10-Stuttering
10-Stuttering
I didn't get involved in their revolution all this time.
More precisely, there was no reason to get involved.
In the week since the Guillotine Incident, Anfrey moved three more times.
At a grain warehouse east of Beren City, they extracted evidence of holy icon tampering; Ori infiltrated a church-sponsored banquet held at a noble's mansion and copied the entire ledger;
and Cael utterly humiliated a squad of Holy Knights who were forcibly collecting taxes in the southern slums.
All were successful, and all without me.
That's how the record of my previous life went. Success. Success. Success. No variables. No variables. No variables.
These were all operations that had gone smoothly even when I wasn't on the board, so there was no reason to butt in and change anything. If there was nothing to change, changing things would only create variables.
In the meantime, I ran errands.
I corrected Riche's formula—she had wasted three hours after misplacing a single variable, and when I found it in five minutes, instead of thanking me, she narrowed her eyes and asked, "How did you know?"
I replied, "I just saw it," and after that, whenever Riche worked on formulas, she glanced my way now and then. It was a look that could've been trust or suspicion, probably both.
I also ran errands for Ori. I went around three markets to buy mana circuit components; Ori, with half-closed eyes as if asleep, recited the list and I wrote it down.
The shopkeeper seemed to see me as an errand boy.
I couldn't argue since it was correct, but...
And Leard probably thought I was keeping my distance.
Whenever I didn't join an operation, he'd glance this way briefly, eyes weighing something, still reserving judgment.
Honestly...
It's not that I'm keeping my distance, you know.
It was just because I wasn't needed. This group was more capable than I thought.
But this operation was different.
======
I knew this one was different even before I unfolded the map.
In the records of my previous life, this operation was just two lines. Success. However, three believers died during the rescue.
That was all; the person who wrote the records must have thought two lines were enough. Because the result was what mattered. As long as it was a success.
How those two lines spread afterward wasn't in the records.
I knew because I'd heard it directly: Anfrey massacred believers. He barged in pretending to rescue and killed innocent believers.
The true nature of the heretic group was revealed. That story spread throughout Beren City.
Right now, Anfrey was building a name.
The Guillotine Incident was already circulating as a rumor—people who saw the Holy Knights knock down a peddler with a bundle of vegetables, people who heard the execution was stopped—word of mouth was spreading.
If the frame of 'mass murderer' stuck at this point, that name would take a different hold.
"I'll join too."
All eyes at the table turned to me at once.
Leard's eyes changed for a moment, a look that calculated something before asking why.
"For this one, I think it'd be better if I take care of the priests. The believers' condition will be unstable. In that situation, the priests could become a variable."
"Variable." Leard echoed the word.
"Yeah."
Leard looked at me, then shifted his gaze back to the map.
"Good."
It was an answer that could've been agreement or observation. He looks clueless, but he's surprisingly a deep thinker, that guy.
=======
I looked at the map again.
It was on the outskirts of Beren City. A facility owned by the Church, located two hours north of the city center, nestled in the hills—its official name was 'Saint Irena Nursing Home'.
"Here." Leard pointed with his finger. "The Church has been running this facility for fourteen years. Officially, it's a faith education facility. It says they only accept voluntary residents."
"Meaning there are people who aren't there voluntarily," Cael said.
"Sixteen people." Riche opened her notebook. "People who have admission records but no discharge records. All contact with their families was lost after admission."
"The slush fund?" Harlan asked.
"This facility is the window. Funds coming directly from Church headquarters are laundered through here. There are two sets of books: one for audits, one for the real deal. The real ledger is inside the facility."
"What's the size of the Holy Knights?" I asked.
"Fifty."
The room went quiet for a moment. It was excessive force for a nursing home—meaning either there was a lot to protect, or something that must not get out.
Harlan opened his bag and placed the contents on the table. They were small glass vials—some with powder, some with liquid, some with powder and liquid layered.
They were all different colors: colorless, pale yellow, and one that gleamed opal when held to the light.
"You're going to stop fifty with these?" Cael asked.
"That's right," Harlan answered shortly, and Cael stared at the vials for a long while before saying, "...I'll trust you."
Harlan didn't answer. He repacked his bag, his hands trembling. They always did. On the table, when packing, those hands always trembled slightly.
I watched those hands.
In my previous life, I'd never seen the person named Harlan in person.
He existed only in records: a pharmacist belonging to Anfrey. Expert in mana-science-based drugs. Low combat ability, specialized in rear support. That was all.
But the person who wrote the records didn't mention that his hands trembled.
=====
It was two in the morning.
The wind was still in the hollow of the hills, making it even colder. It was a frosted field, and with each step the grass broke silently. There were no torches, only moonlight.
We were at the outer wall of the nursing home. It was a stone wall, not tall. It didn't need to be—they probably never imagined the people inside would try to leave.
Harlan crouched in front of an outer wall vent and took out the first drug from his bag: a powder. It was colorless, so fine you couldn't tell if it was there even under light.
Harlan filled a small tube with the powder. His hands were trembling, but strangely, those trembling hands didn't spill a grain.
He filled it precisely, and though his fingers trembled as he closed the lid, the lid shut perfectly.
In other words, it was a hand that trembled but never made a mistake.
Because to Harlan, pharmaceuticals were a language—like a person who stutters but writes clearly.
He pushed the tube inside the vent and placed a finger on the mana catalyst attached to its end.
Swoosh.
There was no sound, no light. Harlan simply touched the catalyst and that was it—but no, what was visible wasn't everything.
I could feel it in my body: something invisible was beginning to spread along the air currents.
"It's not a sleep inducer," Harlan said quietly, not explaining, more like confirming to himself. "Consciousness remains. The body just stops obeying."
"How long?" Cael asked.
Harlan paused. His lips moved slightly, then he said, "Ten minutes."
It was exactly ten minutes, and soon the sounds beyond the outer wall began to change.
The sound of footsteps slowing, the sound of something heavy sinking slowly, the dull clank of armor hitting the ground.
Thud. Thump.
Thud.
Riche raised a finger from atop the wall. One. Two. On three, Cael kicked the door,
BANG-
the locked latch broke and the door swung wide open.
=====
We were inside.
Fifty Holy Knights were down—more precisely, not collapsed, but slumped.
Some leaning against walls, some half-lying on the floor, some frozen on the stairs.
All eyes were open, pupils moving, hands that tried to grasp swords clawing at the floor but stopped.
They were conscious but had no ownership of their bodies.
Cael walked through them, saying, "They're not hurt. It'll wear off in six hours."
One soldier followed Cael with his eyes, a furious glare.
Eyes that understood the situation but could do nothing. Cael smiled gently at those eyes—his signature blank stare.
I took a quick look around.
Fifty men in an instant, with that tiny glass vial of Harlan's.
Harlan was already heading deeper inside. He didn't look back, as if what he'd done held no particular emotion for him.
As if that wasn't what mattered right now. He must have known something more important was inside.
====
The deeper we went, the more the smell changed.
It was a medicinal smell, mixed with the scent of holy oil used by the Church, with disinfectant underneath, and beneath that something else—not so much a smell, but the texture of the air.
The air of an old space, of an unventilated space.
No one spoke. Not Cael, not Riche, not Leard. Because the smell was telling us what was inside.
We descended the underground stairs, and the deeper we went, the thicker the smell. Riche checked the lock at the front, taking five seconds, and with a clank the door opened.
The smell rushed out first.
There was a room. A room hard to call a room.
Iron rings were bolted to the walls, their purpose obvious without asking. There was a drain in the floor, and in the corner were instruments—shapes I'd never seen, but their purpose was guessable.
On the shelves, medicine bottles stood in rows with labels.
Harlan went over and read the labels.
"Harlan." Cael called.
"Just a moment." Harlan's voice was different. Low and flat.
After reading all the labels, Harlan stepped back. He gripped the straps of his bag with both hands; his hands were trembling, but this trembling was a different kind from when he'd handled the drugs earlier.
No one asked. There was no need—you could tell just by looking at the shelves, by the amount of medicine.
That this had been used not just once or twice, but for a long time, in large quantities, systematically.
And in one corner of the room, there were people.
Sixteen of them. Leaning on each other, against the walls, sitting on the floor—all alive, all conscious.
But their eyes were different. They had eyes, but no focus. The door opened and no one reacted. Cael entered and no one looked.
In a state of merely existing, nothing more.
Leard crouched in front of one. "Are you okay?" No answer. "You can get out of here. Together." Still no answer.
Leard stood and looked at Harlan.
Harlan set down his bag and knelt. He sat before the nearest person, a woman in her forties. Her eyes were on the ceiling, seeing nothing.
Harlan raised a hand before her eyes and waved, but there was no reaction.
He took the woman's wrist and felt her pulse. The trembling fingers paused the moment they touched the pulse, and in that instant, the trembling became precise.
Harlan stayed like that for a long while, silent.
"It's drugs," Harlan said, his voice low and heavy. "Long-term administration. The kind that maintains consciousness but suppresses the ego. These people can't make decisions on their own. They move only when given orders, and without orders, they're like this."
"How long?" Leard asked.
"Judging by their pulse, the fastest case is several months."
The room fell silent.
Harlan took out the opalescent liquid: a mana-based awakening agent. It worked by gradually rousing nerves suppressed by drugs, and administering it all at once could cause shock, so precise adjustment was needed.
Not starting with the worst cases, but the mildest.
Harlan began to move. He didn't rush.
One by one. He took each person's wrist, felt the pulse, looked into their eyes, checked the temperature of their hands, and then decided: what concentration, in what order. The judgment was neither fast nor slow, but precise.
His trembling hand tilted the glass vial.
The first was a man in his twenties. Vacant eyes. Harlan administered the drug and waited; barely thirty seconds later, the man's eyes changed. Something seemed to drift in hazily, like fog lifting. And a little more. And a little more.
The man looked at Harlan.
"This place."
His voice cracked—a voice unused for a long time. No, a voice that hadn't been allowed to be used.
"Where is this?"
Harlan answered, "We're on our way out."
That was all. He didn't explain, didn't try to reassure, didn't say it was okay. He just stated the fact, and that probably reached these people more.
For people who had been made unable to trust anyone for a long time.
Harlan moved on to the next person.
The second. The third. The fourth.
The room began to change little by little: some people's eyes came into focus, some moved their hands, some started to cry.
Cael simply sat beside them. Beside each one. Without a word, just beside them.
Cael knew that was all he could do right now.
Riche began packing all the medicine bottles from the shelves into her bag. They were evidence—they had to get out.
Leard stood at the entrance of the room, looking down the corridor with a complicated expression.
And I went the way Leard was looking, into the corridor.
=====
There were priests. Somewhere.
The facility didn't just have Holy Knights; people who administered drugs, gave orders, and kept the books were needed, and those people were somewhere.
In my previous life, that was the variable.
A priest who realized the Holy Knights had been neutralized came down to the basement, took believers hostage, and said he would kill them if we didn't back off.
Anfrey tried to negotiate, but the priest was already irrational, and he made the most horrific choice a terrified person could make.
That's how three died.
I walked the corridor. It was quiet; on the wall hung a holy icon. The Church's sun emblem.
An emblem that must have been looking down on what happened below. I didn't look at it. Because there was no one to answer.
Footsteps started from the top of the stairs, slow footsteps. Hesitant footsteps, trying to figure something out. They'd noticed above that the Holy Knights had gone quiet.
I waited at the bottom of the stairs.
Midway on the stairs, I locked eyes with three priests. White robes, scriptures in hand, and one of them held something else—short and thin, not a knife. I didn't want to know what.
I just looked at them without saying a word, and in those brief moments, the priests must have tried to read my face. Because it wasn't the face of someone here to negotiate.
One of the priests opened his mouth. "We are merely—"
"I saw what's in the basement."
I cut him off. My voice wasn't loud—there was no need. The stairs were narrow, the distance close, and these words didn't need to be heard far.
The priest shut his mouth.
"The drain." I spoke one item at a time. Slowly. "The rings on the walls. The medicine bottles on the shelves. And the people down there, whose eyes are coming back into focus right now."
The stairwell fell silent.
"Is this what you did in God's name?"
No one could say a word.
"Did God command that? Directly?"
No answer.
One of the three averted his eyes, and another silently set down what he was holding on the stairs.
That made me angrier.
"Get out." I didn't raise my voice. "All three. Now."
The priests didn't move, unsure if they were too scared or holding their ground.
I took one step up, and the priests took one step back.
"Are you even human?"
The three priests ascended the stairs. Without looking back. Their footsteps quickly faded.
I went back down the stairs with a bitter expression.
=====
Harlan was taking the pulse of the twelfth person.
The room was different from before: eleven people had regained focus, some were sitting up, some were holding Cael's hands.
Some leaned against the wall, speaking their own names.
They remembered their names, and strangely, that was a relief.
The thirteenth. The fourteenth. The fifteenth.
Harlan's hands kept moving. They didn't stop, trembling but unstoppable.
Vials tilted, fingers felt pulses, eyes looked at each person one by one.
The last person.
Harlan sat before them and took their wrist.
He stayed longer than before, his lips moving minutely.
And he made a decision.
He took out a vial, checked the concentration, shook his head; took out another, looked at it, and shook his head again.
He took out something else from deep in his bag: a powder, opalescent, wrapped separately.
He had made this specifically for this person.
Thinking that, my throat tightened oddly—Harlan had known the condition of all sixteen in advance.
Ori had gathered the information, and Harlan had used it to prepare drugs tailored to each person beforehand.
For people whose faces and names he didn't know. Separately, for the worst-case person.
He administered the powder and waited—only a minute, and soon the eyes opened.
"Where."
A voice came out, cracked and dry.
"Where is this, here."
Harlan answered, "We're on our way out."
That same line again. The same words, no explanation, and that was all.
But it was enough.
The person looked at Harlan with bleary eyes.
"On our way," they repeated the same words. "Out."
"Yeah," Harlan said.
That was all.
As Harlan packed his bag, sixteen empty vials clinked.
=====
Soon, the people who had come to their senses.
And the escape proceeded without pause.
The sixteen began to move.
Not all could walk, so Cael supported them; Riche checked the path ahead; Ori read the perimeter situation via communication.
We passed among the downed Holy Knights, their eyes following us.
Of course, they were in no state to do anything.
The outer wall came into view.
It was the exit, a side door leading to the hills. Ori had opened it beforehand, and moonlight streamed in. Cold dawn air rushed in.
One of the sixteen stopped, breathing in that air.
They stood there drinking in the dawn air, looking at the moon, and no one hurried them.
It was only a moment,
and soon they started walking again.
I let out a breath.
If things stayed like this, it was good. A different outcome from before. Three hadn't died,
the priests hadn't come down to the basement, and we could finish without incitement.
Anfrey's name could remain different.
It worked.
It's a success.
—was what I thought.
That moment.
Far away, in the direction of the hills, lights appeared.
Torches.
Not just one, but many—people heading this way. Still far, but I could see they were getting closer.
Holy Knight uniforms. Reinforcements.
It wasn't unexpected, nor were we unprepared: Leard was already signaling Ori with his eyes, and Ori grabbed a magic tool.
But—
Definitely, in my previous life, there was no record of this.
At the front.
The person walking towards us at the very front of the Holy Knight group.
Torchlight illuminated the face,
and I knew that face.
Red, blood-colored eyes. A white eyepatch over one eye.
And red maple-colored hair.
Under the torchlight.
There was distance, but our eyes met, and the figure stopped walking,
and looked at me.
"...!"
"What's wrong, Victor?"
Leard asked, noticing my strange reaction, but I couldn't answer.
Those eyes.
Eyes that had found their target. The same eyes as at the auction house, and that night.
"...No way."
I'd been complacent.
The complacent illusion that only I had regressed.
The Holy Knights moving now must be Mae-hwa's plan.
To catch Anfrey, moving the knights would have been enough, and if that had happened, the revolutionary group would have been destroyed instantly.
But the reason for moving now, specifically...
"...Is it me?"
"Is there a problem? Has something changed?"
"...Leard."
I called Leard in a low voice.
"Take these people and run. As fast as you can."
"Otherwise, it's over here."
"!"
"...Got it. I'll buy some time—"
"No."
"Don't think about fighting. Just run. I'll stop that person."
"Victor! Even so—!"
"Hurry."
Leard shut his mouth.
"I'm not doing this because I don't trust you.
On the contrary, it's because I trust you. Don't argue, just run. Those guys are on a completely different level from the Holy Knights before."
"Then it's all the more impossible. Against people like that, alone—"
"Yeah. Alone." I said. "This is possible because I'm alone."
"..."
"I'll come back safely. I promise."
Leard paused, looked at me, and spoke slowly.
"...Understood. Victor. I, no—" He paused briefly, then said again, "Anfrey believes in you."
For the first time, his eyes were without calculation, pure.
"...Yeah."
With those words, Leard quickly led the group away behind him,
and I stepped forward in the opposite direction.
The cold dawn air.
Under the moonlight, Mae-hwa was watching me. Not the others, just me.
...And he slowly opened his mouth.
"F-finally."
"I finally found you, Victor."
"...Yeah."
I murmured lowly.
"That disgusting stutter of yours is still the same."