Let's Break Up
Let's break up.
“...”
And so I stood, at last, in front of my own door. My body ached to collapse right where it was, yet my feet refused to carry me any closer. Because beyond that door was Sera. Because a face I couldn't bear to see was waiting for me on the other side.
— Mmmngh...….
Sera, stripped down to nothing but lingerie, crawling between the Association President's legs. That hideous, degrading sight.
“Fuck....”
No matter how violently I shook my head, the horrific image wouldn't come loose.
Clench.
I gripped my resolve so hard the blood drained from my hand.
I can't be with you anymore. I can't trust you. So let's break up.
I held the words behind my lips, ready to spill them the instant I opened my mouth.
Beep-beep-beep-beep, beep. Click.
I opened the door.
“...?”
A rich, pungent smell hit me from the entryway. The musty sweetness of soy sauce and paste pricked at my nose.
“Oh! Oppa, you're home!”
Sera came running from the kitchen, an apron cinched around her waist. And beneath it, she was wearing the exact same outfit I'd seen in the bathroom earlier today — a white shirt with its sleeves rolled up, and a short black skirt that barely covered the tops of her knees.
...So what I had witnessed was real after all.
She flung herself at me.
Before I had any gap to push her away, Sera had buried her face in my chest and was sniffing away.
“Mm, you pass!”
“...Pass what?”
“If you'd smelled like another woman's perfume, I was going to kick you straight out the door. You were unreachable all day, you know. But you pass!”
Her sheer shamelessness wrung a hollow laugh out of me before I could stop it. Was it because her own conscience wasn't clean — that here she was, doubting me, the innocent one?
Whooosh—.
The living room window stood wide open, and the breeze rushing through it sent Sera's hair dancing.
And just like that — it was you the wind swayed, not me.
“You haven't eaten yet, have you? Tonight, forget the delivery food—”
With a playful look, Sera crossed her arms and jerked her chin toward the table.
“Ta-daa! A home-cooked meal, made by Sera herself!”
The kitchen table was laid out with dishes, each one plated with careful, tidy precision. Behind it, though, the sink was buried under a filthy landslide of every pot she'd dirtied. A front and a back that didn't match in the slightest.
“...Sera.”
“What? ...No, wait, don't say anything! It's definitely delicious. I followed the recipe to the letter, I swear. Try it first, then tell me!”
Beaming, Sera scraped a chair back across the floor and sat down across from me, propping her chin on both hands, watching me with eyes brimming with expectation.
Creeeak.
Instead of an answer, I took my seat without a word. It was only right to end things face to face. And even this sense of betrayal existed, in the end, only because of the devotion Sera had given me all this time.
“What? Don't tell me I have to hand you the chopsticks too? You get a job and turn into even more of a baby? Here, let noona—”
“Sera.”
“Hm? What? Are you sick? What's with that face? Was work really that brutal? Don't tell me somebody at the company gave you a hard time?!”
That affection-soaked gaze kept trying to dissolve my certainty back into doubt. Before it was too late. Before the regret grew any heavier.
“Let's break up.”
I spat out the words I'd been swallowing the whole way here.
“...What?”
Sera froze — halfway out of her chair, still leaning in toward me.
“Wh-what is that supposed to mean...? Y-you don't joke about that at the dinner table. Come here, my big baby—”
“I said, let's break up.”
“...?”
Looking like she couldn't comprehend a single word, Sera slumped heavily back against her chair.
“What are you even saying right now...?”
“Are you deaf? We're breaking up.”
“No... this is way too out of nowhere... Oppa, are you drunk? Or did you hit your head or something?”
Nothing was getting through. Fine. I understood. Because the facts you knew and the facts I knew were different. To you — who believed I had no idea about your affair — my breakup notice could only land like a bolt from the blue.
I was just about to drag out the business with that President bastard, something I detested even having in my mouth, when—
“I mean it... don't do this....”
Tears spilled down the line of her jaw. Sera opened her mouth, her voice crawling down to something small and broken.
“I... I have no one but you, Oppa...!”
And then she was screaming, the tip of her nose stained scarlet.
...How revolting. Watching her shamelessly pile up the lie that she had “no one but me” — after handing her body over to another man.
Then—
A single word surfaced in my head, paired with a green light. Truth.
“What...?”
“I love you this much, *hic*, so how can you throw out 'let's break up' so easily...?”
“But you—”
“There's no one but you in my whole world—! If it isn't you, I don't need anything else...! So how, how could you...!”
I was reeling. My Truth Discernment had never been wrong. Not once. It took no account of my judgment or my common sense — its only function was to sort truth from lies in whatever the target said. And yet Sera's words — there's no one but you in my world, if it isn't you I need nothing — were true. She had been on the verge of sliding her bra down at another man's feet, and all of it was true.
“Then I'll just... I'll just die...! If you're going to throw me away, I'll throw myself off first—!”
With that, Sera bolted up from her seat and, her face a wreck of tears, strode straight for the living room window.
And right now, there was no room left in my skull. No spare capacity to weigh right against wrong. So — faster than thought, my body moved on its own.
Snatch.
I seized Sera's wrist and pulled hard.
Thud.
Drawn in by my hand, she tumbled straight into my chest.
“Hck...! Sob....”
Her buried head quivered against me. I felt the trembling through my chest. Warm. Sera's warmth was still — maddeningly — gentle and warm. After absolutely everything that had happened.
“You're mean...! You're really, really mean...!”
[ ▦▦ has reached its maximum value. ]
A voice rang through my skull as I stroked Sera's hair. Censored again — but this time, I thought I knew what lay beneath the black bars. It was love. The fuel for my new power was filled by my love for Sera.
“...I must have been really worn out. I wasn't in my right mind. I was even seeing things that weren't there....”
[Special condition met.]
[New sub-skill unlocked: Past Vision (A)]
That useless voice chimed in my head yet again. What good was seeing anyone's past? The only thing I wanted filling my eyes right now was the Sera of the present.
Tap... tap-tap.
Sera's limp little fists drummed against my shoulders.
“You jerk...! You big jerk...! My life is nothing without you in it...!”
“...I'm sorry.”
“*Sob* — then hurry up and ptooie-ptooie-ptooie it away...! Promise Sera you'll never, ever say that to her again—!”
Sliiide—.
As Sera lifted her head, the apron strings slipped loose and the apron slid down off her. Two buttons of her shirt hung undone, baring the hollow of her collarbone and the pale line of her neck. And—
White...?
A flash of white bra strap.
The lingerie she'd worn at the penthouse had been black. I was sure of it.
— That, I'll tear off with my own hands.
“...”
The President bastard's filthy voice curled around my ear again, and the five minutes I hadn't witnessed with my own eyes unfolded behind them. Sera hadn't stripped off her lingerie herself. The President's hand had torn it from her. And then Sera had appeared in front of me in different underwear — brazen-faced, thick-skinned, as if nothing had happened. It was only my imagination. But the circumstances were too damningly clear.
“...Sera.”
“Whyyy...! I told you to hurry up and take it back!”
“Okay, okay — ptooie, ptooie, ptooie. There, all better? Let's eat first, okay? It'd be a waste to leave it like this. You went out of your way to cook for me.”
Just as I moved to shove this filthy body away, a reason gone suddenly ice-cold seized me by the collar. Ending it now would be a loss for me. The dirty feelings I hadn't yet washed clean would stay caked on me, layer upon layer, and go on tormenting me.
“...Fine. But I'm really, really upset, you know? You get that, right? A thousand kisses' worth of upset. You know what I mean, don't you? Hm?”
Sera's behavior had just taught me something. That whatever the reason, I was not the impatient one in this relationship. That Sera was still beautiful far beyond the reach of a man like me — and yet the scales of her affection tipped the other way. That no matter what I was planning, there was no need to rush.
After coaxing and coddling Sera and sending her home, it was now past three in the morning. I lay there, eyes wide open, watching the night crawl by.
“...Revenge.”
There was only one thing left for me to do. Revenge. Whether Sera belonged on that list, I'd have to dig a little deeper — but one target was already certain.
“The Association President. That motherfucking bastard.”
To me, an F-rank Awakener, the President had been an existence I was afraid to so much as name. A mountain so impossibly high that no amount of reaching would ever touch it — so far up I couldn't even make out its shape. But now, S-rank authority had been granted to me. And in the same breath, I had become a dog of the very Association he ruled. My abilities hadn't fully bloomed yet, but one thing was unmistakable: I was getting stronger. Yesterday, B-rank Spatial Contemplation. Today, A-rank Past Vision. One by one, skills worth using were unlocking for me too. My fist still couldn't reach that son of a bitch — but I was one step closer than yesterday.
Without fail. I would find a way to kill the man who had stolen the most precious thing I had.
“...Past Vision.”
I closed my eyes and called Sera to mind — and through a wispy white fog, a scene I had never lived through spread out before me.
Fwip!
“Well, well. What brings someone as grand as yourself all the way out to see a lowlife like me?”
Sera, her face younger. And in front of her, sneering down at her—
“Kim Mansu...?”
My supervisor — from back when Sera and I had only just started dating. Kim Mansu, section chief of a Hunter Association subcontractor.
What did that bastard do to Sera? Why?
“Please... please, just spare my oppa, I'm begging you.... I'm asking you like this.... Okay...?”
Her voice thick with tears, Sera sank to her knees on the floor. The sheer incomprehensibility of it made my skull begin to throb.
“Ha, well, what can I say? It's out of our hands too. What, you'd rather we all die together? That poor bastard — one neck out of him and the whole company lives. Simple math, no?”
“Th-that's illegal...! I'll report all of it. I know you people framed my oppa...!”
“Do as you like. By all means. You seem to think we spend our days sucking cock for pocket change, hauling the Association's shit on our backs? All we need is for things to look right, I'm telling you. Looks, that's all. The Association doesn't need the real culprit — it just needs a tail to cut off. Honestly, you naive little thing.”
The flow of the conversation alone wasn't enough to piece the situation together.
“Clues... come on, clues....”
Because my ▦▦ was full to bursting, what met my eyes now was far more than just a black void. Sera's past — down to the scenery around her — was fully projected before me. Something here that could serve as a clue. Something that could pin down where this stretch of the past stood in time.
“...March 11, 2025.”
On the desk, the date glowing on what looked like a digital clock. This moment was from a year and some months ago. And if it was March 11—
“...The Gate Rupture Incident.”
In early March of last year, Kim Mansu's company had been implicated in the Gate Rupture Incident. A catastrophic accident — one that spiraled straight into charges of Association High Treason. And that man was, even now, trying to weld me to it. To turn me — the lowest rookie on the totem pole — into his bullet catcher.
“Th-there are other people, aren't there! People other than my Dojun oppa...!”
But how did Sera know something even I hadn't known?
“Look at this, look at this. Even you're standing there telling me to go offer up some other poor sucker instead. So from where I sit, whether I hand over Kim Dojun's neck or some other bastard's — what difference does it make to me?”
Except I had gone on working without a hitch, completely unconnected to that incident. Because the real culprit had been caught. Because a man named Lee Jihyeok had been sentenced to death on charges including Intentional Monster Incitement.
Then how? Had Sera's sincerity actually gotten through to him? Had the sight of her kneeling there, weeping for my sake, moved Kim Mansu's black heart?
“...Whatever you need, just say the word.... Money, or if not that, I could do free promotion for you....”
“Money? Please. How long have you even been in this business? At best you'd scrape together a hundred million won — maybe. Advertising's the same story. That famous, are you, missy? Honestly — the pair of you, a matched set, neither one knows a damn thing about how the world works.”
Kim Mansu snorted, and his gaze slid down to Sera at his feet. With a look so naked it made me want to kill him all over again.
“Then... then what am I supposed to do...”
“I told you a minute ago, didn't I? Couldn't care less who Kim Dojun offers up in his place. From where I'm standing, it's nothing.”
“Th-then...?”
“Which means the payment for what you're asking can be settled with something that's also nothing.”
And with that, Kim Mansu rose to his feet. Then, slow as syrup, his pudgy fingers reached for Sera.
“...?!”
“Just once. Just this once, right here with me — a proper, satisfying go. Yeah?”
“Wh-what... did you say...?”
“What's with the deer-in-headlights eyes? You think I'm asking for something extraordinary? Just the basic service, hm? Then I'll make that call this very second. Not Kim Dojun — hmm... ah. What was it, Jihyeok? There was a guy who came in a few days ahead of Dojun.”
Sliip.
His filthy hand wormed its way inside Sera's coat. And then—
Squeeze.
“...?!”
Kim Mansu's thick hand had closed over Sera's breast.
“Don't like it? Then say so, and we part ways, clean and simple. That prick's fucked now anyway, so you go find yourself a new man too. With a face like that, why would you waste it on a—”
At the old pig's drivel, Sera sprang up from her seat.
Yes. That's it. Walk right out of there, just like that. That bastard — I'll kill him here and now. The me of the future made it through all right, after all—
Softly—
Sera's hand came to rest over his right hand, the one still kneading her breast. And—
Sera guided his remaining left hand to her other breast.
“You have to... keep your promise....”
What......?