Chapter 11: I’m Thinking

The classroom atmosphere was subdued,

Perhaps because the boy who glared at me was sullen.

Or perhaps because of me. I hadn’t left many survivors.

The boy was still scratching his ear frantically, the skin raw and scabbed.

He continued to harass me.

Throwing not just crumpled paper, but scissors, razor blades, sharpened pencils.

I hadn’t let the bruises from yesterday fade, wanting to appear more pathetic.

Even I was disgusted by my reflection this morning.

A pencil grazed my cheek, drawing blood.

I had wanted to look presentable when I saw her.

I wondered what would happen if I snapped.

If a student suddenly started bleeding from every orifice, collapsing onto the floor.

I almost gave in to the urge, then swallowed another pill.

Today was the day.

I stared out the window as the teacher droned on.

Lunch break arrived quickly.

He didn’t bother me during lunch.

Back in my room, I changed out of my bloodstained uniform and examined myself.

My body was covered in bruises and cuts, from my neck down.

I removed my underwear. My skin was pristine white, unblemished, except for my face.

Si-hyun had given me a credit card, but I wasn’t hungry.

I made instant coffee and ate a cream puff, then tried to picture Seo-jun’s face.

I had made it this far. My time in the lab, the suffering… it hadn’t been in vain.

My limbs, my fingers and toes, scattered across various labs… it meant something.

But what was it all for?

Why had I gone through all that, just to see a friend who had abandoned me, who had escaped to a happy life while I suffered?

If she had contacted me, even just once a month, a simple text message… I would have waited.

I would have become a prostitute, offering my body for free.

Or I would have died waiting, happy in the belief that she would eventually come for me.

That’s who Yoo Ha-rin was. Kind, useless, clumsy, dependent.

I had nothing on Seo-jun’s other friends.

I was hysterical now, devoid of any redeeming qualities.

“You look disgusting.”

I wanted to gouge out his dark red eyes. But I restrained myself. I needed my sight.

I wanted to dye my white hair black. That’s what my original hair color had been.

I stared at my reflection, then threw a mug against the wall, shattering it.

I lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling.

Did I even need to attend classes? I wasn’t here to graduate or become someone important.

I was here for Seo-jun.

I still wasn’t sure how to approach her.

Classes were divided by ability. You could move up, even with a low-rank ability, if you performed well on the exams.

F-rank was the lowest, and rarely moved up.

But I wanted to see her now.

I had waited so long, alone, longing for a single message.

I would find the students wearing the same uniform as the blue-haired girl from yesterday.

I swallowed a handful of pills. One wasn’t enough.

Si-hyun had given me a two-month supply, but it was almost gone.

It was foolish to give an addict so many drugs.

It was foolish of me to come here.

But I couldn’t do this sober. I needed the drugs.

I couldn’t have endured the pain, the mutilation, without them.

That’s why they gave them to me.

Though the department head hadn’t bothered in the end. Just for killing a guard.

I shouldn’t have killed him. If Si-hyun hadn’t come, I could have…

What had I wanted?

To die. Or to hurt him. Or for Seo-jun to rescue me.

A foolish fantasy.

What would have happened to me?

I would have become a monster, my mind broken, my body rampaging through the lab.

But I had met Seo-jun in the end. Perhaps going to the lab hadn’t been a mistake.

“Yoo Ha-rin, the teacher asked me to check on you. Even F-ranks are expected to attend class. You’re a student now.”

“I was… thinking.”

The drugs simplified everything. Perhaps it hadn’t been a mistake after all.

What would I say to her? I missed you. Why didn’t you visit me?

She didn’t have to visit.

Why did you abandon me? Why did you leave me there?

No. I didn’t want to just ask why. There must have been a reason.

Then what? I wanted to see you. For so long.

That sounded like a lovesick girl. Perhaps the old me would have said that.

But not me, the girl born in the lab.

Perhaps it wasn’t love. I had thought it was, once. An eternal love.

A foolish, childish love, the kind a poor, powerless girl would cling to.

It wasn’t love. It was… something else. I had been waiting for… something.

I was lonely.

—————-

I felt a sharp pain in my stomach.

I turned to see the boy, the one whose name I still didn’t know, standing over me, his friends behind him.

“I told you… I was thinking.”

They looked… different. Impaled on sharp spikes of blood, like chunks of meat.

I hadn’t controlled my strength properly. The boy’s insides were liquefying.

Blood poured from his nose like a broken faucet.

I kept the blood from staining the room, suspending it in the air.

“How do I clean this up?”

“Y-Ye-jun…?”

One of them was still alive. Ye-jun, was it? I didn’t know his last name.

The girl who always followed him stared at him, her face blank with shock.

She couldn’t comprehend what had happened.

It was a disease. Easily cured. Open the skull, scramble the brain with an electrified probe.

Then, the old, foolish self would disappear, replaced by a brilliant, perfect being, like me.

I decided to help her. I couldn’t electrify her brain, but I could scramble it with blood.

I prodded her head with a bloody tendril. Her limbs twitched, then went still.

As I pondered how to dispose of the bodies and the blood, now swirling in a crimson sphere above me, I sensed someone watching me.

It was the blue-haired girl from yesterday. Her eyes were different. Predatory.

I started towards her, then stopped, remembering the floating sphere of blood and gore.

What would I do, even if I caught her? I couldn’t hurt her. I had just been defending myself against a bully.

In the lab, I felt like I would disappear if I stopped thinking, especially when a part of me was being severed.

I wanted to become an empty shell, incapable of thought. But I couldn’t give up.

I couldn’t let myself fade away. It wouldn’t be fair.

I compressed the swirling mass of blood and flesh, shrinking it until it fit in the palm of my hand. A small, pulsing sphere. The texture was disgusting.

It was dark outside. Night had fallen.

I felt a pang of guilt, knowing I had done this to students, kids with bright futures. I wanted to cry.

Surely, she wouldn’t hate me for this.

The kind, heroic Seo-jun.