Chapter 63: To Be Here

As I opened the front door, the horrific stench of blood pierced my nostrils.

It was a scent darker and thicker than the coppery smell of blood I had long grown accustomed to, an aroma akin to death itself.

Lowering my gaze, I saw a pool of blood clinging to the cold floor of the hallway apartment, just beyond the open door.

The silhouette, illuminated by the faint fluorescent light from the living room behind me, was the shape of a person soaked in blood.

The figure, consumed by a deep, dark red that made it impossible to distinguish between flesh and tattered clothes, slowly lifted its head.

White hair, so drenched in crimson that its original color was unrecognizable, and two eyes as red as rotting clots of blood.

And that familiar, so very lovely face.

“…Seoa?”

Lee Seoa.

And, her other name, Sanguine Obsidia.

Her eyes, devoid of any vitality as if the soul had fled, flickered with a moment of fear and bewilderment before finally losing strength, closing as she collapsed.

I rushed forward frantically, heedless of the blood staining my pajamas.

Thankfully, I could see the faint rise and fall of her chest, and though slow, there was a pulse.

Her chilling body was covered in lukewarm, congealed blood, but it didn’t seem like she was actively bleeding.

Just discovering her identity was horrifying enough; if I had suddenly lost her too, I would have gone mad.

I let out a sigh of relief.

…So, what should I do now?

‘I already knew that Lee Seoa was Sanguine Obsidia.’

‘I had no concrete proof, but there was no one else but a fallen magical girl who was a magical girl, yet avoided others of her kind, reeked of blood, and made suspicious nightly excursions.’

‘There was a slight possibility that Seoa was a different fallen magical girl, not Sanguine Obsidia, but I thought the chances were less than 1%.’

‘The Magical Girl Association had already captured all the fallen magical girls worthy of news long ago, so even if any survivors remained, they would have chosen to live in hiding without causing any incidents, unlike Seoa who went out every night and returned stained with the scent of blood.’

‘That’s why I waited.’

‘For the moment she would confess her identity to me, with her own lips, in her own voice.’

‘The moment when, by confessing her most intimate secret, she would confirm to me that the person named An Yujin had become Lee Seoa’s everything.’

‘Having confessed the most beautiful part of herself—her love—to me, I waited for the moment of her completion, when she would confess the ugliest part—her identity.’

‘I had thought about it over and over, replaying it in my mind, waiting and anticipating.’

‘I believed that moment was only a few days away.’

‘I believed that if I just waited a little longer, I could hold everything of hers in my hands, from her lowest and filthiest parts to her highest and noblest, and be assured of her perfection.’

But then,

“But then, what is this.”

The process is gone.

The most precious process.

“What is this…!”

Fearing my voice would echo in the dawn air, I couldn’t even scream, instead gritting my teeth to hold it back.

‘Should I kill her now?’

The impulse flashes through my mind.

‘Let’s think about this rationally.’

‘The act of killing is the final act for the completion of the masterpiece.’

‘For a ‘masterpiece’ to meet my standard of completion means that as time passes, her thoughts of me might fade, or the possibility of her meeting an untimely death increases.’

‘Therefore, to possess everything about the masterpiece, including her death, the ideal is to appropriately enjoy our lovely relationship at the point of her completion, and then kill her.’

‘But now, her identity has been revealed to me in a way she would not have wanted.’

‘Seeing that her hair is still white even after losing consciousness, it will likely remain Sanguine Obsidia’s white even when she wakes.’

‘Perhaps the black hair she usually showed me was a disguise, but that’s not important.’

I grabbed the revolver from the entryway drawer.

My blood-slicked fingers couldn’t get a proper grip on the handle or the trigger, but I supported it with both hands and aimed at her collapsed body.

‘No matter how powerful a magical girl is, she’ll die if a bullet hits her while she’s unconscious and near death.’

‘Without being able to resist, without even knowing what happened.’

‘How can I confirm that trust, the trust of her overcoming the trembling fear of being abandoned to tell me her most intimate secret?’

‘If she wakes up like this, she will have revealed the truth to me in a way she didn’t want, regardless of her own will.’

‘When Seoa wakes up and grasps the situation, she’ll be afraid I’ll abandon her.’

‘And she’ll cry and cling to me.’

‘That’s not so bad, but it’s different from what I originally wanted.’

‘And, fundamentally, I can no longer possess the moment she confesses the truth to me.’

‘Even if she clings to me and depends on me, it’s just a repetition of our relationship so far.’

‘Perfection is perfection because it is a flawless jewel.’

‘A jade bead with an irreversible crack, no matter how beautiful, cannot be called perfect.’

“If I kill her now.”

‘If more time passes, and she begins to doubt me, and starts thinking about those who cornered her—probably the other magical girls—and the space I occupy within her is invaded, then her perfection as a masterpiece will diminish.’

Click.

Click.

My slipping finger couldn’t pull the trigger, repeatedly catching and falling off it.

My fingers tremble.

My legs shake.

In my mind, her voice echoes more poignantly than the roar of a gunshot.

No.

I can’t kill her.

Tears stream down my face.

My most precious masterpiece.

The person I love most.

Washing away the emotions, the love born from human nature’s hormones and instincts, under the stream of the shower.

‘This way… this way, it’s as if I’m becoming Lee Seoa’s masterpiece.’

‘It’s not that I can’t live without her, but she has become indispensable to my life.’

“I love you.”

Instead of pulling the trigger and letting the casing fall, I let my tears fall.

I threw the gun aside and embraced her cold body, feeling the faint beat of her heart and the whisper of her breath.

‘Live.’

‘Live and love me more.’

‘Cling to me, depend on me, love me more and more until we enter a world that is completely our own.’

‘And then, when this day, this very moment, is relegated to a mere scene from the past, long forgotten…’

‘When you are perfectly filled with that love, tell me yourself to kill you, to make our love eternal.’

“Ah, ha, haha.”

A sense of elation, of happiness from the realization, washes over me.

It won’t even take long.

‘Right, so what if she can’t confess her identity?’

‘I just have to make sure no other being, no other person, can enter her life.’

‘Besides, I just killed someone else, didn’t I?’

‘Lee Seoa, this pitiful little beast who cannot live apart from me, is destined to fall into my arms, whether she walks in on her own two feet or is pushed into them by the world.’

***

The momentary eternity, the inner dialogue of a storm of thoughts and emotions, finally ended.

I checked Seoa’s condition again and hurriedly carried her inside.

I was afraid she wouldn’t wake up, afraid I would lose her forever.

With the familiar skill of cleaning up a body, I cut away what was likely a magically created but now tattered suit and roughly wiped her down.

There were dozens, hundreds of wounds all over her body, and her right arm was gone entirely.

It was the first time I had seen Seoa naked.

Even in this horrific state, her body did not lose its beauty, but to me, it looked like a cold corpse, devoid of any meaning of beauty.

Cuts, punctures, seared marks… the stump of her right arm was sealed with skin, so it seemed her magical girl’s regenerative powers had somehow managed to heal it.

Being the infamous Sanguine Obsidia, her regenerative abilities were probably outstanding.

“This is…”

In the center of her chest, a small, orb-like object was embedded.

A pitch-black, round orb, the size of a thumb.

From the completely black sphere that reflected no light, thin, dark cracks spread out, and beneath the skin, veins protruded like a sunburst pattern, a remnant of something.

What in the world is this orb, and what kind of battle led to such injuries?

Who did this to Seoa?

How did she lose her arm?

Among the masterpieces I had killed so far, there were some with missing arms or legs, so I didn’t consider the physical aspect that important.

But, someone had cut off the arm of my perfect masterpiece, and stolen her perfection.

It was probably the magical girls…

An unforgivable act.

When she wakes, I must hear the full story from her own lips.

Though I had done it more than ten times, carrying an unconscious person was exhausting.

Especially since Seoa was much taller than me.

The irony of dismembering old lady Sunbok after killing her, only to be washing the collapsed Seoa to save her life the very next day.

How on earth did it come to this?

I somehow managed to drag her into the bathroom, lay her on the floor, and, worried she might be in pain, I washed her body slowly and carefully.

“We were fools.”

Both me and her.

After managing to dress her in pajamas and lay her on the bed, I checked the slow rise and fall of her chest and thought as I mopped the floor.

I used to be clumsy and spill blood like this in the beginning.

Wiping away the bloodstains that had turned parts of my home into a gruesome murder scene, I reflected.

I was foolishly complacent.

I was so engrossed in the happy time of completing her, of loving each other, that even while guessing her true identity, I overlooked the possibility of her being tracked and killed by magical girls.

The TV news blared about it every day, but perhaps because I didn’t want to let on to Seoa that I knew about Sanguine Obsidia, I had been unconsciously excluding all thoughts and conversations about her.

…Well, she did return alive, and though dawn has already broken from washing her and cleaning the room, no one has come looking, so she probably wasn’t followed.

And given the state the infamous Sanguine Obsidia is in, her adversaries likely didn’t escape unscathed either.

In any case, there’s nothing I, a mere civilian, can do.

There isn’t a hospital nearby.

Even if there were, I couldn’t possibly take Sanguine Obsidia there.

A murderous magical girl showing up in an emergency room is a story that wouldn’t even pass as a joke.

All I can do is trust in her recovery and wait for her to wake up.

After cleaning with a near-obsessive compulsiveness born from the habit of hiding evidence of murder, I lay down next to Seoa.

She was cold, but warmer than before.

As I hugged her from behind, her slow pulse transmitted through her chest to mine.

Due to our height difference, my face was buried in the nape of her neck, but I was glad to be able to feel the faint echo of her breath near my ear.

Heat rose to my cheeks, and I could feel my own heart pounding, as if trying to transfer its warmth to her.

In the dark room, where the faint morning light seeped through the blackout curtains, only the quiet sound of breathing and a beating heart echoed.

When you wake up, we’ll talk, I’ll whisper words of love, and I’ll make you a meal, just like always.

So please, wake up without any lingering pain or aftereffects.

So that we can whisper our love, share our memories, and finally, so that I can possess you completely, right down to your death.