Chapter 39: No, It’s a Light Conversation After All

After lightly ashing my cigarette, I crossed my legs and spoke to Seo-jun.

“Where were we?”

“……The basement of the research facility.”

Seo-jun remained silent, seemingly unable to process what she was hearing.

“Every meal… was the bodies of students who lost in matches, or the villains you caught.They’d chop them up and throw them to us.”

The boy I killed would have already been gnawed on by lab rats.

The girl would probably be buried properly. Since so many people mourned her death.

“It’s not tasty. Really. Blood dripping everywhere, often with shrapnel embedded in their flesh.I bit down on bullets and fragments so many times that my gums were torn.”

“My daily routine… I’d read books, then get dragged away, my body opened and closed, my skull opened and electrocuted, my whole body shattered for durability tests, then healed back to normal. That’s all.”

“Simple, right? Nothing to talk about.Oh, if they don’t listen, if they seem like they don’t need a self…”

I tapped my eye.

“They stick a long needle in here and stir it around.Strangely, they don’t die. They just become idiots, their mouths hanging open all day.I heard they cut off the limbs of the pretty ones, package them neatly, and sell them.”

Come to think of it, that’s probably why I killed the class president who kept moving when he should have stayed still.

Because it disgusted me. It reminded me of that test subject.

Struggling and resisting, only to become a living doll just from having a needle stuck in their eye and their brain stirred around.

That’s not living.

“I was… fortunately, an excellent test subject.High compatibility, cooperative in experiments……”

“After a few months of that, things started to get blurry.My hair, my eyes, my body, my hands, arms, legs, everything felt like it was fading away.So, I felt like I was going to disappear.”

I stopped talking and went into the bathroom.

I grabbed the rusty, bloodstained kitchen knife I used to cut my arm last time and plunged it into my arm, dragging it down as if tearing my flesh.

Seo-jun jumped up, grabbed my wrist, and then froze, trying to take the knife away.

This time, I pushed her down.

Straddling my friend on the bed, I brought my face close to hers and whispered.

“So I tried things like this.From that day on, I was moved from Basement Level 1 to Basement Level 3.”

Seo-jun stared blankly at the blood, rippling and moving as if it had a will of its own.

I showed them that because I wanted to live.

I thought they would stick a needle in my eye or use me as rat food because of my common regeneration ability.

“And down there, I kept waiting for you to rescue me.Or at least notice that I was gone.It’s a bit irrational, even I know that. No one would notice, and no one would look for me after that fight.”

I held my breath, then inhaled through my nose.

“Still, I hoped.That you would come find me. Not help other kids while I was gone, but come find me, the one stuck in the lab, getting torn apart every day.”

My voice choked with rising emotions.

Seo-jun’s nose twitched, whether from my breath or the disgusting smell of cigarettes on my breath.

“But you didn’t come.Not when I had dozens of my limbs cut off by those, not when my eyes were gouged out and exploded, not when my head was caved in by hammers, not when I was burned, electrocuted, or even when they pulled out my teeth one by one and poked my exposed heart with needles.”

I flicked her forehead, amused, but there was no reaction.

Well, I shouldn’t expect anything like that. Who am I?

I was just a childhood friend of the protagonist for a long time.

Actually, that’s pretty significant, come to think of it.

Even now, the basement of that research facility must be overflowing with rats like me.

Thinking back to the C-rank boy being put in a black plastic bag.

But the girl in front of me, even after hearing my story, looked more confused than determined to save those kids.

A protagonist, a hero, shouldn’t be like that.

Or am I wrong? Am I the strange one for thinking that’s wrong?

I was always strange.

Like someone with dementia, I say things and forget them, I’m always high on drugs, and I wasn’t even there for Si-hyun “unni” when she died.

What does it matter that she saw her younger sister in me?

I shouldn’t have felt offended.

Maybe I wanted to be someone else, not just her sister.

I don’t think I was just grateful.

It’s an emotion I can’t explain otherwise.

Was she happy when she died?

Did she think it was a meaningful death since she got her revenge?

I want to die with a purpose too, not just meaninglessly.

Right. I want to die sane, not as a monster created in that lab, killed by Seo-jun.

I want someone to hold my body and grieve.

“Do you pity me?”

“After hearing this, how can I not…?”

“It’s okay. I really like being pitied.When I was in pain and suffering, the researchers were too busy scribbling on their chart boards.”

Seo-jun, lying beneath me, looked like she was about to cry.

Anger, regret, she must be feeling those emotions.

She tries to simplify everything, even though she has a brain.

“To me, ability users, students, ordinary people on the street, important people, researchers…They’re all horrible. I think every day that they should all disappear from this world.Especially the research facility. I really hated it.”

What was love all about?

Yoo Ha-rin seemed to have something like that.

She promised me something, said she would come back, said we would leave the village and live together someday, but she left me behind.

She left me alone, with only despair as my companion.

I took another breath and tried to smile to show a more positive side.

But all I could manage was a crooked smile, just like the one I saw in the mirror.

“So, Lee So-hyun, you know? The one I mentioned earlier.”

“……Why are you bringing up So-hyun “noona”?”

“I did that to her.”

“……?”

“I… I half-killed that disgusting person, crippled her, took her arm, blew out one of her eyes…”

I don’t understand how she’s still alive.

The shotgun Si-hyun “unni” had wasn’t that bad.

Or was it? It might have been bad. I should try using it tomorrow.

“Do you still pity me?”

“…You, that, can’t be, there’s no way you would have entered the academy if……”

“I told you. It wasn’t you, the school, or some great ability user who saved me. It was a villain who pitied me.”

I shouldn’t be saying this.

Whatever.

This is how my life has been.

Driven by emotions, always impulsive.

Full of thoughts, but acting without thinking.

“No, well, I’m not saying that’s how it is. It’s just… that was it.I didn’t join their organization or anything. Really.”

“……Then when Hye-yeon and I visited you, that was…”

“Figure it out yourself.”

Seo-jun pushed me off.

She rolled off the bed and hit her head, but she didn’t even look at me.

She just sat on the edge of the bed, her legs trembling.

“So, what are you going to do?If there’s a problem in front of you, you have to solve it.”

I moved closer again.

I grabbed her limp right wrist, ran it across my collarbone, and then placed it on my throat.

“You have a suitable ability, the villain who killed two students under the guise of a match is quite weakened and unarmed.”

Seo-jun stared at me with an exhausted, confused expression.

Her lips still twitched silently.

“You can get revenge for Lee So-hyun too.”

Her grip tightened.

Her left hand joined the right, and she lifted me up by my throat.

My whole body trembled as I struggled to breathe.

Her hands, choking me, trembled too.

“Gah, ack, ugh, gasp…!”

I relaxed my body and let her do as she pleased.

This didn’t seem so bad either.

But soon, her grip loosened, and she hugged me, crying for a long time.

Repeating apologies, saying it was her fault I became like this.

Sometimes her body tensed, probably thinking of Lee So-hyun.

We stayed like that for a long time, hugging each other.

Like we used to, the two childhood friends who only had each other.

The girl who told me she loved me, who promised to leave the village with me, was remembering me again.

But it seemed like being around me only annoyed, angered, and saddened her.

Seo-jun wasn’t like that in the village.

She was always like this after we came to the academy.

This place is the problem.

Even in my class, they tormented me just because one girl died. That’s not normal.

I think I heard Seo-jun say it.

If there’s a problem in front of you, solve it.

She’s not solving anything, just clinging to me and crying.

But I’ll solve the problem, just like I learned.