Regret (2)
One day had passed since Kang Maru learned the full, devastating truth.
"Wait... isn't that Great Order?"
"Come on, no way. Why would someone who's supposed to be in the hospital be here?"
Every eye gravitated toward her as she stepped into the Hero Public Columbarium—the final resting ground of the Fallen Stars—looking utterly shattered.
"Still, she looks so much like her."
"Use some common sense. Does that hollow-looking wreck look anything like Great Order to you?"
"...I guess not."
After a brief round of hushed whispering, the attendants averted their eyes and let her through.
Thud, thud...
Paying neither the staff nor the onlookers any mind, Kang Maru staggered forward. With every step, her chest tightened as if bound in iron wire. The more she felt their muted murmurs and piercing gazes prickling her skin, the more her heart withered inside her. Even so, she could not stop. There was one thing she had to do before meeting the end.
"Excuse me."
"Yes?"
Clutching her chest and biting down on her lip until it bled to anchor her fraying composure, she finally managed to speak in a trembling voice.
"Kang Ha-neul..."
She abruptly cut herself off.
"Oh my?" Startled by the sight of the woman hanging her head and letting a stray tear spill down her cheek, the clerk asked in genuine concern, "Is something the matter?"
"...Oh Ji-seok." Kang Maru corrected herself, her eyes shadowed with hollow despair. "Which way is... Mr. Oh Ji-seok's grave?"
"Ah, yes. Just one moment, please."
Watching the attendant leaf through the registry, Kang Maru sank deeper into wretched misery.
I'm sorry... Haneul.
Her little brother had not even been permitted to die under his own name. With his place as a beloved son stolen away by Maru herself, he had perished wearing a fictitious face artificially aged by psychic power—as Oh Ji-seok, a phantom who had never truly existed in this world.
"Right this way."
The attendant closed the binder and led the way as Kang Maru followed with her head bowed, staring blankly at the floor.
"The person you're visiting must have been a wonderful hero."
"..."
"Please stay strong. When heroes close their eyes for the last time, they always depart with a smile, remembering all the people who smiled back at them."
Though meant in earnest kindness, the attendant's comforting words pierced Maru's heart like live ammunition.
"Here we are."
"Ah..."
There, right before her eyes, lay Kang Haneul's resting place.
"..."
An ordinary gravestone stood before an ordinary burial plot. The name carved into the cold surface struck her vision with crushing weight: Oh Ji-seok.
"Haneul... ah..."
Her tears having long since run dry, Kang Maru collapsed to her knees and reached out with a trembling hand.
Caress...
The freezing bite of stone seeped into her fingertips. Naturally, there was no trace of her brother's tender warmth—only the biting autumn night air swirling through the columbarium, chilling her to the bone.
"Your big sister... was wrong."
Even so, kneeling as she stroked the stone, she murmured through vacant, hollow eyes.
"If only... if only I could turn back time."
"..."
"If only I could look at your face just once, and tell you how sorry I am."
As her raspy voice cracked and gave out, she clasped her hands tightly and pressed her forehead against the gravestone.
"I'll end it before this day is out."
The tears pooled in her eyes finally spilled over, staining the cold stone.
"The monster that swallowed our parents, and swallowed my brother..."
A half-finished slash mark stood out vivid and raw against her pale forearm.
"...I will end it with my own hands."
"Goodbye, then..."
Having finished her vow, she started to rise from the ground.
"Excuse me."
"...!?"
As she fumbled in her coat for something, the clerk standing behind her suddenly spoke up. Kang Maru turned around, only to freeze dead in her tracks. For some reason, the voice had completely changed, sounding dreadfully familiar.
"Y-You're..."
"..."
Kang Haneul's former sidekick.
The girl who had tried desperately to help him escape after he was framed, only to be caught by Kang Maru and stripped of both her Hero Academy enrollment and her status as a Black Agent.
Kim Ira was standing right behind her, wearing the very uniform the columbarium clerk had worn only moments before.
"You don't need to give him any flowers."
"Ah, u-uh..."
"Because I bring him fresh flowers every single day."
As Kang Maru stood frozen with her hand still tucked inside her coat, staring blankly, Ira asked in an icy tone:
"Why did you even come here?"
"..."
"Did you think coming here and mumbling a few words would buy you someone's forgiveness?"
Only then did a flood of memories surge violently into Kang Maru's mind.
"Think about what you did."
How she had constantly bound her brother with the absolute authority of her Command.
How she had embraced the woman who orchestrated his downfall, right before his very eyes.
How she had subdued Ira when the girl held a one-person protest carrying a sign that read Kang Haneul is innocent, smashing that sign to splinters.
How she had sneered and walked away when Kang Haneul clung to his prison bars, screaming in agony, begging her just once to order him to speak the truth.
How she had battered him as he lay dying in the seminar room, strangling his throat until his flesh tore beneath her fingers.
"Did you know Justia was in love with Kang Haneul? Did you know that whenever he was facing death on a mission, he'd always stroke your photograph? Did you know his will transferred half of everything he owned directly into your account?"
"I... I..."
"If you didn't know, then get out."
As each hideous memory flashed before her eyes, Ira's merciless voice drove into her like iron daggers.
"A person who knows less about her own brother than I do has no right to stand here."
Naturally, she had no rebuttal. Not a single defense.
"I said, get out."
Keeping her mouth tightly shut, Kang Maru could only turn and flee the columbarium, unable to leave even the flowers she had brought atop the gravestone.
Creak...
Returning to her childhood family home, Kang Maru was greeted by Kang Haneul's bento box sitting solitary upon the dining table.
Brushing past the box without touching it, she walked toward the kitchen. Before she realized it, the recipe note Kang Haneul had left stuck to the refrigerator—gathering dust for months—was in her hands.
※ Note: Adjust the spiciness to your liking :)
"...Ah."
Belatedly attempting to grant the simple wish her brother had yearned for so desperately, she rummaged through the refrigerator, only for a dark, choking gasp to escape her lips. Naturally, aside from the items preserved with permanent stasis treatments, every last ingredient had rotted away.
"..."
Yet, cradling the spoiled ingredients against her chest with hollow, shadowed eyes, Maru walked back to the stove.
Ssshh...
Setting the ingredients down beside the burner, she twisted the gas valve.
Click... click-click...
Naturally, the gas wouldn't ignite.
"...I'm too late."
After turning the knob mindlessly again and again, she bowed her head and whispered to the empty room.
"It's far too late to do anything now."
Even if she ate her meals properly as Haneul had pleaded, even if she followed the recipe he had researched so diligently with all his love, nothing would change. Those gestures only carried meaning while Kang Haneul was still alive.
"..."
Stirring a ladle through the empty pot with unseeing eyes, a memory from the past surfaced unbidden.
"Noona, you're back?"
She saw Kang Haneul standing in this very spot, wearing an apron, welcoming her home after her missions.
"Come eat."
That vision overlapped with the sight of him sprinting out of the house in that same apron, panicked and desperate, as she abandoned him. Stirring the empty pot, Maru squeezed her eyes shut.
"...I'm sorry."
In both memories, Kang Haneul was covered in dark blue bruises—bruises she had put there. Yet he had always lived for her sake. Right until he was framed, hunted to the brink of death, and finally strangled by her own hands.
...Disgusting.
When her thoughts reached that point, Kang Maru could no longer endure the weight of her own existence. Once, back at the orphanage, she had loathed and cursed the vile adults who abused their power. Yet when placed in their shoes, she had become a creature far more atrocious than any of them. She could not allow such an abhorrent monster to go on living.
"...Where did I put the rope I used back then?"
It was time to hunt the monster that had devoured her brother.
Creak...
Securing the rope to the ceiling beam, Kang Maru stepped up onto the chair. The hanging noose swayed gently before her eyes.
"..."
Clutching against her chest the bento box she hadn't dared to taste, she prepared to kick her feet out, but instinctively slid her hand into her pocket.
The Student Saved by Professor Oh Ji-seok Is Actually Justia's Sole Living Kin?
Condition Extremely Critical: Attending Physician Warns Tonight Is the Crucial Turning Point...
Displayed across the main page of the Hero Network was an article flooded with thousands of comments.
"...I could have stopped it."
While she, the root cause of every tragedy, was being showered with public praise, Kang Maru murmured in a flat, monotone voice.
Clatter...
As her limp fingers let go, the smartphone with its shattered screen tumbled to the floor.
"..."
The photograph of Ariel attached to the bottom of the article. And beside it, a picture of Kang Haneul from his academy days. The instant her gaze fell upon them—
"...Gah!"
The chair beneath her boots clattered violently across the floorboards.
"Ghk, ack... ugh...!"
The noose cinched tight around her throat, cutting off her breath.
"Uuugh..."
Her legs flailed instinctively for a second before she forced herself to stop.
...I have to die.
Terror gripped her that if she failed, the shadow monster within her might burst forth again. Even as consciousness slipped away, she bit down on her tongue with all the strength left in her jaw.
Drip...
Numbing agony lanced through her entire nervous system as blood trickled from the corner of her lips.
...Haneul.
Watching her blood drip down to smudge Kang Haneul's faded face on the shattered phone screen, Kang Maru let her eyes close.
Will I finally be allowed to apologize to you now?
Snap—!
"...Hahk!"
Just as the darkness was about to claim her, the rope snapped cleanly, and she crashed down onto the hardwood floor.
"Haaah... hah... gah..."
Clutching her crushed throat, writhing on the ground as her lungs screamed for air, she forced her head up to see what had happened.
"Ah..."
And in that very next heartbeat, her eyes locked dead-on with an all too familiar pair of irises.
"Gyoorook?"
Having lunged from the deep shadows, the creature was clutching the severed rope, staring down at her with an innocent tilt of its head—as if delighted to see her.
"No..."
The moment Kang Maru's face shattered into unspeakable despair—her very last path to atonement ruthlessly denied—
Bzzzzzt...
The entire world abruptly began to flip upside down.