Chapter 1
Chapter 1
A familiar dark room.
Inside that darkness, I was captured, my hands and feet bound by rings of light.
And in front of me stood a girl watching me with lifeless eyes.
“…Mister, you’re awake? How do you feel? Are you hurt anywhere?”
The girl who called me “mister.” The protagonist of this world. The magical girl who protects this world.
Magical Girl Estia… Yeo-reum softly called out to me.
“Hey, Yeo-reum? Um… what is this…?”
I tried to act calm, pretending to be confused as I held out my bound hands.
Yeo-reum stared at them for a moment, then spoke in a quiet, unusually flat voice that didn’t sound like her at all.
“Mister. I know everything now. That you’re a monster.”
At her words, I tried to move my body, but it was a meaningless struggle.
The restraints created by Yeo-reum, who had now become stronger than me, were something I could never break.
“I know how terrifying of a monster you are. How you were treated even among monsters. How powerful you really are.”
There was no point in resisting anymore. That was the conclusion I reached as I let my strength drain away.
Yeah. I had always expected this day would come.
In the original path of this world, I was supposed to be a monster who would violate Yeo-reum and then be killed by her. That was how this world was written.
So… I guess this is where I die.
But I didn’t regret it. I had seen Yeo-reum grow into someone so amazing.
Even if I couldn’t stop her from becoming a magical girl, I had raised her well enough that she grew smoothly into her role, strong enough now to protect this world.
Accepting my fate, I closed my eyes and spoke to Yeo-reum, the magical girl I had raised.
“Yeo-reum, if possible… could you make it painless? Even if I’m a monster, even if I’ve done terrible things… I still raised you. If there’s even a little bit of affection left for me…”
“Mister, what are you talking about?”
At her sudden reply, I lifted my head in shock.
Yeo-reum had stepped closer to me.
And she looked down at me with a dark, unsettling gaze.
It was nothing like the image of the “Magical Girl of Light” she was known for.
“Mister, you’re too reckless. Even though you’re weaker than me now, you keep trying to protect me. So…”
“This is… for you, mister.”
Her chilling voice made my mind grow even more confused.
How did it come to this? When did Yeo-reum start looking at me like that?
When did I make a mistake?
As my consciousness slowly faded, I tried to retrace everything I had done, searching for the moment I went wrong.