No Longer Alone
I was always alone.
There had been family around me, sure, but they weren't people I particularly cared about.
Friends? I'd never had any interest in those to begin with.
I was always alone at school, and I always wanted to be alone.
Sometimes, when I went somewhere new, there were guys who'd pester me — but they quickly lost interest and drifted away.
Were they idiots? Being alone was so comfortable.
I couldn't understand those fools who burned through their energy making friends without ever knowing how good solitude was.
Well… thinking about it, I never even tried to understand them.
But a single meeting with one person changed everything.
After I met her, people started gathering around me one by one, and before I knew it, I'd become the same species as those idiots I'd so thoroughly despised.
Thanks to Armonia…? Because of Armonia…?
In the end, Armonia was the one who made me who I am now.
That result, at least, wouldn't change.
In the end, it all comes down to the result….
Whether it becomes thanks to or because of…. The verdict would come when I reached the final destination of this whole affair.
But one thing was certain.
The feeling I had right now was thanks to.
If it hadn't been for her, I'd still be stuck in my room, snickering at endless strings of zeros and ones on a monitor screen for the rest of my life.
She had become essential to me.
But… what did she think of me?
..
..
When my eyelids lifted, the first thing that greeted my vision was none other than Rena.
The moment she saw my eyes open, she threw herself onto my chest and began to sob.
"Master!!"
"…Rena? Where are we?"
I didn't wait for her answer — one look at what filled my field of view told me everything.
"A ship?"
"Hic…"
Rena buried her face in my chest and just kept crying without giving any answer.
No… it seemed like she'd already been crying for a while….
I did my best to collect myself and calm her down, and it took about thirty minutes before I finally managed to soothe her.
Only after calming her could I grasp the situation.
At the moment Bullet Time activated, I'd used the force of Rena trying to embrace me to reverse it and pull her into my own arms.
Then we'd been hit by a barrage of cement cones.
If I'd taken the full brunt of them, every organ in my body would have put on a spectacular display of its signature specialty right then and there.
But the moment we entered the building interior and Armonia confirmed no one had line of sight on us, she warped us out a little faster.
I'd been hit by roughly five or six cement cones.
Armonia had saved me when I was on the brink of death.
Rena looked up at me, still streaming tears, and whispered as if pleading.
"Never… never do that again."
"…Sorry."
I apologized, but I didn't give her a firm promise.
If the same situation arose, there was every chance I'd do the exact same thing again.
I was no longer alone.
I'd become one of those idiots who couldn't ignore the people beside them.
Looking at Rena, a smile rose unbidden to my face.
I could feel, right in the center of my chest, the lives of those people I'd once thought of as fools.
With that feeling in my heart, one person floated up in my mind.
"Rena, where's Armonia?"
"W-well… Lady Armonia said she would rest for a while, and that she would see you tomorrow."
"…"
Rena's expression didn't look entirely good.
Given the precedent of me not listening to Armonia when we rescued Luna, I was a little worried about how she would treat me.
…Am I actually getting fired?
While I fretted over that, Rena — still not fully composed — whispered to me.
"Lady Armonia said to take the best possible care of you for now, Master."
"…"
Damn… I got hard.
Faced with an expression I rarely saw on Rena, I got hard without meaning to.
I thought to myself.
Even if I get fired, let's take care of this first.
I pulled the Rena looking up at me onto the bed.
Step… step… step….
"…"
The completely shattered rooftop was littered with cement dust and rubble… and corpses and bloodstains.
And standing in the middle of that rooftop was a man.
A tall frame just over six feet, refined features and broad shoulders, and… a blank expression.
The man's face, empty of any emotion, carried a completely different feeling from the deadpan expression Armonia wore.
The eyes set within that face held nothing at all.
The man surveyed his surroundings with an expression of pure indifference.
As he looked around, he murmured quietly, as if whispering into his own ear.
"…I miscalculated."
Paying no attention whatsoever to the blood and corpses, the man walked calmly toward the railing.
The place he stood was the same railing where Sung Suho had been standing only moments before.
Quietly, the man turned his gaze toward the entrance Suho had been watching.
At the Hero Academy entrance, several instructors were in the middle of suppressing the monsters.
But only two people registered in his eyes.
"Two people…."
There was no emotion in his voice.
He was merely spitting out formal words, as if simply acknowledging the fact that he had spoken at all.
In his field of vision, Cho Seohyun was trying to make a call on her smartwatch.
And Cho Seohyun and Seong Sua, looking up with panicked expressions.
They weren't looking at him. Their gazes were directed at something other than the man.
But he turned his body slowly, as if their gazes meant nothing to him, and stood in the center of the rooftop.
A rooftop reduced to chaos.
"This will cause problems later if I leave it like this."
He muttered to himself as if discussing a trivial matter, then lowered his head and whispered as though speaking to someone.
"Return the corpses to nature… and restore what I asked for to its original state… I ask you again."
At the man's words, every speck of dust and every fragment of cement on the rooftop rose into the air and began to recombine.
The cement pieces that had been scattered as debris found their places perfectly and restored themselves cleanly.
And the remaining corpses….
Fsss…
The corpses, still warm, suddenly withered like mummies, and soon only bones remained.
Sss…
Even those bones crumbled to powder within seconds and scattered on the wind.
In just ten seconds.
Everything here had been restored to its original state, save for the bloodstains.
Looking at the bloodstains, the man muttered.
"…I've asked for too much today."
He ignored the bloodstains and turned his body toward the main hall.
At that moment, his body rose into the air of its own accord, and he began drifting slowly toward the main hall building.
Once a certain distance had opened between him and the rooftop….
Bang!
"Hah… hah… hah… what the…."
"…"
"Where is he!? Wh-where did he go! Come out!"
Looking at Cho Seohyun, the man allowed a faint smile — one that had never appeared before — to touch his lips.
"Noona… there isn't much time left… time to go back to the way things were…."
Having said that, the man returned to his blank expression, turned his head, and vanished completely from the rooftop.
Exhausted from spending the whole night having sex with me, Rena was sleeping naked beside me.
I left the living quarters as quietly as possible, careful not to disturb her.
I didn't care about anyone else — but Rena's sleep was something I absolutely refused to interrupt.
With other women, I might have poked at their chests and teased them while they slept, but I could never treat Rena that way.
Doing that to Rena would just make me feel too guilty….
Because sleep disorders had been one of the things that dragged that pure, devoted Rena down into the abyss in the first place.
Honestly, I could have just slept beside her until morning.
But the reason I'd left Rena's quarters like this was Armonia.
I hesitated in front of Armonia's office, debating whether to go in or not.
Do I actually have to throw myself into a full kowtow and beg for forgiveness…?
Judging by everything I'd been through with Armonia so far, she probably wouldn't cast me out that easily….
But if the patience she'd been holding in all this time finally snapped, I'd be reduced to a shut-in wanker in my room all over again.
Shit….
The moment the thought of going back hit me, I found the resolve to kowtow all day if I had to.
The idea of abandoning all the women I'd met so far and returning to that miserable hole of a room made my legs go numb with dread.
With that thought, I decided to practice against the wall first.
Crazy… the day has actually come when I'm practicing this shit.
Me — the guy who treated everyone else as idiots and trampled ethics and hierarchy like a dog — doing a full kowtow….
Open air was too hard. I braced myself against the wall and grunted my way into a handstand.
"Augh, this is fucking hard…. No way I'm doing this without a wall in a single day."
I was still grunting and shifting my arms around when it happened.
Whoosh!
With a rush of air pressure, the door to Armonia's office opened.
Armonia, dressed in her captain's uniform, looked down at me with her usual blank expression.
"What are you doing at this hour?"
"…Exercise."
I couldn't exactly say I was practicing a kowtow.
Armonia watched me for a while, then spoke quietly.
"As it happens, there is something I wished to say. Please come inside."
"…"
So it was finally here….
I followed Armonia into her office.
There was always something odd about Armonia's office every time I saw it.
An antique but worn desk, a bookshelf crammed with books of every size with no regard for order, and a thoroughly frayed bed.
No matter how I looked at it, the facilities were pitiful compared to my own office.
Even if she was being considerate of me, why live in an office like this….
Should I replace it for her later…. No — if I even get the chance to….
As the anxiety began to well up again, Armonia, who had been silent, removed her captain's cap and hung it on the coat rack.
Watching her, a sudden question crossed my mind.
Come to think of it, I've been back for quite a while now — has she been wearing that uniform this whole time without sleeping?
I was giving her a puzzled look when she approached me with only the cap removed.
"Armonia, what did you want to say?"
"…"
She didn't answer.
She acted.
Suddenly, she began undoing the buttons of her captain's jacket one by one.
"Wh-what are you doing?"
If it had been any other woman, I would have been delighted and watched with interest — but coming from Armonia, it was pure terror.
Other women were one thing, but Armonia was absolutely not the kind of woman who did things like this.
Eyes closed, Armonia gave no reply and finished undoing every button on her jacket.
Between the parted fabric, the black straps of her bra and her pale abdomen were fully exposed.
Only after opening her jacket completely did Armonia speak.
"I… made a grave mistake today."
What mistake? The mistake of recruiting me?
I still couldn't grasp the situation when Armonia elegantly spread her jacket open, looked up at me, and said,
"If Miss Rena had not been there, I would not have been able to save you from danger, Suho. And through my own foolish judgment, I nearly cost you your life."
"No, it wasn't that bad…."
Honestly, bringing Rena along had been a stroke of genius.
But I couldn't understand what she meant by foolish judgment.
It had been an unavoidable situation.
If someone else had eyes on us, being unable to warp was the completely natural result.
But Armonia thought differently.
She spoke to me with a noble bearing.
"Out of my foolish desire not to be discovered, I drove you toward death."
"…"
"For today, at least…."
As she said it, Armonia flicked open the front clasp of her bra and continued.
"You may use me however you wish."
"…"
Looking at Armonia's chest, I briefly lost my grip on reality.
I'd joked earlier about wanting to touch her breasts, but now that she was offering everything, I couldn't help but be thrown into confusion.
I fucking want to grab them!
A black wave rose in my chest like a storm, throwing all five of my senses into chaos.
I wanted to see her chest with my eyes, breathe in her scent, hear her voice… touch her, taste her.
Even though I'd just been with Rena, my cock began to respond little by little.
It wasn't fully hard yet, but it was swelling enough that filthy thoughts would start hijacking my brain.
While I was still reeling, both of my hands were already reaching for her breasts.
Firm breasts that defied gravity, red nipples that looked like they'd taste of strawberries.
At last, her chest was about to fall into my hands.
I wanted them.
The urge to fill in the missing senses of touch and taste was the only thing ruling my mind.
Just as my fingers were about to make contact —
"Suho?"
"…"
I pulled the unclasped hook of Armonia's bra back together and fastened it.
Once the clasp was secure, I spoke to her.
"Keep what's mine well taken care of."
"…"
Armonia closed her eyes and was quiet for a moment, as if recalling something.
Then, unlike before, she spoke with a spark of life in her pupils.
"Until then, I shall keep them well, so that no one else may touch them."
"Now that sounds like you."
I looked at the blank-faced Armonia and smiled.
The next day, I met Viola and Beatrice, had a simple meal with them, and spent the day that way.
Warp energy recharged once in the middle of it, but we agreed to wait until it filled to two charges just in case of emergencies.
By the time I arrived at the Hero Academy, it was already the dead of night.
And on the rooftop I happened to arrive on, someone was sobbing with her face buried against the railing.
"We promised… we promised to meet today…."
"…"
It was Cho Seohyun.
Come to think of it, I'd been missing for a full day.
In that situation, it was perfectly clear who the other party to Seohyun's promised meeting had been.
…She's a genuinely good woman.
There was still far more I didn't know about her than what I did.
But I could sense, to some degree, how she felt about me.
Cho Seohyun whispered in a tearful voice.
"You don't have to keep the promise… just come back…."
"That's a relief. I was worried about breaking our promise."
"…Huh?"
Cho Seohyun turned her head and looked at me.
I smiled at Seohyun, who was staring at me with teary rabbit eyes, and whispered,
"It's only eleven at night… so could you forgive me?"