Chapter 1099: Side Story – How to Distinguish Between Different Races and Monsters (3)

“Honestly, it’s not a memory I particularly want to recall.”

“…I imagine not.”

“At the theme park, my mother… well, my Fighter mother and I were riding a roller coaster when that giant monster suddenly appeared before us and cut the rails. And the result… you probably know without me needing to explain.”

“……”

“Shattered into pieces… I don’t know if that’s the right way to put it. The roller coaster train wreckage, and my mother’s and my corpses together…”

“…You don’t need to explain in detail. I can guess what happened even without you having to struggle to say it.”

…Although I was also one of the victims who lost my parents and suffered considerable damage in that incident, the story I heard from Min Hyunyoung-ssi was more cruel and horrific than I had imagined.

Just hearing the brief explanation was enough to picture the unpleasant scene in my head.

“Actually, normally I should have died for sure. Maybe I already died once back then.”

“…But still, you are alive like this, aren’t you.”

“If it weren’t for my Healer mother, I would have definitely died. Even my Fighter mother, who had a stronger body than me, passed away in that incident, so there’s no way my body would have been okay.”

“……”

“But I don’t think my Healer mother thought that way. She wanted to save my mother and me right there, no matter what, so she kept pouring Holy Power into us, who were practically corpses.

But it wasn’t just a matter of bodies being in pieces; less than half of our internal organs were even intact… so simply stitching up severed wounds wouldn’t solve the situation.”

…That makes sense. The more complex the wounds and the more missing parts there are, the harder treatment becomes and the lower the chance of success.

Death by falling off a roller coaster, even. It was enough to make me feel the healer mother of Min Hyunyoung-ssi, who rushed out without hesitation at the scene to save her lover and child, was incredible.

“So, in the end, my Healer mother had to make a decision. To save only one person between my mother and me.”

“…What?”

“Like, one person’s heart was intact, another’s liver was fine, one person’s right arm was completely crushed, but the other person was relatively okay, something like that.

It was about sewing together the relatively intact parts from both our bodies to create one person and revive them. At the time, my Fighter mother and I had the same blood type and pretty similar body types.”

“…Is that… possible?”

“Normally, of course not. There would be ethical issues, and it would probably be prohibited by law. In the first place, it’s obvious the body would have a rejection response if you randomly sewed someone else’s body parts onto it.

But at that moment, since there was no other hope anyway, she must have been grasping at straws. Both my Fighter mother and I were precious people to my Healer mother. She couldn’t bear the pain of losing both of us.”

“…So that means she pushed through with such a dangerous surgery.”

“At the time, everyone was fleeing from monster damage and it was total chaos, so I don’t think anyone noticed whether my Healer mother was performing that kind of treatment or not. After roughly attaching the intact parts together somehow to create ‘one person’, the final choice remained.”

“…The final choice?”

“It was the choice of whose head to attach to this body, forcibly made to move by sewing parts together. The choice of whether to save me or my Fighter mother, whether to save the child she wasn’t blood-related to or the lover she had loved her whole life.”

“……”

“…And, the choice of who to give up on.”

…It was a cruel choice. Even though she, who was practically the person involved, spoke as if she were unperturbed.

I felt like I was empathizing, for no reason, with what the healer mother of Min Hyunyoung-ssi, who had to choose one life with her own hands, must have been thinking deep down.

“So, your Healer mother chose you, Min Hyunyoung-ssi.”

“I don’t know why she did. Even though she treated me like her own child, I wasn’t exactly blood-related to my Healer mother.

Of course, the remaining mother told me this story a long time after that, so back then, I didn’t really have time to question the fact that I had survived.”

“……”

“Anyway, so about half of my body isn’t really mine, you could say it’s my Fighter mother’s body. This left arm that falls off easily here is also my mother’s arm. As for my legs, the right one is from the thigh down, and the left one is from the calf down – they’re my mother’s.

Maybe because she was originally a Fighter, after getting used to the new body, I could really feel that my physical abilities had improved much more than before. Enough to hold my own in close combat against monsters.”

…So that’s why she was skilled in close combat despite her primary weapon being ranged attacks. I never imagined it was for that reason.

With each piece of Min Hyunyoung-ssi’s past I heard, it felt like another secret to her strength as a Hunter was being revealed.

“Now you understand, right? What I meant when I said I wasn’t a ‘zombie’.”

“…You’re definitely not a zombie.”

“Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m human either. Maybe I’m not the first… but still, in the world right now, aren’t I the only one with a body like this?”

“…That might be the case.”

“I introduce myself as human in front of others, but still, I’m not human. Personally, I think I might be something like a ‘rag doll’.

Like a doll repaired by patching on new cloth to broken and torn parts, my body was made by sewing together unusable parts and organs with those of my deceased mother.”

A self-deprecating smile hung on Min Hyunyoung-ssi’s lips as she said that.

It was as if she were mocking her own plight, being neither human, a different race, nor even a monster.

“After surviving miraculously like that, I seriously started my Hunter life about 10 years ago. My remaining mother told me not to do dangerous things like being a Hunter, but in reality, the only thing I could do using my awakened power was being a Hunter.

I also felt it would be a waste not to use the strong body gifted by my deceased mother… In the end, my Healer mother also gave her permission.”

“You somehow managed to get permission from someone who lost his wife to a monster and almost lost his child too.”

“…Maybe she had already started thinking about it around that time. About me, who would be left behind after she passed away.”

“…Yes?”

“She had a rather serious mental ailment. After agonizing over it, she managed to save me somehow, but she constantly suffered over not being able to save the deceased mother as well.”

“……”

“So, when the remaining mother became unable to work due to her illness, I had to earn the living expenses somehow. That’s why I started working as a Hunter.

And if, at some point, my Healer mother passed away, I would have to live alone with this body. Since there would be no one left to treat me if I got damaged anymore, I had to save up enough money to live on my own even after retirement.”

“Then, about you saying earlier that you didn’t need money anymore…”

“…It’s because the living expenses were halved. She lived quite a long time compared to how long she suffered from lovesickness. I don’t know if it’s because she worried about me being left alone with this body.

…But perhaps she couldn’t forget the one she loved, as she eventually left for the place where my deceased mother rests.”

Along with those words, Min Hyunyoung-ssi wore a wistful expression with a bitter smile.

What must her heart have felt like, having gained a second life in place of her birth mother in the Chuncheon City Monster Gate Incident, only to have to send off the mother who raised her to illness as well.

It was a moment that made me ashamed of my earlier thought, wondering if she wouldn’t return to active duty just if I simply returned her awakened ability.

“After my Healer mother passed away, I couldn’t continue being a Hunter because there’s no one to treat me if I get hurt. If I get injured with a body like this, where on earth could I get treatment?”

“I won’t tell you to return as a Hunter, but I can at least offer to treat your body, Min Hyunyoung-ssi.”

“What?”

“Believe it or not, I’m a Multiple Awakened. The healing magic using Holy Power I can perform is comparable to that of any decent Recovery-type Hunter.”

“If you find that hard to believe, I’ll show you directly. Could you let me have your shoulder, the one you injured earlier, for just a moment?”

Min Hyunyoung-ssi gave me a skeptical look, but still readily offered me one of her shoulders.

I gently slipped my hand under her t-shirt and slowly infused Holy Power from within her body.

“Gk, Hhhuu…”

“…Does it hurt?”

“Yes… Seeing that it hurts, it seems you can indeed handle Holy Power…”

“What?”

“Ever since I became this body, pain always accompanies Holy Power whenever it touches me… I’m usually quite numb to normal pain, but even in this aspect, I’m no different from real undead.”

…So that’s why she grimaced for the first time when I sprinkled holy water earlier.

A contradictory body, treated by Holy Power because it’s fundamentally human, yet feeling pain from Holy Power because it’s undead.

Undead, human, or a different race? No matter how I thought about it, her body was something that couldn’t be classified as any single thing.