was as per Isolde’s observation. Basically, he needed help.

"Let’s return to the room for the time being," she said.

"Why?" Julius asked. "The main tour may be over, but there’s still plenty to explore. Don’t you want to see the Antarctica recreation?"

Isolde stopped walking and turned to face him.

"I do," she said. "But not right now."

"Hold on—"

"Let’s go, Mister Schneider."

"...."

Isolde dragged him by the ear.

* * *

"Dimitri."

Just that name was enough to stir something inside Julius. For a moment, his eyes lost focus, as if the room had shifted half a step out of place.

They were seated face to face, close enough that he could feel Isolde’s hot breath over his face.

"Stay with me."

But it did nothing.

Julius had already slipped into an autonomous state. It was not an alter ego or a separate personality of some sort. Just that, his mind had raised its guard on instinct, as if this place were unsafe and comfort itself were a liability.

"Dimitri," Isolde said again.

Julius swallowed hard. "Stop."

"How do you feel?"

Julius looked straight at her. For reasons he could not comprehend, her figure began to overlap with another woman’s. Someone who used to sit this close to him when he was Dimitri.

"Yu—"

"Who is Yuliya?"

"...."

Of course Isolde had heard that name before. She had chosen not to press then. Now, she could not afford that luxury.

"...A researcher I’m grateful to," Julius said.

"Who is Yuliya?"

Her tone did not change. That was what made it worse.

For some reason, this no longer felt like therapy. It felt like an intervention. And Julius knew she did not believe him.

"...A researcher who was courting me."

"Courting you?" Isolde repeated. "This is not the eighteenth century. Who is Yuliya?"

"...A situationship."

"I thought as much."

That was all it took.

The Dimitri state receded as abruptly as it had arrived, like a switch being forced down by sheer authority.

After all, Isolde’s eyes were terrifying right now.

Was this really a therapy session?

"And this Yuliya... where is she now?"

"I killed her."

"...Oh."

For the first time since they sat down, Isolde went completely speechless.

The sharpness in her gaze had shifted into something awkward. She leaned back slightly, as if she needed distance just to process the words.

"I killed everyone."

An unspoken guilt Julius had kept bottled up all this time.

According to Klaus, the most dangerous thing that could happen to a Directorate operative was attachment.

Attachment to the target.

Attachment to collaborators.

Attachment to anyone involved in the mission.

And quite frankly, Julius had never expected himself to fall into that trap.

Yet one year and three months was an extremely long time.

When life fell into routine, when faces became familiar and days began to repeat themselves, it was difficult not to form attachments, no matter how disciplined someone was.

But that was what unsettled him the most.

Before regression, not once had he carried lingering attachments from his missions as a Directorate operative. People had always been objectives, and his operations had always been clean.

Afterward, there was usually nothing left to feel.

This time was different.

Because of that, Julius began to doubt regression itself.

Was it truly real?

Or was it something closer to a distortion, a reconstruction shaped by countless variables rather than a clean return?

How could one life diverge so drastically just because a single person had made different choices?

Was the butterfly effect truly this severe?

Severe enough that entire relationships were rewritten?

Severe enough that even family lines were altered?

In his first life, he had a niece. In this rollback, that same existence had become a nephew.

The implications were wrong. All wrong.

If such fundamental outcomes could change, then what exactly was he standing on?

Memory alone was no longer reliable. The future he thought he knew was no longer fixed, nor even familiar.

Regression was not a guarantee.

It was a gamble.

And for the first time since his return, Julius wondered whether he was moving forward with foresight, or blindly rewriting a world that no longer followed the rules he remembered.

"Let’s stop—" Julius began, but Isolde cut him off.

"Dimitri."

"...."

"Why did you let us die?"

The room collapsed.

The walls dissolved into heat and smoke, giving way to a burning facility. Alarms blared. Flames clawed up the corridors as people ran, tripped, screamed, and disappeared under falling debris.

And somewhere through the flames, something inhuman moved.

It was the USSR again.

"Haah..."

He couldn’t breathe.