Chapter 165

“There is no need for me to fill up, one by one, the lives you will continue using as tools. Is there?”

I could not properly keep up with the words the woman poured out.

What the hell is she saying?

The one who dragged me into this hell was her.

She felt the slightest responsibility for that, so she had saved me until now, but now she would stop.

And the reason was that, in this living hell, I did not cherish my life.

I thought I had become an abandoned animal waiting for euthanasia, but that was the exact expression.

To think she had picked me up, used me as she liked, pretended to care for me for a while, and now intended to kill me.

It was so absurd that I could not even get angry properly.

Instead, amid extreme confusion, I muttered without realizing it.

“Why me, of all people?”

“You were there.”

“…….”

It felt as if something inside me collapsed.

At the same time, the anger that had been pressed down finally surged up.

For an instant, I could not breathe.

“……I only acted according to the situation too.”

But I barely gathered my reason and feigned composure.

“I am the one who wants to live as an ordinary editor more than anyone. But you ruined my situation, and because that situation has not ended, I have no choice but to act like this. I have been struggling to digest it somehow, so what on earth are you…….”

But the more I spoke, the more my emotions swayed.

In the end, unable to finish, I closed my mouth.

I had thought about it constantly.

Why me, of all people?

Did I do something wrong?

I desperately did not want to believe something like this had happened for no reason.

So I searched for a reason.

I even blamed an innocent god.

But this was what it had been.

Because an absurdly irrational existence had found me.

Only that.

The more I thought about it, the more I felt I would lose my mind.

To quiet that, I clenched my teeth, then began speaking again.

“……You said I may resent you.”

“Yes.”

The woman willingly nodded.

I spoke to that being, whose generosity or cruelty I could not understand.

“I will not resent you. Instead, please help me one more time. I know you have helped me until now, but all of it was something you did unilaterally, alone. I am the injured party here, so why do you get to help alone and absolve yourself alone? This does not make sense.”

“If it does not make sense?”

“At least once, please do as I request. Then I will not resent you either. Please take responsibility with that.”

Resenting her would not improve the situation.

So I said the best thing I could say.

Toward me, the woman smiled gently and answered.

“As expected, you are wrong.”

Her voice was gentle as ever.

“I will not revive you, and you cannot overturn my decision.”

“……That is irresponsible.”

“I am fickle, but I am not irresponsible. The irresponsible one is not me, but you. And with that, you pretend to be diligent. You ignore what you should take responsibility for, while embracing what you have no need to take responsibility for.”

“…….”

“What you must take responsibility for now is nothing else but the promise we made. You have no authority to break that promise.”

Only the woman’s voice was gentle.

With a voice that sounded as if she would do anything for me, the woman began urging on despair.

“And you are not a story that must necessarily be completed. Look. Were the deaths in this place perfect in setup, development, turn, and conclusion?”

As if responding to the woman’s words, the space around me changed into ruins.

A space where everything had been broken and everything had burned.

And countless humans burned like trees.

“Having setup, development, turn, and conclusion all the way to completion, and having foreshadowing resolved, is possible only within narrow stories. This world’s causality is not that simple. There are lives that simply end in misfortune, and you are no exception. Not all such stories are incomplete. They are merely common tragedies overflowing in this world.”

At the woman’s words, I exhaled without realizing it.

But the woman did not care and continued speaking.

“Moreover, you already know it well yourself. That this is ‘merely one of the things that happened.’ That humans only desperately assign meaning because they cannot endure their own worthlessness.”

“…….”

I realized why this thing wore the author’s appearance.

Did it want to tell me, with the appearance of the author who had taught me how to live, that my life had no meaning?

If that was truly its intention, perhaps I should applaud its excellence.

“Despite all of this, if you make it out of here alive, would that truly be a plausible story?”

I merely looked at the woman.

But this time too, the woman smiled as if she had already heard my answer.

And my body fell into the abyss.

Because one of the cords holding me had snapped.

---

I was running.

With a body not even ten years old, I ran breathlessly.

Then something blocked my way.

Still running, I fell straight into its arms.

The one who embraced me was the woman.

The thing in the form of an author I knew well.

Still gasping for breath, I looked up at the woman with confused eyes.

Holding the young me fully in both arms, the woman asked,

“Why are you running like that?”

“There is a person over there!”

“The child named Lee Sol?”

Wanting her to let go of my arm, I hurriedly nodded.

However, ignoring my impatience, the woman murmured calmly,

“Is that your last lingering attachment?”

“……?”

“Why is that child holding onto you this much?”

What is she asking?

Not understanding, I looked up at the woman.

The woman slowly released my body.

But I could not think of running again and stopped in place.

The woman lowered herself and placed her hands on her knees.

Meeting my eyes that way, she asked again.

“The friends who came with you did have a great deal of unresolved grief piled up. So there was enough motive and plausibility. But what about you?”

What about me?

“Why are you joining in there and grinding yourself down? You said it with your own mouth. That child is nothing to you, and you are not a hero.”

The woman’s question was too difficult.

No, rather than the question, my answer was difficult.

So instead of answering, I asked the woman back.

“Why won’t you let me go?”

“To save you.”

“Save me?”

“I will make sure you are not murdered by yourself.”

“…….”

“So tell me. Do you perhaps want to become a hero?”

“It is not that.”

“Then is it because of sympathy?”

“It is not that either.”

I kept shaking my head at the woman’s assumptions.

“Then why are you doing this?”

At the woman’s question, I hesitated, then barely opened my mouth.

“The situation cannot be helped, but actions can be chosen.”

At my words, the woman thought for a moment.

After pondering, the woman asked me back.

“Are you perhaps choosing the most ideal action?”

“No.”

When I shook my head, the woman looked at me again.

As if asking me to explain properly.

But the young me could not explain this sufficiently.

So I only struggled to recite the sentence inside me.

“The situation cannot be helped, but actions can be chosen. But my choice becomes someone else’s situation.”

Seeking the woman’s understanding, I said it again and again.

“Someone else’s situation changes because of my choice.”

Had she understood my words?

A smile spread over the woman’s lips.

The woman smiled warmly and asked back,

“And so?”

“And so, I want to give them a situation they can endure.”

“Why?”

“Because everyone has to fight their own situation.”

“I see.”

The woman nodded.

Holding the hem of my clothes, I looked at the woman.

For some reason, tense, I waited for her answer.

“I am the same. I too want to give you a peaceful death.”

The woman pulled me into her arms again and spoke.

It was a cozy embrace, but it was not what I wanted.

“So you do not have to run anymore. There will be nothing painful now.”

Held in the woman’s arms, I looked beyond her shoulder.

There was still something I had to do.

I had to escape this embrace.

So when I tried to push the woman away, she whispered by my ear,

“My mercy is not something you can refuse.”

That one sentence bound me at once.

As if it had substance, it made my body stiff, and to me, frozen still, the woman whispered again.

“Because now, I am your situation.”

I felt something inside me snap.

When the strength left my body, the woman stroked my head and smiled.

“Good boy.”

I had no choice but to accept it.

There was no other option.

Because this woman had already become my situation.

“Thanks to you, it was entertaining. There is no need to be disappointed because the attempt failed. This is not your fault. It is only that I wanted to kill you too much.”

At the woman’s consolation, I silently accepted it.

The woman had chosen.

My death.

And so that became my situation.

It was something that happened everywhere in the world.

If one climbs back along a given situation, someone’s choice always appears.

Even a trivial choice, once it has gone around the world, becomes an unbearable situation, and humans call it fate as they are crushed beneath it.

I did not fail to know that fact.

So I did not resist any further and closed my eyes.

“So now, let’s go.”

The woman cupped my cheek with her hand and whispered.

Press—

But.

Press—

“Why are you really like this?”

……Those are the words I want to say.

At the hand pressing my cheek, I opened my eyes again.

I had become an adult again, and the woman with Author Na Bit’s face was pressing my cheek with her hand, just as she had earlier.

“It seems the resolution is more or less done, so why will you not budge? There is no way the bond would be maintained to this extent…….”

The woman muttered incomprehensible words.

Why is this woman subtly sloppy and making me think of Author Na Bit even more…….

With complicated feelings, I looked at that woman.

I did not know whether I should be glad that my lifespan had been extended even briefly, or whether I should tell her to end it quickly if she was going to kill me anyway.

That was when it happened.

RATTLE—!

The dark space surrounding us suddenly moved.

A floor was suddenly laid down, walls were stacked up, and in an instant, it changed into the waiting hall of 「Railway Station」.

“……?”

I was not the only one startled.

The woman also seemed to find this situation unexpected, because she looked around with startled eyes.

Bzzzt— bzzzzzt—

Then the surge spread out behind the woman’s back also began to gradually shrink.

As if it was no longer possible for it to display its authority as it had until now.

The time and space that had been drifting wildly in amorphous form were hardening again.

“Why is space…….”

Just as the woman murmured, flustered.

CRASH—!

A roar came from far away.

CRASH—! BOOM—!

Were bombs falling somewhere?

The woman faintly frowned, then opened a nearby door.

Then, after seeing what lay beyond it, she sighed lowly.

“Hah.”

Wondering what was going on, I looked beyond the door and grew flustered along with her.

The one beyond the door was a person I knew well.

It was Cha Si-eon, literally beating the abnormal phenomena of nascent-phase 「Railway Station」 to pieces.

A new situation given to me.