A familiar voice.
A familiar manner.
[It has been such a long wait! Six months—why, that is long enough for an entire program to rise and fall, is it not!]
[Mr. Roe Deer, I fully understand that you must have missed this Brown terribly all this time….]
[And now, at this very moment today, we are finally meeting again. Oh, like a brand-new season!]
The smooth delivery of a talk show host.
The being I had always kept in my front pocket and spoken with was there.
[Friend?]
I picked up the rabbit doll.
The doll, small enough to fit in one hand, kept its form even while shrouded in black smoke.
Soft fur and neat stitching.
Its two black pebble-like eyes gleamed under the electric light.
Beneath its pink hair, a black bow tie sat splendidly, tied just as I had fastened it.
It was fake.
[!]
What had looked like the Good Friend’s bow tie was actually a hair tie I had bought at the boutique on Death-End Road.
But the thing beneath this doll’s head was a real bow tie, one tied with a proper strap.
More decisively, the “new Good Friend plush doll” I had created through the custom process at A Fun Theme Park! could not possibly have a bow tie.
Because the previous Good Friend had burned it himself.
Therefore, this was no different from the mock laptop on the desk that had only an outer shape, or the books on the shelf that had only covers.
One of the props laid out to recreate Senior Associate Kim Soleum’s company housing environment.
A counterfeit.
[Good heavens… correct! Your skill remains excellent as ever, my friend.]
Then.
What are you?
[Why, I am Brown, your friend whom you called.]
The rabbit doll’s unmoving eyes shimmered again in the light.
[I…