Midterms (11): The Horror I Witnessed
I saw it. Below Emilia’s waist. Where her lower body should have been, there was only a mess of organs spilling out in every direction.
“What the fuck was that?”
The curse flew out before I could stop it. For a second I wondered if I’d hallucinated the whole thing. No—it had to be a hallucination.
“What the hell did I just see, you bitch?”
“······.”
I grabbed Jin by the collar and hauled her up. But she only stared straight back at me, a mocking smile on her lips. My right hand, the one gripping Bappe, shook uncontrollably.
“It’s exactly what you saw.”
“What the······.”
My mind raced to rationalize it. What I had just witnessed was a fabricated image. If it was Jin, manipulating footage with magic would be child’s play. Hell, she wouldn’t even need magic—simple props and makeup could pull off an effect like that.
Yes. It was fake. An obvious fake. A cheap trick meant to rattle me and make me lose my mind.
So I refused to fall for it.
“A distasteful joke, Crow Jin. You’d better tell me where Emilia is right now.”
“Well, they say she’s dead?”
“Then tell me where the body is.”
“Hehe······.”
Instead of answering she started laughing, so I instinctively seized her throat. Even when I squeezed hard enough to cut off her air, Jin kept staring at me and giggling.
“How cute.”
“What?”
“It’s cute how hard you’re trying to look cool and unbothered.”
What the hell was this crazy bitch babbling about?
“It worked on everyone until now, didn’t it? Those blank, emotionless eyes of yours. But they don’t work on me. I see everything—every flicker of your panic.”
“Shut your mouth.”
“Want to know why you got caught?”
“Shut up.”
“Because you’ve already lost the psychological edge. You know it, don’t you? That you’ve already lost. You’re just denying it because you can’t bear to accept it.”
“I said shut up!”
I clamped down on Jin’s throat. Her slender neck fit easily in one hand. I could crush it if I wanted. I could snap her spine without effort. I didn’t want to hear another word from her. I wanted to silence her forever.
But I couldn’t. There were still things I needed to hear.
“Speak. Whether Emilia is alive or dead—tell me where she is.”
“Ghk······ ugh······.”
Only then did I realize I was still choking her. I released my grip at once.
“Kehk! Ugh······. So impatient. Listen to one little story of mine and I’ll tell you.”
“What story?”
“The story of how your servant died. It’s not even that long. You can spare the time, can’t you?”
“······.”
My body twitched. The story of Emilia’s death. It was all fiction anyway. A plausible little tale she’d made up. I could listen to as much nonsense as she wanted if it meant learning Emilia’s location.
“Fine. Speak.”
“All right. First I slapped your servant awake after she’d passed out. Then······”
She didn’t know the first thing about Emilia. This idiot had no idea the girl belonged to the kingdom’s intelligence agency, or that her brother was one of the Crows. So if she tried to spin some grotesque tragedy porn, contradictions would inevitably show.
I sneered at Jin and focused on the story.
“Her resistance was incredible. She pulled a dagger from under her skirt and came at me. So I snapped her wrist right away to pin her down.”
A lie. Emilia wouldn’t even cry out from something as minor as a broken wrist. There was no way that would subdue her.
“But even then she gritted her teeth and attacked with her other hand?”
“······.”
“So I had no choice but to break the other wrist and both ankles too. After that I could just barely hear these tiny little ‘keuuu’ screams.”
She’d gotten a few details right by sheer luck. It was still complete bullshit.
“She had such strong mental fortitude. Must have been thoroughly trained. But girls like that always make the same mistake—they convince themselves they can endure anything, no matter how extreme. I needed to correct that delusion.”
Nonsense.
“Torture always hurts twice as much when shame is involved. So what do you think is the most humiliating torture for a woman?”
This fucking bitch. Listening was starting to make me sick. The urge to kill her on the spot surged through me.
“That’s right. Exactly what you’re imagining. I’ll spare you the details—your fragile little mind might shatter if I described it. Hehe. Aren’t you grateful?”
“Stop wasting my time.”
“Even when I’m being considerate······. Tsk. Anyway, it took forever. Until that stubborn light in her eyes finally died.”
“······.”
“Her gaze became completely empty, like she’d given up on everything.”
I was slowly regaining my composure. I had found clear proof that this was fiction. No matter how much pain she suffered, no matter how deep her despair, Emilia would never have broken. She had endured the intelligence agency’s brutal torture training. She was prepared to reveal nothing even if the empire captured her and subjected her to every torment imaginable.
Yet she would lose her mind to Jin’s sloppy torture? Ridiculous.
“At first I thought she’d finally lost it. But that wasn’t it.”
“······!”
“She’d simply lost too much blood and her mind had grown hazy. When I leaned in to check her breathing, she spat right in my face. That’s when I knew—I could keep playing with her. So I stopped the bleeding immediately. I’ve taken an interest in anatomy lately. The books say the human body is fascinating. I figured dissecting one myself wouldn’t be so bad. And there was a perfect specimen right in front of me.”
Enough.
“I started with the legs. My goal was Schluss Heinkel. I wanted to make her scream your name. I planned to stop the moment she cried it out.”
Shut the fuck up, you bitch.
“Wow. When I opened her up, it was exactly like the diagrams. So interesting. I thought she’d pass out for sure by then, but she kept biting her own tongue to stay conscious. It was almost pitiful. It’s not like I was torturing her to extract information. I was just doing it because I wanted to hurt her. Her loyalty to you made her fight to the end—it was both admirable and pathetic.”
“Bullshit······.”
Loyalty to me? Don’t make me laugh. It was so absurd I could barely keep from laughing out loud. My shoulders kept shaking. I clenched my teeth so hard to hold it in that my molars ached. The fist at my side trembled violently.
“By then it was too pitiful to watch, so I decided to finish her off nicely. The client only ordered me to kidnap and kill your servant—they never asked for torture. I brought a saw so she could go cleanly. If you’re going to die anyway, better to leave a neat upper body, right? The filthy lower half could just be thrown away. So I started sawing slowly above the pelvis. That’s when her pupils really started shaking. She must have believed I wouldn’t actually kill her. Then her eyes suddenly flooded with despair—! It was so beautiful, you know?”
It was all complete bullshit. Emilia would have accepted death the moment she was kidnapped. Knowing she was going to die wouldn’t make her despair. She wasn’t some ordinary girl. She was a spy machine who killed and deceived on command. There was no way she possessed emotions like that. Everything she had shown me was an act······.
“In her final moments, gasping for breath, she cried out. Do you know what she said?”
“······.”
“‘Oppa.’ ‘Oppa.’ Desperately. Pitifully. She kept calling for her oppa until she died. Oppa. I wonder who she was calling for?”
The final nail had been driven in. At the word oppa I lost all reason. I could no longer treat this disgusting story as fiction.
“Say it’s a lie!”
“Aghk!”
“Say it! You fucking bitch!”
“Kuhk······ ack······. It’s······ all true······.”
“Say it’s a lie! Right now!”
I pressed down on her windpipe. Her struggles grew frantic, but I had no mercy left. I needed to hear the words “it’s a lie” from her own mouth.
“I can······ say it’s a lie······. If that’s what you want. Shall I?”
“······.”
Jin’s satisfied smile made my breath catch. It was drenched in superiority. At this point I had no choice but to admit it. I had lost. I didn’t even know who I had been fighting, but I had been utterly defeated.
“Just shut the fuck up.”
“Aah!”
I hurled Jin to the ground. Before I realized it, a blue pillar of light had formed in my right hand.
I knew it was pointless. I knew the Crows only followed orders. Even if things were this fucked up right now, the Crows could become allies or enemies depending on who paid them. Killing her would accomplish nothing and only bring loss.
Still, I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t control the rage boiling inside me. They were only words. She was only a fictional character I had created. The excuses no longer worked.
“Are you crying? Schluss Heinkel is crying over a mere servant?”
“······.”
I finally noticed. No wonder my vision had been blurry. Tears were pouring down my face.
Now I had a real reason to kill Jin. She had seen Schluss Heinkel cry. I couldn’t let her live and spread rumors. So she had to die. It wasn’t because emotion had overwhelmed me. It was necessity. A rational decision.
Yeah, fuck it. That was it.
I aimed Bappe at Jin’s face and slammed it down.
Crunch!
“Huh?”
“······.”
Right beside Jin’s face. Bappe had sunk deep into the ground. When I opened my fist it flew back into my hand instantly.
I had glimpsed it just now—something glittering in Jin’s pocket.
“What? You’re not killing me? Oh, I get it. You’re going to torture me the same way first?”
“No.”
I reached into Jin’s pocket and pulled it out. A white handkerchief fluttered free. A cute one with a small pink ribbon. It was the handkerchief Emilia occasionally carried. And it always carried mana—the exact wavelength only Emilia could produce.
“What the— aah!”
I placed my hand on Jin’s chest and clenched. The flow of mana through her body became completely visible to me. And beneath it, the foreign current hidden inside. I seized it.
I wouldn’t be fooled again.
“Uaaaaagh!”
Whoosh!
I yanked my arm back. The skin I held stretched and tore free. But the sensation was too bizarre to be real flesh. The thing that came out condensed in an instant and formed a vivid red bean shape. It throbbed as if alive.
Jin’s organ. She must have used her disguise technique to wrap her own innards in Emilia’s appearance.
“Fuck.”
Crunch!
Disgusted, I stomped it to pieces. I destroyed it completely so it could never be recovered.
Only after I caught my breath did I remember Emilia. I slowly—my neck creaking—turned my head. Afraid she might not be there. Afraid that even if she was, she would be in a horrific state. Suppressing my terror, I finally looked.
“Huuuk······.”
“Ha.”
She was there. The girl I had been searching for so desperately.
8 Shop Coins Awarded
It was real. There was a faint bruise under Emilia’s eye, but no serious injuries. Both legs were perfectly intact. Her chest rose and fell—she was breathing normally.
I had only just stopped crying, yet my chest swelled again and fresh tears threatened to spill. The thought that I had nearly killed this child with my own hands moments ago was so terrifying, so dizzying······.
“Huu······.”
“Feeling better?”
Emilia slowly opened her eyes. My body moved on its own. Before I knew it I was hugging her tightly.
But the first words that left her drowsy lips were—
“Oppa?”
“······.”
It ruined the mood. Just a little.