Love Beyond Obsession
A church building drowned in still, freezing air.
At the heart of countless corpses that seeped a slow, rotting stench like the heat rising off freshly baked bread, I stood bathed in the crimson moonlight spilling through the windows, savoring the sound of her frantic footsteps racing up toward me.
Up the stairs.
Down the corridor.
When those ringing footfalls stopped dead—
Only then did I turn my eyes that way.
"Hah… hah… Orly!!"
Welcome.
You came again today.
I've been waiting for you.
Golden hair cut short, radiating a luminous sheen, and pure white eyes that bloomed like fresh snow. Her breathing was so ragged it shook her whole frame, and her face—flushed deep red—said everything about the state she was in.
"Hello. You're late."
Me, the one who commits endless slaughter across the city, and you, the heroine who never stops opposing me.
You, Erika.
That calm, ice-cold composure you showed when we first met was long gone. After this same scene had repeated itself countless times, all that remained was the sight of you glaring at me, trembling with barely contained fury.
"……"
Yes.
Those eyes.
Those beautiful jewels that poured out brilliant light and looked only at me, straight and true. A body wrapped tight in overflowing justice, ready to kick off the ground and hurl itself at me at any second. A conviction that, no matter how much pain and sorrow I had scattered in her path, might break but would never bend.
Her faith.
"You're so late I already killed them all."
I gestured with my chin toward the corpses that barely had any skin left on them and said it just like that.
"You……!"
Angry?
Good.
You have to hate me.
As if every agony and scream in the world were pouring out of me. As if the moans of original sin and every wicked deed existed solely because I do. Think of me that way. Condemn me that way.
Look at me with those cold, decadent eyes and tear me down without mercy.
And at the end of it all—
End my eternal suffering. End my life.
Someday.
— Cough, cough!
Dragging this failing body along, I caught the blood pouring from my mouth in my hand.
Even seeing my pain and my groans, you'll be glad, won't you?
"…A-Are you all ri—"
What?
"What did you just…"
Our eyes met.
I saw her pupils tremble.
No.
It can't be.
I must have misheard.
A heroine worrying about a villain? That is something that must never happen. Right?
"You did well, coming all this way. Handle the corpses yourself."
To you, who for some reason was staring at me while shaking violently, I calmly closed my eyes, offered my farewell, and—wrapping countless vampire bats around my body—rose into the air, tossing out the same old joke as always.
"I'll miss you. Erika—"
— Ugh, pwah!
Even a cool exit was beyond me, it seemed.
In the moment I was mocking myself over the clots of blood soaking my clothes through—
"W-Wait……!"
"……?"
Before I knew it, her hand had reached out and caught me. My body was held fast in midair with no resistance at all.
And naturally, as everything around us fell silent, I had no choice but to look at her face.
Why.
Why on earth was she making that face?
Flushed cheeks. Rough breathing. A face anyone could see was overflowing with worry. And your hand, refusing to let go of my arm.
No.
It can't be.
It mustn't be.
"D-Does it hurt…?"
What kind of question is that.
From the start—
Do you even understand what you're saying?
I am a criminal who has murdered countless people. You are the heroine who protects the citizens of this city. I am the kind of existence you should find utterly repulsive just by looking at me.
"W-Where does it hu—"
───Whoosh!
Even after I frantically shook her hand off, she kept looking only at me with that worried face.
"Orly…"
Please.
You are a righteous person of justice.
You have to hate me, the villain. You have to despise me. Ours is not a relationship where you cling to me like this and harbor feelings you must never hold.
Where.
Where did it all go wrong?
Was it that you saw my frail, sickly self a few times and let some foolish pity take root? Was it that the plan to make you hate me required so much time spent together? Or was it that the interest you started showing in me at some point had swollen into something abnormal?
I don't know.
I don't know.
Even as formless filth I couldn't name gnawed away at my mind, I wrung out what strength I had left and thrashed, trying to fly out through the shattered vast window—dodging her gaze, which had already grown hazy and brilliant with something like obsession.
"Next time… next time I'll definitely… catch you for sure…"
Barely managing to ignore even your incomprehensible murmuring, tangled up in the twisted feast of love that our relationship had become—
"Forever… forever by my side…"
Praying that those sentences did not mean what I thought they meant, I simply vanished into the empty air.