Chapter 89: The Other Side of the World

Chapter 89: Chapter 89: The Other Side of the World

Felix stayed completely still. He didn’t interrupt. He didn’t even shift in his chair.

Vesper gave a short, humorless laugh. "Yes, really. Little Vesper Cruz, future savior of the world. Pretty cute, right?" She shook her head.

"Feels like another lifetime."

"A real hero came through our slums one afternoon. He was hunting some lowlife who had ducked into our district. I remember that armor. Bright, polished, with the full Association crest across the chest. High-grade gear, carrying himself like the entire world depended on his next step." A faint smile touched her mouth.

"To a bunch of dirty street kids who had never seen an Awakened up close, he looked like a god who had dropped right out of a storybook."

"He caught his man eventually, but before that, he actually hung around and talked to us. We swarmed him with questions. Some of the younger ones reached out just to touch the shiny metal on his boots. One boy asked if he could really smash a monster’s skull open with bare hands." She let out a dry breath. "The guy laughed and told the kid that wasn’t the part that mattered."

"He told us about the gates. The beasts crawling on the other side, and how they would spill into our homes if nobody stood in the way. He told us that every hunter stepping through a rift was putting their life on the line for people they would never even meet." Her voice dropped lower, shedding its sharp edge.

"He talked about the ones who died holding the line. Names carved into stone, sacrifices people remembered, heroes who got the highest medals when they came back in boxes." A distant look entered her eyes.

"He made dying for strangers sound... noble."

"We ate up every single word. We were stupid kids. We didn’t understand what it actually meant to watch a friend get torn in half or carry back empty gear. We just heard: heroes protect people. They fight the bad things. Everyone loves them." She glanced over at Felix. "Almost every kid in that alley decided right then and there to become a hero."

"And you?" Felix asked softly.

"Me too." There was zero hesitation in her voice.

"I dreamed about joining a strike team. Going into rifts side by side, getting stronger together, making a name everyone would know." Her lips curved, softer this time.

"I used to imagine camping inside those weird pocket dimensions after clearing a boss, sitting around a fire, fighting over who stole the last ration pack, making fun of whoever passed out first."

She looked away toward the metal floor. "And, yeah, finding someone special along the way."

Felix raised an eyebrow, a quiet glimmer of humor in his eyes.

Vesper caught the look and gave a tiny, self-conscious smirk. For two seconds, she looked like an ordinary young woman remembering a warm memory. Then the warmth vanished, replaced by the flat gray cold of the cell.

"Of course, none of that happened," she said.

She stared down at her bare fingers. "We grew up, and the fairytale fell apart fast. The adults in our district didn’t give a damn about heroes. They cared about bread, rent, and surviving until the next sunrise. That slum wasn’t some place where plucky underdogs trained hard to make it big. It was a dump where people vanished overnight because they owed twenty credits to the wrong loan shark. Where children learned how to pick pockets before they learned the alphabet. A hot meal mattered a thousand times more than some noble dream."

She looked back up, her violet eyes hard. "Once we got old enough to see how the system really works, we realized that wanting to be a hero didn’t mean anything. We had no formal schooling. No family names. No money for basic weapons or skill manuals. Even when a kid unlocked an actual affinity, the local guilds treated them like trash unless they could make money on day one."

"Meanwhile, the gangs were waiting right on our doorsteps. They didn’t ask for academy diplomas. They didn’t care who your parents were. They only asked one thing: can you get the job done? They offered hot food, a safe room, money, and muscle to back you up." A bitter twist hit her lips.

"And by the time we figured out what they were actually molding us into, our hands were already covered in blood. There was no way out."

"Every single kid who crowded around that hero dreaming of saving the world ended up on a wanted poster." She held up her hand, ticking them off on her fingers.

"Pickpockets. Drug runners. Lookout rats. Enforcers. Hitmen." Her hand dropped back into her lap. "Every last one of us." A short, hollow laugh escaped her. "Our fairytale was dead before it even got off the ground."

Silence hung in the room. Vesper stared at the seam where the wall met the floor, then turned her gaze straight back onto him.

"You know what the funniest part is? That hero probably went home that night feeling great about himself. Thought he gave a bunch of poor kids hope. Probably smiled about it for a week."

Her expression darkened. "Ten years later, every single one of those kids grew up to be the exact kind of monster he spent his career putting in the dirt." She leaned back against the steel panel. "Tell me that isn’t a joke."

Felix didn’t reply right away.

He had seen poverty in reports, and he had patched up fighters who came out of rough neighborhoods. But listening to Vesper lay it out hit differently. She wasn’t begging for pity. She wasn’t asking him to feel sorry for her. She was just laying out the math of where she came from.

She met his eyes, her voice turning sharp and cold again. "You will never understand what the bottom looks like, Felix. You’ve only ever lived on the clean side of the fence. Doing the right thing is cheap when you have a roof over your head and food on the table."

The words sat between them. Felix thought about his family: the Valerius name, the private sparring rooms, the expensive trainers, the safety net that caught him even when his relatives laughed at him for picking a healing path. He had fought hard. He had bled. He had put his life on the line to prove a medic belonged in the dirt.

But he had never gone hungry. He had never had to pick between starving in a gutter or slitting a stranger’s throat. Their starting lines were worlds apart, and pretending otherwise would be an insult.

"I hear you," Felix said quietly.

Vesper gave him a sharp, doubtful look. "Do you?"

"Not all of it," Felix admitted honestly. "I didn’t grow up in your shoes. I won’t pretend I know what it felt like to sleep on concrete or wonder if I’d eat the next day. I can’t imagine every impossible corner you got backed into."

He held her gaze steady.

"When you have nothing, food and shelter aren’t perks. They are survival. If the only people who offer to feed you are criminals, a kid doesn’t see a crime syndicate. They just see the only hand reaching down to pull them out of the mud. I get why you took that hand."

Vesper’s fingers froze against her trousers. For a split second, the cynical killer was gone, leaving only the girl who had been abandoned by everyone else.

"I can understand how you got pushed onto that road," Felix continued, his voice firming up.

"What I cannot do is pretend the road didn’t leave a trail of bodies. Understanding your past doesn’t change the outcome of what you did. The guards you executed were human beings with lives of their own. The targets you wiped out had people who depended on them. Some of them were dirty, sure, others were just bystanders who stood by the wrong door."

He leaned in closer.

"You started out as a kid who wanted to protect people. Slowly, step by step, you turned yourself into a weapon that cuts down anyone for a payout, without even bothering to learn their names."

Vesper looked down at the floor, her jaw working.

"And nobody turns into that overnight," Felix said.

The vault went dead quiet. She just stared at her own open palms, letting out a small, tired breath.

"You are really annoying at this," she muttered.

"At what?"

"Making it hard to hate you."

Felix blinked, then let out an amused chuckle.

"Honestly, that might be the best compliment I’ve gotten all week."

"Don’t let it go to your head."

The tension in the air changed. It wasn’t friendly, but the sharp hostility had drained out of the room.

Felix let the quiet sit for a minute.

He thought about the overall balance of it all. An A-rank assassin with her level of lethality, her precision, and her experience was a terrifying weapon. If she remained pointed at society, she would only generate more corpses, more grieving families, and more ruin.

If she was simply executed, that talent vanished into the dirt: a net loss of a capable asset, leaving the world with nothing to show for the years spent keeping her alive.

The only outcome that actually tipped the scales in favor of the world was turning her around. Using those same lethal hands to protect the wall instead of punching holes in it.

Taking someone who had spent a decade subtracting lives and forcing her to start adding them back.

He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. "Can I ask you one last question?"

Vesper glanced up, weary. "You’ve been drilling me for two hours."

"This one matters more than the rest."

"Sounds dangerous."

Felix held her violet eyes with absolute focus.

"Do you still want to be a hero?"

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