KamiKowa: That Time I Got Transmigrated With A Broken Goddess Chapter 212: [212] The Quiet Boy in the Pantry

Darkness enveloped Xavier’s vision, swallowing the hospital room and Maria’s pleading eyes. When his sight returned, the world had shrunk and brightened all at once. The ceiling lood impossibly high above him. The wooden floorboards, worn and splintered, felt rough beneath his small bare feet.

He knew this place. St. Catherine’s Ho for Orphaned Children.

But sothing was wrong. He wasn’t just witnessing this mory—he was living it again. His hands were tiny, with dirt under the fingernails. The baggy gray shirt hung past his knees. His purple eyes peeked out from behind too-long white hair.

He was seven years old again.

"This isn’t right," Xavier whispered, but his voice ca out high and childish. "I was older before. I was watching."

The pantry door creaked behind him, and Xavier spun around. A little girl huddled in the corner, clutching a piece of bread to her chest. Her eyes were wide with terror, tear tracks cutting through the gri on her face.

"Emma," he breathed.

He’d forgotten her na until this mont. Emma, who’d arrived at St. Catherine’s with broken glasses and no shoes. Emma, who’d wet the bed for weeks because she was too afraid to walk to the bathroom alone. Emma, who never spoke above a whisper.

Heavy footsteps approached from the hallway. Xavier’s small body tensed, instincts taking over. He stepped in front of Emma, positioning himself between her and the door.

"Hide that," he hissed, and she stuffed the bread into her pocket.

The pantry door flew open, banging against the wall. Frad in the doorway stood Handler Thomas, a mountain of a man with aty hands and alcohol-soured breath. His small eyes narrowed as he surveyed the pantry, zeroing in on the children tucked in the corner.

"Well, well," he drawled, his voice grating like rusty hinges. "If it ain’t the little ghost boy and his shadow."

Xavier’s heart hamred against his ribs. He knew what ca next—had relived this mont in nightmares for years—but now it felt imdiate, inescapable. The terror was fresh.

"We were just—" Xavier began.

"Stealing," Handler Thomas finished, stepping into the pantry and closing the door behind him. "You think I’m stupid, boy? That I don’t count the bread?"

"No, sir."

"No, sir," he mimicked, voice high and mocking. "Always so polite while you’re breaking the rules." He grabbed Xavier by the collar, lifting him until his toes barely touched the floor. "You think you’re clever? You think you’re a hero, boy?"

Handler Thomas backhanded him, the blow sending Xavier sprawling against the shelves. Tin cans rattled, and a heavy one—peaches in syrup—teetered at the edge.

"Heroes die," Thomas snarled, advancing on him. "Or they beco monsters."

Xavier scrambled to his feet, chest heaving. Behind Thomas, Emma pressed herself further into the corner, making herself small.

"Get up," Thomas ordered, grabbing Xavier’s arm and twisting. "Ti to learn your lesson."

What followed was exactly as Xavier rembered—the systematic cruelty, the blows calculated to hurt without leaving visible marks, the humiliation. Child-Xavier endured it silently, refusing to cry out even as tears leaked from the corners of his eyes.

The Archivist’s voice echoed through the pantry, though Handler Thomas gave no indication of hearing it.

"The data is incomplete. There was another variable. Another choice."

The beating paused. Thomas wiped sweat from his brow, breathing heavily. "And now for your little friend."

He turned toward Emma, who whimpered.

"No," Xavier croaked.

Thomas ignored him, reaching for the girl with hands that seed impossibly large against her tiny fra. "Co here, you little thief."

Xavier’s eyes drifted to the shelf beside him. The can of peaches glead dully in the dim light, heavy and solid. It had fallen closer during the commotion, now within easy reach.

This wasn’t how it had happened before. In his earlier mories, Thomas had beaten them both and left. But now, watching the man advance on Emma, sothing shifted in Xavier’s perception.

"What did you do, Xavier Valentine?" the Archivist whispered. "What choice did you make?"

Child-Xavier’s hand closed around the can, the tal cool against his palm. The mory rippled, fragnts of suppressed truth breaking through.

Thomas grabbed Emma by her hair, yanking her forward. She cried out, a sound like a wounded animal.

Xavier moved without thinking. The can felt heavier than it should as he raised it above his head. There was a mont—just one breath—when he could have stopped. When he knew exactly what he was about to do.

He brought the can down on the back of Thomas’s head with all his strength.

The handler staggered, releasing Emma. He turned, eyes wide with shock, blood already trickling down his neck. "You little—"

Xavier hit him again. And again. Not wild swings born of panic or rage, but deliberate, targeted strikes to the sa spot. His face remained eerily calm, purple eyes clear and focused.

Thomas collapsed to his knees, then fell forward onto the pantry floor. Blood pooled around his head, seeping between the floorboards.

Xavier stood over him, can still gripped in his small hand, breathing evenly. He should have been terrified. He should have been horrified by what he’d done.

Instead, he felt a profound, overwhelming sense of quiet, as if a storm had finally passed. The problem had been eliminated. The threat was gone. His mind cataloged the simple facts: Handler Thomas would never hurt him again. Would never hurt Emma or any of the other children again.

The solution had been so simple. The problem was gone. He looked at Emma, who stared back with wide, shocked eyes. "Don’t tell," he said quietly. "Don’t ever tell."

She nodded, tears streaming down her face.

Xavier glanced around the pantry, his young mind already calculating. He dragged Thomas’s body behind the sacks of flour where it wouldn’t be imdiately visible. He washed the blood from the can and replaced it on the shelf. He used a rag to mop up most of the blood from the floor.

When Sister Agnes found Handler Thomas’s body hours later, everyone assud he’d fallen while drunk and hit his head. No one questioned it. No one suspected the quiet boy with white hair.

The mory began to fade, the pantry dissolving around him. The last image was of child-Xavier leading Emma back to the dormitory, his small hand in hers, his face serene.

The adult Xavier stood in a long hallway lined with doors. Each door looked different—so ornate, so plain, so barely holding together. Each, he knew instinctively, contained another mory, another piece of his fragnted past.

The Archivist’s voice surrounded him, contemplative.

"Efficiency. Your primary motivation. A logical starting point. But where does the calculation lead?"

Xavier stared at his hands—adult hands now, stained with years of blood beyond Handler Thomas’s. "It wasn’t self-defense," he said finally. "Everyone always assud... but it wasn’t."

"No. It was a choice. The first of many similar choices."

"I didn’t feel anything," Xavier admitted, the truth spilling out after decades of denial. "Not guilt. Not horror. Not even satisfaction, really. Just... quiet. Peace."

"You discovered a solution. A formula. Violence equals safety. Violence equals control."

Xavier walked slowly down the hallway, examining the doors. One was painted bright red, with scratches along its surface. Another was made of tal, cold to the touch. A third seed to shift as he looked at it, never quite solid.

"I beca what Thomas said. A monster."

"Did you? Or did you beco sothing else entirely? A weapon, perhaps. A tool. An equation seeking balance."

Xavier stopped before a plain wooden door. Unlike the others, this one stood slightly ajar, warm light spilling through the crack. Inside, he glimpsed figures moving, heard familiar voices—Calypso’s musical laugh, Naomi’s sharp retorts, Ashley’s asured tones, Margaret’s gentle encouragent.

"Why show this?" he asked. "To remind what a killer I am? What I’ve always been?"

"Incomplete data leads to faulty conclusions. You have calculated based on a limited dataset. The original formula was correct in its context: Violence produced safety. But contexts change. Variables multiply."

"What are you saying?"

"The formula evolves. What is safety to a child is not safety to a man. What is control to a weapon is not control to a mind. Show how the equation ends, Xavier Valentine."

Xavier reached for the wooden door, hesitating with his fingers inches from the handle. Behind him stretched the long hallway of his past—choices made, blood spilled, lives taken in the na of efficiency. Before him, beyond the door, waited an uncertain future filled with connections he’d never thought possible.

"I don’t know how it ends," he admitted. "I don’t know who I am without... this." He gestured to the hallway behind him.

"Perhaps that is the next calculation."

Xavier grasped the handle and pushed the door open. Light washed over him, warm and golden.

In the physical world, Xavier’s body remained motionless, connected to the central crystal by tendrils of mist. But a single tear tracked down his cheek, glinting in the crystal’s pulsing light.

From deep within the crystal, the Archivist watched, cataloged, learned. It had existed for centuries, collecting knowledge, mories, emotions. Yet these visitors presented puzzles it had never encountered—fractured souls inhabiting borrowed bodies, divine essence bound to mortal form, pasts rewritten and futures unwritten.

Each of them faced their deepest truths in corridors of their own making. But only one had begun to answer the essential question:

When a story is fragnted across worlds, minds, and bodies, how does it end?