"Exiled for life and held in captivity outside of the Emperor's Borders". aka "we don't have her but we're pretending we do".

Noah is still functional? I am surprised. But for him, any regular day is just as bad as a day in nightmare haunted Haven, I guess.

Ah, socializing with cute girls. Truly, the nightmare has never ended for Noah.

Compared to the situation in Haven:

PRO:
- risk of being horribly tortured to death by weird monsters considerably reduced

CON:
- risk of being forced into awkwardness by pushy people who still find you hot despite you being a weirdo loner considerably increased

So, all in all, it's just a slight improvement.

He already experienced his worst day in life, it can't be that bad now. I think.

So will he be going to the spring dance with her, or not? or is it already time for the summer or autumn dance?

Wait, so he's going to school again? I thought the nightmare ended!

But what does Ciel understand, @Neorice?

What does she understand!???

@someone
I dunno, the main difference on the risk side seems to be that the monsters now look more human.

Oh, hi there...Ciel. All a dream Noah. Time to wake up.

I wonder if Noah is a hero now

Hip hip hooray! My son has returned! I hope he's not trapped in a nightmare.

Waiting for the flashback to drop at any time. Y'know, wtf happened since we last saw Noah.

Poor guy will be traumatized for life.

Wow, the light really dimmed between the last page and this one. oO

Déjà vu

I think the last panel may have a typo. Is that actually supposed to say "How I did not miss this", instead?

No. "How I did not miss this though?" is stilted and weirdly instructive.

What he wrote is "How did I not miss this though?" it's a half double negative he asks himself and 100% grammatically correct.

Gonna have to say: Between the very similar event to the start of Noah's story line and the ruined painting of the Emperor, I'm getting a strong feeling like this might not be real...

I feel like if this really was a dream-slash-simulation, things would've been wrapped up more neatly and less in a way that'd annoy Noah. This level of banal disappointment seems to be on track for reality, so this is real. Probably.

@HanMK

The painting always looked like that, you can see it all the way back in chapter 2.

It is a nightmare. Maybe also reality, but certainly a nightmare.

@Melany Huh, you're right. I must have misremembered, I was sure that the state of the painting were a clue, but guess not...

@Melany: Ah, but it's a return to the way things used to be before the incident with the elves, just the sort of thing he'd wish for...

How I did not miss this versus how did I not miss this.

The first emphasizes how much you didn't miss what is currently happening. Aka this is a bad thing you were grateful to be away from.

The second asks how could I have not missed having this aka I now value and have come to realize this is a good thing. And I suddenly find it surprising I somehow didn't appreciate it before.

Whichever one he is meant to be saying, both are correct grammatically, though the former is hard to read correctly without hearing it. Something like "but, ugh, how I did NOT miss this. At all." Is the tone I think neo was going for.