The One Who Was Left Behind
I am the one who was left behind, and it feels like I am living inside a nightmare that will never end. Every time I speak about myself, it feels as though my heart is being torn out by the roots.
Even strapped to an operating table, watching my legs get severed and then grafted back on at impossible angles—even when they sliced off my fingers by the dozens and dropped them into a bucket, marveling that they grew right back—it never hurt like this. Even after the injections, when they seared my wounds with fire just to test how much punishment I could take; even when they pulled a water bladder over my face and held it there until I couldn't breathe; even when they pressed a finger into my right eye until it gave—none of it left me feeling this hollow.
Well. Of course it didn't.
There's no way I was abandoned. There's no way I was left behind all alone.
I just wanted to see Seojun. That's all. Rather than sit and wait in a place where nothing remained but crumbling, ugly paupers, I wanted to become someone just as magnificent as he was, and go find him myself.
I still remember it. We were walking through the village the way we always did, trading the same pointless little remarks, when his body suddenly lit up right in front of my eyes. He looked so beautiful. If I had known that light was the kind that would tear the two of us completely apart, I would have stripped off the clothes I was wearing and tried to smother it somehow.
So I only wanted to become like that too. I would turn into someone splendid and capable, go find Seojun, and give him the shock of his life. Not some pitiful, bothersome little girl who'd merely shared a childhood with him—but someone who could throw her life away to protect him at any moment. Someone he could trust with his back.
Of course, this—this wreckage—is the price I paid for wanting that.
Not a single speck of red clings to my body, and yet the floor is strewn with things that used to be people. Nothing of their shapes remains. Only the color red.
Reality, unlike dreams, is rarely kind. I thought I would be the exception. The researcher told me so himself, after all. People like me, whose hair and pupils had changed color under the influence of mana, possessed an exceptionally high aptitude, he said.
I thought it would just be a few injections, at most. I never imagined I would be put through things so painful, so hideous, that I would find myself wishing I could simply stop breathing. They told me I would have to be quarantined somewhere—but I never imagined they would shove me into a cramped underground room like a stray dog and pull me out whenever they needed me.
For six months.
For six months I couldn't see my only friend. I couldn't even hear his voice. If it had been me, I would have been sick with worry. I would have torn the world apart looking for him. But of course no word ever came. I have this feeling, for reasons I can't explain, that that's exactly how it is.
And I was the one who said it, wasn't I? That Seojun was terribly busy. He wouldn't have had a spare moment to worry about someone like me. He's probably doing something extraordinary—something that saves the world. If he's doing work far more important, far more magnificent, than the girl he spent nearly ten years with, then of course he'd be too exhausted to spare a thought for someone like me. That's why he stopped reaching out first, too, somewhere along the way.
So it isn't my problem in the end, is it? The problem is everything happening around him. And a problem that disappears stops being a problem at all.
I used to believe a day would come when I could help him. It doesn't feel like that day will ever arrive, and that makes me terribly sad. Which is why, before I go to find him, I keep thinking how wonderful it would be if he came to find me first.
I wonder if he even remembers me. The truth is, even I—the one thinking these thoughts—can't recall his face anymore. More precisely, it started to blur little by little as another version of me began to take shape inside my head.
I used to be someone who always lived with hope, someone relentlessly positive, the kind of person people said made them feel stronger just by standing nearby. Being locked underground and having my body split open shouldn't have been enough to erase a nature like that, so this must be something that happens when things get mixed together. That's also why the anxiety keeps creeping in—this feeling that maybe, just maybe, Seojun really did abandon me, really did forget me, even though he never would. He couldn't.
Before long I'll have blurred away completely. While I can still feel what it was like to be a child, I want to see Seojun. If you asked me why, I'd just say that staying sane in this place is rather difficult.
Perhaps a lunatic who looks this beautiful, with snow-white hair and eyes that shine like rubies, yet refuses to believe she's a girl, is a better fit for a place like this. In the end it would act like me, think like me, and feel emotions like me—no matter how much it sneers that this is all just something out of a novel.
I walked toward the break room where they keep snacks for the staff, and I started drinking my fill of the coffee I had whined and sung about wanting every single day. There was no Einspänner or whatever that fancy thing is called, but they had instant mix by the fistful.
"Bleh."
It's sweet, I'll give it that, but it still tastes terrible. If you drink garbage like this, of course the world starts looking dark and bitter.
Well. Of course it does. Forget me? Abandon me? He was never that kind of boy. Do you have any idea how good he is? The kind of boy who'd run to help someone in trouble even if their sleeves had only brushed in passing. The kind of boy I was certain would still be right there beside me even after we grew up—the boy who was always with me. There's no way he would forget me. All he's doing is saving a few people and driving off a few bad ones.
Some of us got locked in a basement and carved apart, fried with electricity, and every so often had the lid of our skull pried open so they could stir around inside with a stick—and even then, I never forgot my one and only childhood friend. Even someone as lacking as me never forgot. There's no way he would. That doesn't make any sense at all.
At any rate, I hadn't been drinking the coffee long before a mechanical chime announced the door opening, and the sound of a great many footsteps came pouring in. I wasn't particularly afraid. I wasn't going to die, after all. Inside my head, the part of me that is terrified of pain screamed at me to run, to get out of here this instant—but there was never anywhere to run. One small incident and they would seal off the entire underground of the building.
A crowd of armed people surrounded me, muzzles trained on my body. I couldn't see their faces behind the helmets, but they must have been wound tight. These were people I could split in half in an instant if I so much as twitched a finger. But I'm not the sort of person who does rotten things like that.
I sat still, grimacing at the miserable taste of the coffee and drinking it slowly anyway, when the click-clack of heels began to approach. Team Leader Ju. A face every bit as familiar as the guard I had just burst open.
"Didn't I tell you last time I wouldn't let it end with just starving you?"
"Did you?"
"I did. I told you that if you just cooperated, we'd send you to that school your friend attends someday, and make sure you never had to worry about making a living for the rest of your life."
Her hair was a wreck. Dark circles, sleep crusted in the corners of her eyes, clothes thrown on without a thought, worn shoes she looked to have shoved on in a hurry. It must have been dawn, then. She'd gotten the call after clocking out and come running the moment she woke.
"But if you keep pulling stunts like this, I won't be able to help you. Don't you want to try living a life like that friend you talk about every single day? Going to school, bumping into this and that, making friends, getting close to them little by little. You know. That kind of life."
"That's why. That's why I ended up locked in here."
"Then shouldn't you be doing as we say?"
"But last time you told me you'd let me out the moment I could use my ability."
"Your potential is far too valuable to stop there."
So she wasn't going to let me out. That potential of hers was going to twist me into something unrecognizable.
"Do you know something? I'm sitting here having this conversation with you so obediently, but the truth is I'm terribly afraid of you."
I had no intention of being led away quietly, so I drew countless needles from the pools of blood still left on the floor—enough to fire at any moment, should I choose.
"The feeling is mutual. One flick of your finger and I might survive, but our precious staff would be dead in an instant. The government funding comes in generous enough, but when the guards start dropping like flies, the recruitment rate tends to suffer."
"So, Subject 11. No. Harin. Crawl back to your room yourself. That's the only place you're permitted. Your school, your memories of your friend, even yourself—you sold it all away. With nothing more than a single fingerprint."
I didn't sell anything. You took it from me. You told me there wouldn't be any pain. You told me I could go home whenever I wanted. You did. I know you did.
"There's no one coming to find you, so what exactly are you planning to do here? Did you really think we wouldn't look into your records? Your parents have been dead for a long time, and you ran away from the thugs in The Slums."
Bringing up my parents is a cheap shot. They weren't living some life of crime. They just got caught in a fight and vanished without a trace.
"Besides, that friend you talk about every single day has never contacted you once. Were you even really close?"
As she said it, Team Leader Ju tossed me my phone—the one with the shattered screen. I turned it on, the glass cracked faintly along the right side, and the battery sat at eleven percent, as if someone had only just taken it off the charger. I checked my texts, my call log, every messenger app I had. The only new things waiting for me were advertisements.
I didn't mean to, but I exploded the men with the guns.
I threw the phone aside and laughed for a long time, and then I crawled into my room myself, just as Team Leader Ju had told me to. And then I laughed for a long time again. Because I was ridiculous for still trying to remember him. Because I was a pathetic idiot for having hoped, even a little.
When I looked in the mirror again, a sharply defined version of myself was sitting there this time. It wasn't a funny thing at all, so I let the laughter die.