You Don't Have It
You Don't Have It
"What on earth..."
Yoo Chae-rin.
She felt a moment of bewilderment at the sight before her.
Her reason for coming today was nothing special. She had simply come to relay information, as usual. Coincidentally, some rather important news had arrived today.
Then she happened to hear a woman shouting near the forest, felt a spark of curiosity, and that was the whole reason she had come here.
Just wondering what kind of lunatic was yelling in this forest.
But... she had never expected to witness a scene like this.
Her eyes took in a woman with her top stripped off. Thank goodness the stream wasn't on. She'd nearly gotten a strike.
Was she trying to jump Yor like that time before...?
No, if that were the case, both of them looked far too relaxed.
'Huh, then...?'
For a moment, her thoughts veered in 'that direction.' I won't bother explaining exactly where 'that direction' is.
But those thoughts were brief; she soon shook her head.
By the look of the atmosphere between the two of them, they weren't comfortable enough with each other to do something like that.
Yor spotted Chae-rin and asked, looking at her.
"Chae-rin? Wait, what are you doing here all of a sudden?"
"Well, I heard some kind of noise coming from here, so..."
"Yor? Chae-rin? Are you two acquainted?"
Nikki cut into their exchange.
Her lips were twisted into a crooked smile.
"Aha... Could the reason you said you couldn't come be because of her? Because you couldn't get over a mere lover?"
"L-Lover?!"
"No, what the hell kind of bullshit is that..."
Yor frowned as if he found it absurd.
It was a completely forced guess.
There was no proof to speak of, no basis. And the context didn't match, either.
Chae-rin had simply happened to set foot here, nothing more.
But none of that mattered to Nikki.
Her trigger had already been pressed a little.
'Trusting someone who isn't your own kind. What utter foolishness...'
The truth was, even after her tenth birthday passed, Nikki had once lived among people for a short while.
Her family, which placed great importance on honor, wanted to hide the fact that a demon's kin had appeared in their house.
Because of that, she was cast out of her home, but in exchange, she survived.
As a Manifestor, she used her physical abilities to become an adventurer.
She had to earn a living, after all. Adventuring, which paid no mind to things like lineage, suited her perfectly.
It had gone rather smoothly.
She made close colleagues, many juniors looked up to her, and she had even dated a man she connected with.
She had even thought... perhaps she could reveal to these people that she had the 'Demon's Blood.'
Just how foolish that thought was is now explained by her circumstances in Lemegeton.
-You motherfucker! Bring an axe!!
-Damn it! That demon spawn was pretending to be human this whole time?!
-I'm sorry, darling, please, just spare my life...
For one person to trust another is a sin.
For a human cursed from birth to wish for normalcy is nothing but greed.
Watching her own kin pretend to be ordinary people, she felt something dark rising up inside her.
"Hey, you. You don't even know what this bastard's real identity is, do you?"
"Huh, me?"
Perhaps that was why. Why she casually revealed Yor's identity.
"That guy is a Manifestor. He has Demon's Blood."
"Hey!"
Bewilderment spread across Yor's eyes. Seeing that, Nikki snickered.
To be clear, this was her acting on her own initiative.
The Lemegeton Cult had taken the stance of hiding information as much as possible, after all.
But she couldn't understand it.
Why the hell should they? If you lost the place where you lived, wouldn't you have no choice but to join Lemegeton anyway?
Of course, he might be hostile at first, but once he lived there, he'd surely be satisfied.
"Yor, come here! This is the only place you can truly belong! We can welcome you warmly!"
As she said that, she glanced briefly at Chae-rin's face.
Chae-rin, as though she hadn't yet grasped the words, was watching the situation with a blank expression.
A strange sense of anticipation welled up inside Nikki.
Soon, that bitch's blank face would become tinged with shock, and then with terror.
Just as she herself had experienced. The mere thought of it made ecstasy surge up within her.
Finally, Chae-rin's lips parted.
"Ah... I thought it was something serious."
"...What?"
At those words, Nikki tilted her head. That wasn't the reaction she wanted.
"No, is that what you've been hiding all this time? You should've just said so."
Chae-rin said that and trotted over to stand beside Yor.
Yor seemed just as taken aback, looking at Chae-rin with a bewildered face.
"It wasn't quite how I wanted to find out, but anyway, I learned one secret."
Chae-rin's face looked as though she had already expected it.
*
Yoo Chae-rin was no fool.
She hadn't been top of her class during her school days, but at the very least, she could tell that Yor was hiding something.
After all, he'd seemed to have many secrets from their very first meeting.
Living in this forest in the first place was peculiar, and he avoided questions about himself to an extreme degree.
There was also the time he made her log out during that fight, and the time he was covered in blood; she could have found plenty of odd points.
It was just that he didn't seem willing to reveal them, so she'd been holding back, even though it was frustrating.
'Demon's Blood...'
She knew about those words, too.
It was lore that had been strongly etched in her mind since the first Demonkin incident.
She knew how dangerous it was, and she knew how sensitively the NPCs here reacted to it.
But aside from that... she had felt pity for them.
Because in the end, they weren't born that way by their own choice.
'So that's why you were in this forest...'
For a moment, she looked at Yor with sympathetic eyes.
"Th-This can't be!"
That was when it happened. When Nikki raised her voice. Her face was full of spite.
She seemed quite displeased that the situation wasn't unfolding as she'd envisioned.
Nikki snapped and demanded.
"I, I lost everything. So why is it that you can react so nonchalantly, you bitch!"
"...Why, she asks?"
It wasn't Chae-rin who answered, but Yor.
He was just as surprised by her overly calm reaction, but he had some guesses.
There could be many reasons.
Maybe it was because this world was merely a game to an Otherworlder like her.
Or perhaps it was the perceptual gap caused by the difference between the civilizations of Gaians and Otherworlders.
Or it might simply be because she had little information about 'Demon's Blood.'
But instead of listing all those reasons, Yor offered one that was more convenient and more infuriating.
"That's because I have a dick, and you don't."
"...What?"
"Uhh."
At Yor's words, question marks appeared over the two women's heads, as if to say, what the hell kind of bullshit is that?
But he had no intention of backing down from his assertion.
Because being born with a cock in this inverted world was a truly great thing.
The simple act of having a pole hanging between your legs made your likability go up!
Emotion was an extremely important judgment criterion for humans, and the Charm stat had a massive influence on those emotions.
In other words, being equipped with a dick was an unavoidably critical fact.
"No, no way!"
"Jealous? Then you should've been born with a cock, too."
"That couldn't possibly happen!"
"No! Accept reality! That the space between your legs holds absolutely no value, you bitch!"
In the inverted world, that was your fault for being so brazenly born a pussy.
Or maybe you shouldn't have lived in an inverted world to begin with.
At Yor's mocking, the woman went berserk.
Being a Manifestor, her mind didn't seem all that stable, either, judging from how she reacted to such light provocation.
"..."
Chae-rin, who had suddenly been branded a cock-chaser, simply stood there in a daze.
But the mockery was brief; Yor, who had regained his seriousness, soon opened his mouth again.
"Now, then, I suppose I should tell you why I won't go into that place?"
Nikki hadn't said anything wrong.
"As you said, if I went there, I could probably live a little more comfortably."
After all, the forest wasn't that comfortable a place.
He could roughly understand why she had joined Lemegeton.
Though the group called Lemegeton had many enemies, to Manifestors, the entire world was ultimately their enemy.
Whether for survival or quality of life, joining a group was a rational choice.
"But that place worships demons."
He continued. A strange heat rose up from within him.
"I just can't fucking stand it. In the end, it's those demon bastards who definitively twisted my life into this mess."
The stance of people here, he got it. It was unjust, but he could force himself to understand it.
After all, it was true that when someone became a Demonkin, their lives were threatened.
But the demons, those bastards, were different.
Even now, just thinking about the Berserk state he had to face once a month made his teeth clench.
Just what were they? Just how grand were they that they sought to drive countless people into agony?
"And yet, fuck... you're telling me to join a cult that serves those bastards? Am I some fucking idiot pushover? I'm not some neighborhood mutt looking for its owner; why the hell should I? I'd sooner bite my tongue off and die."
Those were rather violent words. Hearing them, Chae-rin looked at Yor for a moment.
And she could see it. Him, absolutely furious.
She'd seen him act annoyed plenty of times before, but this was the first time she'd seen him radiate such a murderous aura.
It meant he had that much deep-seated resentment bottled up inside.
"If you understand, get lost. The fact that I'm not killing you right now is the highest courtesy I can offer to a fellow Manifestor."
"...Damn it."
At those words, the other party left without another word.
She had realized that further attempts at persuasion were useless.
And so, all that remained were Yor and Chae-rin, in a somewhat awkward atmosphere.
"..."
"..."
Silence flowed for a moment.
Sighing, Yor gathered the courage to speak to Chae-rin.
"Sorry you had to see such an ugly sight. About what you heard today..."
"Are you asking me to keep it a secret? Don't worry, of course I will."
"...Thank you."
Yor's lips twitched several times.
Anxiety, worry, and various other emotions swirled near his chest.
Because of that, he almost emphasized it a few more times, but he decided against it.
It felt like forcing it any further would only make himself look worse.
One thing that had undeniably changed, however, was that the number of people who shared his secret had grown.
Still, contrary to his expectations... it didn't feel as bad as he'd thought.