84. My Buff is a Drug
84. My Buff is a Drug
The cafe table was tucked into a secluded corner, and given the late hour, it was so quiet there that we could talk without worrying about anyone overhearing. It made for an easy, comfortable conversation.
"First of all, I really am a student here at the Academy, but I didn't come here to climb the ranks as an Awakened like the others. As I mentioned earlier, I'm from a secret society whose name can't be revealed. I was dispatched here under their orders. My mission is to protect this facility from the clutches of the Aberrations."
Hye-yong gave a surprisingly plausible explanation about what the Aberrations were.
Kwon Jin-ah clenched her fists, her face on the verge of tears.
'How could something like that show up in front of me? What am I supposed to do?'
Whether it was thanks to switching his buffs back to Acting and Persuasion, Jin-ah was taking Hye-yong's words as gospel, even though the story sounded fairly outlandish.
"Anyway, I got an instinctively suspicious feeling from you, so I kept digging into your background. When I saw you jump that woman in the alley, that's when I stepped in. If I hadn't stopped you then, you would have become a real murderer."
Hye-yong put on a stunningly convincing show of regret.
"And after that, the Aberration possessing you would have fully awakened, and you'd have turned into a monster who could think of nothing but killing women. The organization's trackers would have caught you, and a fate too miserable for words would be waiting for you..."
Hye-yong spun a fitting story based on her testimony.
Kwon Jin-ah tensed up and asked,
"The fact that you're telling me all this..."
Before she knew it, even her speech had become formal and polite.
"That's right. You're already involved, as much as someone can be. So deep there's no way out, no matter what."
Ah, no...!
She screamed inwardly.
As it happened, she was also the type with an excessively vivid imagination.
Scenes involving secret societies she knew of—whether from reality or fiction—already flickered through her mind like a film reel.
"I-if I'm really possessed by an Aberration... d-does that mean... live experiments or something like that..."
As she spoke, Kwon Jin-ah was trembling for real.
'Huh... would you look at that.'
Hye-yong tossed out another remark as if throwing a stone.
"The Aberration possessing you is a pretty severe type... if we're not careful, it could cause a massive number of casualties."
"H-heek, th-then what's going to happen to me?"
"The higher-ups told me to dispose of you. ...The easiest way to weaken an Aberration that's possessed someone is to kill its host."
Kwon Jin-ah's face drained of color the moment she heard that.
"D-d-don't, p-please don't kill me...! I'll do anything...!"
Judging by her reaction, she seemed to believe every word of it.
This Persuasion and Acting Skill buff combination might actually be monstrously effective.
"You really mean that? Anything?"
"I-I mean...! I said I'll do anything!!"
"Anyway, calm down. If the decision had been to dispose of you, I wouldn't be sitting here having this conversation with you. How about taking a deep breath?"
"Haah, h-heek, haah..."
Kwon Jin-ah, who had been wound up to the extreme, placed a hand on her chest and barely managed to steady her breathing.
Disposal, elimination, death.
Those words had suddenly barged in while she was already so confused she hardly knew what was what, clouding Kwon Jin-ah's judgment to near its limit.
And on top of that, right after he finished speaking, an Anxiety Induction and Amplification Buff slipped in without her ever noticing!
Hye-yong waited long enough for her to sink properly into that anxiety, then reapplied his Persuasion and Acting Skill buffs and drove the point home.
"It's not like I liked the order myself. Those bastards just have to give the orders, but in the end, I'm the one who has to get his hands dirty. So I raised absolute hell. I argued, why do we have to do it that way when there's a way to save her? Defying orders means disciplinary action, but... I refused to the end. Because I didn't want to kill you when you haven't done a single thing wrong."
"Ahh."
"In the end, I agreed to take on every problem that arises as a condition for letting you live. Not that I got out of the disciplinary measures, of course."
Her judgment clouded, Kwon Jin-ah was already completely absorbed in the story Hye-yong had fabricated.
As she listened, tears brimmed at the corners of her eyes.
'Th-this person... he's a total stranger, and for my sake...'
Kwon Jin-ah wiped her tears with a tissue from the table and spoke.
"This method to save me... what is it?"
"You growing stronger and developing an immunity to the Aberration. Starving the Aberration inside you to death."
"I-is such a thing even possible?"
"It's difficult. We're not even sure it's possible. But I believe. In your potential."
Believe?
What on earth about her did he believe in?
Kwon Jin-ah's question was thick with doubt as she asked,
"What about me makes you say I have potential...?"
"That mental fortitude."
"...!"
Maybe it was the Acting Skill buff, but Hye-yong himself was getting sucked into this utterly ridiculous play.
Right now, he was the very picture of a field agent from a nationwide secret society.
"The Aberration possessing you, it's a considerably powerful one. So powerful that even I'm at my limit just holding it partially in check. But you're not even a spiritual ability user, and yet you endured that thing's temptations with a will of solid steel."
Kwon Jin-ah shook her head.
"I-I still lost in the end."
"I told you, I was watching you for quite a while. Any other person would have been completely consumed within two days. It's because you're you that you held on that long, Kwon Jin-ah. Because it was you!"
I have... a talent for it?
Because it's me, I held on?
As she listened to Hye-yong's words, Kwon Jin-ah felt something rising from deep inside.
What is this?
What kind of emotion is this?
Countless unstable feelings were mixing together, little by little.
The only thing she was sure of was that she couldn't express it.
"Kwon Jin-ah, you have a talent for it."
Something was.
"The talent to kill Aberrations."
Swelling up.
"There are sometimes... people who aren't ability users but have a talent for killing Aberrations."
Continuously.
"Join me. I'll take full responsibility for everything. I believe in your potential. Become my subordinate, Kwon Jin-ah. If you swear to follow any order, I'll believe in you until the very end."
"Then..."
It swelled all the way to the top of her head—
"The Aberration that's tormenting you, I'll erase it. I'll take responsibility and give you back your normal life."
—and overflowed, bursting out.
'This man... how, how could he...'
A drama produced by her own imagination played out in Kwon Jin-ah's head.
The secret society executives giving the order to eliminate her.
Hye-yong standing firm and refusing.
A man who refused to bow to all manner of external pressure, saw a single will through to the end, and eventually took on a seemingly hopeless task that showed no signs of potential, bearing all responsibility—the lonely sight of his back.
All rendered by the highest-performance graphics card in existence.
'He could have just eliminated me. He went that far for me, someone he didn't even know. Just what is this man...!!'
Clench.
Kwon Jin-ah gripped her fist tighter than she ever had before.
She didn't want to live trembling with guilt anymore—the guilt of having killed someone, of having possibly killed someone.
She didn't want to be devoured by the Aberration.
So she wanted to believe.
In this man.
This man who was doing so much for her, a complete stranger!
She wiped away the tears streaming down her face once more, and when Kwon Jin-ah opened her eyes, deep resolve filled her pupils.
"I'll swear it. I'll follow any order. I'll become your subordinate."
The man grinned.
In that moment, time seemed inexplicably slower.
The man's mouth slowly opened.
"From now on, when it's just the two of us, call me Boss."
At the same time, Hye-yong created a buff that granted the emotions of Joy and Relief and cast it.
"...Yes, Boss."
Calling Hye-yong "Boss," Kwon Jin-ah felt a strange joy and relief.
-
July 11th (Wed), 11:33 PM
Inside the shower in Kwon Jin-ah's room.
Shhhhhhh!
The water poured down in heavy streams.
Jin-ah wasn't normally the type to turn the water pressure up this high, but today she especially wanted to.
'...'
With her eyes closed, feeling the stream of water, she recalled again everything the Boss had told her today.
— So long as I can suppress it, you're safe. Just go about your days as if nothing happened, like any ordinary day.
— But keep this in mind. You have to receive the Aberration Control Buff from me at least once every two weeks, or you won't be able to hold out.
— Any longer than that and it gets dangerous. Once the Aberration starts to rampage, even I won't be able to help you from that point on.
— I pray it never comes to the point where I have to kill you with my own hands.
'I've... become a member of an organization whose identity I don't even know.'
It felt like she had stepped foot into an incredibly dangerous place.
How had it come to this?
She'd cried her fill today, but tears threatened to leak out again.
'Haa. Look at the state of my life.'
Aberration, secret society, ability users. The talent to kill Aberrations...
Countless keywords buzzed busily inside Kwon Jin-ah's head.
Amid the overwhelming complexity and dizziness, Kwon Jin-ah's brain eventually chose rationalization.
'Maybe... this is for the best. Once you're possessed by an Aberration, living like a normal person is out of the question anyway. That impulse. I know because I've experienced it. It's the kind you can never, ever resist. If the Boss hadn't discovered me, I definitely would have become a murderer.'
She could never hide it.
In the end, she'd just be caught by the police and live in prison until she died, or be caught by the trackers of that secret society and eliminated.
She recalled Hye-yong's face once again.
The face she had recalled over and over today.
The highest-performance graphics card in existence rendered another drama.
'If the Boss had silently followed orders.'
She would have been killed.
'If the Boss had said he wouldn't take responsibility.'
A tracker would have killed her.
'Possessed by some strange Aberration, I was a dead woman walking no matter what.'
She hadn't been able to sleep properly, every night plagued by extreme terror.
The guilt of having killed someone.
The anxiety of not knowing when she'd be caught.
Day after precarious day—any one of which could have been her last—her mental fortitude had been steadily whittled away.
Ah, what would her parents think if they found out this truth?
That their one and only precious daughter was a murderer who strangled a girl her own age.
What would her friends think?
At the very least, even if her life were ruined, the only thing she couldn't bear was for her parents to find out.
To have friends she thought were close call her creepy, denounce her as human trash.
Kwon Jin-ah might have looked fine on the outside, but inside she was worn down to the absolute limit.
That was when Hye-yong appeared and said those things.
— I believe in your potential. The Aberration that torments you, I'll erase it.
— I'll take full responsibility and give you back your normal life.
That person told her.
That he believed in her potential.
That he would eliminate the Aberration.
That he would take responsibility and give back her normal life.
'Ahh...'
Kwon Jin-ah felt as though she only now understood the emotion she'd felt while talking with Hye-yong.
It was liberation from guilt.
— I'll swear it. I'll follow any order. I'll become your subordinate.
The moment she spoke those words aloud, it felt as if all the accumulated anxiety and guilt she had endured and could no longer bear softened and melted away.
'I never killed anyone! I was just a victim. I... I am...'
The tears streaming from Kwon Jin-ah's eyes mixed with the water from the showerhead and flowed down.
Squeak, squeak.
She turned off the water and dried her face with a towel. There wasn't a single trace of weak tears to be found on her face, no matter how hard you looked.
It was the face of someone who had made a firm resolution.
'I didn't kill anyone. I won't be eaten by some pathetic Aberration. They said I have plenty of talent for it. If I just follow orders diligently, I can return to a normal daily life.'
She recalled Hye-yong's face.
'Because that's what the Boss said...'
A man who had defied an organization's disposal order as if it were nothing—refused it because he didn't want to kill a stranger he'd barely exchanged words with.
Someone to be grateful to—who, knowing the odds of overcoming the Aberration were low, had sacrificed himself, shouldered all responsibility, and believed in her potential.
'Boss.'
It had only been a few hours.
Even though it had only been a few hours since they met and talked, the existence called Hye-yong was growing uncontrollably large inside her heart.
While Kwon Jin-ah was steeling her resolve like that, Hye-yong was...
Pang! Pang! Pang!
Lying down and furiously kicking his blanket.
'Wow, what the fuck is this? It's so much more cringe than I thought!'
Now he realized it—the Acting Skill buff had a fatal side effect.
The side effect that even he would get sucked into the act and lose himself completely!
'And what the hell was with the "Boss" shit, totally out of nowhere?!'
At some point, Hye-yong had been running entirely on autopilot, inventing new terminology, adding backstory, and delivering a full-fledged impassioned performance.
"Hoo!"
Silence followed the sigh.
Quiet now, Hye-yong fell into anguish.
'Was this really the right thing to do?'
The original plan had been to use the murder as leverage to blackmail Kwon Jin-ah, destroy all her peripheral relationships, break her down as a person, and condition her to depend solely on him.
But perhaps because he was still not ruined enough as a human being, he simply could not bring himself to use such a ruthless method.
So he decided to compromise appropriately.
By removing her guilt and leaving only the burden.
A shift from non-burnable trash to recyclable.
In the midst of all that, he hadn't expected the Acting Skill buff he'd improvised on the spot to make him roleplay that hard—to get him that deeply absorbed.
'L-let's just watch the situation for now. See how Kwon Jin-ah reacts.'
Hye-yong couldn't sleep properly that night, tormented by self-loathing.