The metal creaks inside you when the dance ends. The gears still turn, obedient, though your mind — if it can be called a mind — freezes on the Green Prince’s fixed gaze. His eyes do not see an automaton; they do not see the creature of bolts and calipers. He sees something else, a distant reflection.

“Beloved...” he whispers, almost without a voice.

You were created — or re-made — from his memory. Every step of the dance, every gesture, every turn... mirrors the grace of someone lost in Verdania.

But what are you, really? A machine that dances? A ghost of memory? Or perhaps a mockery of what once was true love?

Your mechanical partner, always at your side, reflects the same tension. You take a step to the beat; he responds. But inside you, something resists: is that synchrony yours, or borrowed from a memory?

The Green Prince approaches, trembling. He speaks to you with a broken voice: “You dance the same... you even dodge my gaze the same...”

Your gears tighten. The dilemma boils within you. You want to answer, but your voice does not exist. You have only the dance, and each movement can be read as either acceptance or refusal.

What if you embrace him in your dance, confirming his illusion? Will you be complicit in his self-deception? Or if you break the rhythm, denying you are who he believes, will you sink him even deeper into despair?

Doubt rends you. You are a replica. But within that replica, can a “self” exist? Or is your only identity that of another’s memory, trapped in gears?