The Worst Exceeds My Imagination (2)
"Are you telling your own eldest son to go die?"
"Good heavens."
The other parents who had been watching stared at Baek Hyeong-won and Kim Yu-jeong in horror. But they only stared. Not one of them stepped forward to object.
To them, Baek Seo-jun was nothing more than a child they were seeing for the first time today. No matter how pitiful his situation, they had no obligation to sacrifice their own children—or their own lives—to save him. If anything, though they couldn't say it aloud with a clean conscience, they were desperately hoping that Seo-jun's sacrifice would let them walk out of this place alive.
"Why should you have to die? What kind of thing is that to say?"
"Th-that's right. It's not like that man is definitely going to kill you, is it?"
At Baek Hyeong-won and Kim Yu-jeong's words, Seo-jun let out a hollow laugh of sheer disbelief.
"If it's not that he'll definitely kill me, doesn't that mean he might kill me?"
"Why do you always have to look at everything so negatively! Don't you trust the parents who gave birth to you?"
The way they were trying to coax him now—sweet-talking him into walking blindly to his own death—made Seo-jun's stomach turn.
These people are even more disgusting than I thought.
In the original novel they had only ever been portrayed as good parents. By his current standards, these so-called parents were more repulsive than the villains.
"So you're saying this isn't sacrificing me, right? You're saying I can go and I won't die?"
"Th-that's right! Exactly!"
Kim Yu-jeong's voice trembled—probably because it was a lie. Baek Hyeong-won, though, perhaps from all the lying he'd done as a guild leader, spoke without the slightest waver in his voice.
"That's right. We'll come back for you tomorrow. So just think of it as spending one day away from home."
At those words, Seo-jun looked at Baek Seo-jin.
"If there's no chance of dying, then Seo-jin can go."
"What?"
"If it's just one day of hardship away from home, then Seo-jin can go instead of me. Seo-jin. Come on. Let's go."
"You little—!"
Baek Hyeong-won seized Seo-jun's wrist and hurled him. He wasn't putting his full power as an SS-class hunter behind it, but the raw force was more than enough. Seo-jun's small body—still that of an immature mana awakener—went tumbling backward.
"Ugh!"
"Trying to throw your little brother into a death trap! You unfilial little bastard!"
"Haha. Suddenly changing your tune? A death trap? I thought I wasn't going there to die?"
Baek Hyeong-won looked momentarily flustered, then his face flushed a mottled red as he roared.
"You little shit! You knew all along and you've been lying to your parents—mocking us!"
He was genuinely enraged, looking ready to kill Seo-jun on the spot. Kim Yu-jeong made no move to stop him. She screamed in fury herself.
"How the hell were you even born! How could I have given birth to something like you! You're the older brother and you don't even know how to yield for your younger sibling!"
"Yield. You're talking about yielding the path to death?"
"You little—! We gave birth to you, raised you, gave you a place to sleep, fed you—you should know gratitude!"
"Don't you talk back to your mother! You're the older brother and you can't even do that much for your little brother!"
Baek Hyeong-won and Kim Yu-jeong had almost completely lost their reason. The mere possibility that Seo-jin might be the one sacrificed was enough to send both of them into a mindless rage.
"My god."
"How can they be like that?"
Even though the onlookers had already decided to sacrifice Seo-jun and had turned a blind eye to their own consciences, the looks they gave the couple were not kind.
The villains, too, were clicking their tongues.
"I honestly didn't see this coming."
"These two have personalities that'd make even us cry, don't they?"
"They're both his biological sons. What the hell is with this discrimination?"
Seo-jun smiled hollowly at his own parents.
He glared at them, utterly speechless. But all he could do right now was expose everything he had been put through.
"When you were buying Seo-jin clothes that cost hundreds of dollars at the very least…"
"Shut up!"
Baek Hyeong-won, already guessing what Seo-jun was about to say, moved to stop him. So Gang-seok held him back.
"Stop, Baek Hyeong-won. I'm curious about what the kid has to say. Don't interrupt."
At So Gang-seok's warning, Hyeong-won had no choice but to freeze. Thanks to that, Seo-jun was able to lay his life bare.
"I always had to wear secondhand clothes that cost less than ten dollars. And when Seo-jin was eating lavish meals worth hundreds of dollars, three times a day, I had to eat the same cafeteria food as the janitors—and even that got taken away from me. After that I could only order lunch boxes that cost less than ten dollars including delivery. And when Seo-jin was sleeping comfortably in a nice bed, I had to sleep in the warehouse on a thick blanket on the floor!"
"That's the truth."
So Gang-seok nodded. He had the ability to distinguish truth from lies in the words of those with weak mana.
The people who heard him began to murmur.
"Good heavens. It was really like that?"
"The Baekho Guild is too much."
Even just surviving this place would have damaged the Baekho Guild's reputation. The humiliating label of hunters who submitted to villains just to stay alive would have followed them regardless. But now, a great many people here also knew what they had done to their own son.
Damn it.
Baek Hyeong-won did not regret treating Seo-jun that way. The boy was his biological son, but he felt no affection for him. The thought that even a creature like this was his child—and would someday take a share of the inheritance that his beloved Seo-jin ought to receive—had always left a foul taste in his mouth.
And now, when he had finally given the boy a chance to serve his purpose and die, this exposé was damaging the Baekho Guild's image!
Damn it. My son Seo-jin is so pitiful, being born as this bastard's younger brother.
If there was anything he regretted, it was not killing the boy sooner—this child who had never inspired a shred of affection in him or his wife, not even as a baby. No. What he truly regretted was not aborting him when his wife was still pregnant.
"Well now. Impressive. Discriminating against your own flesh and blood like this—you've got a personality that would put villains to shame."
Baek Hyeong-won's teeth clenched at So Gang-seok's mockery. He knew it looked strange to others, but he genuinely felt wronged. To outsiders who didn't know the deeper circumstances, it would look bizarre—but he and his wife were in the right. There were simply too many shortsighted people who didn't understand how pitiful their good son Seo-jin was, born as the younger brother and unable to claim his rightful share because Seo-jun had come first.
"We'll trust your promise that if we offer up a child, you'll let us go. Take Baek Seo-jun. Take that one."
"Right. A promise is a promise. Fine. I'll let you out right now, and I'll let the rest of them out soon enough too!"
"…Thank you."
Offering thanks to a villain was humiliating, but first they had to survive. He couldn't let his own sense of justice bring harm to the wife and child he loved.
And of course, that beloved child did not include Baek Seo-jun.
"Ah, fuck…"
Seo-jun had exposed every bit of the treatment he had received. But as a ten-year-old kid, this was the full extent of the revenge he could take. He had been sold to a villain, and he was going to die.
The protagonist's older brother, dead before the original story even begins. A role that won't even be remembered.
He had pictured it many times—the life he might have lived if he had made it to adulthood. He had the power of a mana awakener, something his previous life had never given him, so making a living wouldn't have been a problem. He had wanted to live quietly, stepping into the original story only as much as he had to.
But all of that was nothing more than a fantasy.
Because today, at the age of ten, I was going to die.
"Get lost already."
When So Gang-seok waved them off as if they were a nuisance, Baek Hyeong-won and Kim Yu-jeong scooped up Seo-jin and hurried out of the theater. The villains made no move to stop them.
"Well then, kid. Your parents sold you. How does that feel?"
So Gang-seok grinned as he asked. He already knew the answer, but he asked anyway. He seemed to find the whole situation genuinely entertaining.
"Really, fucking, shitty."
Getting reincarnated just for posting one hate comment. Being treated like garbage and then dying a dog's death. All of it felt unfair. But the most despairing thing of all was the reality that no amount of struggling would change anything. There was simply no way out.
"So, mister. Are you going to kill me?"
Having already given up, all he wanted was that if he was going to die, it would be quick and painless.
"No. I can't just kill a test subject as valuable as the eldest son of the Baekho Guild that easily."
Come to think of it, there were villains who conducted human experiments on talented mana awakeners. Hearing So Gang-seok's words, Seo-jun realized his fate was even worse than he had imagined.
"Goddamn it."
"Haha. Don't feel too wronged, though. I recorded the whole scene of your parents selling you on video."
"That was well done."
"Ohh? A brat like you praising me? You've got some nerve. You want to die?"
"Then go ahead and kill me."
Having already given up on life, Seo-jun would rather die quickly than suffer as a test subject. He wanted his head smashed in cleanly, all at once—just like the little girl who had died earlier with her skull crushed.
But he could not escape a situation in which he had to envy that dead girl.
This was the beginning of hell.