Chapter 142: Closing Argument (2)
The abrupt arrival of an apocalypse left the Scolla members stunned and unable to hide their confusion. Among them, Member Number 3, Dr. Swalon, cautiously asked,
“Can’t we just close it?”
“I tried... but it didn’t work. It’s as if it has its own will and is actively invading this side...”
“Then how about we try this—”
While the two genius scientists exchanged ideas, I turned my gaze back to the monitor. The black background, where bits of junk floated aimlessly, depicted the frozen universe of Big Freeze—a world that had succumbed to thermal death.
The world that this genius from our side had discovered stirred something deep within me. Every word spoken by the old man with a beard now entirely white, or the woman who looked well past her thirties, hit me harder than I cared to admit.
‘What kind of world... what kind of ridiculous world is that...?’
A universe where all motion had ceased, and even heat was stolen from neighboring universes to force them to stop as well? It was absurd—a world that reminded me of the wild imaginings I had scribbled in secret during my middle school years.
The idea of such a world, hastily cobbled together with the juvenile imagination of a middle-schooler’s "8th-grade syndrome" and incomplete knowledge, had resurfaced now in the words of others. Every mention of it made me feel a deep shame, so intense that I wanted to bite my tongue and end it all.
“Dr. Eight.”
“...”
“Dr. Eight?”