(Mona's Perspective)
When I woke up, I found myself reborn, back before the apocalypse. My parents were still alive, my friends were still around, but the timing was too early. I couldn't even start stockpiling supplies.
Now, I was just a little kid in kindergarten. Even if I told my parents that the world would end in a decade or so, they'd just think it was a child's wild imagination.
So I stopped talking about it and began to enjoy my carefree childhood. But then, I unexpectedly ran into him againAlan.
To be honest, I had long forgotten his name. I only remembered that after the apocalypse, when I was betrayed and thrown into a horde of mutated monsters, he saved me. But in the end, due to the sheer number of them, I still died.
I still remember his tears falling on my face and the tight embrace he held me in before I died. He was so powerful. If he hadn't cared about me, he wouldn't have gotten hurt at all.
In the apocalypse, humans are the most delicious food for the mutated creatures. They swarmed towards me, and Alan chose not to resist in order to protect me. It wasn't until his blood fell on my face that I realized even a monster's blood is warm.
I never expected to find him living in the same neighborhood as me in this life. Although he's changed a lot, I still recognized him.
But he was too easy to bully. Every time I saw him, he was being picked on by other kids, never daring to fight back.
At first, I planned to slowly find out his likes so I could get closer to him, but I couldn't stand it anymore. And in the beginning, I stepped in to help him out of a sense of repayment.
Later, I discovered that we were neighbors, and we spent a lot of time together. I don't know when, but something changed in our relationship.
Because of the looming apocalypse, I always felt on edge and threw myself into my studies. When I finally made it into my teacher's research institute, I learned that there were many others like mepeople with memories of the apocalypse. We banded together with one goal. That's to preserve the human race's spark as best we could before the apocalypse struck, and to find a way to ensure humanity's survival.
Some of them knew Alan, or rather, the monster he became. Their opinions of him were mixed, but they all agreed on one thing. He was extremely dangerous and needed to be eliminated immediately.
But the Alan I knew was just an ordinary person! He hadn't done anything wrong yet. He was just a 'little brother' who needed my protection. I argued fiercely with the higher-ups, and because I held the key research project, the organization agreed to abandon their plan to eliminate Alan.
My research project was Alan. To conduct my study, I told a lie. On April Fools' Day, I told him I loved him.
He said yes. But later, when I fell ill, my body was uncontrollably contaminated by the very pollution he carried, even though he didn't mean it. So, I told another lie.
It was also on April Fools' Day. I told him I didn't love him anymore.
To make him give up on me, I enlisted Jeff from the same project group to help me stage a scene. I feared that my death would accelerate his mutation, so I pretended to marry Jeff, moved out of the city, blocked all his contacts, and publicly declared that I would never reach out to him again.
Looking into his sorrowful eyes, seeing the disbelief in his tears, I wanted so badly to hold him and tell him it was all just a lie for April Fools' Daya cruel prank.
But I couldn't. That would have been even crueler for him. In this life, maybe he won't become a monster. Maybe he'll become a powerful Awakened One, a hero who saves humanity.
My health deteriorated rapidly, and soon I was bedridden. I heard Alan's mental state wasn't doing well either. The organization was still keeping a close watch on him, but there was nothing else they could do.
Before I died, I gave Jeff a letter. I told him that if he ever saw Alan again and if Alan still retained his humanity, to give him the letter. I hoped to be buried in the place we had once agreed upon.
He shouldn't give up on a better life because of me. Over time, he'll gradually forget me. He'll live well in the apocalypse, and maybe sometimes he'll think of me, but he won't be a monster anymore.
I want him to live well and become a hero, but I also don't want him to forget me too quickly. Just forget me a little bit every day, just a little. Let me slowly fade away in his memories.