The Weight of Injustice
The management team leader sounded the alarm and leaped into the elevator, frantically replaying the footage on her personal terminal to assess the situation. The moment the counselor’s arm was severed and dropped to the floor, everyone vanished. It was unmistakably demonic authority—the world had inverted, dragging the three people present into an isolated space. The remnants of the demon should have been completely erased by code name Founder. The detailed examination results for No. 13 had been clean as well, so how had this happened…
“At least it’s fortunate the incident occurred there.”
Deploying staff would be troublesome, but right now countless followers with faces covered in white cloth stood silently throughout the hot spring area, waiting. There was no way that old snake hadn’t known about this incident. “Then there must be a reason…”
*
“Ugh… uwaaah…” “Kkyuung…”
The bleeding had already stopped. This was clearly thanks to the mini Undine poking her head out from the severed end of my wrist.
“Huu, thank you… mini Undine.”
“Kkyu?”
Regeneration—beyond the blue body of Undine, bones slowly sprouted, muscles and flesh reattached. It looked… quite grotesque, so I decided to look away for now.
“Huaa… huu…”
Was Scarlet all right? She had probably been flung somewhere random inside this hot spring, just like that time in the abandoned building. And that unpleasant darkness visible outside the window had to be the fallen light the team leader mentioned.
“Founder must have…”
Before I could even finish muttering to myself that Founder had erased every last remnant of the demon from No. 13—
“Did you call me?”
“Eek?!”
I couldn’t help but give the most obvious reaction to the familiar voice that suddenly reached my ear while I sat on the floor.
“Hehe…”
When I turned around, I saw a familiar girl wearing a black dress, her long black hair cascading down. Her playfully smiling lips and slightly tilted head naturally radiated a bright, cute impression.
“Founder, how did you get here… ah.”
Before I could finish, my gaze fell on my own shadow, clearly stretched beneath the corridor lamps. So the question I should be asking was something else.
“This is… No. 13’s doing, isn’t it?”
“Yep, that’s right.”
Unlike last time, it wasn’t a matter of crossing a doorframe to move. With every single step I took, my position truly shifted. That was why I had been hesitating instead of moving recklessly.
“But Founder already erased the demon remnants…”
“Ah~ I left the authority intact. It would’ve been a waste of talent.”
Talent…? I didn’t know exactly what talent she meant, but I could only nod.
“That’s why it took a little longer back then. Remember?”
“Did it…?”
“Erasing the demon blood while leaving only the authority required wiping away the discrepancy in causality. Even for me, it was tricky.”
Tricky, yet she had succeeded in the end. Still, my mind was on Scarlet and No. 13.
“Then let’s go right away.”
“Huh?”
My hand—which hadn’t even regenerated up to the wrist yet—was already being held by Founder’s small hand, perfectly whole again.
…It was surprisingly soft.
“You’ve seen everything you wanted to see, so I’ll help you a little.”
“Ugh…?”
I was yanked backward by an unbelievable strength from that tiny hand and staggered. I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the fall, but even after what felt like enough time, no impact came.
“Big brother is really timid, huh.”
“Ah…?”
When I opened my eyes again, I found myself in a mysterious space.
No… could this even be called a space? Directly above my head, the corridor floor from moments ago stretched like a ceiling. In the pitch-black void—like outer space with no sense of a floor—countless facets of other spaces floated around like shards of a broken mirror.
“The little mold kid’s ability has turned the entire surrounding area into a complete mess.”
“Little… mold?”
“Yeah. Doesn’t it give off the gloomy impression of someone who’d like dark, damp places?”
“…”
It didn’t seem like a nickname one should give a person, yet for some reason I couldn’t immediately deny it.
“It’s not necessarily like that. Her inner self is clearly kind…”
“Does big brother like girls like that? Hair all messy even after washing, eyes hollow and always dazed… like this.”
Even with her pretty hair, she couldn’t perfectly reproduce No. 13’s feeling, but Founder’s face perfectly mimicked that gloomy, melancholic expression. Seeing those pitch-black eyes with not a single spark of light sent a chill crawling up my spine.
“…There…! Over there…!”
“Huh? You found it pretty quickly.”
Just before being sucked into Founder’s eyes, I barely managed to shift my gaze over her shoulder—and that became the moment I spotted No. 13 sitting between several floating windows.
But how was I supposed to move here…? How was I even floating in the first place?
“But big brother, if you go now, you’ll definitely get chopped into pieces again and scattered in different places. Is that okay?”
“Chopped into pieces… That definitely wouldn’t be okay.”
This time it had only been one arm, but next time it could be anywhere. Thanks to Founder, who seemed to have instantly erased both the pain and the memory of my arm being severed, I was fine right now. I had no desire to feel that agony again—the burning spread from the severed area, crushing my brain.
“No. 13… why did she end up like that?”
“Huh? You don’t know?”
“What? Well… she’s clearly struggling so much…”
If I had known it would turn out like this, I never would have acted the same way. Clearly something Scarlet or I did had become the trigger… I had thought it over, but nothing came to mind.
“Hmm… I see. Not even properly understanding what you did yourself—big brother really is quite the fool.”
I couldn’t help but fall silent at that sharp criticism, delivered without the slightest attempt to hide her thoughts.
“How do you think the little mold kid endured that painful, difficult time all alone until now? You weren’t about to say something like ‘her mind is stronger than she looks,’ were you?”
Her voice was cheerful, but the question carried hidden thorns.
When I had briefly connected with No. 13 and touched even a fragment of that agonizing guilt, I hadn’t been able to endure the heavy, gloomy self-loathing at all. I had fled and vomited. There was no way I could attribute that to mental strength.
…Rather, the reason she had been able to endure must lie within that very painful self-loathing.
“That’s right. Humans generally don’t show much patience when it comes to the unfair feeling of being driven by unreasonable, malicious accusations.”
“…Unfair… feeling.”
“So that pitiful little mold kid… had no choice but to believe she must have done something wrong.”
“…!”
Feeling unfairly treated by unreasonable suffering, she had blamed and apologized to herself in order to escape the unbearable stress. If she didn’t feel the unfairness, she could at least endure the physical pain. But that, too, was ultimately just running away—and that self-suggestion only gave rise to a disgusting, endless self-loathing.
“It was the only way she could escape the mental stress caused by the harsh life and abuse until now. At least then she wouldn’t feel resentful from the unfairness, right?”
If she believed the unreasonable violence and bullying were because she had done something wrong, she could somehow accept it. Her body hurt, her mind gradually collapsed… but it was still better than rebelling and inviting even greater stress. That was the conclusion she had reached.
It wasn’t brainwashing. No—saying it definitively wasn’t brainwashing was difficult. But she had accepted the brainwashing because she needed it.
“But… if that’s the case…”
“Yeah. That kid actually didn’t do anything wrong. She must have vaguely sensed it herself.”
“…”
“So big brother… pushed that small back, telling her to quickly accept the truth she least wanted to acknowledge. And you did it by borrowing the mouth of someone she had no choice but to obey.”
…Scarlet.
Even though I didn’t truly understand No. 13… I had caused all this simply because it saddened me to see her treated like a prisoner. It had been hasty and thoughtless. Still… I couldn’t leave her like that forever. Rather than wallowing in self-blame and regret, I needed to move toward the best possible outcome. At least to avoid the worst.
“Yeah. That’s why I came.”
“…?”
“You said you’d help, right? First, since she scattered dirty authority all over my domain without permission, I can’t just sit still either.”
If “dirty authority” referred to the demonic energy No. 13 was currently drawing out… then what exactly was this “domain”?
“Other things can wait. Can you connect with the little mold kid from here first?”
Founder grabbed my wrist—already drifting toward another thought—and pulled me right up to the window where No. 13 was visible. She demanded I establish a mental connection with her.
Of course, I had no choice but to comply.
“…I’ll try.”
Given No. 13’s current state, I had no idea whether the connection would even work or how long I could endure it. But Founder had said it, so there had to be a reason. Without doubting, I immediately attempted to connect with No. 13…
…Though I was already beginning to wonder if blindly trusting and following her words so easily had been a mistake.
…Of course, by the time I thought that, it was already too late.
“Then have a good trip.”
“…?”
“When you come back, you’ll understand that little mold kid better than anyone else—just like you wanted.”
Have a good… trip…?
“What… does that… mean…”
Thud—