Like Family (7)
Like Family (7)
Maybe it was because the beam Virgo fired was so powerful. Or maybe the tremors from the commotion here shook the earth far away. Monsters began to gather, countless numbers of them, all heading this way.
Fortunately, no new S-rank monsters appeared. The claim that this territory belonged to Virgo must not have been empty boasting.
“Spectators, huh?”
Virgo surveyed the area, a hollow laugh on her lips.
“You hate that kind of thing, right? Being watched like this. Ah, but maybe it doesn’t matter since they’re monsters?”
Just how deeply had she devoured my stories to know such little details? She probably knew more about me than I did. I let out a hollow laugh too.
Not that Virgo could see it, hidden as it was behind the helmet.
“Did I tell you before? Madness is oblivion. I said I wanted to forget everything and become a crazy bitch....”
With a flutter, delicate wings unfolded. Evening-colored feathers embroidered the space around Virgo as she floated upward.
“But, it turns out, forgetting everything is harder than I thought.”
Each feather contorted, growing thin and sharp as a honed spear. Virgo moved her hand, and the things—feathers and spear-tips both—scattered.
Descending with leisure and grace, the feathers, the spears, erased even the brightness of day and summoned a new light.
It was as if the area had been hit by a fighter jet’s bombing run. Buildings crumbled, the ground collapsed, asphalt and concrete shrapnel flew, chunks of flesh tumbled. Traces of an explosion. A purple blast cloud shook the whole region.
Most of the teeming monster horde evaporated in an instant.
“Even when I think I’ve forgotten, it comes right back. I want to just empty my head like a crazy bitch, but do you know how hard that is...? Funny, isn’t it? If you want to go mad, you can’t be mad first. That’s the only way you can harbor that kind of desire.”
Virgo raked irritably at her own hair.
“To forget, you have to remember first. To remember, you have to experience it first. If it never happened from the start, it’d all be solved. Then you wouldn’t even want to go mad.”
Like a devil rising, like an angel descending, she came down slowly.
“You get it, don’t you? How I feel. You wanted to be like me.”
She stopped right in front of my nose, hovering about fifty centimeters off the ground so we could meet eyes. There was no body odor. The only scent from her was that distinctive smell like dust and earth.
“You said you wanted to be like me. So why?”
A scent that hinted at the shape of her life. A shabby scent you’d catch in a wasteland. A scent proving her life was a wasteland now.
On the surface, she still looked maybe late teens or early twenties. Short, and her skin was pale to the point of pallor. Her appearance should have been radiant, but it wasn’t.
“Why are you on that side?”
Regrettably, I couldn’t fully understand this girl’s words. Because I had no memories. I didn’t know her life, didn’t know what times I’d shared with her.
She was spouting things I couldn’t understand, but from her perspective, I might be the one who couldn’t understand.
If madness is oblivion, then the mad one here might just be me.
“Don’t do this. My identity’s starting to shake. It’s starting to look like you’re the crazy one, not me.”
The quest completion announcement still hadn’t rung.
[Oppa!]
Ah-yoon’s voice came from the Belt.
[That explosion and the beam just now! That’s Virgo, right? And you’re there too! I saw it from miles away! I’m heading there now! No....]
A single butterfly flew through Virgo’s floating feathers and alighted. The butterfly vanished, and a figure leaped through dimensions to arrive.
“I’m already here!”
White and pink armor. Cloth like winged garments adorned the shoulders. The most distinctive ornament was the Cassiopeia-shaped belt with a lens at its center.
The five stars, originally belonging to other constellations, shone in unison, drawing the entirely different constellation of Cassiopeia.
Perhaps surprised by the sudden entrance, Virgo’s eyes scrunched deeply. And so did her face.
Without a moment’s delay, Jo Ah-yoon kicked Virgo right in the face. A kick loaded with starlight would hurt even a monster. Virgo began an involuntary flight.
“You okay... What?! What’s wrong with her!”
She yelled in alarm, seeing Red Vega in my arms.
“Pretty much what you imagined.”
Boom! A dull impact echoed from where Virgo had flown. I turned my eyes there. Jo Ah-yoon had figured it all out and was scowling hard.
“You idiot... What were you thinking picking a fight with Virgo? Did you want to get all your magic drained in this hellhole and die screaming? You should’ve just run!”
“Pot, kettle, isn’t it?”
“Shut up. I survived in the end.”
“Proud of it, huh.”
“Yeah, I am proud.”
Jo Ah-yoon smirked and took my hand.
“Then let’s bail out right now. No need to keep her company.”
“Hold on.”
I let go of her hand and placed Red Vega—Baek A-hee, whom I’d been holding—into her arms instead. Our physiques in transformation were similar, so she seemed to have no trouble carrying her.
“...?”
Jo Ah-yoon stared straight at me. Even without seeing her expression, I could clearly feel her bafflement.
“I’m not going.”
“Why. What now. Can’t control your power? Wanna rampage around like a bear?”
“It’s not that....”
I gave Jo Ah-yoon’s shoulder a light push and stepped forward. A violet line was drawn straight toward me almost instantly. I swung the axe, still in my hand, to counter it.
Twang! The beam bent through my axe, veering into the earth and flying off in a completely wrong direction.
“I’ve got something to settle.”
A huge shout came from a distance.
“Don’t interfere!!!”
Virgo cried out in fury.
“You little brats who still smell like milk, don’t interfere!”
“What? Who’s a brat?”
As Jo Ah-yoon geared up to charge, I quickly grabbed her shoulder.
“...I’ll handle this. You evacuate Vega to a safe place.”
“Ugh, seriously....”
With a heavy sigh, a butterfly landed again on her finger.
“See you later.”
“Yeah.”
She didn’t doubt for a second that I’d come back. I nodded in response.
“I’ll see you later, then.”
The butterfly dashed across the sky, and the two of them vanished from my sight. Most of the spectators had been consumed by the beams and evaporated; the only ones left were dust, dirt, and sparks.
“Now it’s really just the two of us.”
“Right~ Did you do that for me? Thanks. Kyahaha, so you did want to be with me after all? I’m happy~”
Her emotional swings were still as rapid as ever. Where had the irritation from moments ago gone? Emerging from the smoke, Virgo was smiling with ease.
“Last warning! Drop the sizzly-zappy act right now and come over to my side. I’ve got to chase after those runaways.”
“And if you catch them, what then?”
“What do you think.”
Virgo sparked a light in her palm, then clenched her fist.
“I’ll kill them. And while I’m at it, I might as well go on a massacre! For the sake of annihilation, I have to work myself busy every day!”
“That’s a problem.”
I gripped the axe tightly and aimed it at her. A sharp blade of iron, hard to see properly behind the glare of lightning. Virgo’s eyebrows twitched.
“...Hey. Weren’t you supposed to be a good boy and listen to me today? Why are you being so rebellious? Annoyingly so?”
“Sorry.”
With my other hand, I operated the Belt.
“I’m self-directed by nature. Following your orders nicely isn’t going to happen.”
“Ah-hah~ Really?”
Virgo chuckled, then aimed every feather at me and pointed her finger.
“Then you die.”
A rain of light fell. Droplets the color of a wistful violet sky at dusk fell mercilessly toward this spot, as if I were the center of gravity.
My eyes soaking in that baptism of light, I conveyed a single request to the Belt.
‘Hey, Belt.’
[What is it?]
‘Activate the star.’
[...Now?]
Every time I’d activated a star I’d collected, my memories would regenerate and I’d suffered more than enough. I’d even collapsed in the bathroom once.
So I’d taken a lesson from that and made a resolution.
Not to activate every star as I got them, but to activate them all at once when I wanted.
The Belt had independently regenerated my memories at times, making that resolution meaningless, but at least I hadn’t seen the memories embedded directly in the stars.
But now, I intended to break that resolution.
[Memory regeneration during combat is dangerous. Responsibility for any loss of consciousness rests entirely with the Guardian....]
‘Did I ask you to show me until I lose consciousness?’
I didn’t know if it would work, but I threw it out there.
“My left eye. Show me the memories only there. Is that possible?”
After the briefest of delays, the Belt answered.
[It is possible. However, the Guardian’s body will not withstand it. There is also the possibility that your brain will entirely burn up.]
“If it’s possible, do it.”
The meaning of the quest to let Virgo survive. The regrets she held now. The answers had to be in these memories.
But I didn’t have the leisure to read them at a relaxed pace. I had to end all this before Virgo committed another massacre.
“She says she’s going to destroy the world.”
A dazzling, ceaseless feast of lights, like a kaleidoscope. The beams, like letters sent by Virgo, were still approaching, trying to reach me.
Strangely, all of that scenery seemed slow right now.
I, too, was composing part of those lights. A pale, cold lightning-fire. A mechanical savagery eating away at my body erupted in the form of lightning and rampaged.
[Understood.]
From within a radiance blindingly bright, the Belt’s reply came.
[Activating the star. However, memory regeneration will be limited to the left field of vision.]
My left eye went blind with light. From beyond it, a nostalgic landscape approached.
Virgo was standing there too. In the past, she fired a beam at a monster to protect me.
On the other side, in reality, she was standing as well. She fired a beam to kill me.
My head hurt like crazy. I felt a pain like my eye was melting, seared with a branding iron, and even breathing was agony.
But I could still move.
I swung the axe and sliced through the beams.
Then I walk forward.
I walked forward.
I ask Virgo.
I asked Virgo.
“What do you want to do once you get out?”
“Why are you trying to destroy the world?”
Virgo answers.
“First, I want to watch a movie with my mom! What movies are popular these days? Aren’t you curious, Jae-jung?”
Virgo answered.
“Hah, are you asking the obvious?”
At arrow-like speed, she closed in. She drew a beam like a blade and swung it at me.
“I forgot it all a long time ago!”
I, who had forgotten, was in the midst of remembering. And Virgo, who had remembered, was in the midst of forgetting.
To borrow her words, that oblivion was madness itself—she was steadily going mad.