Regret
"……"
Ever since that day, Kang Maru's life had become a living hell.
Refusing all food and water, she lay in her hospital room like a shattered invalid, passing each endless day without a flicker of response—save for the tears that occasionally spilled down her cheeks. Existing as little more than a corpse, her battered body finally gave out one afternoon, and she slipped into a deep, unresponsive coma.
Her fellow heroes, countless officials from the Hero Association, and throngs of devoted fans sent boundless outpourings of worry and prayer. None of it, however, possessed the power to mend what was broken inside her.
Even as she lay motionless, the gears of the world ground on. Kang Haneul's desperate final struggle had dealt a catastrophic, near-annihilating blow to the top-ranking heroes who had ruled global society from behind the guise of grotesque parasites.
Yet his sacrifice was never acknowledged. The shadowy cabal that sought to drown the world in darkness remained entrenched, waging an aggressive media war to brand the detection serum as a monstrous mutagen designed to turn humans into kaijin. Amidst the chaos, the responses from Dominating Hands grew inexplicably sparse, dwindling until the notorious syndicate—which had once seemed poised to upend the entire global order—vanished entirely from public view.
It was around that time that Great Order, Kang Maru, finally opened her eyes.
"Excuse me…"
"H-Huh? Ah!"
Maru cast a vacant gaze around the room, taking in the towering stacks of get-well cards and wilting flower bouquets that crowded every available surface.
"…How much time has passed?" she asked in a hollow, lifeless whisper, realizing with dull ache that this waking nightmare was reality rather than an endless dream.
The nurse, frozen in shock at her sudden awakening, numbly pointed toward the calendar hanging on the adjacent wall.
"Ah."
Months had drifted by since the incident at the seminar hall. The villain named Kang Haneul had already been thoroughly buried and forgotten by the rest of the world.
Upon her discharge, Maru headed straight for Lumia's house. Lumia had already perished from massive blood loss, and all their former comrades had vanished without a trace; searching this place was the only path left to uncover the truth.
"Cough, cough…"
A cloud of suffocating dust billowed up the instant she pushed the front door open. Covering her mouth, she coughed harshly before stumbling forward into the stale gloom.
"What on earth were you doing…?" she muttered, her hands tearing frantically through every drawer, cabinet, and shelf she could reach. "What… what were you planning all along?"
Why had that child, gifted with the ability to foresee the future, spoken those chilling words to her that day? Were the memories that had surfaced within her own mind truly reality, or merely cruel hallucinations? Had Kang Haneul truly died after being framed for atrocities he never committed?
Tormented by these unrelenting questions, Maru searched through Lumia's house until the sun dipped below the horizon, yet she uncovered nothing. She was left only caked in filth and grime, her dry throat racking with hollow coughs.
"……"
Sinking down onto the living room floor in sheer defeat, crushed by the agony of hitting a dead end, she rested her forehead against her knees for a long, quiet time.
"…Wait."
Her foot brushed against a slightly raised floorboard.
Click.
Reaching out with trembling fingers, she pressed down on the protruding edge. A hidden mechanism clicked, and the floor slowly slid aside to reveal a subterranean entryway leading deep underground.
"……"
Cold sweat beaded across her forehead as she stared into the pitch-black descent. Gathering what little resolve remained, she tentatively leaned forward to look down inside—
"……?!"
The face of Kang Haneul stared straight back at her.
"Gasp!"
She recoiled with a shuddering gasp, tumbling backward onto the floor. Only when her breathing slowed did she realize it was merely a photograph.
"…What is all this?"
Countless pictures of Kang Haneul papered the underground walls. Every single photograph had a tiny heart scrawled over it, captured from angles and moments she couldn't even begin to place. Beside them hung a complex relationship diagram, with her own face, Minamoto Himari's, and Lee Se-ah's pinned to the board.
Blinking in numb disbelief at the chilling label scrawled beside their faces, Maru turned her gaze toward a small table sitting in the center of the basement.
I succeeded. I finally stole Kang Maru away from Haneul's side.
A thick leather journal lay open, left as though someone had recently reviewed its contents.
Kang Haneul thought his sister walked out on the family because of him. He cried in his room for hours before crying himself to sleep. So adorable.
Pasted beside the entry was a candid photograph of Kang Haneul curled up in the corner of his room, his eyes swollen and bloodshot from weeping.
Today, Kang Haneul brought a packed lunch for Kang Maru. Right in front of his eyes, I fed her some snacks with my own hands. Watching him stand in the background, utterly speechless before hanging his head and walking away, was the absolute best. When will he finally snap and choke the life out of me?
With every page she turned, the horrific truth peeled back like rotting flesh.
I fell asleep in Kang Maru's arms today. It was so repulsive I felt like vomiting on the spot, but I managed to endure it. Imagining Kang Haneul's icy gaze glaring at me from afar made my heart flutter so hard. I love you, Haneul-ah. Please kill me.
This was the hideous reality of the girl who had always claimed to be her guiding light.
Kang Maru is becoming more and more dependent on me. And Kang Haneul is falling apart day by day. I'm almost finished wrapping up Himari. Lee Se-ah is still keeping her guard up against me until the bitter end, but it doesn't matter. I'm going to take everything from them anyway. Haneul belongs to me. He only needs me.
The diary laid bare every single atrocity.
Justia. An entirely unexpected variable. She has feelings for Haneul. I tried to steer her attention away multiple times, but stealing her heart was impossible. It looks like Justia has already picked out the exact day she plans to confess to him. Did I push Haneul too far into a corner? Since he considers Justia his final reason to keep living, things are going to head toward the worst-case scenario at this rate. We can't have that. It seems she'll have to disappear. Of course, given who she is, taking her down won't be easy. But I can do it.
Maru read on with wide, trembling eyes, until the final sentence caught her vision.
Because I am the protagonist of this world.
The date scrawled beneath those ecstatic, frenzied words was exactly one week prior to Justia's murder.
"…Ah, ahh…"
Swaying on her feet as violent shock ripped through her mind, a broken, dazed sound escaped Maru's lips.
"No… this can't be…"
The beloved savior who had smiled warmly at her, whispering that Maru was indispensable, the radiant hope of all heroes—
"It's not true… it can't be!"
That very beacon of hope was the true culprit who had butchered Justia. Her own little brother had been thoroughly violated, stripped of his life, framed, and murdered.
"NOOOOOOOO!"
And through it all, what had she done? She had abandoned the brother who shouldered her monstrous fate in her place, seeking comfort in the embrace of that demon and smiling back at her.
"Urp."
Bile surged up her throat as memories flashed through her mind—of how she had bashfully promised to dedicate the rest of her life to following Lumia. Sickness turned her stomach inside out.
"Ugh… aaah…"
She remembered her brother screaming desperately that he was innocent, weeping as he left behind his final words. She remembered his battered, dying body collapsed in the seminar hall. And she remembered herself wrapping her hands around his throat, showering him with vitriol while leveling a gun at his head.
Flutter.
A loose piece of paper slipped from the board and drifted down before her ghastly, drained face.
"……"
It was a picture of Kang Haneul, his expression utterly hollowed out.
"…Ha-Haneul-ah."
Terrified, as though the frozen image were glaring directly into her soul, Maru stumbled backward, her mouth parting weakly. "I… I just…"
Yet even after a long silence, she could not complete the sentence. There were no words left in the entire world that she had the right to speak.
Creak…
That evening, wearing a face completely stripped of life, Kang Maru pushed open the door to her childhood family home.
The hero agency she had founded was permanently shuttered, crippled by her prolonged absence and the tragic slaughter of more than half her sidekicks during the war against the kaijin. Himari and Lee Se-ah were completely unreachable; whenever she reached out to mutual acquaintances, she was met only with the news that they had vanished off the face of the earth.
"……"
And so, the only refuge left to her was the very home she had abandoned with her own two feet. Aside from the thick layer of dust accumulated over two years of vacancy, the house welcomed her back looking exactly as it had the day she walked out on Kang Haneul.
"This is…"
Except for the faint, worn marks etched into the low table in the living room.
"……"
Faint rings left behind from a hot bowl of soup set down day after day, without missing a single morning or night. Only then did the memories rush back to strike her like a hammer—the memory of Kang Haneul packing a fresh bento box every single day and bringing it to her office.
'Noona, I brought lunch for…'
'Just leave already, kid.'
'He's here again? Unbelievable.'
She vividly remembered his desperate voice shouting from beyond the doorway even as her staff kicked him out into the cold, pleading that he would always be waiting for her at home.
'Noona… I'll leave the lunchbox right here.'
'……'
'I'll always have a warm meal ready for you… so please, come back whenever you want…'
Just as he had promised, Kang Haneul had faithfully prepared a meal for her every single day, waiting endlessly for a sister who never came.
"……"
Staggering to her feet, Maru dragged her leaden limbs toward the kitchen.
"Is there… a knife…"
Her hands began rummaging through the drawers, driven by the dark, desperate urge that seized those who had been driven entirely past the brink of sanity.
"……?"
Her glazed eyes caught sight of a small paper note affixed to the refrigerator door.
To Noona.
If you're reading this, it must mean you've finally come home, right?
Tearing the note free, Maru read the lines with violent, trembling tremors racking her hands as she pulled the refrigerator door open.
Honestly, I doubt I was able to convince you to return. You probably just stopped by because I died during a hero mission.
A message filled with quiet resignation, penned only a few days before she herself arrested him under the false accusation of murdering Justia.
There isn't really anything left for me to say at this point. I just wanted to give you this one last thing.
Looking down into the shelf revealed by the open door, she saw what he had left behind.
You'll eat it at least once, won't you?
It was a homemade lunchbox prepared by Kang Haneul's own hands, perfectly maintained in an eternally fresh state through an exorbitantly expensive Mystery artifact.
I left the recipe underneath, so please make sure to eat properly from now on, okay?
— From your eternal little brother, Kang Haneul
Maru stared dumbly at the playful ketchup smiley face sticking out its tongue atop the omurice. Heavy tears welled in her eyes, spilling over to drip onto the sauce and blur the smiling face beneath.
"Ha-Haneul-ah…"
For the first time since the slaughter at the seminar hall, an emotion broke fully and unreservedly through the cracks of her soul.
"Haneul-aaaaah…!"
It was suffocating, bottomless regret and despair.
"Noona was wrong… I was so wrong…!"
Clutching the lunchbox tightly against her chest, Kang Maru collapsed to the floor and began to wail, her agonized shrieks echoing through the empty kitchen for an eternity.
P.S. Make sure you chew thoroughly, or you'll get an upset stomach.
"I'm sorry… I'm so sorry…!"
She wept until the ketchup design on the omurice dissolved completely, running down like tears of its own.