68 – Her brother’s empty eyes stared at her.
The boots that reached up to her knees blurred and distorted, repeatedly coming back into focus. The repulsive face seemed to be swallowed by the hazy mist.
Amidst the swaying, Iris felt a strange sense of unease as traces of presence appeared and disappeared.
Her body tensed up involuntarily, her breath caught. Without even blinking, she stared with a dazed expression at the returning slave trader.
“Why… why is this happening?”
Her stomach churned, and she felt like she could vomit at any moment. Her head became dizzy, as if she were suffering from a high fever.
“H-hack…”
Her blocked breath intermittently burst out, causing her shoulders to jerk violently. Was it because of the crimson mist? Or perhaps the sword wielded by the slave trader was coated with poison?
Various questions swirled in her mind, but she couldn’t find any answers.
Blink, blink.
Every time she blinked, the slave trader’s arm looked familiar, like someone else’s arm. The blood-soaked clothes became familiar to her eyes. Quick-witted Iris immediately thought of a possible ‘answer’, but quickly erased it from her mind.
There was no need to keep something in her mind that couldn’t happen or be done. As she absentmindedly stared at the blurry slave trader, someone approached and tapped Iris lightly.
“Hey, come on, go inside. You need to prepare for the next match.”
When she absentmindedly turned her gaze, a man she had never seen before stood there. His shoulders were broad, his head looked twice the size of an ordinary person’s, and he seemed to be around 2 meters tall.
He definitely looked like he used a lot of strength.
As Iris stared blankly at the man and then turned her gaze back to the fallen slave trader, she noticed that ever since the air cleared, the number of times the slave trader’s brother collapsed had increased.
“Can’t you hear me?”
With an irritable voice, one of his arms roughly grabbed and pulled Iris.
“What’s this? You played the match with this frail body?”
The man grabbed Iris’s arm and shook it as if he were surprised.
“Ow…”
In her dizzy state, with her body shaking, Iris felt like she could vomit something up right away.
“Ah, sir…”
In that state, the man roughly threw Iris. After Iris rolled on the ground, she instinctively grabbed the sword that had fallen beside her. With Lian’s death, the contract was released and the cursed sword, Gargandoa, ended up in Iris’s hand.
Thud!
As Iris gripped the sword, her vision shook violently.
Monsters like you shouldn’t be alive.
You, how are you still alive? Are you a monster?
Horrible! Monster! Monster! Monster!
A scream-like voice echoed in her mind. Feeling her vision becoming even more distorted, Iris lowered the hand that was covering her mouth and touched the ground. She had to do so, or else she felt like she would collapse onto the floor.
Something useful! Is it?
Sister, sister, sister…
You know? I want to live, don’t you?
hehehehe, that’s right, hehehehe, that’s right, hehehehe, right?
The terrifying memories that Iris had barely suppressed began to resurface on their own. The tone of the voice fluctuated, and the same words were repeated over and over again. The sound of a chalk scratching on a blackboard even burst into laughter in her ears.
“Ah -, please, please stop…stop!”
She screamed and shook her head frantically. But the voices only grew louder and didn’t stop. Memories of all kinds burst out like someone suddenly regaining all their memories, confusing her vision.
“Ugh…I hate it, aaah! Oh, brother…brother…brother, save me. Lian!”
As she raised her voice and shouted, her mind suddenly became quiet.
You killed Lian, didn’t you?
The voice that came through clearly felt like a jumble of a woman’s, a young boy’s, and an old man’s voice mixed together. Startled by the content of the voice rather than its eeriness, Iris turned her head to listen.
Look at what you’ve done.
The face turns stubbornly to the side. As if someone forcefully turned the head to the side, the head turns as far as it can and looks down.
“Huh…?”
Iris looked down at ‘Oppa’ with a blank face.
“Why? Why..? You, a slave… a merchant…”
From Noble mtl dot com
Looking at her dead ‘Oppa’ without even closing her eyes, Iris distorted her expression and laughed. It was a reflexive laughter as her body involuntarily released laughter when faced with unbearable stress.
“Oh, no… No, it’s not like that…”
Iris mumbled those words absentmindedly. At that moment when her mind was falling apart.
Thud.
The man from earlier grabbed Lian’s neck and lifted him up.
“Huh, luckily the neck is still attached. It would be difficult to get rid of it if it broke.”
After saying that, the man started dragging Lian somewhere, half-dragging him. Iris only watched her receding ‘Oppa’ and didn’t follow.
She still couldn’t accept that what she stabbed was her ‘Oppa’, that her ‘Oppa’ was dead. Of course.
To her right now, the only sanctuary and goal in life was Lian. And she had stabbed him to death with her own hands? It was an impossible thing.
“I, I killed the slave trader. So… so no. Yeah, it’s all because of that strange fog.”
Iris muttered to herself incessantly and got up from her seat.
Swoosh.
Without paying attention to the sword in her hand, she quickly moved towards the entrance she came from. As Iris entered the waiting area, she saw the figure of a rat-man.
“Can I… go up now?”
“Yeah. You can go up right away. First, pack your things on the floor you were originally on -…”
“No, I want to go… go right away.”
Joo Suin tilted his head, deep in thought.
“Has her tongue suddenly been loosened?”
He had his doubts about Iris, who now answered much more flexibly than before, but he quickly brushed them aside. The arena was a place where people suddenly went crazy and transformed.
Iris suddenly speaking out was not that big of a change.
Joo Suin immediately took Iris to the floor where Ryan was staying in the elevator.
“There is one vacant room, but it’s still a mess—”
“Oh, what about Oppa’s room?”
Joo Suin smirked and was about to add something with his mustache twitching, but he didn’t want to deal with the bloodied Iris anymore. He told a slave who was cleaning the hallway to take Iris to Ryan’s room.
Watching Iris leave with the slave, wearing a bright expression, Joo Suin burst into a wry smile.
“Don’t even know who the person you killed is, huh?”
Since things might get out of hand later, it seemed like he would have to communicate with Iris through someone else for the time being. Joo Suin left on the elevator, and Iris arrived at Ryan’s room.
The door wasn’t locked, so she could enter right away. Iris quickly scanned the room, her head turning back and forth, trying to find Ryan.
Clink.
The black sword she held in her hand fell to the floor. She had unknowingly lost her grip and dropped it.
Without paying any attention to whether the sword rolled or not, Iris began to search the much larger room than before.
“Oppa, Oppa…”
Continuously calling out Ryan’s name, Iris scanned the entire room with her flickering eyes.
She searched every room, of course, from the bathroom to the inside of the closet, but she couldn’t find Ryan anywhere.
Her fingertips trembled, and her breath felt like it would run out. Iris felt her collarbone tremble as her whole body grew cold, and she spoke with a voice mixed with laughter.
“Clearly, clearly, he just stepped out for a m-moment… That’s all.”
A rumbling sound began to fill her mind. Iris raised her head firmly and pulled out Lian’s clothes from the wide-open wardrobe, embracing them in her arms as she hesitantly took a seat.
“The clothes, all the clothes are here. I, I’m also here as Lian’s little sister! So he’ll come back soon!”
Iris trembled her lips and tried to erase the scenes that came to her mind.
Embracing Lian’s clothes, she lay down on the bed filled with his scent, curling up her body and swallowing her breath.
From a distance, she heard the sound of his footsteps, and the door opened quietly. Then she would jump up and run towards him… Then…
While embracing Lian’s clothes, Iris groped for the past, waiting and waiting for his return.
…But he never came back.
The boundary between night and day. At a time when the world began to be swallowed by darkness, someone came to the room where Iris was suffocating.
Through the sound of footsteps, Iris immediately realized that the person who had come to the room was not Lian.
Knock, knock, knock.
So she didn’t move even when she heard the knocking sound.
“Hey! The guest said they want to see your brother, so come out!”
“….!”
Thud!
Iris jumped up from the bed and hurriedly ran towards the door. She was so absent-minded that she didn’t notice the slender dagger-like weapon sticking to her ankle.
Creak!
As she forcefully opened the door, the man who had thrown Iris in the arena stood there. He furrowed his brow and tried to grab Iris’s wrist, but she agilely evaded him like a cat.
“Well… fine, do whatever you want. Try to keep up properly.”
The man realized that there wasn’t enough time to wrestle with Iris and started walking ahead.
Iris, who had longed to see Lian, silently followed behind him.
“Come in.”
The place they arrived at was in front of Angsho’s room. Since Iris was already in a daze, she immediately opened the door and went inside.
Creak, thump.
The door made a sound as if it would fall off due to the difficulty in controlling its strength, but she didn’t pay any attention. Iris quickly walked and eventually ran.
“Hak, haa…!”
It wasn’t enough running to tire her out, but her breathing became rough due to her heightened emotions.
As she quickly passed through the dim corridor illuminated only by candlelight, she found doors on both sides at the end of the corridor.
Crash!
Iris opened the door as if she would break it.
“Haa, hak… Oppa!”
Arriving in the spacious living room, Iris looked around quickly. Then her eyes met his.
“Oh, you came just in time.”
On the living room table, Lian’s empty eye sockets, pierced through by her chest, stared directly at Iris.
Gives me new appreciation for why Angron did what he did (warhammer40k).