The Truth
Childhood memories. For Kang Maru, they were an unforgettable treasure she desperately wished she could erase.
"There's our sweet girl. What did you play today?"
"I played hide-and-seek with Haneul!"
"Oh, did you now? Good girl."
Whenever she looked back on those early years, the first thing to surface was the warm smiles of her parents.
"All right, wash your hands. Let's have dinner."
"Okay!"
Her parents were heroes, a profession that basked in public adoration back then. They were not high-ranking, possessing only modest abilities and running an ordinary agency, but their genuine kindness earned them an impeccable reputation. Thanks to them, Kang Maru had spent her childhood without a single care in the world.
Until that day, before the incident shattered everything.
"Huh?"
Kang Maru had stepped away to the bathroom right before dinner, having just finished playing with her little brother as usual.
"M-Mom?"
"..."
"Dad?"
The sight awaiting her when she pushed the door open was a nightmare: her parents lying on the floor, unconscious and bathed in blood from catastrophic wounds.
"...Kang Haneul?"
And right beside them was her little brother, trembling violently as blood gushed from his right eye.
"What... what happened to everyone...?"
According to the investigation by the police and heroes who rushed to the emergency call, the culprit was an intruding magical beast. The creature had broken through the window, mauled her parents, blinded Kang Haneul's eye, and casually slipped away into the night. Considering it had crushed two active professional heroes with overwhelming force, authorities concluded it was at least a 1st Grade threat.
The surrounding area was immediately sealed off and a massive manhunt began, yet not a single trace of the beast could be found. It was as if a ghost had done it. Despite becoming a high-profile case that gripped society for months, the investigation ultimately ended cold.
It left behind a devastating aftermath: her parents forced into retirement, condemned to long-term comas in the hospital, and her younger brother suffering the permanent loss of his right cornea.
"Haneul, let's talk. Please."
"..."
"Haneul."
From that day forward, Kang Haneul locked himself away in his room. No matter how she pleaded, he refused to come out. When she tried to force the door open, he resisted with frantic, violent rejection.
How much time had passed like that?
Eventually, Kang Maru realized the grim reality: she was now the head of the household. With their parents lying comatose in hospital beds, she had to be the one to earn a living and feed her brother. Clutching the still-raw wounds of that fateful day, she resolved to stand back up on her feet.
"I know who the real culprit behind that incident is."
"...What?"
As she left the house to return to classes at the Academy, an unfamiliar white-haired child had suddenly approached her.
"I can see the future, you see."
"What are you talking about...?"
Unsettled, Kang Maru tried to walk past her, but the voice echoing behind her froze her in her tracks.
"The one responsible for what happened that day is your little brother. Kang Haneul."
"What kind of nonsense are you—"
"If you go into your brother's room right now, you'll find out the truth."
With those parting words, the child had vanished.
"..."
Though she tried to brush it off at first, doubts began to fester in her mind like poison.
Why on earth had a 1st Grade magical beast targeted their modest home, of all places?
Why had every single Top-Ranking Hero mobilized for the search failed to uncover even a whisper of its trail?
"Ah."
The gnawing questions refused to leave her. After agonizing over them endlessly, she finally crept back inside the house and quietly pushed open Kang Haneul's door.
And to her younger brother, shivering in the dark on his bed, she issued a Command for the very first time.
A Command to speak the truth.
"I-It's all my fault... Noona..."
The confession spilling from his lips was dizzying in its horror.
He told her that when he discovered a magical beast breaking into the house, he had managed to dominate it with his awakening ability, leaving him thrilled. Longing for praise, he had called out to their parents. But the moment they arrived, the creature went berserk. Their parents threw themselves into harm's way to protect him, sacrificing their lives to keep him safe.
"Is that... is that really true?"
"...Yes, Noona."
Her Command had never failed. Even Justia had once been caught in its grasp, nearly losing a duel because of it. Backed by such absolute power, there was no doubt that the words tumbling from her brother's mouth had to be the undeniable truth.
"Then... then..."
Of course, it was an accident. From the moment a beast breached their home, the tragedy might have been inevitable. And so, Kang Maru tried to forgive him.
However...
"What is that blooming under your bed right now...?"
What she witnessed next made acceptance impossible.
"B-Behind me?"
"What is that thing grinning creepily beneath your bed?!"
Lurking beneath Kang Haneul's bed, a monster crouched in the dark, its eyes gleaming with an eerie, cyan light.
Gyuruk?
The magical beast had never disappeared.
Gyuruk, grrrrr...
"Aaaahhh!"
"N-Noona? What's wrong?"
"Stay away from me!"
The monstrosity had fused entirely with Kang Haneul's shadow.
"N-Noona, I'm sorry, I—"
Gyuruk...
"Don't come near meee!"
From that day on, Kang Maru could not help but push her brother away.
Whenever he was in danger, the shadow would manifest and swallow everything around him whole. And he always treated it like nothing out of the ordinary.
That grotesque nonchalance terrified her.
That must be how he killed Mom and Dad.
She didn't know what kind of power her brother possessed, but she knew she had to stop him. And so, Kang Maru began binding him with her Commands.
Yet, while Kang Haneul's body obeyed her words, his mind remained untouched, unlike anyone else she had ever commanded.
That terrified her even more.
She dreaded to imagine what kind of monstrosity he would become once his powers matured and his body broke free from her control.
'N-Noona? Where are you going?'
By the time her terror had metastasized into loathing and disgust...
'I made dinner! Where are you going?!'
She abandoned the house.
'Noona!!'
Leaving behind her brother, who now held countless monsters imprisoned in his shadow, still wearing that detestable, innocent expression.
Disgusting monster.
She turned to the only person capable of stopping him—the Child of Prophecy, who had consistently aided and protected her ever since that day.
"The culprit behind that incident wasn't Kang Haneul."
"...What?"
The Child of Prophecy, the very person who had revealed the supposed truth of the incident all those years ago.
"That was a bold-faced lie from Lumia."
For some reason, the girl was referring to herself in the third person, flatly contradicting what she had said back then.
"What... are you talking about?"
"What did Lumia tell you back then?"
"...Y-You're the one who told me."
It was glaringly bizarre, but Kang Maru was in no state to dwell on quirks of speech.
"You said Kang Haneul was the one controlling the monster that day."
An inexplicable dread pooled in her gut, sending a chill prickling across her skin like the calm before a catastrophic collapse.
"You told me he tried to surprise us by controlling the beast, but lost control of his ability and caused the accident."
"..."
"There's no way that was a lie. I verified it all myself."
Engulfed by an ominous foreboding, Kang Maru's voice trembled.
"What do you mean, a bold-faced lie? After all this time, what are you saying?!"
Watching her, Lumia let out a weary sigh.
"That day, Kang Haneul swapped his memories with yours."
"...What?"
When Kang Maru tilted her head, completely failing to grasp the meaning of her words, Lumia spoke with an expression that said she couldn't stand the ignorance any longer.
"For your sake—an orphan without a drop of their blood, adopted from an orphanage by Kang Haneul's infertile parents—he rewrote both of your entire lives with Common Sense Alteration."
The breath seized in Kang Maru's throat.
"That... that's absurd..."
A throbbing ache tore through her temples.
"You expect me... to believe that...?"
"The one who locked herself in that room and tried to commit suicide was you."
As Kang Maru gritted her teeth in frantic denial, Lumia threw a direct, brutal pitch right into her chest.
"On your third suicide attempt, Kang Haneul tackled you with everything he had, sobbing his eyes out as he began altering your memories."
"Liar..."
"Unskilled with his newly awakened ability, he couldn't just fabricate entirely new memories out of thin air. So, as a desperate last resort, he traded his memories with yours."
Lumia poured out the twist like a final boss monologue unravelling the ending of a game.
"Thanks to that, Kang Haneul grew up believing he was the adopted one, and that he was the monster who destroyed his own parents."
"..."
"And maybe because their lives were swapped, he even awakened the very power you were supposed to manifest—which ironically made you misunderstand and despise him even more."
Observing Kang Maru's face slowly warp in horror, Lumia gently closed her eyes and murmured, "The funniest part is... whenever the story narrated his thoughts, he always thought of you as his real older sister."
Lumia's consciousness was slipping into a distant haze.
"He must have loved you so much that he took on your entire ruined life without hesitation."
Realizing her own consciousness was about to cut out completely, she clenched her left hand, squeezing out the last drops of her strength.
"If you really can't believe me, go check the records at the ○○ Orphanage. The paperwork is still there."
"..."
"Oh, and one more thing..."
Having kindly pointed out where the undeniable proof was kept to obliterate Kang Maru's denial, she delivered her final revelation.
"Kang Haneul didn't kill Justia."
Her dying declaration began.
"Justia was murdered by heroes."
That last part was half a lie, but to Lumia, it didn't matter in the slightest.
"By those bastards right over there... whom Kang Haneul fought to the death... just to get revenge on..."
Because Kang Maru's face, as she turned to gaze upon Kang Haneul's cold corpse kneeling lifelessly on the floor, was twisting into an expression Lumia had yearned to witness all her life.
'If I drew an "IF" manga based on that exact expression, it'd sell a million copies easy...'
With that final, detached thought, Lumia's consciousness went dark.
"..."
And so, left with only a single soul remaining, the Seminar Central Conference Room fell into a heavy, unending silence.