"What exactly was this experint you ntioned?"
"It wasn’t anything that directly hard you. It was rely about observing the flow structure of your mana while living alongside you, or collecting residual energy. It was closer to observation than an experint, really."
"Data collection… Then that’s strange. Was there a reason you had to just observe? If you had taken direct action, the process would have been much simpler. Even kidnapping and dissecting would have yielded far more samples. I don’t understand why you remained so passive."
"…I don’t know either."
She murmured, thrown off by my words.
Perhaps that had been her final boundary.
Despite working with the dark sorcerers, she had never directly hard a student.
She had only provided the cultists with information and data they requested.
In exchange, she received ancient tos on resurrection or the samples she needed for her research.
Selena spoke.
"I never intended to grow close to you, Yuda. I had decided to see you only as a necessary sample…"
The distance between them had been far too close.
Even though she maintained a cold deanor, even though she constantly drew the line—
The boy kept approaching her.
Kept smiling at her like it didn’t matter.
That smile—
"That smile… It reminded of Lianne."
The black-and-white fragnts of the past kept resurfacing.
The drunkard staggered under their weight.
The guilt tightened around her like a noose, unbearable without the numbing haze of intoxication.
Her mind was fragile, ready to shatter at the slightest push.
"So it worked."
It had been intentional.
From the start, I had been prodding at her guilt.
Gentle words, thoughtful gestures, the closing of the distance—
And in the end, even a smile that mirrored her younger sister’s.
I had kept pulling her back, making sure she couldn’t escape reality.
I had been chipping away at her all this ti.
"I’m sorry."
The guilt that had consud her mind entirely.
And at its peak—
She found herself staring at , sitting in my wheelchair.
A frail appearance.
Pale skin, drained of color due to my dwindling lifespan.
A mouth that never betrayed weakness, despite the obvious signs of decline.
To anyone looking, I was a critically ill patient.
The drunkard couldn’t bear to face that reality.
"I know I have no right to say this, but…"
She must have been tornted by the fact that soone was hurt because of her.
Especially when that soone was the student closest to her.
The one who had always whispered kind words to her.
Burning away my own lifespan had, in the end, served a purpose.
It had pushed her into the most dramatic emotional state possible.
Selena’s lips trembled.
The red hue of her mouth had faded, tainted by despair.
"…Maybe I really did see Lianne in you, Yuda."
"Would it feel sothing like this?"
Snap.
A light flick of my fingers.
For an instant, a flickering illusion.
In the next mont, the golden-haired boy before her was gone—
And in his place, a violet-haired girl sat in the wheelchair.
Exactly as Selena last rembered her younger sister.
"Ah…"
Selena gasped softly.
But almost imdiately, she exhaled, recognizing it for what it was—an illusion.
The drunkard clenched the blanket in her lap tightly.
"There really isn’t anything you don’t know, is there?"
"You’re not asking how I know what your sister looked like."
"Because I know I’m in no position to question sothing like that."
She bit down on her trembling lips.
A silence that dropped into the abyss.
Until now, she had only given answers—
But this ti, she asked a question of her own.
A question born from the nightmares that had plagued her for the past few days.
Her pupils quivered.
"Can I ask just one thing?"
"Of course."
"Back when I was under your hypnosis. Those dreams I saw in the haze of my consciousness… Or maybe they were mories. Were they all illusions that you carved into my mind?"
"Yes."
During the attack.
Selena had tried to hold back, to take sowhere safe instead of letting rush toward the danger.
At that mont, I had put her to sleep—
And while I was at it, I had planted a dream.
The contents of that dream?
A mory of how things would have played out if events had followed the original tiline.
The academy, trampled beneath the Calamity.
For days, Selena had been trapped in that vision, wandering through it over and over again.
Never realizing it was just a dream.
Vomiting blood and tears, again and again.
"What did you see there?"
"A ruined academy. And myself, collapsed in front of it. Clawing at the scattered remnants of flesh, sobbing, repeating over and over that this isn’t what I wanted… that this isn’t what I wanted at all…"
Of course.
I had hidden the scene where the cult betrayed her, as well as the truth behind Lianne’s death.
So that her rage and sense of betrayal wouldn't lessen her regret.
So that she would be tornted solely by her own sins.
So that she wouldn’t even be able to bring herself to beg for forgiveness.
I had shown her nothing but her mistakes.
"Then."
This ti, it was my turn to ask a question.
What had she learned from her mistakes?
"How did you feel, when you woke from that dream?"
"…I thought."
Perhaps she was recalling the mories.
Her eyes clenched shut.
No matter how much she told herself it was just a dream, the illusion I had planted had shattered all limits.
It had imprinted itself on her senses—sight, touch, sll, and everything else.
It had been just like real life.
The corpses crushed beneath the wreckage.
The flesh and blood lodged beneath her fingernails.
The sickening scent of burning bodies that clung to her nose.
She relived each sensation, vividly.
The warmth of the dead bodies that had only just begun to cool.
The drunkard lowered her head, and then, as if wringing it out from her throat—
Drip.
A clear line of tears rolled down her cheek.
Tears of none other than relief.
"I… thought, thank god."
That the nightmare she had just seen wasn’t reality.
That there had been no sacrifices.
That peace had not yet been broken.
The woman had felt a deep relief.
She had murmured, again and again, thank god.
"If everything had gone according to plan… I should have been worrying about Lianne first. I should have been devastated by my failure. But instead, I was relieved. Because the children in front of were alive. Because the plan I had succeeded in was all just a dream. And because I found myself despicable for feeling that way…"
Her expression finally began to break.
The truth she had never realized before.
The guilt she had buried beneath the justification of her grief—now blooming once more, with the trigger I had planted.
The emotions she had unknowingly suppressed could no longer be stopped.
Her tears, at first light, grew heavier with each passing mont.
"That’s when I realized."
I—
"I love this place far more than I thought I did."
Blind love covers one’s eyes.
It clouds rational thought, one’s own life, and even the love that should have been directed elsewhere.
The drunkard had been so fixated on her love for her younger sister that she had covered her eyes.
And only after destroying everything else she had loved—
Did she realize that she had loved them too.
How foolish.
That must have been why Selena’s final regret was what it was.
Because she had failed to realize her love for so long.
Because she had been so consud by Lianne’s death that she had forgotten—
Forgotten that she had co to care for the academy, her ntors, her colleagues, her students…
That she had abandoned the people who had beco her ho.
"I know. It’s too late to go back. I’ve co too far."
She spoke.
That if she had never realized it at all, if she had simply clung to her sister’s resurrection, it would have been easier.
But because she had seen another light at the end of this path—
"I lost my purpose for betrayal… But I still missed Lianne so desperately."
Selena.
You and I had too much in common.
No—
You were .
We carried the sa wounds, suffered the sa ruin.
I knew the scar of longing for sothing lost.
If I…
Had been in the sa situation, wouldn't I have ended up the sa way?
No—if anything, because I had power, I might have done sothing even more terrible than she had.
That was why I understood you.
That was why, even as I condemned you, I wished for you to reach a different ending.
Because the ending I had t was one of complete destruction.
"I'm sorry."
The past life I had wasted away as nothing but a ga addict.
I didn’t want you to throw the world away like I had.
"What do you plan to do now?"
"…If I can’t go back, then I suppose I should at least stop."
I wanted to save you.
No—
I wanted to save the past version of myself that I saw in you.
Our gazes t, locked in silent understanding.
"I’m going to end everything. And take responsibility for it all."
"And what do you an by responsibility?"
"I can’t go against them. I bound my heart with a mana oath. But I can at least tie up the loose ends. I can punish both them and myself."
"Surely you don’t an—"
"Yes. That’s exactly what I an."
The tears in her eyes stilled.
Like soone who had resigned herself completely.
With the tears still falling down her cheeks, she spoke.
"I’m going to die."
A flat declaration of suicide.
Her crimson eyes were utterly empty.
Reviews
All reviews (0)