291

Chapter 291 — Something I Can Accept (7)

Wading through the blood that had risen to my ankles, I tried clenching and unclenching my fingers.

Was it because this wasn’t reality? The sensation wasn’t particularly vivid. It felt like a hand that had been left out in the cold on a freezing winter day. Except the sensation of cold itself was gone.

“…Is that your true form?”

Then again, perhaps because the physical sensations reaching me had diminished. Or perhaps because the culprits who had thrown me into this godforsaken mess were right in front of me.

My insides churned more violently than usual, like a reagent after a catalyst had been tossed into it.

My vision blurred, sharpened again, then abruptly cut out like a severed thread. This wasn’t good. From experience, I recognized that this was a “not good” situation.

“I’m asking you. Is that your true form?”

But if simply knowing something was enough to fix it, would humans even be human?

[Who knows. Does it matter?]

Hehe. The being whose facial contours were barely visible beneath the goat skull laughed. The three-piece suit and the durumagi thrown over it somehow looked familiar.

Was this some elaborate way of fucking with me by making me nostalgic for home?

[Well, since you went to the trouble of asking, I suppose I can answer. Yes, this is my true form. Unlike a physical body, where one’s essence is obscured by the appearance one is born with or defects acquired later in life, a mental form directly reflects the “essence as defined by oneself.” Completely. You can’t cover it up, and you can’t hide it. In other words, you could say this very form is exactly the “true form” you wanted.]

Regardless of how I felt about it, she—or rather, that thing that was probably a demon—took step after step in an outfit that had been fashionable in Korea a year or two ago.

Starting from beside the boy, she walked in an ellipse around me. Keeping an appropriate distance, she passed by my left side with a crooked little smile.

[But speaking of that point… you’ve become quite mixed yourself.]

The figure that had clearly kept its distance suddenly stood behind me.

[Or do you perhaps think of your present self and your past self as two separate things?]

Normally, I might have jolted at the sudden approach and immediately gone on guard, but the words that followed were too heavy.

My gaze fell blankly toward the floor. My face was faintly reflected in the surface of the blood.

[Poor Gretchen.]

It was the Demon Knight’s face.

The Demon Knight’s face, except that the hair had turned pitch-black and burn scars now covered the jaw and cheeks.

[Whether you forgot or simply separated the two in your mind, it really is pitiful.]

It bore “my” features, yet it still wasn’t mine.

[Originally, none of this should have been necessary.]

As the demon’s laughter seemed to recede into the distance, I clenched my fist tight. My teeth had already bitten into my lip, and blood trickled down from it.

[More importantly, how long are you planning to stall? Are you hoping Gluttony will advance or something?]

Click.

The demon’s footsteps stopped roughly halfway between the boy and me. The sight of her standing slightly off-center from directly in front of me was so fucking irritating that, for a moment, I tensed my throat.

「I’m sorry…….」

But my words never came out.

The boy spoke again.

「I’m really… sorry…….」

Naturally, all my attention immediately snapped toward him.

Every hardship I had gone through since coming here made a vein stand out in my neck.

“What are you……!”

What are you sorry for?

What are you apologizing for?

Do you even know what it is you should be apologizing for when you say that?

The things I had gone through. The burden I was carrying.

Are you really trying to apologize after understanding and empathizing with all of it?

「I, I…….」

Originally, there had been no reason for me to hurt this much.

There had been no reason for me to spend more than a year longing for my father, my mother, and my friends.

There had been no reason for me to forget my own face, or to desperately cry out for all the peace I had once enjoyed.

The same went for killing people, and for the anguish of watching people die. Struggling so desperately that I even reached for worse crimes, then screaming beneath the guilt that kept piling up—none of that had originally been mine to bear.

None of it was something I should ever have gone through.

There wasn’t a single burden in this place that should have been mine to carry.

Originally.

Originally, that was how it should have been.

「I never should have made that choice…….」

And yet, because of you.

「I never should have brought you here…….」

Because of you alone.

「I’m… sorry. I’m truly sorry…….」

Because of you.

Just you…….

「I’m really sorry…….」

I—

You—

“Why?”

If it hadn’t been for you, I would have lived a perfectly good life.

“Why are you so young?”

If only you hadn’t existed, I’d still be happy even now.

“Why are you so young that I can’t even get angry at you……?”

I should have been.

「N-no. I’m, I’m not…….」

“If you’re this young…….”

「That’s, that’s not it, ah…….」

There was anger I had wanted to unleash.

There was resentment I had wanted to spit out by screaming and berating someone.

The hardships and suffering I had endured getting all the way here had been so intense that, whether I wanted it or not, plenty of grudges had grown old and festering inside me.

“If you’re this young, then who the hell am I supposed to be angry at……?”

But standing before that tiny boy, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Fuck.

The damned little brat was so tiny that the top of his head barely reached my shoulder.

He was that small.

So, so small.

They said the appearance of a mental form represented one’s essence, and this fucking bastard was a kid who defined himself as a boy.

「You can get angry! You can! I, I’m the one who did everything wrong… It really is all my fault……!!」

And so, fucking hell, because he was so young.

I simply couldn’t get angry.

I couldn’t do it because the child was too small.

「Don’t hold it in, please. I really am the one who did wrong. Everything that tormented you was all my fault… so…….」

I waded through the blood and stopped in front of the boy.

He wasn’t only short.

His face was small, his hands were small, and his arms and legs were thin.

From what I had gathered, he had clearly been a knight’s child. He had been talented enough to place first in an entrance exam.

And even then.

He was young.

He was a child.

「I-I really am a bad person……!!」

Just a young child…….

「…Don’t forgive me. Please, don’t forgive me. Please…….」

I carefully pulled the child into my arms.

「I don’t deserve to be forgiven…….」

The part of my chest where the child’s face pressed against me quickly grew damp. His trembling body was far too thin and small.

「Please don’t forgive me…….」

The starting point of all the misery I had suffered in this place was so pitifully wretched.

「It’s all my fault…….」

In the end, tears fell from my eyes.

“Why is life so fucking shitty?”

It was an unbearably cruel world.

Read only on MUGEX

[…Are you fucking kidding me?]

And beside my falling tears, the sound of dress shoes rang out.

[Are you fucking kidding me?!]

The blood-submerged white world suddenly convulsed.

[You’ve been suffering like you were about to die all this time, and now you’re forgiving him just because he’s a fucking kid? Are you seriously that much of a fucking sucker?]

Tick.

Tick.

With the white world beginning to crack like a spiderweb behind her, the demon twisted her lips.

Beyond the sockets of the goat skull was a darkness that concealed even the demon’s face.

Red lights hanging there like decorative buttons instead of real eyes blazed fiercely.

[You said you’d beat him half to death. You said you were going to fucking half-kill him.]

What exactly fueled those flames?

Who knew.

In front of the goat skull trying to stoke my anger, I held the child a little tighter.

The child, who had been shuddering ever since that thing started speaking, now even suppressed the sound of his crying and rationed his breaths.

Like children abused by adults often did.

[Was your anger really so shallow that a single change in appearance was enough to make it disappear? It wasn’t. I know. I know how angry you are. I know exactly how much rage you’re carrying.]

“…….”

[I know there’s resentment inside you that wouldn’t disappear even if you strangled that child to death right now and stabbed his body with a knife over and over.]

Hic.

The boy in my arms shuddered once again.

Did he want to pull away?

Maybe.

But after that one tremor, the child let all the strength drain from his body as though resigning himself to it.

「You can do that.」

The tiny murmur pierced my ears.

[Don’t hold back. You don’t have to. You have every right. Of course you do! If you don’t have that right, then who possibly could?!]

「If doing that would relieve your anger.」

[This is a mental world anyway. He won’t die even if you strangle him. He won’t die if you stab him either. So don’t hold back. There’s no need to hold back!]

「I’m okay with it.」

[No one can blame you! No one!]

Ah.

Really.

[So, Gretchen, don’t endure—]

It truly was an unbearably cruel world.

“Shut your fucking mouth, you goddamn bastard. Are you so desperate to fucking die that you’ve gone insane? You’re seriously trying to gaslight the shit out of me right to my face, you piece of shit.”

I drew the Zweihander from my back and threw it.

Had it been there from the beginning?

I wasn’t sure.

I simply thought that I wanted to throw a sword, and one naturally appeared in my hand. Then I threw it.

[…I didn’t tell you to attack me.]

“Did you sell off your common sense together with your conscience? You caused the whole fucking thing yourself, and now you’re trying to dump all the blame on a kid. Why the hell did you think that meant a sword wouldn’t come flying at you? Do I look like such a colossal dumbass that I can’t understand cause and effect?”

At the same time, the anger I had barely suppressed surged up again.

Do you think I’m not getting angry because I’m not fucking pissed?

Do you think I don’t resent how miserable it is to be in a situation where I can neither forgive nor condemn him?

I’m human too.

I hate this.

I resent this.

It pisses me off that I have to go through something like this in the first place, and that I’ve even lost the chance to be justifiably furious about it.

“This kid did something wrong. He did. But that doesn’t mean everything is his fault. Did he summon me here for fun? Did he get bored with life and summon me because he wanted to fuck over some random person?”

But did that mean it was right to let my emotions control me and lash out indiscriminately?

Did the misery I had suffered give me a free pass to blindfold myself and cut down random people?

“No. It doesn’t. None of this would ever have happened in the first place if it weren’t for you.”

Some people might think that way.

But I didn’t.

I didn’t want to become that kind of person.

I—

I wanted to be someone who could stand before myself without shame.

“I actually want to ask you something instead. Does living like that make you feel good?”

[…What?]

“You killed an entire family just to get your hands on one child’s body, and after parasitizing him, you tormented him to make him hand the body over. You spend your life stirring up hatred and disgust in other people. Does that feel good?”

And putting everything onto this little child and doing nothing but resenting him wasn’t something I could take pride in.

It was even less acceptable for someone over thirty fucking years old.

“If someone told me to live such a monumentally pathetic life, I think I’d be so ashamed I’d just fucking kill myself on the spot.”

So.

So…

I moved the cowering child behind my back.

Why it had been me.

Why he had stayed silent all this time.

Whether there really had been no other way.

There would be plenty of time to listen, get angry, and scold him after I beat the fucking shit out of that bastard.

The child wasn’t the only one who deserved to get smacked in the face by karma.

That bastard did too.

[…So you’re going to forgive that child?]

“No. This isn’t something that can just be forgiven. But I’m not going to become someone who won’t even give a child one chance to explain himself.”

[Ha. You really never stop surprising me.]

Come to think of it, hadn’t she said earlier that because this was inside the mind, you wouldn’t die even if you were strangled or stabbed?

That was a little disappointing.

If I could cut that bastard’s head off right now, maybe I could finally be free.

[Well, I suppose. It isn’t as though I don’t know you. I already expected you wouldn’t be easy to sway.]

Ah, no.

Actually, since there was no guarantee I could win, perhaps that was fortunate.

Relieved that even the worst outcome would only preserve the status quo, I tried imagining a sword in my mind.

You know how, in comics and novels, whenever someone enters a mental world they can create and erase things just by imagining them?

Even that Zweihander just now had felt as though it had appeared on my back because I imagined it.

[I still can’t understand it, though…….]

So I tried it, just in case.

Fortunately, it worked.

Shrrring.

A sharply honed longsword settled into my hand.

[But Gretchen, do you really think I allowed you to learn the truth for no reason?]

「N-no!」

Before I could make any move at all, something struck me from behind.

The blood covering the entire floor made the impact even worse.

Slip.

The force pushing me sent me sprawling forward.

“Hghyak!”

I took several quick steps, trying not to fall, but it was useless.

In the end, I went down flat on the floor, spread-eagled, then immediately pushed myself back up.

Fortunately, none of the blood had gotten on me, but my nose felt numb.

“Why did you push—!”

For a moment, I even forgot my anger and grabbed my nose as I jerked my head up.

Clang!

A chilling metallic crash erupted directly in front of me.

「Don’t even think about leaving!」

[Why shouldn’t I?]

「The contract……!」

[You broke it first.]

The demon and the boy were crossing swords.

Fast and violent enough that even my eyes couldn’t follow them.

[You were the one who demanded that keeping silent be included in the contract. And you were also the first one between us to break that rule.]

「……!」

[So why should I restrain myself?]

Even if I couldn’t follow each individual movement, however, it was obvious which side held the advantage.

Just as I was a head and a half taller than the boy, the demon stood a full head taller than him.

One side already had the advantage in sheer build.

[Little boy, you can’t stop me anymore.]

And even the power I could feel was overwhelmingly in the demon’s favor.

No.

Calling it merely an advantage wasn’t enough.

They were on entirely different levels.

Boom!

At last, the white world collapsed.

Beyond it lay pitch-black darkness.

And enormous chains.

「…Not yet.」

Instinctively, my eyes followed the chains.

Something was bound by them.

A gigantic hand.

A gigantic hand made by gathering flames upon flames together.

「I said, not yet.」

Clatterrrrr!

At the same time, the boy cast a chain toward the demon.

Although the trajectory was hardly impossible to dodge, the demon extended a hand as though compelled to do so and was bound by the chain.

[Tch.]

The demon crooked the lips I could barely see.

It might have been irritation at the situation.

Or perhaps mockery.

[But things change once the truth is conveyed.]

There was, however, one thing I knew for certain.

[Fulfill the “promise,” little boy.]

Those bastards had forgotten about me.

Pissed off, I hurled a sword at the demon.