episode_0140

What is responsibility?

The woman with a relieved gaze recited the meaning.

“I thought about it while lying in bed. I’ve lived a life no different from a blind person due to my foolishness, so at least this last part must be tied up with my own hands…”

Tears flowed.

Was the meaning contained within them regret? Or self-loathing?

Perhaps it was both, I thought.

“I know I’m not worthy. Even so, I wanted to ask.”

It was closer to an plea than a request.

She was an adult swayed by blind love and bound by longing, but she wished that at least the ending would be different by her own hand.

With a resolve not to abandon today for the excuse of yesterday.

Selena’s tears were looking towards a tomorrow that wouldn’t exist.

She spoke.

“Please… let me end it.”

Silence flowed for a moment.

Where had her characteristic cold atmosphere gone?

Had her indifferent attitude been broken?

Before my eyes, only a single flower was withering.

Her haggard complexion only added to her decay.

An adult was that pathetic.

Just as I was no different.

I simply couldn’t shake off the self-portrait of a certain era reflected in her pupils.

Amidst the thick, intertwined sorrow and emptiness, I conveyed my answer.

“If that is truly your will.”

A single word that granted the ending.

A faint smile touched the corners of Drunkerd’s lips.

“…Student Yuda is a truly good person.”

The woman tightly gripped the edge of the blanket.

There was no light in her crimson eyes.

Yet, beyond their murky surface, I was reflected.

Only I existed in Selena’s world.

“Thank you.”

It was the first time.

That something other than her younger sister existed for her.

“You might think it despicable… but the night we spent at the banquet. My words that you were my first were by no means a lie.”

Being so close to another person.

Dancing with a man.

Being held in someone’s arms, or truly feeling their languid warmth.

Relying on someone who wasn’t her younger sister.

Everything.

“Everything. Not a single thing excluded.”

“…”

“All my firsts belonged to Student Yuda.”

The sinner’s confession was excessively precarious.

As if it would spill out at any moment.

Softly.

The woman raised her body from the sickbed.

She stepped onto the ground with wavering steps.

Her strength hadn’t recovered. Where was she trying to go? The woman draped a thin outer garment over her patient’s gown.

It was an infinitely insufficient attire to brave the winter outside the window.

For if you peeled back just one layer, her delicate skin would be exposed.

However.

Nevertheless, Drunkerd moved her legs.

Towards the outside of the pure white sickroom.

“…I’ll be going now.”

With those words.

The woman opened the door.

I watched her receding back for a long time.

Until the lingering afterimage faded forever.

Before long.

It was a memory spanning three days.

***

After the conversation with the snake.

Drunkerd immediately left the academy and headed towards the cultists’ stronghold.

It was none other than their laboratory, where she had been granted access as a collaborator.

The personal space of the fellow who introduced himself as [Puppeteer]… beyond that, it was also used as a branch of Baob.

Inside, data and results from experiments were piled up.

In short, a warehouse of collected data.

Selena stood in the center of such a warehouse.

“…”

Crackling.

What lingered at the tip of her nose was a pungent smell of smoke.

Scarlet flames flickered everywhere.

The laboratory was burning in thick flames. Dark crimson blood was spread thickly across the floor.

In the hallway, the corpses of black mages or chimeras lay scattered.

A sudden betrayal by an insider.

It was Drunkerd’s doing.

She was clearing out the personnel in the laboratory and burning the data one by one.

Her faint breaths mixed with the heat and vanished.

“Haa…”

The laboratory couldn’t cope with the surprise attack.

Because her opponent was a professor.

Although her abilities weren’t suited for combat, Selena was also a member of Gallimard Academy.

A key figure in the continent’s top educational institution.

She could handle subduing a branch office by herself.

Of course.

Though it had to be accompanied by severe injuries and exhaustion.

The woman staggered, looking tattered.

Even as she spat out blood-tinged phlegm that boiled in her throat, she steadily disposed of the data with her hands.

Piles of documents spilled amidst the blood, corpses, and flames.

Crackling.

‘I wonder how much use it will be.’

Selena also knew.

The fact that it was meaningless.

The cultists were a group of unimaginable scale. To the extent they had connections with various noble families.

It was obvious that the loss of just a few documents wouldn’t be much of a blow.

Just buying a little time.

Like a moth drawn to a flame for that purpose.

‘Still.’

She wanted to personally finish her transgressions.

She wanted to carve out even a little of that sin.

‘Is it atonement?’

The woman shook her head.

Because she had no intention of sugarcoating herself with plausible words.

However.

‘The Academy.’

The place that had newly become her home.

An affection realized too late.

She wanted to pull back the demon’s hand that would reach them, even just a little.

They say spilled water cannot be picked up [a proverb meaning irreversible actions cannot be undone], but even before all her days were soaked in dampness, she wanted to wipe away the dark crimson moisture that was spreading.

The woman moved her hand.

She did not borrow the hands of others.

Because she believed she had to tie up the knot entirely herself.

Drunkerd burned, and burned, and burned everything.

“…This is the last one.”

The last remaining document.

Her hand paused for a moment.

Bloodstains and soot clung to the surface of the yellowish paper.

Selena’s soiled hand touched the document.

[Selena Drunkerd]

Her name was written there.

It was none other than her own research log.

Transcendence of Providence through Stars and Mana.

Project name: Revival.

It was a record of the days she sought to reclaim her younger sister, and a goal she had considered her entire life for a long time.

Was it because of a certain voice lingering in her ears?

Her hand didn’t move easily.

‘Lianne…’

If she even threw this away.

It felt as if she would truly accept the fact that Lianne was gone.

Her heart, slowly being whittled down, clung to the woman’s sleeve.

Asking if she really intended to give up.

To reconsider.

Asking if she didn’t want to see that child’s smile one last time.

Piercing longing and regret whispered to her.

But.

‘I’m sorry.’

Drunkerd shook it off.

Her long-held lingering attachment.

Her wavering gaze caressed the document one last time, then pushed the bundle of papers she held beyond the flames.

That moment, before she could even chew on it, scattered into bone ash.

Burnt to death.

“Unnie will also… come to meet you soon.”

She begged for forgiveness with flowing tears.

Only now had she let that child go.

Only a trace of emptiness rippled in her hollowed-out heart.

It was over.

She had left a letter for the Dean regarding the fact that she was a traitor and the details of her collusion with the cultists.

She believed that Teacher-nim would handle it properly.

On the one hand, she also felt sorry.

She had merely been buried in Lianne’s death… but he was no different from family to her either.

Memories of the time when the three of them lived together were still vivid.

-Do you not wish to learn magic under me?

A benefactor who had saved her life, which had been wallowing in the depths.

All she had repaid him with was betrayal.

Her brows furrowed at the particularly bitter aftertaste, but she tried to calm the surging emotions and regret.

There would be no meaning in apologizing at the very end of the path she had reached.

Selena turned around, resigned.

“…”

Behind her stood figures in dark crimson robes.

Each of them aiming magic.

It seemed that reinforcements had arrived from another branch.

Leading them was an executive with whom she had occasionally exchanged greetings.

“The betrayal of a traitor… it seems you’ve awakened to guilt, albeit late?”

The executive spoke with a frown.

Hostility was fiercely evident.

It was an impossible power difference to overcome.

Her stamina was already bottoming out. Her body was like a rag. Even her heart ached from the mana oath.

Resistance or defiance was meaningless for Drunkerd anymore.

Before long.

Thud.

The strength left her legs.

It was the woman’s limit.

As she knelt in place, the robed figures who rushed in after her overpowered her.

Selena’s arm was violently twisted, and kicks rained down on her.

Yet, her gaze was utterly serene.

Smack!

The executive slapped Drunkerd’s cheek.

Her vision momentarily flashed.

As she chewed on the stinging pain spreading across her face, a question flowed into her ear.

It was a question as if he couldn’t understand her.

“Why did you stab us in the back? We thought our interests aligned. Didn’t you want to save your younger sister?”

Drunkerd replied with difficulty.

Because of her burst lips, her words kept leaking out with blood.

“I wanted to save her… desperately at that time. No, perhaps even now…”

“Then I understand even less.”

Well.

It wasn’t a particularly special reason.

“…It’s just that I sobered up.”