Chapter 700 – #140_Agony And Choice (6)
#700
1.
Siwoo stared blankly at Pina.
It felt like swallowing a red-hot nail.
His complex thought processes seemed to have stopped, leaving him with only a sense of utter despair.
His heartbeats echoed vividly in his ears, accompanied by an unpleasant ringing.
Rosie walked past Siwoo and approached Pina.
“Pina, how have you been? I was sad that you haven’t been playing with me lately.”
Like a child picking up a discarded doll, Rosie sat Pina up, straightened her clothes, and smoothed out her disheveled hair with a comb.
What on earth was Rosie thinking when she did this?
And why was she showing it off to Siwoo as if it were something to be proud of?
“How is it? Surprised?”
“……”
At Rosie’s cautious question, Siwoo rubbed his face with his dry hands.
He couldn’t tell what kind of expression he was making.
“But I didn’t break all my promises. I didn’t even kill her. Right, Pina?”
Rosie, who looked no different than she did when she was alive, lightly kissed Pina’s peach-colored cheek and intertwined her fingers with Pina’s limp hand.
Humming a tune, Rosie finished combing Pina’s hair and gently laid her down.
“I’ll definitely play with you next time. Sleep until then.”
Rosie’s lips lightly touched Pina’s lips and then parted.
Pina regained her peace, like a princess in a deep, long sleep in the forest.
“Oh, right. I came to talk about the bet, didn’t I? So, if I win this position board bet, I’ll tell you what I’ll ask for.”
Unexpectedly, what Siwoo felt was not the anger of someone who had witnessed an inhuman act.
It was just an unidentified anguish and a pain that tightly constricted his heart.
Humans are empathetic creatures.
They can easily empathize with the despair and pain of others.
It felt like the despair and pain that Pina must have felt were seeping into Siwoo through osmosis.
And now, Siwoo’s brain was refusing to understand it.
It was so overwhelming that his mind’s safety mechanism was cutting off acceptance.
“First, I need to prepare a cake and fireworks. And we can’t forget the party hats. Because it’s the time for Mama’s reunion with Pina that she’s been waiting for for ten years.”
Ignoring Siwoo’s reaction, Rosie babbled about her plans as if she were singing.
“First, I’ll eat cake with Mama in her room and talk about how hard she’s worked. Then, I’ll blindfold her and take her to Pina’s room.”
“……”
“I need your cooperation here. You’ll like it once you do it, you know? Even though Pina is asleep forever, I’ve preserved and decorated her so well. She’s no different than when she was alive, you know?”
“……”
“You can really trust me. I’ve interfered with her diencephalon, so if I put a little magic into her, she’ll breathe and twitch. And her body temperature is regulated too, you know? The only problem is that her reactions are a bit dull. But who cares? She’s so pretty and cute.”
“……”
Rosie’s excitement made her flutter around Siwoo like a fly.
Rosie’s transparent cruelty echoed left and right in his auditory organs, which had not yet fully returned.
“What do you mean by that?”
Everything was implied, but he couldn’t understand.
No matter how much of an enemy she was.
He was denying that at least a fellow human being could not conceive of such an act.
Rosie grinned, showing her white teeth.
“Hehe, why are you asking the obvious? I’m saying I’ll let you do it with Pina.”
A thin layer that had been blocking osmosis was peeled away.
Like a hyena offering rotten meat to its pack.
Rosie was calmly telling him to participate in her evil deed as a reward for the bet.
“You don’t have to pretend. You’re the only one I’ve shown Pina to. Whatever you do, it’ll be our secret.”
“……”
“Anyway, when I blindfold Mama and come in, you just have to play with Pina.”
Rosie’s breathing grew rough, as if she were imagining the future.
The blush rising on her cheeks seemed to be evidence of sexual excitement.
“Mama will be very anxious when she hears the sounds, right? She’ll hear the sound of the bed shaking or creaking.
But even if she feels something is wrong, she won’t be able to refuse me. Because that’s how she can meet Pina again, and it’s the moment when her ten years of perseverance will bear fruit. Don’t you think so?”
“……”
“But when she takes off the blindfold, she’ll realize that her apprentice witch can never become a witch again.”
Rosie let out a scream-like cheer and hugged herself.
Her eyelids, which were tightly closed and looking up at the sky, showed her eyeballs moving back and forth.
“Ah, the despair Mama will feel then… It’ll definitely burn beautifully.”
2.
In front of Siwoo and Rosie was the position board that had been set up a little while ago.
Siwoo was the first to move.
Rosie was the second to move.
After setting up their respective magic sources according to the rules, and after a standard early-to-mid game fight, they were now in the late game phase.
The advantage of the game was clear.
Rosie had 6, and Siwoo had 4.
If this game were a normal match between ordinary users, it wouldn’t be a big gap.
The position board is a game full of variables in the early, mid, and late stages.
However, both Rosie and Siwoo were skilled players who did not allow for variables.
In any field, top-tier matches are often decided by small details rather than dramatic reversals.
The fact that Siwoo, who had the first move, had instead handed the flow of the game to Rosie meant that a gap had opened up that could not be reversed unless he made a divine move in this game.
However, Siwoo’s hands repeated mechanical and conventional moves.
Without any special attempts or tricks, the chances of a reversal were falling away one by one.
If Rosie had been a little more focused on the game, the match would have ended here.
But she didn’t.
Rosie wasn’t focused on the position board at all either.
She was just shining her eyes and bragging.
“Pina is really pretty. And do you know how bold and brave she was? Even though she was captured, she threatened that she wouldn’t let anyone touch her teacher’s hair. No matter how much I tormented her, she bit her lip and endured it. She was so lovely.”
No matter how good Siwoo’s acting was, he wouldn’t be able to hide his physiological disgust for Rosie.
Nevertheless, Rosie didn’t seem to notice any of that.
Rather, like a child listing the pretty points of a doll in her house, she rambled on about her own precious memories in an innocent tone.
“If you liked her so much, why did you kill her?”
Unable to bear the question, Siwoo asked his enemy, whom he didn’t even want to talk to, in a cracked voice.
“Did I kill Pina? That can’t be true. Thinking about that time already makes me cry. It’s a really sad thing, but she cut her wrist with broken glass….”
“So why?”
“Why did she die? She was just a little sensitive. It’s my fault for not considering it beforehand. I didn’t think she would kill herself just because she couldn’t become a witch.”
Was the fact that she didn’t directly mention the cause here an expression of the minimum remaining shame?
That couldn’t be.
Rosie was still smiling.
“Are you curious? Are you interested in this kind of thing too? Hmm…. I’ll tell you a little bit.”
Rosie continued, lost in thought.
“That day, Pina was screaming, and I was in a bad mood. No matter how much I yelled at her, she wouldn’t listen. So, in a fit of anger, I put the slaves I had brought for experiments in as her roommates.”
Slaves for experiments, roommates, she just couldn’t become a witch, suicide.
Each combination of ominous words became a shovel that would soon dig up the terrible truth of the past.
“Haa, I shouldn’t have done that. I really regret it. No, but that night was really fun. The lesson we should learn here is that the marshmallow experiment is all a lie.”
What am I doing right now?
Siwoo looked at the position board.
As Rosie gained momentum, the game quickly tilted to 8 to 2.
“By the way, you’re going really easy on me. You don’t have to be so polite, you know? Actually, you want to participate in my surprise too, right?”
There was no way to reverse it.
Rosie’s victory would be confirmed in the next three moves.
“……”
He had successfully maintained a proper distance from Rinne.
Dorothy had informed Gehenna of Siwoo’s situation.
She would soon return with the code to complete the dimensional transfer.
He was confident that he could change the price Rosie had demanded for the bet.
Although there was a good chance that his relationship would be broken and he would have to give up Manya and Malisha, getting them back was only a secondary issue.
Since Rinne owned them, he could get them out through her if necessary.
Even in the worst case, he could definitely smuggle out Yebin and Alice and escape.
However, the moment Siwoo expressed his anger at Rosie, everything he had built up so far would collapse.
Because any act of violence that takes place in Hexennacht is directly punished by Qliphoth.
Tragedy exists everywhere.
The essence of human beings is cruel.
As long as there is a damp evil that savors the grief and pleasure of others.
The word tragedy will never disappear from this world.
So there was no reason for Siwoo to be responsible for all the tragedies.
Even if he felt indignation and anger at Pina and Mama’s tragedy, there was a great compromise that he had no obligation to risk himself to punish a complete stranger.
“I won.”
Rosie, smiling brightly in front of him, declared the end of the game.
She was a disgusting villain who had created all this tragedy.
But at this moment, what was even more disgusting was his own weakness, which was making all sorts of excuses to avoid taking risks.
He made a vow here.
An immature justice that he couldn’t handle.
He could be seen as a manifestation of complacency and optimism.
“Bloom.”
For this moment, he would be satisfied with beating to death a dog in human skin.
Because Siwoo had the power that the poor apprentice witch, who had been caught up in a morality-less game and had no choice but to take her own life in despair, did not have.
fuck yeah
Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhh