The Method of Revenge
Creak...
"Hm?"
I had been dragged into Pandora's room and was quietly watching her excitedly boot up a game when the door abruptly swung open.
"Dice?"
For some reason, Dice had followed us right inside.
A message surfaced on the drone hovering beside her, practically bristling with territorial hostility.
Is she throwing a tantrum?
Pandora always wore a chilly, indifferent expression, framed by drowsy eyes and messy, disheveled hair. Because of that, people who didn't know her well assumed she rarely displayed any emotion at all.
Yet living with her revealed a surprisingly expressive side. Much like right now, gripping my sleeve with both hands as she hid behind my back and peeked out cautiously. She might not speak with her own voice, but her assertiveness was undeniable.
"It's not that kind of weird thing, you know..." Dice protested mildly.
"Close friends drink together all the time, don't they?"
As I fought back a chuckle at the thought, Pandora froze mid-debate, utterly at a loss for words.
"Huh?"
She tugged insistently on my sleeve, silently pleading for assistance.
"Pfft."
The sight was so absurdly endearing that a soft laugh escaped my lips before I could stop it. A startled shudder ran through Pandora, and she frantically fired off another message.
"No, no, that's not it at all..."
"I said no."
While I shook my head, biting my lip to stifle my laughter and console her, Dice—who had been watching our back-and-forth in silence—quietly chimed in.
"All right, calm down, Pandora. I only came to play a dating sim."
"Yeah, really. I like them. I've played plenty."
At those words, Pandora's eyes practically lit up.
...That sounds like a lie, I thought, but seeing Pandora beam at the prospect of gaining another gaming buddy, I decided to keep my mouth shut.
Dice slid into the space right next to me, and the dating sim finally booted up.
"Ah... right, dating sims were... like this. Yeah, yeah."
Staring blankly at the vibrant anime girls flashing across the screen, Dice offered an awkward, strained smile.
"...Wait a second."
Right at that moment, my attention snapped straight toward the player handle displayed in small lettering at the bottom corner.
"Minamoto?"
The name struck an intensely familiar chord.
"Pandora, are you Japanese?"
As I scratched the back of my head and asked, she tilted her head with a look of utter confusion.
"The player username says Minamoto."
"A friend?"
Pandora had a friend? That came as quite a surprise.
"You actually have friends?"
While I held back the blunt question, Dice stepped in and asked it for me.
Pandora's message flared with indignant outrage.
"I see..."
Faced with her overwhelming fervor, Dice quietly clamped her mouth shut. Pandora cleared her throat, then turned a suspicious glare directly toward me.
"No, just..."
"...What on earth are you talking about now?"
Naturally, I wasn't shocked by the mere fact that someone was Japanese. Ever since the dawn of the Great Magical Beast Era, catastrophic devastation had swept across the globe, leaving few territories intact outside the United States and parts of East Asia. Once the survivors began congregating in designated safe zones, national borders had blurred into near-irrelevance.
What had caught me off guard was purely the surname 'Minamoto.'
My ex-girlfriend, Himari, shared that exact family name.
"Do you happen to know her identity?"
It seemed I had worried over nothing. If she was Pandora's age, there was no way she could be Himari. Besides, Himari had always detested video games for some reason.
Come to think of it, she isn't the only person in the world named Minamoto.
Having quietly sorted through my thoughts, I turned my attention back to the screen alongside Pandora, who had already plunged into the game with rapt concentration.
"Mmm-hmm."
I did my best to ignore Dice, who was subtly inching closer and closer to my side.
"Whoa, what? Why did she just die out of nowhere?"
Less than ten minutes into the playthrough, the heroine dropped dead and a stark game-over screen appeared. Dice stared at the monitor in utter bewilderment.
"How on earth is that normal?!"
Watching Dice work herself into a frenzy like an elder struggling to understand modern technology, Pandora gave her an amused look and sent another message.
Her explanation followed immediately.
"Ah..."
As the explanation continued, the initial sparkle in Dice's eyes gradually faded, replaced by an unsettling darkness.
"........."
Suddenly, Dice fell silent and fixed a heavy, unblinking gaze upon me.
"...What is it?"
Even when I asked, she kept her lips tightly sealed, merely peering deep into my eyes.
"They're so alike..."
"......?"
Puzzled by her stare, I scratched my head and furrowed my brow before changing the subject.
"Wait a minute. Didn't you say the game only dropped yesterday? How do you already know all this?"
Pandora gave a nonchalant shrug and typed away.
"That's completely disrespectful to the game creators."
Thwack.
Having instinctively rapped her on the head with my knuckles, I looked at her teary, glaring eyes and asked another question.
"...Then do you know how it ends, too?"
Rubbing the bump on her head, she tapped out a response.
"Is that so?"
Backing away slightly to put a safe distance between us in case I struck again, Pandora kept a wary eye on my expression as she finished typing.
"Hmm."
In that instant, a bolt of lightning seemed to crack across my mind.
"Yeah. That really is cruel."
When I abruptly pushed myself to my feet, Pandora stared up at me in utter bafflement.
My final, most critical objective:
Revenge against Lumia's faction.
As for Lumia herself, whose exact abilities remained an enigma, I could afford to take my time—unearthing intelligence piece by piece before dragging her straight down into hell.
But what about the traitors who joined her side?
Despite having had plenty of time, I hadn't actually achieved anything meaningful against them. The most I had managed was placing a restriction on my older sister's power. Yet obviously, that fell far short of true retribution.
It's because of my own pathetic weakness.
I already knew the reason all too well.
No matter how meticulously I drafted plans for revenge in my head, I could never bring myself to carry them out. Whenever I imagined subjecting my sister to ruthless brainwashing, vivid memories of her giving me piggyback rides as a child would flood my mind. Whenever I pictured destroying Himari until she lay in ruins, I would remember the nervous tremor in her breath during our very first kiss. Whenever I contemplated hunting down Lee Se-ah for payback, I was haunted by the memory of her nestled in my embrace, whispering that we should get married once we grew up.
Even after being abandoned first, I couldn't bear to treat them with cruelty. If anything, I felt a lingering urge to give them everything I hadn't been able to provide before our bonds soured.
I was that much of a fool.
"Then... that's exactly how I'll do it."
Even for a fool like me, there existed a fitting method of revenge.
"I'll treat them well, just as my heart urges me to."
For my sister, meals prepared with heartfelt care. For Himari, sincere warmth and devotion. For Lee Se-ah, a dependable pillar to lean on.
If I couldn't bring myself to treat them harshly, then I would simply do what I was best at—what I was most confident in.
Not as Kang Haneul, but in the guise of 'Oh Ji-seok.'
The undercover persona crafted by my former sidekick, Ira, who had modeled it after her vision of my future self—the very appearance that made Dice gasp in shock every time she laid eyes on it.
"Just like a dating sim... I'll conquer them all over again."
The ultimate goal of this gambit:
To steal their hearts back from Lumia.
My older sister. My ex-girlfriend. My childhood friend.
Those who were stolen by Lumia—I would capture their affections once more, just like the heroine routes in the game before me.
It sounded daunting, but it wasn't impossible. With the full backing of Dominating Hands, and by fully leveraging my position as a temporary instructor at the Academy to engineer constant encounters, the odds were on my side.
I knew them better than anyone else in this world.
As long as I established entirely new relationships and properly kept Lumia in check, the chances of success were more than sufficient.
And when the mission succeeded...
Then would come the hour of retribution.
Hadn't Pandora said that being discarded was the cruellest fate of all? Having endured that exact agony firsthand, I understood it to my core. And so, I would return that very torment back to them in full.
Because that was the greatest vengeance I could inflict right now.
After all...
By that time, I would already...
"Kang Haneul."
"......?"
My eyes had been gleaming as thoughts raced through my head, but a soft tug on my arm from Dice drew my gaze back to reality.
"Pandora's pouting."
Sure enough, Pandora sat clutching the handheld console without sending a single chat, her cheeks puffed up in a sullen pout.
"...Ah, my bad."
Snapping out of my daze, I sank back into my seat and offered an awkward murmur.
"A really good idea just crossed my mind thanks to you."
She blinked once, twice, before typing with sudden urgency.
"Right. Let's play properly."
Offering a gentle smile, I let my gaze wander back to the resumed gameplay, lost in quiet contemplation.
If I'm going to do this, I'll do it right.
Tomorrow was my first official day at the Academy.
I genuinely couldn't wait.
A few hours passed.
Dice, who had been staring blankly at the TV screen, turned her head at the ping from Pandora's drone.
Kang Haneul had succumbed to exhaustion and fallen fast asleep, his head resting gently against Pandora's shoulder. Beside him, Pandora sat frozen stiff as a statue, frantically dispatching messages for salvation.
Watching the girl struggle, Dice let out a soft chuckle.
"You spend every single day huddled together in this room playing games, and now you're acting like this?"
".......!"
At that pointed question, Pandora's mouth fell open, her breath catching in her throat.
"Oh dear. Looks like she wasn't even conscious of it until now."
Having inadvertently force-fed Pandora the red pill of self-awareness, Dice scratched her head and stood up from the floor.
"At this rate, someone might just beat me to the punch."
With slow, deliberate steps, she walked over to Kang Haneul.
"......?"
Pandora, whose face was flushed crimson as she hung her head—shivering slightly at the warmth of Haneul's breath against her ear—looked up in bewilderment as Dice approached.
"Well, the lips above were already claimed, but everything down below hasn't been taken yet."
Gently cupping Haneul's cheek with one slender hand, Dice slowly leaned down.
...Smooch.
A tiny, delicate sound echoed softly in the quiet room.
"I'll definitely capture your route, Kang Haneul."
Pulling her lips away, she whispered in a sultry undertone.
"Your eternal assistant, Dice."
Leaving those words behind, she quietly slipped toward the door.
"Oh, Pandora. Let's continue the game tomorrow."
"........."
"I'm curious, too... about how to keep a sunfish heroine alive."
Silence descended upon the room.
The dazed message Pandora typed without thinking glowed softly on her drone, casting faint light over Kang Haneul's sleeping face.
That morning.
"Calm down... Keep it together, Lee Se-ah..."
Having tossed and turned all night without catching a single wink of sleep, Lee Se-ah finally rose early and began getting dressed to head out.
"First, I have to verify the facts. That comes before anything else..."
Her eyes were heavily bloodshot as she muttered to herself, hurriedly pulling on her clothes.
Ding-dong...!
Right at that moment, the chime of the doorbell rang out through the apartment.
"Ah?"
Startled, she turned toward the screen, and a familiar face filled her vision.
"Miss Lee Se-ah, are you home?"
Displayed on the entryway intercom was Lumia's radiant, smiling face.