Drunkard (3)
“What exactly… was this experiment you speak of?”
“It wasn’t a method that directly caused harm. Just living alongside them, understanding the structure of their mana flow, collecting residual energy. It was closer to observation than experimentation.”
“Collecting data… then that’s strange. Why only observe? Wouldn't it have been easier to directly intervene? You could have obtained a much wider variety of samples through abduction and dissection. I don't understand why you took such a passive approach.”
“……Well. I don’t know either.”
The woman murmurs at the pointed words.
Was it a final boundary?
While cooperating with the dark mages, the Drunkard had never directly harmed the students.
She merely relayed the information and data requested by the cultists.
In return, she received ancient texts on resurrection, or samples needed for her research.
Selena says,
“I never intended to get close to Judas. I decided to think of him as just a necessary sample, but…”
The distance that had become too close.
Despite maintaining a cold demeanor and always drawing a line, the boy always approached her.
He smiled as if he didn't care.
That smile.
“That smile… I thought it resembled Lianne’s.”
The monochrome days of the past kept resurfacing.
The Drunkard would stagger.
Overwhelmed by the ever-tightening grip of guilt, she was driven to a point where she couldn't endure without being intoxicated.
Her inner self was fragile, ready to shatter at the slightest trigger.
‘Did it work?’
It was intentional.
I had been performing acts that would erase Selena’s guilt.
Kind words, meticulous care, close proximity, and finally, a smile resembling her younger sister’s.
So that she couldn't escape from reality.
I had been constantly prodding at her inner self.
“I’m sorry.”
The guilt that had now filled her mind.
At the end of it all, she faced…
The sight of myself sitting in a wheelchair.
An emaciated figure.
A pale complexion due to lack of vitality.
Yet, the corners of my lips didn't falter.
My current appearance was that of a critically ill patient, for all to see.
The Drunkard wouldn't have been able to bear that reality.
“I know I don’t even have the right to say this, but…”
The fact that someone was hurt because of her choices must have been agonizing.
Especially a student who was closest to her.
A child who always whispered warm words to her.
The fact that I had expended some of my life force was helpful at this moment.
It allowed me to push her further into a dramatic situation.
Selena’s lips tremble.
Frustration is etched in the fading redness.
“…Perhaps I… saw Lianne in Judas.”
“Is it perhaps a feeling like this?”
Snap!
I lightly snap my fingers.
A fleeting, shimmering illusion.
In the next moment, instead of the blond boy, a violet-haired girl sat in the wheelchair before the woman's eyes.
Exactly as she remembered her younger sister.
“Ah…”
Selena is momentarily startled.
But soon, realizing it’s an illusion, she exhales the breath she had been holding.
The Drunkard clutches the sheets tightly.
“You really know everything.”
“You don’t ask. How I know your sister’s face.”
“Because I know I’m not in a position to question such things.”
The woman bites her trembling lip.
A silence descends, like falling into an abyss.
She, who had only been providing answers, now poses a single question.
It was a question about the nightmares that had plagued her for the past few days.
Her pupils waver.
“May I ask just one thing?”
“Of course.”
“When I was under Judas’s hypnosis. The dream, or perhaps memory, that played out in my hazy consciousness… was it all an illusion Judas created?”
“Yes.”
During the attack.
Selena, who tried to grab me as I ran towards the center of danger, and tried to evacuate me to a safe place.
I put her to sleep and implanted a small dream.
Its content was…
A memory of what would have happened if everything had gone according to plan.
The scene of the Academy trampled by disaster.
The Drunkard had to wander through such an illusion for days.
Without even realizing it was a dream.
Vomiting tears and blood countless times.
“What did you see there?”
“The collapsed Academy. I was sitting in front of it. Scraping together scattered pieces of flesh, repeating over and over that I didn’t want this,that this wasn’t what I wanted…”
Of course.
I concealed the scene of the cultists’ betrayal and the truth about Lianne’s death.
Lest anger and betrayal dilute her regret.
So that she would be completely tormented by her own guilt.
So that she couldn't even bring herself to ask for forgiveness.
I only showed her her transgressions.
“Then.”
This time, I ask the question.
What did you learn from your mistakes?
“How did you feel after waking up from the dream?”
“……I thought…”
Is she recalling the memory of that time?
The woman tightly shuts her eyes.
Even if it was a dream, the scope of the illusion I provided transcended the framework of a dream.
It would have remained in all her sensory organs: sight, touch, smell…
As if she had actually experienced it.
The corpses crushed beneath the debris.
Someone's flesh and blood lodged under her fingernails.
The disgusting smell of burning clinging to her nose.
The woman relives the vivid sensations.
Of those corpses that had cooled lukewarm.
The Drunkard lowers her head, then forces out a voice.
A watery line flows down her cheek.
Tears of relief.
“That it was fortunate… I thought.”
That the dream she had just witnessed wasn't reality.
That no sacrifices had been made.
That peace still reigned.
The woman felt a deep sense of relief.
She murmured several times how fortunate it was.
“If the plan hadn’t failed… I should have worried about Lianne first, I should have been frustrated by the failed plan… but more than that, I was relieved that the children in front of me were alive, that the success of the plan was all a dream, and I felt disgusted with myself for feeling that way…”
Her impassive expression gradually crumbles.
The truth she hadn't realized.
The guilt she had suppressed under the guise of longing, now blooms again, triggered by the seeds I planted.
The blossoming bud of emotion can no longer be stopped.
The falling tears gain weight.
“It was then that I realized.”
I…
“…that I loved this place more than I thought.”
Blind love blinds.
Rational thought, one's own life, and even love that should have been directed elsewhere.
The Drunkard, bound by her love for her younger sister, had closed her eyelids.
Only after destroying everything else she loved.
Did she realize that she had loved them too.
‘Foolishly.’
That must be why Selena regretted it in the end.
Because she hadn't realized her love for so long.
Consumed by Lianne’s death, she had forgotten the love she had developed for the academy, her teachers, colleagues, students… all of it.
She abandoned those who had become her home.
“I know. It’s too late to go back. I’ve come too far.”
The woman speaks.
It would have been easier if she had remained unaware, focused solely on her sister's resurrection.
But she had seen other lights at the end of the endless straight line.
“I’ve lost my purpose to betray them… but not doing so makes me miss Lianne terribly.”
Selena.
You had a lot in common with me.
No… you were me.
We suffered similar wounds, experienced similar breakdowns.
We knew what kind of scar longing for loss left behind.
‘If it were me…’
Wouldn't I have been the same in the same situation?
No… perhaps because I had power, I might have done something far more terrible than what she had done.
That's why I understood you.
That's why, even as I condemned you, I hoped your ending wouldn't be the same.
Because my ending was complete ruin.
-I'm sorry.
My past life, where I became a gaming addict.
I hoped you wouldn't give up on the world like I did.
“What do you plan to do now?”
“……If I can’t go back, I have to at least stop.”
I wanted to save you.
No.
I wanted to save the past me reflected in the mirror that was you.
We are locked in an intersecting gaze.
“I’m going to end it all. I’ll take responsibility for everything.”
“What do you mean by responsibility?”
“I can’t go against them anyway. I swore a mana oath on my heart. But I can at least tie up loose ends. Punish them and myself.”
“Surely you don’t mean…”
“Yes, that’s right.”
Her tear-filled eyes sink.
As if resigning herself to everything.
With tears streaming down her face, you say,
“I’m going to die.”
A calmly delivered suicide.
Her crimson eyes are hollow with relief.
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