Chapter 84
I listened as Theo heard my whisper and suddenly started crying.
No.
It wasn’t that he cried after hearing my words; it was something different.
He was crying while staring at something, as if he saw a hallucination in the empty air.
He kept looking at something in the air, sobbing and laughing repeatedly for a long time.
Had alcohol driven him mad?
I thought I should give up on pouring alcohol into this guy for a while.
“Ahaha, does being with me feel that unfair to you?
Even I’d feel hurt if you started crying.”
“…It’s, it’s, it’s over. Finally.”
His voice sounded horribly hollow.
It was the kind of empty voice that seemed to resent the heavens, as if asking why such a thing came to him now.
It felt oddly similar to the emotion I had when I mumbled to myself after being forgiven by Ethel, wondering if this was right.
“What’s over? You won’t even let me die.”
“Yeah, I was stopping you from dying. That’s over now too.”
Theo pushed me away as I clung to him.
Before I knew it, he’d taken the pistol from my waist and all the daggers strapped to the belt around my thigh.
“G-give them back.”
His eyes scared me.
Was he angry?
Because I’d treated him too harshly until now?
I felt a bit confused that this guy, who’d never reacted before, was suddenly angry now.
“You give me back what you took from me.”
Instead of drawing the sword at his waist, he approached me holding the one he’d taken from me.
Was he going to kill me?
Maybe it was all an act—maybe even his demand for an apology was just a ploy to restore things with Ethel and Isabel.
When someone who’d already crumbled once rebuilt something only for it to collapse again, it was hard to get back up.
Yeah, honestly, it was overwhelming.
If Theo betrayed me here…
“Even if you tell me to give it back, I don’t even know what to return, so how can I?
Everything I took from you was ruined long ago. I can’t give it back.”
My words dragged on.
It wasn’t like me.
I didn’t know why I was acting like this.
Was it because I’d been betrayed?
No, there was no need to use the word “betrayal.”
I’d always been the one making a fuss on my own, never asking for the other person’s opinion, so thinking of us as allies or friends was strange…
Fuck, he did call me a friend, didn’t he?
He said he didn’t hate me, even if he found me annoying.
Had he lied so calmly with that composed face?
“Yeah, you always just took from me.
You didn’t kill them yourself, but…
No, fuck, it was basically the same as you killing them.
Do you remember what you said to me when I was crying after Mom and Irma died!?”
Even if I remembered, I wouldn’t say I did.
I hadn’t thought he’d forgive me just because I said sorry, but I never imagined that after struggling so hard to keep myself alive and finally seeing a path forward, he’d try to kill me.
Maybe it was divine punishment for trying to push Alicia to the back of my mind.
If someone like me could live happily after doing such things, there’d be no god in this world.
Though they say there’s some holy power floating around up there, bestowed by a god.
“You asked if I finally understood, didn’t you?
They died, so I couldn’t answer, but back then, I didn’t understand a fucking thing, you bitch.”
Even when I kicked him wildly with my feet, he didn’t seem fazed.
Probably because he really wasn’t. They say bullets don’t even pierce when you cloak your body in mana.
“S-stop talking.”
“What kind of crazy bastard would think of taking kids and killing them with their own hands, even if their family died?”
I gathered spit in my mouth and spat it at Theo’s face.
Maybe because I’d just bitten my tongue, it wasn’t spit so much as pure red blood.
Even without a weapon, my hands could still move.
I punched Theo’s face repeatedly until a dagger stabbed into my arm.
It hurt like hell.
I always felt it, but I really hated pain.
“…Now?”
I hated seeing someone in pain, and I hated being in pain myself.
But even if I hated it, I had to do whatever it took to get what I wanted.
“Well, live? What’s there to live for?
Forgive? What’s there to forgive? Just die.”
I’d gotten used to it, but the sensation of blood flowing from my body, the dizziness, and the pain from the wound were utterly unbearable.
Who’d like pain?
That’s why people inflict it on others.
Hateful, filthy, unbelievable, yeah.
I’d wanted to give up and die, but he forced me back to life and even made me resolve to keep living, and now?
I told him from the start.
Tie up my arms and legs, strap me to a bed, and shove food through a hose.
Let me live like that until I die of old age.
If he wanted to keep me alive, that’s how he should’ve done it.
Why, why now?
Just when I saw a bit of hope.
Just when I thought I could see a path forward.
He smashed it all.
“Now, fuck. You fucking bastard, fuck off.
If I die and come back, I’ll kill you, Ethel, and Isabel.
My specialty was skinning people your parents’ age alive—right in front of you, I’d skin…”
Suddenly, he started choking my neck.
I thrashed, kicked him in the groin with my still-moving legs, and flailed my whole body.
Not that it mattered much.
“You asked me to choke you, didn’t you?”
“Gah! Eh, hrrgh! Agh! Ehh, ugh!!”
I was dying again.
Would I forget this too?
Theo would remember it all.
He’d recall it someday.
Hopefully soon.
The sensation of my mind blacking out came as my vision darkened.
I was surely staring wide-eyed at the ceiling.
Then, for a moment, it felt like my consciousness expanded again…
“Ha, fuck. I can’t do it.”
“Aheeeeek!! Guheeeeek!!”
I clutched my just-choked neck and desperately gasped for air.
My lungs filled so much it was hard to believe this was a body that’d been dying for lack of air, and I kept inhaling and exhaling.
“Didn’t I say you’re the only thing I have?”
“Now, hey, huff. It hurts. Did you, realize? Hic.”
Bile leaked from my mouth, my breathing still unsteady.
Tears streamed down my face, but I forced a smile, not wanting to show weakness.
“Since you’re mine anyway, it doesn’t matter how I treat you, right?”
Theo came closer and started stripping my clothes.
I wasn’t in a school uniform—just light white underwear and a housecoat—so when his rough hands yanked them down, my bare body was exposed.
“W-wait, you were trying to kill me a second ago, what the fuck are you—mmph…”
“Shut up.”
If he was going to cover my mouth, he could’ve at least used his hand—this bastard shoved my panties into it instead.
I hadn’t planned on having a kid.
Even if I did, I wouldn’t have the confidence to love it.
And just like I’d always done, Theo was treating me the same way.
Not caring about the other person’s opinion, just forcing it with strength.
It didn’t feel great.
“Ugh, uhh, mmph, ahh…”
The dagger was still in my arm, and after not breathing for so long, the guy who’d just tried to kill me was now on top of me, moving his hips. It’d be weird if that felt good.
My sense of smell only brought awful odors.
The faint stench of urine from when I’d wet myself while being choked.
The smell of cigars on his breath, mixed with the hot, alcoholic stink.
The unique scent of skin and the smell that came with our bodies mingling.
I managed to push the panties out of my mouth with my tongue, and what came out wasn’t curses.
For some reason, it was a plea.
Maybe because I saw Theo’s crying face.
This time, I didn’t look away or run from his emotions, so why did it turn out like this?
“Guh, ugh, st-stop…”
They say it’s so painful for small-framed people their first time, but thankfully, it wasn’t that bad for me.
Physically, the pain in my lower body was less than the dagger in my arm or my choked neck.
But my heart hurt more.
Because I felt everything I touched got ruined.
Alicia died.
My parents died.
Julian died.
Ethel and Isabel, once fine and beautiful, became twisted messes.
And Theo, the one most deeply tied to me, was in this state.
People usually call sex an act of love.
There was none of that here.
Just two people who suddenly cried, exploded with violence, and now lay here venting their urges while drowning in self-loathing.
“I want, to cry, too, ha, ha…”
After a while, I felt a hot sensation filling me up inside.
There was no love.
No excitement, no happiness.
Not even sexual satisfaction.
Just two idiots lying on a bed, disappointed in themselves after mixing their bodies in a mire of emotions.
A long time passed.
Maybe because he was a decent guy, he wasn’t the type to open a path forward and then push me off a cliff.
Not trash like me.
Well, he’d always been kind.
If you looked at it narrowly, you could even call him righteous.
“…I’m the one who got attacked, so why are you crying?”
“I hate you, enough to want to kill you.
But why do I like you? Enough that I can’t kill you.”
“Yeah, why is that?”
How could we know how people feel?
You or me.
“Light a cigar and put it in my mouth.
I can’t do anything.”
My body had no strength.
I could barely wiggle my fingers, and that was it.
“Sorry.”
“Yeah.”
“Sorry.”
Theo kept repeating that he was sorry, and I kept answering, “Yeah.”
Because it wasn’t okay.
And I answered again when he said sorry once more.
“Theo, I’m sorry too.”
I didn’t hear that it was okay.
Because it wouldn’t be.
“Yeah.”