78. Thank You for Going According to Plan
78. Thank You for Going According to Plan
"Cough......."
When I came to, blood spilled from my lips.
Even so, I strained to move my body, but my collapsed limbs only trembled feebly, refusing to rise.
It was only natural. No matter how much I'd steeled myself for death for the sake of the mission, I had always used my power to foresee the future to avoid every danger aimed at me.
Even if one is prepared to endure pain, the body instinctively shutting down from that agony isn't something willpower alone can overcome.
"Is it over already?"
Step, step. The Frenzied Clown walked into the ruined house, its walls crumbled, and approached her.
Even in this moment, there wasn't a shred of mercy to be found in those glinting eyes.
"Try resisting a little more. To pick a fight with such confidence and have it end like this—it's just too dull."
"Ke, heuk!"
The moment my windpipe, which needed to expel the welling blood, was seized tight.
My body convulsed from the agony, but that alone couldn't break free of the demon's strength.
A demigod I might be, but aside from my prophetic ability, I was merely human. And she, however weak, was a demon who had awakened a power tied to her desires.
Given such an innate difference, a direct contest of strength was as good as decided.
'No, not yet....... She's let her guard down.'
Yet Airi did not give up.
Demons were universally arrogant, and thus prone to becoming complacent against those they deemed weaker than themselves.
As a race that feels pleasure in mocking and trampling such foes, she wouldn't kill me outright.
'Just a little, stall for time.......'
Airi, her throat still seized, desperately shifted her gaze.
The crystal ball lying on the ground had been losing its light from the moment it slipped from her hand.
That didn't mean its power was gone.
Rather, it was funneling even the power that would normally be released outward back inside, preparing to activate a trap set in advance.
"Now then, what to do. If I just kill you here, Hyosung-ssi will be sad......"
I had to stall until that trap triggered.
Using this moment when my opponent was off guard, until the trap laid within the crystal ball activated.
"...You, why don't you just give up on Hyosung-ssi."
To that end, I was prepared to endure anything.
The demon, believing she held the upper hand, lifted my chin high and began whispering in my ear.
"Give up......?"
"Because you can't make Hyosung-ssi happy."
She could snap my neck at any moment.
Yet Marilyn even loosened her grip, easing the constriction around my throat.
"If you're a prophet, you would have realized long ago that this world has no hope. So why do you keep standing by, watching him walk into his death?"
Because she knew I had no chance of beating her anymore.
Now that she knew my prophecies didn't work on her, she had the confidence to swat me away no matter how many times I lunged.
"Surely you aren't planning to raise him as a savior? In a world overflowing with dangers worse than me, with him weaker than even you?"
But if I intended to endanger her love with such paltry power, she would not be so generous.
He was a treasure that existed no more than once in this world, and treasures must be used preciously while they remain.
He was far too precious a being to leave at the mercy of a world fated to crumble.
"...Leaving, his side."
Sensing this clash of values, Airi twisted the wrist of the hand holding her throat and forced the words out with difficulty.
"Is that, the sum total, of what you want?"
"Yes. Leave his side, and promise never to appear again, and I'll at least spare your life. I don't want to see him grieve......."
"Pfft!"
The words cut off at the faint sound of laughter.
Though she was teetering on the brink of death, showing scorn instead of begging for her life defied all reason.
"...What's so funny?"
"How could I, not laugh......? Believing that, if I disappear, he'll become entirely yours... that's just so pitiful to watch......"
Even with her whole body wrecked and in a precarious state, Airi did not stop mocking her.
"...And here I thought what."
The Frenzied Clown, taking her comment at face value, tried to dismiss the words lightly.
"Well, he's a man even I've fallen for, so naturally plenty of women covet him. But it's fine. Whoever comes, I'll just beat them away. The one standing beside him at the very end will be me......"
"The first, was me."
What a dreadful misconception.
What I was getting at, before any talk of resolve, was that the result was already determined.
"The last, may be you....... But his first was me. The future can be changed...... but the past cannot be altered."
"What......."
"Whatever you do with him from now on...... it will all be measured against what I did with him first. Just like when you had a meal with him today."
A flinch. A tremor ran through the hand gripping my throat.
That alone meant my words were hitting a nerve.
Airi, having hazily foreseen that future act, smiled with conviction and kept provoking her.
"You, even when you had a meal with Hyosung-ssi, you must have thought it, right? 'Did he do this with that person? Did he do even more than this?'"
"Don't provoke me. No matter what you say, the outcome...!!"
"Yes, you've monopolized him as the victor, so you must brace yourself."
With that, Airi Haven twisted her wrist in the grip, thrusting her face forward as if daring her to squeeze harder.
In those eyes that stirred with madness, an even stronger tenacity could be glimpsed.
"That the person you hold precious will think of someone else before you, and compare all the memories you make together with those who shared love before you......"
Even if you believed your own heart was pure, the one you gave your heart to could never return that pure repayment.
What happened, happened.
That is an immutable law, no matter what one does in the future.
"Can you lightly shrug that off? Was your love so trivial that you can disregard and overlook something like that?"
That overlooked fact would become a wedge in this moment, creating a crack in her heart.
As the ultimate wedge to provoke the detestable wench who dared covet the man I love.
"Trivial? What do you know to say such things......."
"You, who already betrayed your own lord once."
The instant that struck her reverse scale like a bee's sting, her breath hitched.
Seizing the certainty in that brief silence, Airi foresaw the shaken future and drove in the final decisive blow.
"That's right, already. You betrayed him. The one you held most in your heart."
"...Shut up."
"In the end, you who yearn for human love can't defy your birth. A loose woman who throws men away like worn-out shoes...!!"
-Kwaaang!!!
Her body was hurled with full force.
Even though she could have wrenched my neck and snapped it right then, she couldn't bring herself to do it.
"Shut your mouth!! What do you know to spout off!!"
Because even knowing rationally it was certain, her rage surged to the point it became impossible.
"Do you even know what it feels like to cling to a life that would be better off just dead!? Can someone like you understand the heart of someone who chased something hopeless, only to finally realize it was an unsolvable problem from the start!?"
Even at this moment, that pain kept welling up, and so she tried to soothe it with her obsession toward him.
For a demon who lives madly by desire, that desire is the driving force of life, and unfulfilled desire is at once what one would call a curse.
To dismiss lightly the heart she held for the one who freed her from those shackles of desire—that was an atrocious blasphemy against herself, who had considered that liberation her salvation.
-Crackle!
And so, the one who blasphemed it must be torn limb from limb right here.
No sooner had she taken a step to do so than the crystal ball rolling on the ground beside her began to gradually fill with light.
"...Yes, I don't know everything. Because an existence like you, who escapes predictions...... probably doesn't exist twice in this world."
The moment the pre-laid trap's time to activate arrived.
The instant a sense of crisis surged from it, she stared at her opponent reflected in the crystal ball and spoke her true feelings with a sincere voice.
"Still, thank you for being exactly as I expected in one thing."
"Unfittingly for a demon, your feelings towards him were sincere."
-Perrrang!!
The crystal ball shattered into fragments in a final mana explosion.
But this attack did not end with a simple explosion.
It was a technique that doubled as a 'Binding,' using the scattering crystal shards at the moment of the explosion to spread mana as a medium and instantly freeze and harden the surroundings.
"Why on earth....."
Power surged from the body trapped in that binding, and before long the crystal restraining her shattered with a 'Kwachang' sound.
"Why on earth are you interfering with me?"
Though her whole body was ragged with crystal shards embedded in it, the demon did not stop tracking her target's blood trail.
Too much time had been lost while bound by her opponent. Left unchecked, that woman would try some other scheme to interfere with her again.
"Just when I finally thought... I could achieve what I want. Why on earth......."
I just wanted to be happy.
Giving up on being rewarded for my past efforts, I wanted to dream of a new future I had seized at last.
Is holding such a simple hope truly so wrong?
Did I have no choice but to suffer this much because I dared to hold any hope at all—toward my lord, and toward him?
"...This place."
The place she finally arrived at, driven by that obsession, was a ruined building.
The spot where she had laid his body on the neglected bed.
"Hyosung-ssi......."
He was gone.
Taking advantage of the gap while I was bound, that woman had taken him and escaped from here first.
"Hyosung-ssi, Hyosung-ssi!!"
The moment she grasped this, what little reason she had left evaporated, and she focused solely on chasing his traces.
Repeating, replaying, and reciting only the moment she would get him back into her hands—the one she had resolved to seize by abandoning everything.
"Hyosung-ssi, please......."
At the end of it, a resentment toward the world rose up, mingling with her sobs and echoing through the streets.
Why, of all places, did I have to meet him in this crumbling world?
When I had risked my life to settle old ties and return, why was there someone who filled that void in that brief window?
"Please don't throw me away, I-I...."
If it weren't for that, I could have been happier.
Having lived in emptiness until now, I could have been content just with the simple times spent with him, satisfied with that life.
Ku-goong!
Her steps to seize that simplicity suddenly halted, and soon her gaze lifted upward.
Something was falling from the sky.
Something massive, traveling at high speed, carrying a mass incomparable to anything before, was flying toward this spot.
"From the start......."
As she foresaw that it would soon crash into the center of the street she had entered, a woman stood on the opposite side of the road, now coming into view.
Her body was so wrecked even walking seemed precarious, yet held in her arms was the body of the man she so desperately craved.
"This was prepared, before this fight even began."
Everything was according to plan.
What she was about to drop onto this street was the final resort set up to shake off pursuit in case she succeeded in rescuing him.
A meteor dropped from the highest point her mana could reach.
Though small in size, should it strike the earth, it would exert enough power to scorch the point of impact clean.
"This once, I don't think it's a good idea to try and take it head-on. Even you won't come out unscathed if it hits......"
Crash that destructive blow down here, then escape in the ensuing chaos.
Even if I couldn't finish her off, the surrounding area would collapse and block the path, buying at least enough time to flee.
She might come for me again later, but that was a problem I could solve by scheming more carefully and cutting her off next time.
"...Don't, go."
But as if to shatter that expectation.
The demon was still trying to move toward this place, even with her ragged, stumbling steps.
"You, what in the...!"
"No, please......."
"Are you insane!? If you come here, you'll...!"
There was no hesitation in those footsteps.
Even knowing the meteor would soon fall in a matter of seconds and turn this place into a wasteland.
"I won't let, him...."
Unable to even conceive of the future.
Because she felt her reason being buried by the impulse to stop the one she so craved from leaving before her very eyes.
-Kwaaaaaaaang!!!!
But whether intended or accidental, fate was already sealed.
The meteor, having broken through the atmosphere, slammed down onto her head. The aftermath went beyond forming a crater, collapsing nearby buildings that began to cascade down on top of her.