Chapter 47: surprised

“But everyone hates me. I’ve been like this since the day I entered the school.”

What was supposed to happen?

Did I go crazy, or did I keep moving even after I died?

I destroyed the research facility where I was confined, went out into the streets, and killed everything that moved.

I think that’s what happened.

I was a moving corpse. A very powerful one.

And then Seo-jun killed me, buried me somewhere, and she became even stronger.

That’s so boring. What’s so sad about a childhood friend killing-up villain?

That’s how it goes.

I could see the square device she used to restrain me on the day of our reunion, clutched in her hand.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t planning on being captured.

Even as I died, I wouldn’t acknowledge her. I’d just curse her and die a pathetic death.

It wasn’t important.

I suddenly remembered the busy streets in front of the university I used to frequent.

If you went right from the main gate, there was club street, and if you kept going straight, there was a good area for drinking and hanging out. If you went left, there were a lot of foreigners…

Anyway, there were always a lot of people.

So many that it was suffocating. So many that I hated the kids who held hands and dragged each other around, wanting to have fun.

“So I hid it. Because I thought everyone would hate me.I almost got caught a few times, but I got lucky.”

There seemed to be more people who escaped the bloodbath than I expected.

“Sometimes, I thought it would be okay to live like this, but then the class president and the homeroom teacher died, and I lost the will.Why don’t you just look out the window instead of coming closer?”

Ability users carrying injured or exhausted people on their backs or in their arms.

Patients in hospital gowns, clinging to each other, escaping together, not abandoning the injured, unlike what I had imagined.

Doctors and nurses, using their meager abilities, other than healing, to block the incoming sea of blood and thorns with their bodies.

I stopped attacking.

Seo-jun’s companions gritted their teeth, ready to attack me, but then they glanced out the window and froze, their gazes fixed on the scene outside.

“I wanted to try this kind of melodrama.Talking, exchanging resentful words, but not actually doing anything.”

“……Release the people now. I’ll at least give you a clean death.”

No one offered me a clean death when I begged them to kill me. Now that I wanted to live, no one would let me.

I chuckled as a bullet grazed my face, leaving only a scratch.

“I don’t want to die. Someone told me to die, but I didn’t want to, so I’m living like this.”

“You should have never been born.”

I remembered stammering those words to her while we were drinking coffee at the same table, saying that it was good to be born because we could drink things like this.

The words were the opposite, but they strangely overlapped, and it felt odd.

“That’s exactly what I thought.It would have been better to not be born at all, in that village, among those people, above this horrible city.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

It sounded like a provocation, but she was right.

“But I was already born. I wanted to live differently.Even though I know I’m useless, no matter who I go to.A cancerous tumor doesn’t choose to exist.”

Maybe I was like a cancerous tumor to society.

Rotting everything I touched, everyone desperately trying to remove me.

“Since my body changed like this, I got an ability, and a goal, I decided to do some volunteer work.”

Still, living like this wasn’t pleasant.

I hoped other people, the children who would be born soon, would live happily.

I hoped there wouldn’t be any children like me.

“Who was it? Right, your father. He didn’t die peacefully, did he? He was bullied by small fry and died because of his useless daughter.”

Hye-yeon flinched and stopped as I detonated someone, the countless screams filling the air.

“It doesn’t matter how many die. Why don’t you just come at me?They’re not dying because of you. It’s all my fault.”

“I shouldn’t have cared about you.”

“I told you not to.”

I cleared my throat.

“Anyway, if he was a genuinely good person, decent villains like us wouldn’t have touched his daughter. He probably only acted all righteous in front of you, because you’re his young, naive daughter.”

My words were rambling.

“He probably fed living people or cooked human flesh to kids like me, sometimes cutting off limbs and serving them, sometimes torturing them for durability tests. All the researchers there, the men and women, they were all family-oriented, good people.”

I just kept talking, whatever came to mind.

“Don’t talk nonsense. He wasn’t that kind of person.”

“Yeah, maybe not.”

There were probably hundreds of survivors.

This was a big hospital.

Honestly, I didn’t want to see it, but I couldn’t look away from what I had to do.

They didn’t do anything when I was suffering.

No one was there for me when I was in pain, so it’s okay if no one’s there for me now.

I detonated the people soaked in blood, pierced with thorns, their bodies riddled with holes.

The sky looked like it was sprayed with a red watering can.

With the explosions, the hospital, peaceful just minutes ago, the lawn and garden in front of it… now there were only a handful of survivors.

“Until recently… I wasn’t the kind of person who would do this.”

“…….”

Why did the kids behind me follow me?

They weren’t much help.

“Seo-jun, take your friend and go.If you’re coming, come alone.”

Screams followed.

The legs of the two behind me were sliced off at an angle.

Standing on a pool of blood was a foolish move in the first place.

“Oh, and the severed legs and Lee So-hyun too. I can regenerate, but you can’t.”

My left arm had already grown back.

Though I hadn’t been using my hands much lately.

The two who were blocking my escape seemed to retreat.

Hye-yeon picked up Lee So-hyun with one hand and the severed legs with the other. She put one person on her back and seemed to be handing the other to Seo-jun.

As they were leaving the hallway, the unfamiliar restraint device I saw earlier flew towards me.

I couldn’t dodge.

My body was bound, and Hye-yeon, as if waiting for this moment, kicked me in the stomach and stomped on me.

I glanced behind me.

Seo-ha, what was her name again?

Anyway, she calmly reattached her leg, then her friend’s leg, and then started patching up Lee So-hyun’s wounds.

Hye-yeon’s foot left my stomach, and I collapsed on the floor, gasping for air.

Though it didn’t help much.

My mind was hazy.

“You came prepared, huh?”

Hye-yeon grinned, her previous expressionless mask gone.

“Yeah, you better brace yourself. We’re taking you to the NIS basement and making you spill everything.”

She wasn’t even stammering.

“You said something about her father earlier, remember?You seem to know what he did.The NIS… they catch spies, right?”

With the research facility in this state, that place was probably where they sent the meat I prepared.

“Shut up.”

“Seo-jun probably knows too.”

“……I said shut up.”

“I’m sick of basements. I’ll apologize, so can you let me go?I’ll be good. I won’t do this kind of thing again.”

They stared at me blankly.

“How about we reconcile here? Seo-jun? Bringing your friend is a bit… weird.It should just be you and me.”

There was no answer.

Seo-jun just bit her lip and stared at me.

Without answering, she approached me to put restraints on my legs.

It’s a bit strange that they think I can’t do anything, even though I can control, explode, and reshape the blood flowing through me, and the blood others spill.

Oh, right, I hadn’t shown them how my limbs regenerate.

Most of the people who saw it were dead, and besides Lee So-hyun, no one had seen my limbs grow back.

I decided to show them.

The restraints tightened the more I moved.

Would they tighten even if there was nothing to tighten?

I wasn’t sure.

It had always been like this.

The sound effect should be… bang.

It was much quieter than a gunshot, but still an explosion.

As I exploded my arms and torso, my head and legs splattered on the floor.

My head hit the ceiling, but it was always fun to see the shock on their faces.

“…….”

While they were frozen in surprise, before my body could regenerate, I gathered the blood, shaped it into a body, and jumped out the window.

To freedom!

“……!”

I wanted to laugh, but I didn’t have lungs, so I just opened and closed my mouth.