Chapter 51: As for Me…

My gaze drifted across the floor.

The man’s head lying there, the grotesque sight of numerous people kneeling, their upper bodies exploded, and the blue-haired girl crying beside me.

I didn’t speak.

For some reason, I liked seeing the girl cry.

It meant she still had the energy to cry, that she was still somewhat okay.

“Why would your virginity be more important than the lives of these people?I can sympathize. That middle-aged man wasn’t exactly appealing.”

“……S-Seo-jun will be here. Y-you can’t… stay here…”

I kicked Hye-yeon again, annoyed by her whimpering.

“The one who was sharpening her sword, vowing to kill your friends, sent them.”

“Why… why are you…?”

“You wouldn’t listen to me anyway, no matter what I said.You’d just say it’s my fault for doing this, regardless of what I’ve been through.I guess it’s understandable for a parent whose daughter was killed by students.”

I took a breath.

“It’s just… we think differently.So, it’s not my fault at all.”

A good idea came to mind.

“It’s all Seo-jun’s fault.It’s her fault for not coming to save you, for not caring if something happened to you.”

I gathered the scattered pieces of flesh and formed them into a large pillar in the middle of the street in front of the bank.

“That’s… ridiculous…!”

I sharpened a piece of bone and hammered it into Hye-yeon’s shoulder, pinning her to the pillar.

I preferred pretty girls with all their limbs intact, but this was much better than having her run around. I carefully lifted Hye-yeon and started carving her, as if she were a doll.

I had the carving knife they used to split open my head.

I stared at her thigh and then brought the knife down with all my might.

Hye-yeon sliced through people like butter, but my knife only whistled through the air, cutting halfway through her thigh before getting stuck on the bone.

I gave up and used the blood to sever both her legs.

Blood spurted from the wounds, but thankfully the bleeding stopped after I rubbed the severed ends with my hand.

Never mind how clean my hands were.

Hye-yeon writhed and screamed in pain.

“Why are you making such a fuss over this? You’re such a drama queen.”

“S-stop it… Stop…”

“I thought hidden stories, someone’s past… those things were important. But they’re not.”

I severed her arms at the elbows and placed them neatly below her.

Then I ripped her tattered, skin-revealing uniform and carved words into her stomach with the carving knife.

[Yoo Ha-rin was here.]

Capture? What capture?

You’re supposed to rush in, full of rage, and blow their head off.

And then, make sure they can’t regenerate, that they can never breathe in this wretched place again, turning them into pure light.

Stories didn’t matter.

No one cared what happened to me.

Only Si-hyun “unni” cared.

If she hadn’t died, I don’t think I would have become like this.

The Chairman and I… we wouldn’t have gone this far.

We would have just been hunting rats for fun. Did she really have to die because of something so trivial? If she’d stayed with me, there wouldn’t have been any problems. I didn’t understand why she insisted on going to see Seo-jun.

I thought I’d be truly happy once I escaped the lab, the basement of the research facility.

I thought I would see Seo-jun, make friends, and live a normal life like a protagonist.

The school I visited with a bright smile wasn’t beautiful at all.

It was the opposite of what I expected.

No different from the lab, just a bit more spacious, with the kids roaming free.

It was the same kind of place.

C-ranks were put in plastic bags and turned into our daily meals, and only from B-rank and above could you get a proper burial.

Even then, kids like me, with no connections, would probably be turned into special meals for special lab rats like me.

The world above ground I stepped into with so much hope wasn’t beautiful.

Seo-jun wasn’t perfect either.

I expected too much.

I hoped, wished, and searched on my own, and because what I wanted wasn’t there, I’m sulking like this.

Was the village beautiful?

The village I always reminisced about in the basement of the lab?

Was it beautiful when I actually went back?

Was it beautiful with the snow that fell in autumn and didn’t melt even when spring came, the people bundled up in fur coats, the clustered houses, the constant snowfall?

The unmelting snow was now soaked in red, no longer white. The people in fur coats were all gone, the houses had long since burned down, and it didn’t even snow anymore.

Was I happy back then, leaving footprints everywhere I went, occasionally encountering deer with clear eyes, running around the village with my hunting dog?

I was still leaving footprints everywhere I went, though the color was a bit different.

I met countless people with cloudy eyes instead of deer with clear eyes.

And the dog… it burned to death in front of me, so how could I keep it?

Did I like the cool woody scent, the dog that came running when I called its name, the sunlight reflecting off the snow-covered mountains?

Instead of the woody scent, there was the stench of blood, and sometimes, the dry smell of dust.

Instead of the dog, there were people who came looking to kill me as soon as I appeared, without me even having to call their names.

And the sunlight… it wasn’t that different from the faint sunlight filtering through the gaps between buildings, so I probably didn’t like it.

Still, I must have been happy when I was leaning against the window, reading a book, or petting the dog bigger than me, and my friend would always come over to my house, asking me to play.

I couldn’t focus on books anymore.

The big dog was gone, and my only friend wouldn’t see me as a person anymore.

She would still come over, asking me to play.

I was doing so much for her.

My friend left the village to become a hero, leaving me behind, and it’s my fault for not accepting it, for trying to follow her.

I couldn’t be the childhood friend who stayed by her side.

I couldn’t be the lover who watched over her.

I couldn’t be the comrade she could trust her back to.

In the end, there was only one thing a hero needed.

When the kids played together in the village, two or three of them always had to play the villain.

That was all that was left for me.

That was the only role left.

Just like I was the only one in the village destined to be left behind.

“There, that should do it.”

This might not be just a harmless prank, but still… it was a prank, wasn’t it?

I spared her life.

And how often do you get to see a heroine in her underwear at a time like this?

Especially when you’re not even her lover.

Though the lack of limbs was a bit of a flaw.

Hye-yeon, her body covered in my writing and doodles, had already fainted.

The smell of blood… it felt familiar.

Like a kinship.

Maybe that’s why I kept sparing her.

I only doodled up to her neck, not wanting to scar her pretty face.

Her white skin was now covered with my name and the scenery of the village I once remembered.

I carved an unforgettable scenery onto her body, so shouldn’t she be thanking me?

A few ability users seemed to have shown up while I was doing this, but my doll friends took care of them.

I heard a loud explosion and turned to see a huge pillar of light rising from the direction of the school.

I decided that visiting was better than running into them, so I quickened my pace.

In the opposite direction of the school, of course.

If I ran into them now, I might be turned into dust too.

I would be angry too if someone messed with my only friend’s precious doll.

I glanced back at Hye-yeon, hanging from the meat pillar.

She didn’t seem dead.

If she was lucky, she could reattach her limbs.

Did I go too far?

I quickly erased the thought.

What I did at the hospital, what I did here, exploding the people I saw on the street… it was all the same.

There was no need to distinguish who was more special, who was more precious.

I was just a villain, destined to be beheaded by the shining blade of a great hero.