603 – 7. Jealousy is my strength (103)
‘Embarrassment’, maybe it should be called that.
An incomprehensible gaze was directed at me. As if it’s hard to figure out why you’re asking such a question.
Sometimes a moment of glance conveys more than a hundred words. The emotion in the man’s eyes had one meaning.
Impossible.
That was natural. As of now, I wouldn’t be able to imitate even a tenth of a man’s battle.
Yes, as of now.
“Even if it’s just for a little while… I just need to buy enough time to protect the two of them.”
The man’s golden pupils deepened.
The whirling thoughts shine like reflected light and then disappear. Silence, silence, and silence.
It took some more time before he opened his mouth. It was a more subdued tone than before.
“Baby… You must be mistaken, but that body does not belong to you. It is nothing more than a body embodied in my image in the ‘border’. Do you think you’ll be able to control your body properly when you go back?”
It was a very realistic half-question.
My body has already reached its limit for a long time. In accordance with the special condition of ‘boundary’, the optimal body created by the man’s image simply replaced my broken body.
What if I go back?
It was me who had just entered the ‘boundary’. There was no way I could have a solid image like that of a man.
So, the man’s question, in other words, meant something like this.
‘Worry about your life.’
In fact, it was a miracle that the war could continue until now.
I deliberately overworked the man’s body so that he could exert his full strength. Only then will it be easy for the man’s image to replace my body. Didn’t even take drugs.
This was a fact that even the man acknowledged.
“This is enough. I did as well as you.”
“Then what should I do now?”
Again silence.
The man kept his mouth shut even if he forgot how to respond immediately. It’s still hard to lose my inner feelings from the gaze that scans me.
So I had no choice but to appeal to myself as always.
“Should I be thankful that I woke up like this and saved my life? Waiting for Elsie-senpai and the Archwitch to do something!”
“Baby… ….”
“Elsie said she was scared.”
I gasped and added.
About the scenery the man couldn’t see, the people I had to meet.
“It’s not just Elsie-senpai… everyone must have been It’s such a heavy burden. To suddenly save the world, does that make sense? Seria and Celine were like that…… !”
“It’s a burden I should have shouldered at some point.”
“No, it was too soon.”
Affirmation.
At my steady voice, the man’s pupils deepened even more.
Some scenes were passing by in front of my eyes.
Elsie sunbaenim who cried and held me in my arms.
My childhood friend who cursed himself while being locked in a closed room with no light.
Even the lovely juniors who lost their minds when faced with the cruel truth.
It was a podium made by the world ahead of war. Or, I
Heated breath was leaking out of his clenched teeth.
“The burden given to me was too heavy, so I couldn’t properly look at myself… But not anymore.”
And then, I clenched my fists as if I was determined to be alone.
“…… I need to stay by your side.”
“Sacrifices are inevitable to save the world.”
Determination, and assertion against it.
The man’s tone seemed as firm and flawless as my determination. He recited his scarred lessons with an emotionless expression on his face.
As always.
“It is impossible not to lose anything… That the burden given to you was too heavy? Run so short of breath, look. What did you protect and save?”
And then, as the man glanced at the sky, the scenery of the sky changed completely once more.
It was countless memories.
A girl who collapsed after spilling her intestines.
Trees of flesh covered the vast plains.
A mountain range of gigantic bodies crouching in the wilderness, a tidal wave of flesh sweeping through the snowfields, and even a traitor with a fox tail.
So many other scenes divided the sky like shards of a broken mirror. Among them, there were even invisible scenes.
“…… ‘Humanity’.”
A short word pressed heavily on my chest.
The tone of the man who licked his lips was calm, but his eyes were so expressive. As if there is nothing more important than this.
“You have to know how to give up something for the cause. Wanting to save the world without losing anything? How many lives must have already died at your hands.”
It was an indisputable claim.
I tried to open my lips, but closed them. It’s ‘the life that died in my hands’, yes. This too was a sacrifice.
Even if they made the wrong choice, they also had their own circumstances and logic. It would have been nice if there had been an option to save them as well.
If this is also a sacrifice, then it must be a sacrifice.
I knew. To say that I don’t want to lose anything is close to childish coercion.
So I said.
“…… I can do it.”
The emotion in my chanting was not anger. Rather, it was more of a process of reaffirming one’s own commitments.
The heated voice vomits again.
“I just need to sacrifice more… As always!”
“I’ll say it again, but no matter how much you sacrifice yourself, there is a limit… ….”
“…… You have to do it.”
Then the man who met my eyes stopped moving.
A pair of bloodshot golden eyes shone over his retinas. I didn’t even have to ask who it belonged to.
“None other than me.”
It was a firm, sloppy tone. The traces of emotions that were dug in here and there were filled with damp moisture.
“I want to save Elsie-senpai. No, neither Celine nor Seria… Everyone was so sick.”
It was no longer an argument or persuasion.
At my language, which had degenerated into a mere appeal, the man was unable to open his mouth for a while. She just repeated putting her lips on and taking them off.
In the end, I was speechless.
“I can’t do it alone… I, I have to do it somehow…… !”
“…… Baby.”
It was a word mixed with a sigh.
The body of the man who had been sitting on the rock was slowly raised. The man’s stare staring at me was dry. Just like the hot summer sun.
He took a step forward with his sword wrapped around his waist.
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“I hate you. Until now, I didn’t know why… I wondered if I was envious of you, who still had so much left to protect.”
And one step, one step.
The man’s gait was leisurely but still. To the extent that the sound of him stepping on the ground forms a rhyme.
Soon, the distance between me and the man is close.
The eyes of the man he saw right in front of him were still numb. Could a rock that has lost its curves washed away by rain and wind for a long time look like this?
“But now I get it. Why didn’t I like you so much…….”
A cold flame burns.
It was the man’s golden eyes. Her strong presence made the man’s eyes the only source of light.
“You are me.”
The emotion contained in that one word is, well.
It was so deep and concentrated that I couldn’t even dare to express it. She just flinched and took a step back.
The man vomited again.
“You look like me.”
Another step, the man takes her foot, and my body naturally backs down that much.
In an instant, an eerie sensation passed through my peripheral nerves. To that extent, the origin and end of her man’s feelings were unknown.
“So, I didn’t like you… baby.”
It was then.
The man’s body stood still, and the bloody aura of her surrounding me subsided. It was proof that the density of emotions, which had been so dense that it seemed like it was real for a moment, was rapidly dropping.
That’s it.
The man sighed silently, and then she turned around again. It meant that she had no business left.
However, I was finally able to hear the one word I wanted.
“…… Good.”
There was no need to ask where. Because she had been like this before.
I feel a sense of incongruity in the direction the man turned his back. Let’s look back, what we see in the distance is a shimmering space.
It was a sudden change in her attitude that made her feel like she didn’t have it all of a sudden. When I hesitated, not understanding this, the man spoke in a dry tone as always.
“I must have intended to go even if it dried up anyway… It’s not my taste to invest energy and energy in useless things.”
Jerobeok, jeobeok.
And then the man started moving her steps again. She turned towards the rock he was sitting on at first.
I had no choice but to hesitate for a moment. I want to know what kind of reaction I should show.
Should I say thank you? Or, would you accept it saying that you only knew that now?
The answer may not be both.
A bloody battle was going on outside. I was in a situation where I had to run fast for an hour.
Just like that, the moment I turned my back.
“But keep in mind.”
With that one word, my eyes turned to the back as if being drawn. There, before I knew it, I could see a man perched on a rock.
His face is as plain as his voice.
“Every choice comes with a price… The future is already twisted. Now even I can’t guess.”
It was something I always heard.
I brushed off the ominous warning and averted my eyes. And forward, forward.
Like reverberation, the man’s voice follows me and then disperses.
“Is this also fate… ….”
The pure white light embraces me and tears into countless colors. Each of the innumerable particles became fragments of memories and emotions and were lodged in my heart.
Memories, memories, memories.
The first sensation I felt at the end was one.
It hurts.
*
In a battlefield where blood is splattered and two women roll on the ground.
The man’s fingers trembled as he closed his eyes.