Chapter 49: Execution. (2)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 49: Execution. (2)
The morning of the day I decided to commit my first murder dawned.
Perhaps my practice had paid off, or perhaps it simply hadn’t sunk in yet, but I felt surprisingly nothing.
“…Is something wrong?”
“Huh?”
On the way to school, Ha-ni suddenly asked me that.
“No? Why? Do I look like something’s wrong?”
I wasn’t lying. If anything, I felt even more relaxed and composed than usual.
“No, it’s not that. How should I put it? You just seem strangely different from usual. Anyway, you look a bit tense.”
“Hmm, I’m not sure.”
“…Really? Well, as long as you’re not worried about anything, that’s a relief. If you do have something on your mind, don’t hide it—you have to tell me, okay?”
Before I could even respond, Lilac and Lee Yu-na joined us and greeted me.
“So-hyun! Han-hee!”
“Hey.”
However, those two also approached me and tilted their heads with strange expressions.
“So-hyun, is something up?”
“You too? What’s with everyone? Do I look weird?”
Is my supposed composure just a delusion, and it’s actually all over my face…? That wouldn’t be good…
“No, it’s not that you look weird, but more like… your nerves are on edge?”
“Usually, you’re like a wary cat, but right now, you’re like a cat that’s had its tail stepped on.”
Lee Yu-na offered a somewhat confusing analogy.
“Ah, right. That’s exactly the feeling.”
What exactly is ‘that feeling’…?
“Anyway, if anything happens, contact us immediately. I’ll drop everything and come running. Right, Yu-na?”
“…Well, if I have time.”
Oh, to hear something like that from Lee Yu-na, I must have managed my relationships quite well since transmigrating.
When I opened the classroom door and walked in, Butt, who was sitting at my desk as usual, greeted me rowdily.
“Loser~ you’re here? Uh…?”
But her face soon turned worried as she looked down at me while I took my seat.
“Loser, did you cry by any chance…?”
“…No?”
“Right? It doesn’t look like you cried, but you seem a bit different from usual. Hmm, did you skip breakfast?”
“I didn’t…? Anyway, nothing’s wrong, but everyone’s making a fuss today.”
“Really…? Well, it’s a relief if nothing’s wrong, but if something is up, tell me. I can at least pay for your tteokbokki. We’re friends, after all.”
She giggled as if relieved and hopped down from the desk.
“Then, Loser! Tell me if things get tough~”
As soon as Kim Ga-eul left, Cheon Yu-hak, who was sitting nearby, approached me.
Wearing the most serious expression of everyone I’d met today, Cheon Yu-hak didn’t have his usual confident attitude. Instead, he seemed to hesitate, carefully choosing his words.
“Is it true that nothing is wrong?”
“Is my expression really that much of a problem that even you’re worried…? Then I guess I’m really in trouble.”
I chuckled and replied with a joke, but Cheon Yu-hak’s expression didn’t brighten.
“…No, your expression isn’t the problem. It’s just that your atmosphere is exactly like… that day… No, I’m being overbearing. You’ll handle yourself well. Still, if you think I can be of help, tell me. I will surely come running.”
“Forget it. Just share some good info with me next time we go hunting.”
“That goes without saying.”
Only then did Cheon Yu-hak return to his usual self and go back to his seat.
* * *
“Oh? Is Kang So-hyun sick?”
“Pardon?”
During Basic Mana Studies, the Academy’s mascot, Professor Park A-ram, asked with a tilt of her head right after shouting her usual, “Then shall Kang So-hyun answer!?”
“No, I’m not sick.”
“Really? You’re always like that, but your atmosphere is so sharp today that I just had to poke at you.”
“Then do I not have to answer?”
“That and the lesson are separate matters! Now, answer this question, Kang So-hyun…!”
“Number 3.”
“To guess on a short-answer question, you’ve got quite the nerve. But I’ll let it slide today. From next time, you’ll be on the fast track to becoming a TA, no mercy.”
Oh, at least she didn’t say she’d give me an F.
The moment the class ended smoothly, the Little Witch threw a piece of candy at me.
“You dropped this.”
When I tried to return the candy, she let out a smirk as if she found me absurd.
“I’m giving it to you. You’re quite sly, acting like you don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on, but just venting to someone will make you feel better. You’re still a young cadet, so you should learn how to lean on others.”
“Seeing how everyone is strangely looking out for me today, I guess my expression really is bad.”
“No, it’s not a matter of your expression. It’s just… something about you isn’t like the usual Kang So-hyun.”
“The usual me?”
“Yes. Well, I haven’t known you personally for very long, so I can’t explain it well, but anyway, there’s a certain vibe.”
She took out another candy and popped it into her mouth.
“Well, if it were a truly great worry, you would have told someone else, not me! Still, I’m an adult in my own right, so it’s fine to tell me. You’re my future TA, after all!”
“Who’s a TA?”
“You. It’s a joke, so don’t feel pressured, but come by if you want. I’ll at least give you some candy and tea.”
With those words, she left the lecture hall.
* * *
“Mmm, good. Cadet Kang So-hyun. Seeing your posture improve, it seems your physical strength has increased quite a bit.”
The last lecture of the day was Cathy’s class.
As expected, I felt in top condition today.
My body felt lighter than usual, and whether it was a kick or a punch, every strike landed exactly where I wanted it to.
“So-hyun.”
“…Yes?”
It was rare for her to speak informally to me inside the Academy.
At the very least, she had never done so suddenly during class.
Of course, given the distance, the other cadets wouldn’t be able to hear her.
“You remember promising to tell me if anything happened, right?”
That was true.
I had made such a promise to her in the past.
Even though I knew it was a promise I couldn’t keep, the fact that I was breaking it didn’t feel very pleasant.
“If the promise you made to me is a burden to you, you can take it back.”
“…Pardon?”
“I made that promise because I wanted to help you, not because I wanted to make you anxious or uncomfortable.”
“What do you mean…”
“I don’t know what’s going on, but I can tell it’s something you can’t talk about. Boys sometimes make that kind of face.”
“…What kind of face am I making right now?”
She stroked my hair at an angle where others couldn’t see.
“A face that says you’re overdoing it.”
“No, I’m not overdoing anything…”
“And it’s the face of someone who has made a resolution in secret. Kids with that look on their faces never listen, no matter how much you try to persuade them.”
I really had nothing to say to that.
“I won’t be upset. But let’s make just one more promise.”
“…Another one?”
“Yes. You have to come back without getting hurt.”
“Geez, you’re acting like you know what I’m going to do. You’re getting ahead of yourself.”
I would try my best not to get hurt.
“So-hyun. Getting hurt doesn’t just mean getting a wound on your body. You know that, right?”
“…Yes.”
“Right. We can’t stay like this forever, so shall we continue for now? It’s important to let your body get used to the posture while it’s still good.”
She said that as she corrected my posture bit by bit.
“I’ll support you in whatever you do. Hang in there.”
The way she even held back from saying she would help made my heart ache for some reason.
* * *
After all the classes were over, as I sat alone in the Academy building, lost in thought, various reflections crossed my mind.
“Seriously, usually everyone acts so damn dense and like pushovers, so how are they so good at sensing this kind of thing?”
Is it because they’re characters in a novel?
Or is my poker face just that terrible? I was quite confident in it.
When I recalled the images of them dying in the original work, my softening emotions instantly turned cold.
I didn’t want to see these people, whom I had already grown so close to, die.
The surroundings had already begun to darken.
The time when the moon begins to reflect transparently in the sky while the sun is still up.
It’s a bit of a poetic expression, but I liked this brief moment of the day when the sun and moon coexist.
A story with only bright sides is boring, but a story with only dark sides is even more boring.
There needs to be a balance. A balance. Don’t you agree?
How long did I wait?
As the sun almost vanished from the sky and the moonlight began to grow stronger, the guest I had been waiting for finally appeared.
“Ah, sorry. Am I late?”
“No, Senior. Thank you for coming out even though I was the one who called you so unilaterally.”
“Haha, you wrote the letter so well that I had no choice but to come. I was hoping a pretty female junior had called me, so it is a bit disappointing.”
“Ah, I understand that feeling. When you get a letter, you might expect a girl to confess her feelings or something.”
“Yeah, but I actually abandoned those expectations because of the content. ‘I know your secret. If you don’t come alone to the Academy training grounds by 7 PM after school, I’ll expose everything.’ That doesn’t sound like a confession at all, does it?”
“Well, it’s not a confession, but isn’t it? If you think of it as a confession from an obsessive yandere character, it’s quite plausible, isn’t it?”
“That’s a novel interpretation. So? What is it? Why did my cute junior call me here?”
“Oh, it’s nothing much.”
Yes, it’s nothing much.
As I told Ha-ni, it’s just simple trash disposal.
It’s just that right now, no one but me can clean it up, and it’s a massive piece of trash that will rot everything around it if left alone for even a moment.
“I’m just trying to… clean up some big trash that I don’t like.”
“…What? What are you talking about? Are you being bullied or something? If so, you’ve come to the right person. I’m part of the Student Council, so I’ll make sure you don’t get hurt as much as possible…”
“Ah, you don’t need to answer. I know you’re sincere. I feel sorry for you, Senior, since you don’t know anything.”
I gripped Ruyi, which I was holding in the form of a knife, in a reverse grip and cloaked my entire body in Reinforcement.
“For now, please just die.”
“…Wh-what!?”
He hurriedly tried to pull out his mana weapon, a bow, but since I had already closed the distance with my reinforced body, I had no intention of giving him time to draw the string.
I aimed for his throat with the knife, but because he chose to discard his bow and dodge at the last second, it only grazed his shoulder, failing to deal significant damage.
“What do you think you’re doing…! Who sent you!? I don’t know what kind of misunderstanding there is, but I don’t recall ever earning anyone’s resentment!”
“Yes, I’m sure you don’t. Senior Seo In-young, Vice President of the Student Council. You are not at fault.”
“Then why…!”
“The problem is simply that you were born.”
“…You…!”
Enraged, he lunged at me.
He probably thought that he was just caught off guard earlier, and that as long as he didn’t let his guard down, he could suppress someone like me even at close range.
Since he was a third-year and I was a freshman, he wasn’t entirely wrong.
That is, if I didn’t have Ruyi.
He was measuring the distance, thinking my weapon was a knife.
That one moment of misjudgment was his downfall.
He began to close the distance in a single breath, but I had already swung my strike.
The moment he entered my range, closing the distance as if he didn’t understand.
“Grow longer. Ruyi…!”
The knife transformed into a long sword.
“…What!?”
A sickening sensation was transmitted to my fingertips with a slash.
The sensation of a sword cutting through human flesh and muscle wasn’t very pleasant.
“Uh… ugh…!?”
Having been hit by an unexpected attack, he looked incredibly indignant.
It seemed he didn’t even understand why this was happening to him in the first place.
Well, that made sense.
In reality, he—the person named Seo In-young—was innocent.
No, in the first place, he wasn’t even human.
“I thought it was an artifact with a disgusting hobby even when I read about it in the text, but seeing it with my own eyes is even worse.”
Wow, it’s over with this! The Academy is safe! It would be great if I could say that, but of course, the world isn’t that easy.
“…What?”
Light gathered on the body of the fallen, bleeding Seo In-young, and all his wounds were healed.
And he was now examining his condition with an expression completely different from before.
The real enemy had finally appeared.
“There’s still time before the plan? Why already? No, were you caught? By the fake personality?”
The first artifact he possessed.
Puppeteer’s Tea Party.
It was an artifact that intentionally created another personality within oneself. Since the personality created by the artifact cannot recognize that fact, it cannot be detected by most lie-detecting artifacts.
Unless the pre-set conditions are met or a life-threatening crisis occurs, the original personality will never be revealed. In a sense, it was the optimal artifact for infiltration.
It was also the biggest reason why he could boldly disguise himself as a different student every four years and enroll in the Academy without being caught by the Chairperson.
And what had just healed the wound that almost killed him was his second artifact, the Lucky Double Coin.
It had a one-week cooldown, but it was an incredible artifact that completely healed a fatal wound once.
He looked at his torn clothes and asked me.
“Was it you?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“…You look like a cadet?”
“That’s also right.”
“The fact that you’re not Lilac or Cheon Yu-hak means you’re just trash. Did you do this knowing something? Or did you just do it because you didn’t like my fake personality?”
“Hardly. I did it because I know who you are, what your goal is, and what you were planning to do.”
“You have a loose tongue, don’t you? Didn’t you learn that being so honest makes you die early?”
“If I lie, will you let me live?”
“Not a chance.”
“Right? Then what’s the point of lying?”
He looked down on me and warmed up his body.
“Fine. Any last words?”
“Wow, that line is seriously so old-fashioned. But you know what?”
“…What?”
“The one who needs to say their last words isn’t me, it’s you.”
I gripped Ruyi, which had returned to its knife form, and provoked him.
“You’re going to die here today. You piece of trash villain.”