Chapter 17
Chapter 17
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 17
Chapter Title: Fragments
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I barely managed to regain my balance by shifting my legs just as my body was about to topple backward completely.
Something had clearly struck my head, but when I looked around, there was nothing that could have done it.
No, was there really nothing like that...?
There was truly nothing around me at all.
Nothing.
Not even the herringbone-patterned floorboards I'd once thought had a refined beauty, nor the red silk wallpaper I'd felt didn't suit me—nothing visible at all, not even on the level of wallpaper or floors.
'Night...? Or maybe I've lost consciousness?'
In the pitch-black darkness where not a single speck of light was visible, I wondered if my eyes might be closed and fumbled at my eyelids.
Only after confirming the feel of my eyeball and eyelashes could I finally admit that I had fallen into complete darkness.
"Is anyone... there?"
For some reason, speaking out loud felt frightening.
The certainty that no reply would come gnawed at my mind.
'This is bad.'
They say humans trapped in total darkness lose their vision completely after a certain amount of time.
But before that, a terror rose sharply that I would lose my sense of self first.
-Thud!
Without realizing it, my legs gave out, and I collapsed right there.
I'd barely recovered from the impact to my head when I fell into this space of pure darkness.
But as they say, fortune comes after hardship.
Thanks to my undignified tumble, I found a chance to escape this suffocating place.
Where my hand landed as I fell was against something like a wall.
Whether it was any comfort or not, I hadn't been locked in mere darkness—I'd been standing confined in a narrow, dim space about a meter deep.
-Click.
Groping the walls indiscriminately for any protrusions or irregularities, I finally escaped from what felt like a coffin-like narrow space.
"Huff, huff..."
The terror of suddenly opening my eyes from that cramped spot had apparently made me lose my composure.
I panted, my breath up to my chin, and wiped away the cold sweat trickling down to it.
-Clack, clack, click.
Instinctively drawing my pistol from its holster and chambering a round, I didn't even have time to recall that up until right before opening my eyes, I hadn't been wearing a holster at all.
"Who's there? Who's pulling this ridiculous prank?"
Gripping the gun close to my chest in case an enemy popped out at any moment, I scanned my surroundings.
Only then did I realize that the scene before me clashed severely with my common sense.
"This place—"
Well, what should I even call this landscape?
I was gazing at a world where everything had literally frozen in place.
A mage tower with its upper section exploding outward from a powerful impact, its waist buckling and collapsing as a result; a temple whose four walls had crumbled inward as if hastily cleaved open rather than carefully breached.
Fragments of statues floating in a perfect circle as if mocking the very existence of gravity, destroyed [Star Crosses of the Great Being], a black sky, and a black-and-white world faded to pallor.
The disrupted order and traces of destruction stood like mocking displays, each one artificial and provocative.
-Gooo, gooooo—ma—ehh—
Breaking the silence came a voice like a child's babbling, or something mimicking a human.
Swept by an inexplicable destructive urge, I fired a shot into the empty air.
-Bang!
-Kikikikik! Go—ma—'Bang!'
The entity then began mimicking even the gunshot fired at it, as if it found it amusing.
-'Bang!', 'Bang!', 'Bang!'
"Stop..."
My head spun.
The circular formation of statues whirling in the air spun about like toys, making the ruined temple shake.
As if some giant hand were playing with the scattered toys in that space.
-Chee-goro, maaat-itneun, seongchan!
It was clearly somewhere in this place, in this sky, and I could feel it toying with me across the boundaries of sky and earth, but I couldn't pinpoint the existence at all.
It was an entity I couldn't grasp even if I reached out, yet it touched me without me needing to.
It was the terror lurking within me, my imagination pushed to its most pessimistic extremes.
-Go-maeoo~... Thank yooou~... For in, invitiiing us~ Thank yooou—...
"Shut up!"
-Bang!
Forgetting I needed to conserve bullets, I futilely fired the two chambered rounds into the air and broke into a run.
No matter how far I ran, it felt like the end of my pounding legs always touched its tongue.
"This can't be real..."
My breath rose to my chin.
I ran and kept running.
Through a world shrouded in death, pale and darkly extinguished, without a shred of light.
My legs instinctively headed for a refuge, very familiarly.
The place I unconsciously sought was—
"Theodore."
The very spot from my first nightmare, where I had killed Theodore.
Unlike that time when red sunset blazed, in this black-and-white faded landscape, Theodore was there.
"Theo!!"
Like a wax doll, frozen in the pitiful pose of his final moments.
The 'Academy Theodore' I knew was an adolescent just entering young adulthood.
In contrast, the Theodore before me already had the face of a young man.
Yet somehow, I was certain this young man was Theodore.
That made it all the more despairing.
If not for this scenery, I might have thought this scene was an exquisitely malicious fake crafted by a once-in-a-millennium artisan.
His hair scattering, upper body halted mid-air gazing at the sky, eyes unaware, blood spurting from the bullet hole piercing it.
An unrealistic, vile panorama of death.
The only strange thing was the golden tear flowing from Theodore's left eye, where the bullet had struck and vanished him.
In my faded vision, that glimmer was utterly captivating and exquisite.
Unconsciously, I reached a finger toward the golden tear streaming like a river current somewhere, then snapped to my senses.
Someone in my head was screaming not to touch it, ever.
"Huh, huff..."
Putting distance between me and the one-eyed Theodore shedding golden tears, I turned and dashed west.
The ground, gouged out like a child giant had playfully ripped into it, hindered finding the place from my memories, but I couldn't stop.
"Judith!"
I shouted down at the cliff base.
There, leaning against the cliff with her head bowed, Judith stood motionless, just like Theodore moments ago.
Her hair, grown past her collarbones to below her chest and tied down, made her look even more mature than the Judith I knew.
Her relaxed pose looked as if she were napping against a tree.
But I knew Judith wasn't peacefully asleep.
Even from afar, I could tell her right hand and part of her arm were mangled by my gunfire.
Blood from her head spread around her like a black curtain.
"Damn it."
Mixed densely amid the bloodstains were sparkling things like marbles children played with.
The shimmering lights flowed from her right hand—now just a silhouette—and spread shallowly and wide.
The sparkles gathered at Theodore's left eye and Judith's right hand.
And they were all things I'd shot in my dreams.
"Shirley..."
To confirm the final despair I'd wrought with my own hands, I turned again.
Perhaps I was going to put an end to the vague hope and foolish expectation that maybe, unlike Theodore and Judith, Shirley had survived.
Yeah, of course.
The last place my steps had turned toward preserved that tragedy intact, just as before.
Frozen as if taxidermied right before death.
From afar, Arthur's broken, gleaming sword and Shirley's spear stuck to it like a magnet gleamed as one in gold.
I recognized it as Shirley's spear thanks to the wine-red velvet pennant for ceremonial use wrapped around it.
It probably said there:
[Peace and Happiness.]
Because that's what I'd written when I gifted it.
"—...Aaaagh!"
It was profound despair.
Before I knew it, surrounded by those things that had closed in tightly, I sank to the ground.
Even covering my face with my palms, the scene burned into my brain wouldn't fade.
-All thanks to yooou, it waaas so fuuun.
"Thanks to me."
-Wee, let's play agaaain.
"Again, this again."
-This time, I'll giiive you plenty of tiiime.
Turning at those words, I met countless eyes staring at me from everywhere.
***
"Sunbae...!!"
Wandering in my unconsciousness, I snapped awake at someone's call.
"Nurse—no, doctor!!"
It was a voice I missed so dearly.
Not the Shirley curled up dead and stiff like a wax doll, but the living Shirley was by my side.
"Shi—"
I tried to joyfully call Shirley's name, but it wouldn't come out.
Just a bit of air made my desert-dry throat feel like it was tearing.
The moment I tried to sit up, Shirley firmly pressed my shoulders and laid me back down.
I flopped weakly onto the bed.
"You're in the infirmary. The doctor said not to move until they get here."
"Doct?"
"Yeah. Moving recklessly could hurt you more. Your depth perception's off because of your eye too."
No wonder my vision felt off in one corner—it was the bandage covering one eye.
I tried to blow away the annoying bandage but realized it was futile and sighed.
"Am I hurt bad(Am I hurt bad?)?"
"You lost way too much blood for the wounds... You were in a coma for a week, sunbae. Know that?"
"A week...?!"
Any more words and my lips would split and bleed.
As I shut my mouth, Shirley pulled a small bottle from the drawer a beat late and offered it to me.
"Just enough to wet your throat."
They must have treated me while I was out, as the thirst wasn't as bad as expected, but the water improved my throat noticeably.
"Your clothes okay? Theodore brought his and changed you."
"Sleeves are a bit short, but fine otherwise."
I'd been worried since someone had changed me, but it was a relief the contact went to Theodore as guardian.
Without lifting my collar too much, I glanced down to check the magic circle was well hidden.
Shirley pulled out an auxiliary chair from under hers and flopped face-down onto my bed.
"You have no idea the chaos..., no, more than that, I was scared you wouldn't wake... Theodore and Judith-sunbae too, for days on end... Never mind. You're awake now, that's what matters."
"Sorry."
"What do you have to be sorry for? The psycho who threw a rock at your head should apologize. Wet your throat more. Seems okay now."
Relieved that I'd woken?
Seated, Shirley started nodding off as if releasing pent-up fatigue.
At this rate, she'd fall asleep before the doctor arrived and could relay the situation.
But no one could blame Shirley for that.
Above all, I knew better than anyone that no one stays fine after tending a delirious patient for a week.
'It was a rock that hit me.'
Endured three sleepless days, then got clocked by a rock on the fourth and passed out.
Coincidence or devil's design, one thing was certain.
After this dream, I finally had two convictions.
One, that the world in my dreams was a future timeline beyond the present.
In that wretched black-and-white world, Theodore and Judith looked at least two or three years more mature than now.
The other, that the 'future events' I'd caused were influencing this world.
In the future world, shooting Theodore's eye made current Theodore one-eyed.
Likewise, blasting off Judith's fingers and part of her arm led to her current prosthetic.
I didn't know what my cruel actions intended, but if the black-and-white world linked to this one...
-Wee, let's play agaaain.
That playfully circling presence wasn't fiction either.
Stiffly, I turned my gaze to the window, gently flexing my rigid neck.
And I was stunned to see every window boarded up and fenced off.