Intermittent Explosive Disorder

I have a disorder that keeps me from holding back my anger.

Intermittent Explosive Disorder.

In other words, anger management disorder.

I live with this rather famous illness.

Contrary to the world's smug prejudice that anyone becomes a model of anger management the moment they're facing someone stronger, this disease rips a person's reason away entirely. True to its name — explosion — all that remains is violence no one can rein in.

Vision drowns in tunnel-black. The mind bleaches to a blank page. Nothing is left but raw, aggressive instinct, rampaging wherever it pleases. That was the kind of disease this was.

Honestly, I was scared that if this kept up, I'd end up going on a knife rampage one of these days. And so, I am currently in the middle of the final dive of my life! All so I'd stop being a menace to the people around me. Waking up to find the whole crowd holding a little reunion at the hospital — that had happened far more than once or twice, after all.

Fuck. If you're going to lose your mind, at least lose it gracefully. Why does it have to come out this violent, goddammit?

'Wow! The water's black!'

The Han River rushes closer. I can feel the wind sweeping across my cheeks. The Han River at night is black.

A bottomless pit, pitch-dark beyond all fathoming, churned with waves and yawned its jaws wide open to swallow me whole. Smack. The sensation of slamming into that darkness was not exactly pleasant. I'd always assumed falling into water came with a nice, round splash — what drummed against my eardrums instead was something sharper, more like the crack of a whip.

Spray, pressure, impact, pain — a savage, surging force swallowed me down. I had plunged into the frigid Han River, and yet every time my body slammed into the current, it burned like I'd been scalded by fire.

The water felt like it was boiling. Or maybe it was my blood at a rolling boil. Ah. I'm dying. This is definitely how I die!

'Fuck!'

"Khhk, glurgle......"

Fuck. The disorder had seized me again. People say your whole life flashes before your eyes in the face of death — apparently my fate was to spend that moment with this disease instead, right down to the very end.

Well, it didn't matter anymore. Rage all you want. I'd be underwater and dead soon enough, so there'd be no one left for me to hurt. Might as well crack this skull open and just di—

Ding — a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠chime as bright as a xylophone. Then came a woman's voice, unfamiliar and mechanical.

Ah. White. Bright. I had been in the dark mere moments ago. Now I stood in a space of blinding, immaculate white, alongside countless other people. What the hell is this?

"...Fuck?"

"Hello! Welcome to the Tutorial! I am the Tutorial Fairy—"

The problem was that my disorder was mid-episode, live and in real time. Snap — somewhere inside my skull, a taut string parted. My brain broadcast the attack signal.

Should I kill that fly-looking little bastard? The rage's boiling over, isn't it? Killing that thing would feel so goddamn satisfying. Right?

This fucked-up world. Can't a man even die when he wants to die? Fairy my ass. A thing shaped like a moth kidnapping human beings — what a load of shit.

Did fairies even exist in the first place? Aaah. Don't know. Fuck. Who cares. Why waste time thinking when you could be rampaging instead? You're an animal, after all.

"From now on, all of you will risk your lives to climb the Tower—"

"Die!"

"...Huh?"

My body was fast. A fist — the most primitive weapon there is — swung straight for the fairy's head. One of the fairy's eyebrows rose in vague displeasure. The look of someone who had just witnessed something incredibly petty.

"Humans are so barbaric. Well, fine. We needed an example anyway."

Shhk. The sound of an enormous watermelon being cleaved clean in two by a single stroke of a blade.

"—Huh?"

The world tilted. The fairy had done no more than flick her hand, and my body was folding powerlessly to the ground. No. Not folding... I honestly couldn't tell.

The floor was unnaturally close. The ground was... the ground was standing up?! The earth canted sideways, then flipped wholly upside down and spun round and round. Falling and tumbling across the pavement shouldn't feel like this. Sideways, down, sideways, up — thud — the instant I struck a familiar shoe and stopped, a headless man stood stock-still, gazing down at me.

'Huh.'

No. Not a headless man. That was... my body! My body was looking down at me! This was a mutiny! The torso had risen up in revolt against the head!

'Why is my head over here?'

A Dullahan? Had I become a Dullahan? Ah. Aaah. I understood. I finally understood! I was! I was—!

'I'm dea— ...d?'

My neck, had been, cut. My thoughts, severed along with it, aargh, a scream, I can hear it, and yet my breath, is already gone, so a scream, is something I can't. A scream, that I need to let out.

Me, me, me... I died?! Is that what happened — that I died?!

'It hurts.'

"Now, now! Everyone understands the situation by now, right? If you want to live, you'd best not come at me so carelessly. After all, it's in my interest for as many of you as possible to survive."

"!@#$%^."

"Wonderful. I'm glad everyone seems to understand. First, why don't you try saying Status Window? Each of you has been granted a skill of your very own."

"!@#$%^."

"Kahaha. That's the one! Now, all of you will be fighting monsters of your own... Well, don't worry even if your skill turns out to be complete garbage. Even without a skill, you can win as long as you fight calmly."

One by one, the summoned people were whisked away to somewhere else. The Tutorial Fairy vanished soon after. All that remained in the white room was a single decapitated corpse, left abandoned and alone — lonely enough to make the throat run cold...

......

And then, a long stretch of time passed. Squirm — something stirred in the abandoned corpse. An anomaly had come upon it.

The anomaly arrived in the reverse order of death. The heart began to beat again; from the flat cross-section of the severed neck, a stubby lump of flesh budded and swelled; eyeballs, teeth, hair — all of them burst forth in heavy clusters and bore their fruit.

The reversal of death. In other words — resurrection. The dead body returned to life. It overcame death. It took back its life. Not that a single soul remained to witness it.

"Ah......"

Did I pass out during another episode? Ugh, my head throbbed. Something was off, though. I was pretty sure I had been in the middle of diving off the Han River?

"Haaah. What is this...? Is this hell...?"

I was still mulling it over, taking one step at a time, when — thump — something bumped against my foot. I looked down on reflex and nearly screamed. Jesus.

"What the fuck is this."

It was a head. A noggin. A gourd. The watermelon on your shoulders. A dome. Whatever you want to call it. A cleanly severed head was sitting right at my feet. Tumble, tumble. My nudge even sent it rolling a little.

"I-Is this for real? Like a movie prop or something......"

Slasher horror. Dismemberment murders. Kidnapping and confinement. Dissection. Organ trafficking. Death games. A Buster Mist hidden camera.

Every horrific scenario imaginable flashed through my mind. And then I recognized whose face it was, and recoiled in horror all over again.

"This is my head, isn't it?!"

It was my head. My handsome face. Only then did the memories I'd lost come flooding back in full.

Right. I had died with my head cut off. A self-proclaimed fairy had taken a blade to my neck. And I'd confirmed it firsthand, rolling this very head across the floor — so there was no room for doubt.

"Then why the fuck am I still alive?!"

The severed head was still right there, of course. Tumble, tumble.

The scientists who claim memories are recorded in the brain were wrong! Charlatans, the lot of them! The Earth really was flat after all!

"...Is this hell?"

Judging by the circumstances, probably not.

A hell where the Tutorial Fairy chops your head off and you come back to life? That's not even a decent punchline. If anything, this felt closer to those web novels I used to read way back when.

I shouted the promised word.

"Status Window!"

"Oh."

Healing Factor. A super-regeneration ability of some kind? The thing positively reeked of cheat ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠code — a straight-up broken skill. Going by the evidence, this was what had saved my life. The status window had even been kind enough to list my weaknesses. Lucky me. Right. I now had a rough idea of how I'd survived.

'So what do I do now?'

No, hold on. The Tutorial Fairy had clearly been right there in that open space, and so had all the other people. So why was I the only one here? How much time had passed since I died? Where even was this? If there was a Tutorial, was there a main game too? And could I even get out of this place in the first place?

"Um, Miss Tutorial Fairy? You're not here?"

Huh?

"Hello? Is anyone there? ...No?"

This......

"Tutorial, proceed! Tutorial, enter! Exit! Logout!"

"I think I'm fucked, aren't I?"

"You fucking bastard, Tutorial Fairy."

Apparently, I had managed to get myself stranded in the Tutorial waiting room. If you're going to kill someone, kill them all the way. How hard is it to finish the job with a proper confirmation kill, huh? Fuck.

Hungry.

"Hello? Anybody there?"

"I've been left here all alo-o-one."

You crazy Tutorial Fairy bastard. I got left behind, dammit. The least you could do was let me take the Tutorial.

"Fuuu...ck......"

My mouth was drying out to leather. After hours of screaming at the walls and throwing a full-blown fit, my voice seemed to be gone entirely. And with my energy drained, I was hungry as hell on top of it.

How many hours had it been since I came back to life? A full day? Half of one? Or hell, maybe it hadn't even been half a day yet? My sense of time was a complete disaster.

Ah. Goddamn anger management disorder. Goddamn Tutorial Fairy. Goddamn Healing Factor. Goddamn it, goddamn it — I'd get down on my knees and beg just to eat something, anything, fuck.

My stomach felt like it had shriveled up against my spine.

"Tsk. No use wasting energy for nothing."

Right. Wasting ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠energy would only make me hungrier. Time to calm down already. Calm... my ass.

"Fuuu...ck."

I flew into another wild rampage, rammed my head into the wall, and knocked myself out cold. Ah. Fucking anger management disorder.

When I came to, the hunger had dulled a little. Apparently the brain cells in charge of appetite had broken. Lucky me. From now on, whenever I got hungry, I'd just headbutt the wall.

In exchange, I had no strength left at all — even twitching a single finger was an effort. Like a newborn kid goat, every muscle in my body shivered and shook.

'I'm... thirsty.'

I gulped down the saliva pooled in my mouth. The frothy, gluey sludge crawled thickly down my throat, and it stung. And in that instant, I understood my fate.

'Ah. So hunger wasn't the real problem.'

Water. They say a human being can survive three weeks without food, but dies within three days without water. Which meant that in three days, I would dry out and die.

'Fuck.'

I had jumped into the Han River fully intending to die. And now the actual cause of death wasn't going to be drowning — it was going to be dehydration? How does a situation get this fucked?

'Is this for real?'

A man who threw himself into the Han River of his own free will to kill himself gets saved without being asked, kidnapped without being asked, and now — now — left to dry out and die somewhere no one will ever find him? Am I a fucking dried fish, is that it?

Scooped out of the water, dying shriveled-up, and then getting filleted like sashimi — that's my destiny? The more I thought about it, the more fucked it got?

"Bull...shit."

I am not dying like this.

Absolutely not.