Recovery
Recovery
"Seo-eun."
"What."
"Could you take these off?"
"No."
I rattled the cuffs chaining me to my bed.
Come on, cuffing my hands to the bed was too much...
And I could simply teleport out of them whenever I wanted, you know.
"Try taking them off. I won't look at you again, big bro."
"....."
Seo-eun must have read my expression, because she warned me in an icy voice.
Tch... I couldn't exactly argue after what I'd put her through.
"Fine, fine. I'll just lie here, alright?"
I surrendered and leaned back against the bed.
An IV was stuck in my right hand. Fluids, or whatever they're called.
Weeks had already passed since I was stabbed in place of Stardus in the Han-eun Group Underground Complex.
I was at death's door, and Ha-yul barely pulled me back with her healing. I survived even though my body had an actual hole in it. If that was not a miracle, what was?
And when I added the accumulated fatigue from teleporting back while half dead, the fact that I was alive at all was absurd.
But there was one problem.
Everyone in this house found out I nearly died.
The result: I was confined to my room.
"......"
"Here. Say ahhh."
"...Soo-bin. Please. Can I please feed myself?"
"No. Ahhh."
"Haah..."
Honestly, I'll admit it.
If I were them, I'd have been shocked too.
If Seo-eun, Soo-bin, or either of the siblings went out somewhere and came back with a hole in their body, gushing blood? My heart would drop.
And in reality, when I woke up weeks after collapsing, everyone just bawled their eyes out right in front of me.
...Still, I didn't think I would have handcuffed them to the bed.
Anyway, my body wasn't exactly in great shape even after I woke up, so I spent a while just lying in bed with an IV in me.
"...I'm sorry I hid it from you all this time."
"No, no. I should be thanking you for saving my life. Cut it out!"
And Ha-yul confessed to me that she'd a healing ability. Aside from the orphanage director, whom she'd told as a child without really understanding, I was the first person she'd ever revealed it to.
By that point, everyone already knew because she'd healed me while I was blatantly collapsed in the living room. But I'd known all along. I'd simply kept quiet until she said something first.
And so, officially, I acquired a healer.
There was a minor incident where I said, "Well, if I get hurt Ha-yul can heal me, so isn't it fine?" and Seo-eun smacked me on the head, but anyway.
Once I recovered a little, the first thing everyone asked was how I had gotten so badly injured.
I was about to just tell the truth: "Got hurt protecting Stardus."
"....."
But I got a really bad feeling.
Some kind of instinct telling me that if I said that, I'd be totally fucked.
Did I gain Hyper Sense like Stardus or something? What is this feeling?
...Right. Let's put it this way.
"A monster ambushed me from behind?"
"Yeah. I let my guard down and got hit."
It wasn't a lie. I had merely told part of the truth.
I had been stabbed because a monster ambushed me. The part where I deliberately jumped in front of it—if I mentioned that, I would be in for a hellish time, so I would keep quiet.
Even just saying this much made everyone's faces go stiff.
They kept hounding me about why I'd gone somewhere so dangerous in the first place. They only let up after I promised never to go anywhere like that again.
...Tch. But a man had to risk danger.
And so my several-day confinement finally ended.
After I pleaded that simply lying in bed was actually bad for the body, I was finally allowed to get up and take a walk.
Because the house was nestled in a mountain valley, the front yard was practically landscaped like a park. I didn't even need to go anywhere to take a walk. A trail right outside the house—the modern man's dream.
Of course, I didn't walk alone. Seo-eun stuck right to me, saying she had to watch me.
...Come on. Did they think I was suddenly going to run away from here? It was seriously unfair.
Now that I thought about it, perhaps she simply wanted to walk with me. Whatever.
Anyway, the weather was nice.
Probably because it was spring by then—birds were flying around, some flowers were starting to bloom, and the breeze was pleasantly cool.
"Big bro, are you really okay?"
"Yeah. I'm fine now. How many weeks have I been resting? It'd be weird if I still wasn't better."
"...You had a hole in your chest. Healing this fast is what's weird."
"Ha-yul did such a good job healing me. Every team really does need a healer. Without her... I'd have been in serious trouble."
But I did feel bad for Ha-yul.
I heard she used so much energy healing me that she passed out for a bit afterwards.
...The truth was that I had recruited her with the intention of making her a healer from the start, but knowing it had actually happened that way still made me feel a little guilty.
I stroked Seo-eun's hair as she walked beside me, still looking at me with worried eyes.
Seo-eun stayed still and leaned into my hand without saying a word. She wasn't normally like this, but she'd grown much gentler since I collapsed.
And that makes sense. Seo-eun was the very first one to see me as a half-corpse. The others at least heard Seo-eun's scream and had some instinctive mental preparation, but Seo-eun ran over with none of that and just saw me. Honestly, watching someone with a hole in their chest bleeding out would be traumatic.
...I'd heard she'd been extremely shaken. Soo-bin said she'd kept crying. I was sorry.
Right. Let's show her something fun.
"Seo-eun, check this out."
"What is it?"
I gathered the Behemoth attached to my body into my hand.
Essentially, my one and only takeaway from that whole shitshow.
It's a black, remotely controllable liquid monster.
...Saying it like that makes it sound kind of underwhelming, but anyway.
I shaped it into several balls.
Four squirming black spheres formed in an instant.
"Ta-da. Juggling!"
I started juggling them.
The defining trait of a bioweapon created from the lives of dozens of people in a secret lab.
It can be used as juggling balls.
"Big bro, is that supposed to be fun?"
Seo-eun just looked at me with thoroughly dead eyes.
Weird. Do kids these days not like juggling?
***
Anyway, I took it easy for quite a long while after that.
After a few more weeks, my condition was back to normal.
I finally graduated from the life of lying in bed hooked up to an IV and could properly sit in my room again.
At last, I had some time to myself again.
Everyone really does need some time alone.
"......Done."
I wrote everything up to this latest incident in my diary and then shoved it deep into a drawer, locking it with the key.
I have to keep writing in this diary every day until 'that villain' appears. After that, I can burn it...
If anyone reads it, I'm in enormous trouble. I've written down all my secrets.
...But the real problem was that Seo-eun kept trying to read it. She can't read this. Hands off.
I need to come up with a countermeasure soon.
"Phew..."
With my tasks done, I leaned back in my chair and organized my thoughts.
What had happened in the Han-eun Group Underground Complex—I'd succeeded in absorbing Behemoth as planned, but what came afterward was the problem.
Because honestly, for the first time since coming to this world, I realized that I could die too.
It'll be a problem if I die.
I had no idea how Seo-eun, Soo-bin, and Ha-yul would act... and the world would ultimately go to shit again.
Everything I was doing only delayed the world from descending into the bleak tragedy of the Original Work. It would all be meaningless unless I defeated its final boss.
So the conclusion is,
I needed to start thinking ahead about a world after my death.
"...."
It looked as though I would need to buy another notebook.
Anyway, that aside. Let's talk about preventing a repeat so this kind of thing doesn't happen again.
What I learned from that incident was that I had practically no combat power, so going anywhere alone was far too dangerous.
"...No. I guess I can't say 'zero' anymore."
I looked at the black mass attached near my right shoulder: Behemoth. Now that I had it, I had at least some combat power. It should be able to block most bullets.
...But I probably won't be personally joining combat very often anyway, so it's really just a sort of insurance. Something to pull out in the worst moment.
Anyway, the key point was that I had almost no combat power.
More importantly, it was exhausting to keep putting myself on the front lines.
Right. I needed to speed up that thing I'd been conceptualizing.
Just bringing every villain in South Korea under my control.
The heroes have the Association managing them—so shouldn't the villains also have something to manage and control them?
If that thing came to exist, I wouldn't need to personally plan and lead terrorist attacks.
I could outsource all of it. Keeping civilian casualties at zero and only making Stardus stronger.
If that happens. Maybe. Retirement might not just be a pipe dream.
I would simply stay in the background, managing and approving all the operations.
...But would a day like that ever really come?
"Hoo... I should start by scouting her, I guess."
And so I began sketching out my next plan. First, I definitely need someone with actual combat power.
...
I needed to sketch out the plan...
"Haah...."
I sighed in the middle of my planning.
Fine. Future plans, whatever—none of that matters right now.
Only one thing mattered right now.
"....What do I do about Stardus?"
What on earth must she be thinking about me.
What kind of villain in the world sees a hero about to die and jumps in to take the hit in her place?
I honestly can't even complain if she starts suspecting me over this one.
"...Ah, I don't know."
Whatever. I would simply talk my way through it later.
Still, I'd built up a considerable track record by then. She wasn't going to become suspicious because of one sudden development.
Come on—I'd already carried out four terrorist attacks. Yeah.
...That was what I would believe. I needed to stop worrying.
"...."
...Wait, before that. We'd parted with me looking like that.
She didn't think I was dead... did she?
***
"Ha-ru. Why have you been spacing out so much lately? Is something worrying you?"
"Ah... It's nothing."
"'Nothing' my foot. You've been moping around and looking terrible for days. Something happened, didn't it?"
Something did happen.
Something was bothering me.
Swallowing that thought, Shin Ha-ru forced a smile and simply said it was nothing.
It had been one month since that day.