Chap 39-The Past

 

Leaving Emilia sitting there blankly, I burst out of the headmaster’s office.

I had no destination in mind.

I just wanted to escape this suffocating space.

I ran up the stairs and down the hallway, mindlessly.

I didn’t have time to care about the stares around me.

Finally, I reached a familiar door.

The door to the academy’s main building rooftop.

Creak-

Pushing open the heavy iron door, a cold wind brushed my face.

An open space.

Under the red sky at sunset, the entire academy and the distant city lights were visible at a glance.

It was a scene I would normally have found beautiful, but now it just looked colorless to me.

I leaned against the railing and stared blankly down.

I didn’t want to think about anything.

Since being possessed in this body, I hadn’t been angry very often.

No, in fact, I hadn’t been angry at all.

No matter how unfair or unjust things were, my Unique Ability always turned them into other emotions.

Even now… I wasn’t angry.

But I decided to force myself to feel angry, channeling the feelings I had before the possession.

I had realized it at some point.

That I was giving in to my desires even when I didn’t have to.

“…What the hell am I doing?”

What am I struggling for?

At first, it was to survive.

To avoid the tragic end of the villainess Yeon Bennet.

And if possible, I wanted to save the characters I loved from the game.

I wanted to fulfill my dream of being a hero, which I couldn’t achieve in my previous life, here.

When the people at the mansion died, I acted out of guilt for them.

Since it was as if I had killed them myself, I vowed to live for their sake and save people.

At least, to not make their deaths meaningless.

But now…?

I couldn’t help but ask myself.

Am I really walking this path for them, or to save the world?

Or…

Was I actually enjoying the pain and humiliation, all the misery, that I was experiencing in the process?

Was I hiding behind the noble cause of saving people, just to satisfy my twisted desires?

Was saving people just an excuse, and was I just enjoying being in miserable situations because of my Masochist Ability?

I was tired of blaming myself.

Fuck.

What did I do wrong?

As annoyance surged, a faint pleasure began to spread throughout my body again from my head.

Masochist [Unique Ability]

[Mental and physical pain makes you stronger. All forms of pain are converted into pleasure.]

This damn ability turns sadness, anxiety, despair, and even anger into pleasure.

I tried to forcibly dredge up sadness and anger.

I didn’t want to be consumed by this disgusting pleasure.

I didn’t want to become a piece of trash swayed by such emotions, even in the face of parting with Master.

Please, please don’t take away this feeling, I cried inwardly.

But the more I did, the more strongly the ability mocked me.

The more I suffered, the more I grieved, the more I raged, the clearer and more intense the pleasure became.

Like a swamp, the more I struggled to get out, the deeper I sank.

Even standing before my master’s death, I felt pleasure before sadness.

Do I, who am like this, even have the right to say that I will save someone?

I stared out at the scenery with empty eyes.

Everything became blurry.

The path I should take, the reason I should exist.

I didn’t know what to move for anymore.

It felt like I was left alone in a thick fog.

My head was all jumbled up, and my chest felt empty and hollow.

“…”

“Fancy meeting you here again, Yeon.”

A clear, familiar voice came from behind me.

I knew who it was without turning around.

Lina.

She had already come to my side and leaned her arms on the railing.

Her figure against the sunset was like a painting.

“I guess I’m lucky. I was just looking for you.”

Lina said with a soft smile.

‘It must be the effect of her Unique Ability .’

I grumbled inwardly.

Lina’s Unique Ability .

The description was simple, but the effect was truly enormous.

‘It leads the ability holder to the best possible outcome in any situation.’

Does that even make sense?

It was an absurd ability that seemed to distort the very causality of the world.

In the game, it was just implemented as ‘all attacks guaranteed critical hits,’ but the power it manifested in the real world was much more subtle and powerful.

Like now, just thinking ‘I want to find her’ was enough to find my location like a ghost.

“What is it this time…”

I asked as nonchalantly as possible.

“Well… I don’t know if I should be the one saying this, but…”

Lina hesitated for a moment, then looked at my face and said.

“You can make that kind of expression too.”

“What expression?”

Lina smiled and looked straight into my eyes, speaking calmly.

“A very… sad, lonely, and lost expression. Like a child left alone in the world.”

I scoffed at Lina’s words.

“What do you know?”

“I know.”

Lina replied firmly. Her gaze was unwavering.

“I’ve… made that kind of expression before too.”

“…What?”

“Before I became a Saintess Candidate, when I lived in the slums.”

Lina’s voice lowered slightly.

She looked beyond the railing, at the red-tinged city, and continued.

“I had to struggle to survive every day. Hunger, cold, and… the coldness of people.”

There was a bitterness in her voice.

“I didn’t want to… but as I continued to live there, I became increasingly cynical about people. I only saw them taking from each other, trampling on each other, and deceiving each other. I just thought, is the world such an ugly and selfish place?”

I silently looked at Lina’s profile.

Her past story from the game.

A child who was abandoned without parents and had to live in the back alleys of the slums.

A girl who had to survive by stealing, getting beaten, and being despised.

Certainly, it would have been too harsh an environment for a young girl to live alone.

“…That ‘I understand everything’ expression… for some reason, it makes me feel bad. You have a pretty big part in it!!!”

When I showed a slightly shaken expression, Lina suddenly raised her voice.

“So I was just going to throw it all away and leave.”

She took a breath and continued.

“I didn’t know where to go, but I just wanted to get out of this awful place. I wanted to go somewhere where there were no people.”

Lina paused for a moment, her eyes flickering faintly as if wandering through the memories of those terrible times.

“I just left the village and went into the forest, and of course, I met a magical beast there…”

Lina stopped there, then suddenly looked up at me again.

Her eyes were no longer lingering in the past.

They contained something intense directed at me, here and now.

“I was running for my life… and someone I never expected saved me.”

I sighed inwardly.

‘That wasn’t me, it was the original owner of this body, Yeon Bennet, who did that.’

Before the possession.

A past I couldn’t possibly know.

But there was no need to correct her.

“So what.”

I still replied curtly.

“Did you come to find me just to tell me a story about the past?”

“No.”

Lina shook her head.

Her eyes became serious again.

“Do you remember what you said to me then?”

“Why would I remember something like that?”

I scoffed.

Lina ignored my answer and said carefully, as if taking out a precious treasure.

“You said to me then.”

She looked straight into my eyes and said in a very clear voice.

“It’s okay, everything will be okay.”

The words that came out of Lina’s mouth felt unfamiliar yet somehow familiar, like an old spell.

Really… did the original Yeon Bennet say that?

It was hard to believe, but Lina’s serious expression didn’t seem like a lie.

Lina paused for a moment and continued.

“Honestly, until then, I really hated you. You were selfish and only bothered others. But… even you, I saw you moving for others at really important moments, and my mind changed.”

Her eyes shone faintly, as if recalling the memory of that day.

“Even if someone has a terrible temper and is twisted, there must be a good part left inside. People aren’t that simple. I thought.”

She smiled faintly.

“Maybe it was thanks to that realization. Not long after that day, the holy power inside me awakened, and I was lucky enough to be chosen by the sacred relic and become a Saintess Candidate.”

Lina paused for a moment and looked up at the sky.

“Of course… being a Saintess is very different from what I thought it would be.”

Her words seemed to contain complex emotions.

And she looked at me again.

Her eyes were even deeper and warmer than before.

“Anyway, what I want to say is… I think I can understand you a little.”

“…Understand?”

I asked back.

“Yes.”

Lina nodded.

“Why you’re so sharp with people and isolate yourself. Maybe it’s because you hate people. Like me. Because you’ve been burned by the world and people too much, and you don’t want to get hurt anymore.”

Lina’s words were wrong.

It was true that I kept my distance from people, but that was only out of necessity.

The object I truly hated was not the world or others.

But I didn’t bother to correct her. I didn’t care what she thought of me.

No, maybe her misunderstanding was a relief.

Lina took another step closer to me and said with a sincere look.

“So… I’ll give you back the words you gave me a long time ago.”

She said in a soft but firm voice.

“I don’t know what happened…”

“Everything will be okay, Yeon.”

At those words, a corner of my frozen heart seemed to melt away just a little.

Of course, Lina didn’t understand me at all.

Her comfort was completely off the mark.

But… strangely, it was a little comforting.

Author’s Note:

A private donation of 100 coins has been received.

Thank you so much!! I’ll work hard…

And there is an announcement? regarding the settings.

The ages of some of the characters in the story have been clearly indicated.

All characters are adults over the age of 20.

If you think that the age is different from what you knew before, it’s a mistake!

I don’t think this will change the story much!