I Have No Expectations Left for You
I have no expectations left for any of you.
“Why the hell would I tell you that?”
“No need. My sister is definitely not on the Pangaea Continent.”
If she wasn’t on the continent where humans lived, only one possibility remained. Suddenly, Werther’s obsession with the Demon Continent started to make sense.
“No, dumbass. Haah~ Fuck. Why the hell do I have to explain this shit to you people now, of all times?”
Werther clutched his forehead and stood there in silence for a long moment. He seemed to be debating whether it was even worth telling them or if he should just ignore the whole thing. Then the answer came.
“Fine, fuck it. I don’t have anyone else to vent to anyway, so I might as well dump it all on you bastards. My sister isn’t on the Pangaea Continent or the Demon Continent. She’s in some ridiculously, insanely faraway country. No… I guess I should say she was there.”
“A place you wouldn’t know. I came from there too.”
“…………”
To hear the truth about his mysterious origins straight from Werther’s own mouth. The party members held their breath and hung on his every word.
“My sister was born with a weak body to begin with, and that piece-of-shit father—no, I don’t even want to call him Dad, but—”
At that point, Cynthia flinched, realizing that Werther carried trauma about his father just like she did.
“Anyway, because of that bastard, she got hurt in the legs and her illness got worse. She couldn’t even go to school and just stayed cooped up at home. No friends, no family except me. She was just a really pitiful kid. But she was also the kindest, cutest person in the world… that’s the kind of girl she was. For her sake, I dropped out of high school—well, you probably don’t even know what high school is, but just listen. From the age of seventeen, I worked at factories, delivered food, took every part-time job I could find just to pay for her medicine. Our sister…”
At some point, even Jeanne and the hero had been drawn into the story. Werther’s voice caught in his throat as memories of his sister surfaced, and he paused for a moment before continuing.
“She was so good that she genuinely felt depressed thinking she had ruined my life. Since she couldn’t go outside, the only person she ever interacted with was me. Like a little puppy, she would stare at the front door all day while I was at work, waiting for me to come home. She was always afraid I wouldn’t return… Damn it. Fuck!!”
Werther pounded his chest so hard it sounded like a drum. No one dared to stop him.
“I told her over and over, ‘I’m never going anywhere. I won’t leave you behind, so don’t worry…’ I reassured her so many times, but in the end it was all a lie. Three whole years… Fuck, I couldn’t go back to her for three years. That kid couldn’t even move from her bed, and she didn’t even have a damn cellphone because—ha—fuck, I thought the phone bill was too expensive. Even if she had a phone, she probably would’ve just stared at the front door without calling anyone until she starved to death. Actually, if I didn’t make her take her medicine, she’d just lie there staring at the ceiling with this look like she was done with the world and refuse to eat. By now…”
It was as if Werther could see his sister right in front of him. She had probably taken sleeping pills and fallen into a deep sleep, only waking up after noon. She would’ve puffed out her cheeks, upset that he hadn’t woken her. He had promised to always say goodbye before leaving for work, but he had broken that promise. She would’ve resolved to scold him fiercely when he returned and glared at the front door like it was her mortal enemy. But as time passed and night fell without the door opening, she would have grown anxious. Even though she must have been starving after not eating all day, she probably refused to eat out of sheer stubbornness. The next day, and the day after that, she would slowly begin to understand the truth.
‘Oppa left me.’
‘He finally abandoned me.’
‘He threw away his burdensome little sister to live his own life.’
But that wasn’t it. It absolutely wasn’t.
“Fuck, how many times did I say it, you worthless pieces of shit!! I said let’s go kill the Demon King! From the very first day I joined this party, you fucking idiots!”
Cynthia, Theresa, Jeanne, Sharon, and even Leonhart. Werther glared at each of them as if they were the enemies who had killed his sister, spitting out his hatred.
“Remember, Theresa? I even got down on my knees and begged you. Huh? I asked you to convince the hero! So we could head straight to the Demon Continent! What the hell did you say to me the next day? Don’t rush the will of God? Ha, fuck!”
“What does it have to do with her? Because I have to kill the Demon King to get back to that godforsaken faraway country. Got it now?”
“If I had told you sooner? If I had told you sooner?!”
Theresa thought Werther might strangle her at any moment. The murderous aura radiating from him was that terrifying.
“What would have changed? I told you. I said I wanted to see my sister. I said I wanted to defeat the Demon King. I told you that if you just did that for me, I’d wipe your asses, bathe you, cook for you, do the dishes, find you lodging, act as a meat shield against monsters—anything. Didn’t I? Didn’t I say that? But because I didn’t spell out the one single thing—that I had to kill the Demon King to see my sister—you’re telling me you never realized how badly I wanted to kill that bastard? Is that what you’re saying, you fucking idiot?”
“……….”
“What would have changed? Even if I had said it, from what I’ve seen, you all would’ve just dragged your feet like the pathetic worms you are. Or maybe not. How about right now? Should we head to the Demon Continent? Let’s go kill the Demon King. Then I’ll forgive all of you. How about it? What do you say, you pieces of shit!”
No one moved. Not even a hint of motion toward the Demon Continent.
“See? You won’t go. You never would. Haah… haah… Fuck, how the hell did I end up meeting bastards like you? How can a hero’s party be so lacking in the desire to kill the Demon King that they fall behind their own porter? Shouldn’t you have been the ones dragging us to the Demon Continent before I even said anything? Isn’t this supposed to be the hero’s party?”
Even if they had ten mouths, they would have had nothing to say.
“I’ll be honest. My sister is probably dead by now.”
Even Leonhart swallowed hard and listened quietly.
“She probably… died alone in that room… a lonely death. Honestly, after three years… there’s no hope. We don’t have any relatives. We lived in a poor neighborhood, so no one would have checked on her, and she wasn’t the type to reach out to anyone. There’s just… no way. Honestly, she’s dead. Cursing me… crying because she thought I abandoned her. Haah… That’s enough, fuck.”
Werther looked down at Saint Theresa with eyes full of hatred.
“The saint who only spouts nonsense about waiting for God’s will while time slips away,”
Then Sharon.
“The elf bitch who’s always too busy reading the room,”
Jeanne, slumped like a drowned rat.
“The pathetic loser who used to get bullied, then got way too into her role as the knight of the hero’s party after somehow getting the position,”
The hero, whose bones had been warped from all the beatings he’d taken.
“And that pathetic coward of a hero who somehow received a divine oracle despite being such a spineless piece of shit.”
Finally, he glared at the princess with the rolled-up hair buns.
“Thinking you could kill the Demon King while dragging around a bunch of broken personalities like this was ridiculous from the start.”
“What the hell have you been listening to? Want me to repeat it?”
Any more and her heart would shatter. Theresa quietly lowered her head and remained silent for a long time before finally speaking with a look of determination.
“So what?”
“Bullshit.”
“Ugh.”
Werther clutched his throat and made a motion like he was forcing down vomit.
“Did you forget? You were the ones who abandoned me first. Who was it that stabbed me with the holy sword without a second thought after I was killed by goblins and then just left?”
“Let’s stop. Honestly, I want to kill every last one of you right here, but I’ll hold back for now.”
“There’s something you don’t know. I think it’ll hit you harder if you experience it yourselves rather than me telling you, so I’ll just leave it at that.”
Werther took a step back, his expression no longer filled with grief but with anticipation for what was to come.
Saint Theresa spoke solemnly.
The hero’s words weren’t entirely wrong. Whenever they returned to the capital, martial artists curious about the hero party’s strength would come charging in with fire in their eyes. Famous mages, knights, hidden masters—they all lavished praise on the hero party’s ever-increasing power… especially their terrifying growth rate.
That was exactly why they had become so arrogant. They had grown stronger without really doing anything. So even if they avoided dangerous journeys and only picked on relatively weak opponents, their power increased at an incredible pace. If they kept wandering like this for about ten years, they would naturally be able to defeat the Demon King too, right? They had begun to think like they were on a pleasant picnic.
All of it had been thanks to my buffs.
“Oh… really? Then good luck with that. I’ll just hide somewhere, read the newspaper article about your total annihilation, and laugh myself to death. Goodbye.”
Werther’s determination to leave the party was clear to everyone. The companions who had initially felt sorry for him now felt a surge of resentment as his sharp arrows of hatred pierced them.
‘No matter what, isn’t he being too harsh with his words?’
Moreover, they honestly believed they could do just fine without him. If he hated them that much, he could just leave. Who was going to stop him? At this point, they were done caring.
Even though the same people who had begged for forgiveness moments ago were now stabbing him in the back with resentment, Werther didn’t feel particularly disappointed. Because from the beginning, he had held no expectations whatsoever.
“Werther. Wait.”
“?”
They were all bitches anyway. Their very nature was rotten… But among those bitches, the biggest bitch of all suddenly stepped in front of him, blocking his path.
“What do you want, Cynthia?”