A Changing Future
It hurt.
It hurt so much I felt like screaming right then and there.
The agony of my body being consumed by Beatrice's flames was unbearable.
They say burning at the stake is among the most torturous forms of punishment a human can endure. Flesh roasted to crispness by fire tears apart at the slightest brush of wind, while the organs inside cook as if steamed from within by the external heat. Even if you survive, your eyes and mouth melt shut — you can no longer see, no longer speak — and eventually your nose fuses too, leaving you unable to breathe at all.
The inability to see plunges you into the terror and anxiety of unending darkness, eroding your sanity. The sealed mouth denies you even the release of a scream.
You're wondering why I know all this?
Of course I do.
This is my own experience — the memory of being burned alive.
The tortures I endured at the Dang family's hands were too numerous to count on both hands, and naturally among them was the torment of having my body set ablaze.
Back then, every breath felt like the flames were melting my lungs from the inside out. But eventually, even that pain became so familiar my body no longer reacted to it at all.
So this was strange.
I was accustomed to the agony of burning. Then why, standing before Beatrice's flames, was I feeling a pain I'd never known before — a pain that nearly made me scream?
My entire nervous system had been amplified dozens of times over by the Dang family's poison. Even the lightest touch felt like being burned alive. I'd been burned before under those conditions, and I'd never screamed then.
So why was I on the verge of screaming now, in this state where I should have felt nothing?
And this was Beatrice holding back on me. The power had already been cut roughly in half by my own magic.
Even so, the pain was overwhelming. I couldn't believe it.
WAAAAAH—!
Beatrice's crimson flames swept over Cheon Seong and passed through him, revealing his two arms, roasted to a crisp.
The lingering heat of the flames filled the air with the smell of burning squid, and the source of that stench — Cheon Seong's arms — glowed with residual fire.
Beatrice stood still, watching him with something like pride, as if to say she was impressed and would give him a chance to counterattack. But Cheon Seong didn't attack.
No — he couldn't.
He'd barely held on, but his body was paralyzed by pain and refused to obey.
Tremble…tremble…tremble…
His legs, planted on the ground, were consumed by agony, shaking violently like aspen leaves, ready to give way at any moment.
Just one attack — not even at full power, with its strength already halved — and his body felt like it might collapse.
Because he was used to pain, this pain felt utterly alien.
Beatrice asked, seeing no further attack coming.
"No way." He lowered his guard and gripped his still-trembling legs, forcing them to steady.
Tremble…tremble…tremble…
The shaking gradually subsided as white mana erupted from Cheon Seong's body, healing his burned flesh.
His one true advantage: he never stopped until he died.
Injuries could be healed. Pain could be endured.
"If you give up already…you won't really know my strength."
He hadn't requested this sparring match with Beatrice just to test himself and quit at the first sign of pain.
This was a match to determine whether he could truly protect Yuna.
If he'd been injured, the Beatrice of the present wouldn't wait for him like this. What he needed to confirm wasn't whether he could fight while badly wounded — it was whether he could kill his enemies when fighting with his life on the line.
So he steadied himself.
He wouldn't give up easily, even in a sparring match.
He would throw himself in with the resolve to die.
He would gain the certainty that he — himself — could protect Yuna.
THUD—!
Cheon Seong drove his foot hard into the ground and charged at Beatrice. White mana surged into his hands as black demonic energy bloomed like flowers, and he drove a fist toward her with all his might.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Thump.
That's truly the end.
"Haa…haa…Yeah…"
As expected, the result was his defeat.
Even fighting with his life on the line, he hadn't landed a single effective blow on Beatrice.
Of course, "with his life on the line" was something of an exaggeration. He was still alive, but his body was far from normal.
His left arm was severed as if blown apart. His right arm was crushed, the bones ground to powder.
He'd be entering the academy in a couple of days, but he had no worries.
Because Beatrice was here.
"Phew…Thank you, Beatrice."
Cheon Seong nodded at Beatrice's words, spoken after she'd healed him with her golden celestial power.
Beatrice could have fully cured his injuries, but she'd only treated him enough to last until the academy, telling him not to push himself.
Of course, he could heal himself to this extent anyway. But since Beatrice had asked, he intended to rest quietly until he went to the academy.
He absolutely wasn't refusing because he didn't want Beatrice to have to nurse him with both arms injured…No, really, he wasn't.
His arms weren't fully healed, but they were functional enough for daily life.
The bones had hairline fractures, so they ached a little with every movement, but he could manage.
Well…That didn't mean he had no intention of accepting care, though.
Lee Cheon-seong, a twenty-year-old adult male. An adult who still desperately needed love.
"I'm back, Yuna."
"Ah, Cheon-seong! Welcome back. How was the sparring match?"
"Same as always. I lost. Whatever."
Yuna greeted him when he returned home. She'd known about the sparring match with Beatrice, and hearing he'd lost, she comforted him, saying it was fine and he'd do better next time.
"But Cheon-seong, are you hurt anywhere?"
"Hm? Ah…My arms ache a little, but Beatrice healed me, so I'm fine."
His arm bones were actually fractured, but he didn't want to worry Yuna, so he said he was okay.
Well, a hairline fracture was something that would heal with a day of rest, so it wasn't exactly a lie. Probably.
Yuna gave him a suspicious look for a moment, but fortunately she let it go. After eating the lunch she'd prepared, he had a few hours left before one of the children's daycare sessions ended, so he spent the time with Yuna and Beatrice, turned on the TV, and relaxed.
"Cheon-seong, lie down here for a moment. I'll clean your ears."
"You don't have to, but thank you, Yuna."
Yuna tapped his white thighs lightly as she offered to clean his ears. He thanked her and lay down.
That's when he frowned at the news on the TV.
It wasn't the disappearances themselves that bothered him.
He didn't care how many strangers vanished — they had nothing to do with him. The problem was that this was an event he didn't know about, something that hadn't happened before his regression.
If it was being reported on the news, the number of missing people was significant.
Then the same thing must have happened before his regression too — but it hadn't.
Has the future changed again?
He'd already known from the amusement park terror attack and the department store terror attack that the future he knew had diverged significantly from the present. But this incident felt fundamentally different from those two attacks.
Both of those attacks had been orchestrated by Noah.
Persona, Noah's Highest-rank villain, and an Upper-rank terrorist who infiltrated a department store guarded by Mid-rank personnel in the middle of the street.
Persona could pull off something like that, but for someone who had only just reached Upper rank to carry out a terror attack without being detected — that was nearly impossible without someone's help.
And both of them were targeting me.
He didn't know why, but Persona had launched the terror attack to kill him.
It was true that most villains were violent, reckless trash. But not all of them were.
Most villains in Korea belonged to Noah, and despite being a villain organization, Noah didn't act recklessly.
More precisely, villains who held positions within Noah didn't act recklessly. And Persona held a high position within that structure.
Would someone like Persona really launch a terror attack to kill him for no reason at all? Everyone knew that if she moved, it would be seen as Noah's doing.
Of course not.
He didn't know why Noah was targeting him, but it was certain that both the amusement park and department store attacks had been aimed at him.
But the incident being reported on the news now had nothing to do with him.
Of course, Noah wouldn't be so idle as to target only him. But at the very least, this wasn't an incident caused by a Noah villain connected to him.
Still, the fact that the future had changed again was deeply unsettling.
Even a small deviation from the future he knew created countless variables. A change this large would create deviations so vast he couldn't possibly resolve them all.
There was a phrase: the butterfly effect.
The butterfly effect — a butterfly's wingbeat causing a storm somewhere far away.
If a butterfly's tiny wingbeat could summon a storm, what would happen if that wingbeat were dozens of times larger?
A small change in the future could create massive ripples. If the change in the future was large, the scale of those ripples was obvious — almost inevitable.
The future that had changed because of him was now becoming a colossal storm somewhere.
He couldn't guarantee that storm wouldn't sweep away the people he cherished.
So he had to protect them.
He had to protect them from being swept away by the storm he had brought.
But compared to the number of people he needed to protect, he was far too few.
His head began to ache.
There was too much to think about, too much to prepare for. His head throbbed.
And that made him angry.
He was angry at himself for his head aching over something so trivial.
Maybe it'd be better to just temporarily damage my brain.
His brain had already been tampered with once.
If I just temporarily damage the part that makes my head ache, and heal it later after everything is resolved…
"Sis, is that really true? Cheon-seong, are you okay? I'm sorry — did it hurt a lot?"
"Ah, no. I was just thinking about something. Sorry for worrying you."
As Cheon Seong seriously considered damaging his brain, the voices of Yuna and Beatrice, worried about him, reached his ears.
Cheon Seong stopped his violent thoughts at their voices and said he was fine.
But Yuna, mistaking his "I'm fine" for him trying to spare her feelings, apologized once more and handled his ear-cleaning with even more care.
The gentle touch of Yuna, careful not to hurt him, and Beatrice's concerned gaze.
Their love, directed only at him.
His shame at being the lover of someone so wonderful, and his gratitude that they loved someone like him — strangely, the aching in his head eased.
Why do they love me?
He couldn't understand why they gave him love so undeserved, why they loved him when he couldn't love just one person.
But that was also the reason he could never give up.
