As I slowly opened my eyes, at first, I couldn't understand where I was. It felt strange to realize that I was on my couch and not in my bed, but it didn't take long to rember what had happened.
I yawned slightly, then looked at the clock.
An hour and a half...
The sun would be up in a few hours, but I wasn't very sleepy. I'd been through so much lately, fainted and shocked, that I didn't feel sleepy at all.
I went to the bathroom, washed my face, and stood in front of the mirror.
Being a wiera hadn't changed one bit. I was still the sa as I used to be, an ordinary-looking guy with gray eyes as the only extra.
Although… If I think my charm statistic has gone up, there must be so slight differences.
With this in mind, I looked at my facial features, the smoothness of my face, and so on.
Now that I pay attention... I guess I can say that I have a little more composed face than before...
I was completely focused on my face. I was examining my eyes and my hair, and I was looking for small differences, but then I suddenly stood upright.
I heard a sound, a loud sound. It ca from inside my room, my bedroom.
I walked out of the bathroom with slow steps and approached the bedroom where the sound was coming from. When I opened the door, what I saw were two dark blue eyes staring at .
"Ah..."
Well... Now, what should I do?
The first thing I did was to put my hands up in the air, make sure she knew I wasn't a threat, and take a short step toward her.
Olivia quickly backed away from my tiny gesture. With a swift movent, she pulled a dinsional button out of her pocket and broke it, and then a staff appeared in her hand, one of the basic weapons issued by the academy.
"W- will you calm down, please? I'm not going to hurt you. Don't you rember what happened? I'm the one who saved you, I'm the one who brought you here."
She pointed the tip of her staff at and then beca thoughtful. Her eyes lost focus for a mont, then they widened and her whole body trembled.
A few seconds later, the staff fell to the ground. This ti there was a look of terror in her eyes.
"I- I kill... ed..."
I clicked my tongue and slowly approached her when she wasn't looking at . She didn't react like before, she just stared into space as if she had forgotten until I ca in front of her and stopped.
She started crying again. She was holding herself back but the tears were falling from her eyes, she was in such a state that she didn't even care about .
"Calm down, Olivia."
She continued shaking and muttering as if she didn't hear what I said.
Seeing her like that, I didn't know whether to be sad or happy that I had the Absolute Mind. If it wasn't for it, I would probably have been in the sa situation. I would have been... human, like her.
Whatever...
Olivia pulled her legs to her and wrapped her arms around them, burying her head in her knees. Strangely, she hadn't turned down, but now I didn't know what to do.
What should I say? How can I calm her down? How can I... help her?
I don't know. I really want to help her, looking at her reminds of my old self. In fact... she even reminds of Clara.
Who knows, maybe that's why I'm helping her. Maybe I think that by helping her I'm confronting Clara. That may be how things are going on in my subconscious, but... it still doesn't change the fact that I want to help her.
I looked again at her trembling body.
She looked like she was in pain. She couldn't believe what she was going through, and neither could I a few days ago.
"I've taken care of everything, Olivia, neither of us will get caught."
That's what finally ca out of my mouth. I didn't want to tell her 'I'm sorry, I apologize', I knew it wouldn't do any good.
I took a deep breath and exhaled deeply again.
Okay... Then, I'll just do what I feel like doing.
"I said I would help you, and I will. It's up to you to question why, but in case you're wondering, I can tell you that you are like and my sister."
I paused, realized my mistake, and smiled.
"Okay... Let stop lying, I have no idea why I helped you. It's just that sothing told to do it, I felt like I would regret it if I didn't."
I took a deep breath, took my eyes off her, and turned them to the floor.
"I killed soone too... No... Not one, I killed almost twenty people. None of Justin's n who were there are alive, and they died by my hand, even though I didn't want to kill them."
I don't know if she's listening to , I don't really care. I'm just... talking, pouring my heart out, and relaxing. That's it.
"I'd be lying if I said I feel guilty. The weight of killing a human being is on , but I can't even feel remorse for the stupid situation I'm in."
I didn't think for a second about what I was saying, I just said what was on my mind.
"It's the sa situation that made lose myself. I apologize if I caused you any harm. It's just... when it ca to my sister, the last few straps in my head that were still intact snapped."
I took a deep breath again. This was actually easier than I thought it would be, once I started, I could just keep going. Especially when soone really listened to ...
"I have a sixteen-year-old sister."
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Olivia look up, she turned to but I didn't look at her.
"I ignored her for many years, I was an idiot, and then when we lost our parents, we completely lost touch."
That was the old Aiden, I'd heard it from Clara a couple of tis. She thought I, Aiden, 'just wanted to be alone'.
Who knows, maybe he really did.
"Then I realized I was an idiot. I went back to her, I gave her strength to work through her troubles. I was happy, she was happy. Everything was resolved between us... And then I did sothing stupid again... I deceived her."
Olivia stopped shaking. Now she just stared at .
I'm lying again... but there's nothing else I can do here, I guess. The fact that I died and that I don't really belong in this body, or this world... I will only tell this to the people closest to .
I will not take risks.
"She didn't even realize I deceived her, and when I started to regret it, I explained it to her. I told her how I deceived her, and now she hates ... she hates even more than before."
Dammit, it's still hard to talk about it.
"I still love her as her brother. I want to protect her, I want to spend ti with her, I want us to be brother and sister again, but that doesn't seem possible anymore."
If it wasn't for the Absolute Mind, I'm sure I'd be crying here. Stupid skill... it doesn't even allow to have an emotional mont.
"Anyway... I ca back from the dead recently, and then I got into such a stupid situation that I can't even cry anymore. Because of a retarded passive skill I gained after I ca back from the dead, any thought that might stress out is instantly erased. Haa... I want to cry right now but I can't even do that. Isn't that funny?"
I smiled again, laughing was all I could do with what I was saying.
"What a disgusting brother I am, isn't it? Such a punishnt... as if it was specially prepared for ."
I turned to the right side without lowering the bitter smile on my face.
Our eyes t, her dark blue eyes looking strangely bright in the room.
Maybe it's because she's been crying... I don't know, but she looks appealing.
"Go ahead, spill your heart out. Believe , I feel relieved now, do the sa. I'll just listen as you did to ."
Yes, that's my plan.
How simple, right?
But… it worked.
"I..."
She didn't want to talk. Maybe it was difficult, maybe there was so other special reason. Still, she wanted to relax. I could understand.
"Two... Two and a half years ago."
I smiled and looked at her face without saying anything. I just listened to her in the dark room, her dark blue eyes flickering as she recalled past mories, scared but determined.
"Justin was being punished for sothing I don't know what it was. As punishnt, his mother decided to send him to a high school that no one had ever heard of and to finish his education there."
Ah... Justin didn't go to an 'elite' high school with nobles?
That must have been pretty hard on him. I wonder what he did to make his mother give him that kind of punishnt.
"That's where we t. He only sat next to in class because my desk was empty, but he didn't interact with anyone else in the class. He spent the first week just listening to the lessons."
She paused for a mont.
"No... He didn't even listen to the lessons, he refused to take lessons from our teachers because they were not 'qualified' and he studied on his own. Still, he did well, he was not a weak student."
As she spoke, her voice beca easier, the words ca out spontaneously. I knew it because I had just been through the sa thing, she was relaxing now.
"Then I don't know what happened... I was interested in him, so I asked him out as a young girl, and... he accepted."
Oh? Justin accepted a proposal from a commoner girl...?
That's really interesting...
"I was surprised at first. I thought I was going to get rejected because he didn't like 'common folk'. So when I asked him why he accepted the proposal, he simply told that he wanted to try 'romance'. It was as if he was just going to leave in the middle afterward. He didn't care, he only saw as a test object, but I persisted. I did everything I could to endear myself to him, observing his likes and dislikes, his tics, even the things he looked for in other girls, and I took on that persona."
Her eyes were fixed on the floor, and her eyelids drooped. She fell silent for a mont, the air in the room getting heavier with each passing second.
"He didn't even care about at first. We'd go out occasionally, hang out and have dinner and stuff, but then... he started to change. The more I kept doing the things he liked, the closer I got to him, the closer he got to . I think it was at the end of our first month, he smiled at for the first ti."
Her lips curled upwards. She couldn't help it, she grinned and giggled. And then, all of a sudden, she just froze.
It was as if she had done sothing she didn't want to do. She was even uncomfortable, but she took a deep breath and continued, keeping her eyes on the ceiling this ti.
"Over ti we grew closer and closer. I was really starting to like him, and he was starting to like , but at the end of our second year, his parents found out about us. They rejected harshly, but Justin defended . Then his mother frad and set up so fake photos and videos. She disguised soone as Justin, tricked with him, and took out to dinner. And then she showed the footage to Justin. Of course, in the 'live' video that Justin saw, the other person looked normal."
I couldn't think of anything to say, and I didn't want to interrupt her, so I kept silent. I kept listening, and she kept talking.
"Even though I noticed that the other person was acting strange during dinner, I didn't go too hard on him, so I fell into his mother's trap, and then… Justin went crazy. He thought I was cheating on him and humiliated in front of the whole high school. He followed my every move and made my life hell for . When I went to see a psychologist, he even bribed them not to talk to . No matter how much I pleaded with him, no matter how much I told him it was all fake, his mother had shown him so much and Justin trusted his mother to such an extent that he completely ignored ."
I didn't expect this to go this deep...
"Still, I resisted the bullying for months. I did everything I could for my brother Paul, to make sure he didn't notice anything. I succeeded, but every day I got more and more hurt. And then, a few days ago, Justin showed up outside my house."
Her whole body shuddered and beca uneasy, the re mory of Justin's presence made her suffer, but it was at that mont that sothing else occurred to .
She... she said Paul, didn't she?
Well, whatever. I thought sothing unnecessary.
"He said he was giving an opportunity. We just had to conspire against you and he'd stop making my life miserable. Not... not completely, only halving the bullying, but even that was a blessing."
She shifted a little to the side, wary of , and I didn't react in any way.
"I didn't think straight... I didn't care about other people. I accepted his offer even though I knew what I was doing was wrong. Then he added a few other boys with and made us all beat up. He even broke one of my ribs and took us to the woods."
A tear flowed from her eye again and she took a deep breath.
"I... I'm sorry... I'm really sorry... I just wanted to live a more comfortable life... I... I'm a bad person, I only think of myself... I'm sorry..."
"No."
I hesitated at first, but I put my hand on her back, not really caring what I did if it made her feel better.
"Don't worry about other people, Olivia."
I just... I want to help her, that's all.
"This world isn't normal, and its people aren't normal. If it hurts when you think about other people, then don't. You haven't done anything wrong. You just want to get out of the hell you've been living in for months."
I don't know if I had the right, but I pulled her to and hugged her. Strangely, she didn't reject again.
Silence fell over the room again.
Neither of us knew each other, everything we knew about our past was limited to what we had just told, and we were both one of the 'extras' of this world.
I was soone who should not have existed in this world in the first place, while she was soone who was not even ntioned in the ga, even though she had an important place in Justin's story.
We were actually similar to each other. We were both ordinary people, we both had siblings, and we both had our own problems. Maybe that's why we could get along and open up even if we didn't know each other.
"I can help you, Olivia. I'm not doing this as a favor, I'm doing it because I feel like it, because I feel like I have to. Of course, if you don't want, I can leave as if nothing happened. So I'll ask you again, do you want my help?"
I didn't stop hugging her. On the contrary, she hugged even tighter.
"Please..."
She was weak in terms of 'power' in this world and I was strong, whereas she was ntally strong and I was weak.
Nevertheless, sotis one reaches a limit even in matters where one is strong. She was at that limit. To endure severe bullying for almost half a year was too much even for her, no matter how strong her will was.
"Help ..."
I smiled. Inside the dark room, her whole body trembled again, tears started to flow again.
"Okay, I'll help you."
In this way, tonight, for the first ti, I felt that I had truly 'helped' soone in this world.
For the first ti, I felt that I was a 'hero' in soone else's eyes and what can I lie...
It felt pretty good.
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