(This short side scene takes place at some point after Aiko fully reveals she is from 2026, during one of their conversations in the study. )
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Sebastian rubbed his temple. “So in your time… they truly believe we were monsters that for no reason at all wanted to kill millions of people with poisonous gas. Wow...”
Aiko nodded, her voice quiet but steady. “That’s the unchallengeable official story. But there are things in my time that are harder to defend.”
Sebastian leaned forward. “Tell me one.”
Aiko hesitated, then spoke with careful, measured words.
“There was a girl in her twenties. She was... violated by several men. Brutally. In a government supervised care facility. The trial dragged on for years. In the end the criminals walked free because the government didn’t punish them. They wanted to keep it quiet because the men were migrants who had already caused trouble in the country. The authorities cared more about maintaining an international image of being kind and welcoming to migrants than about protecting their own people. If anyone spoke out against it, they were accused of hate crime. The girl was so broken that she jumped off a building. She survived… but she became permanently disabled. Instead of helping her heal, the government offered her assisted suicide. They called it ‘medical assistance in dying’ — a dignified death. They said she was too traumatized to ever live a normal life again, so they helped her end it. And many people praised it as compassionate.”
Sebastian stared at her, his face slowly draining of color. For several long seconds he said nothing. When he finally spoke, his voice was hoarse with disbelief.
“They helped her kill herself… after she had already been violated and left crippled?”
Aiko nodded. “They framed it as mercy. As respecting her autonomy. In my time we’re taught that if someone is suffering deeply, the kindest thing is to let them choose death. That forcing them to keep living with trauma is cruel.”
Sebastian exhaled sharply and leaned back, looking physically sickened.
“That sounds like something the Führer would agree to… In difficult times, with eugenics and the need to strengthen the Volk, the government might decide it is better to remove the weak-minded, the broken, those who cannot contribute. But at least we don't lie, we KNOW that is not mercy,” he said, his tone firm but laced with quiet outrage. “That is abandonment, dressed up as kindness. The state fails to protect an innocent girl, fails to punish the guilty, and then offers to finish what the criminals began — and calls it dignity? They sacrifice their own people on the altar of international optics and then hand the victim the means to die because it is more convenient than justice.”
Aiko shifted uncomfortably. The modern ideas she had grown up with suddenly felt thin when spoken aloud to him.
She tried to make her point: “But we’re taught that personal choice is sacred. If she decided she couldn’t bear the pain anymore, who are we to force her to keep suffering? Dignity means controlling your own end, not being a burden on society.”
Sebastian’s jaw tightened. He leaned forward again, his gaze intense yet gentle, as though he desperately wanted her to see what he saw.
“No, Aiko. Dignity is not the right to die when life becomes inconvenient. Dignity is the recognition that every human soul has worth simply because it exists — even when it is wounded, even when it is suffering, even when it is no longer ‘useful.’ A violated and crippled girl is not ‘broken goods.’ She is still someone’s daughter. Still a person made with inherent value. True mercy does not hand her poison and call it freedom. True mercy shelters her, protects her, walks with her through the darkness until she can stand again — even if the healing takes years. Even if she never fully heals.”
He paused, searching her face.
“In our Reich, even now in wartime, we still try to feed the people held in the camps when the supply lines are bombed. We worry about them because they are human souls under our responsibility. Horrible things happen in our time even right in front of us, every single day. But at least we know it's horrible and we still strive to live so that we can change it. In your time… they allow evil to go unpunished to protect an image, then offer death as a solution because the victim is no longer ‘happy’ or ‘productive.’ That is not progress. That is a deeper kind of barbarism — one that smiles, uses soft words like ‘autonomy’ and ‘compassion,’ and quietly discards its own people.”
Aiko was silent for a long moment. The slogans she had absorbed since childhood — autonomy, dignity in death, quality of life — suddenly rang hollow.
“I was taught that refusing someone the right to die is cruel,” she said softly, almost testing the words against his. “That forcing life on someone who no longer wants it is violence.”
Sebastian shook his head slowly, his voice steady and deeply rooted in conviction.
“Then your time has forgotten what life truly is. Life is not a possession we can throw away when it becomes difficult or painful. It is a sacred trust. The strong do not prove their strength by eliminating the weak or the wounded or the inconvenient. The strong prove their strength by carrying them. By refusing to look away. By saying: your life still matters, even when it hurts, even when the world has failed you.”
He reached across the table and gently covered her hand with his — warm, steady, grounding.
“You came here because you were tired of a world that had forgotten the worth of human beings,” he said quietly. “Let this world remind you. We do not discard the broken. We do not call death mercy when life can still be fought for and redeemed. That is the difference between a civilization that still remembers its soul… and one that has lost it completely.”
Aiko looked down at their joined hands, then up into his clear blue eyes. For the first time, the modern narrative she had always accepted began to crack open.
She didn’t have a full answer yet.
But something deep inside her — long buried under layers of textbooks, slogans, and carefully curated compassion — stirred awake.
Sebastian’s voice softened even more.
“And if that girl had lived here… we would have guarded her. Not because she was useful, but because she was human. Because her life still had meaning. That is what strength and mercy truly look like.”
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Author’s Note:
This sidequel was written because the real-world event it is based on actually happened recently, and it genuinely broke my heart.
I am still angry. I am still heartbroken for that girl and for every victim who is told that death is the compassionate solution while the guilty are shielded for political reasons. This scene is my way of letting that anger and sorrow speak through fiction.
I hope the scene honors that girl’s suffering. It's not meant to be a criticism of her choice, but that she needed help and she have already been failed by the world.325Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7piH1Vy13V
and then Add to home screen.