How to Save a Time-Limited Heroine

A faint sound echoed in his ears.

With every beat of the sound, the scene seemed to fragment.

13 cycles had passed since.

Deltain who abandoned sleep had tirelessly tried to prove something, but the results were devastating.

‘What is it…’

What exactly needed to be proven?

What was the winter being referred to, and how would it end?

He tried to follow the train of thought, but it slipped away.

And not just that — whether his eyes were open or closed, whether he was walking along a path or lying on the ground — it was all blurred and uncertain.

Crunch.

He heard footsteps.

The sound rang painfully in his ears, reverberating in his eardrums.

Yet his steps did not stop.

Even as all his cognition and senses twisted into an indistinguishable mess, something pushed him forward.

‘… cold.’

That single thought filled his mind.

Deltain lifted his head and looked around.

It was a place both familiar and unfamiliar.

‘… Central City.’

The heart of Manhattan, located south of Harlem.

Even this late at night, the buildings shone brightly like a different world altogether.

It was the place he had visited a few cycles ago, right before attempting to sleep, only to leave the moment he lay down.

Deltain blankly wondered.

‘Is it okay to come this far?’

As long as he didn’t attempt to sleep, was it alright to stay here?

He didn’t know.

But if he was to keep wandering, this place would surely be better than East Harlem.

Deltain staggered forward.

His face bore a weariness and despair far too deep for a seven-year-old child.

His complexion was sallow, his cheeks hollow — he looked like someone teetering on the edge of death.

Yet no passerby stopped to help him.

‘… an outsider.’

Deltain was a complete outsider.

Realizing this again, he bit his lip unconsciously.

The same question repeated itself in his mind.

‘Why…’

Why did it have to be him?

Why was he chosen, discarded, then thrown into Harlem to fend for himself?

Everything that followed.

Why him?

Crunch.

The sound of walking through snow.

The soles of his feet felt frozen to the bone.

Only then did Deltain realize he was barefoot.

Still, he did not stop.

His steps now followed a definite path.

‘Why…!’

Even as his entire body froze and his senses dulled, a burning sensation in his head led the way.

A path paved by indignation.

A route illuminated by resentment and fury.

He passed Central Park’s main road, moving toward the outskirts, then into a residential area lit by faint, yellowish lights.

‘Why me…’

Swallowing the endlessly repeating question, he stopped at the end of the path.

Dump.

With no strength left to walk, he collapsed, lying on his back and staring at the upper floor of a building.

The 16th floor, specifically.

Warm light seeped out from one of the windows there.

‘Why did it have to be me?’

Deltain asked so.

His lips moved to utter the question, but no sound came out.

The body of a seven-year-old child would not allow it.

“Haah…”

Only a fractured, deflated sound escaped his lips.

His eyes grew heavier and heavier.

Yet the illuminated window on the 16th floor remained vivid.

Even after all these decades, the faces of the people within were as clear as ever.

Deltain envisioned them once more.

A white man and woman, more aristocratic in appearance than actual nobility.

Young, capable, and arrogant — people who flaunted their exceptionalism.

And who had chosen him as their sacrifice.

His foster parents must be up there.

‘And…’

Were they fighting again?

No, by now, they’d likely made up and were probably having sex like nothing happened.

And there would be no place for him in that scene.

They lived in their own world, and he had only ever been an accessory.

‘Is that why I ran away?’

In all honesty, the reasons were now a blur.

His life had never afforded him the luxury of dwelling on such things.

But one thing was clear.

What he had wished for on the day he fled to Harlem.

‘I wanted you to come find me. Both of you.’

He wanted them to tell him he wasn’t just an accessory.

To prove there was a place for him in their lives.

‘… but you never came.’

Did they know that the reason he never left Harlem for four years was because of them?

Did they know that even as he lived like a beggar, he remained in Manhattan because of them?

Deltain asked himself these predetermined questions and let out a bitter laugh.

‘If they knew, they would’ve found me.’

Surely, in this cramped Manhattan, they couldn’t have failed to find him in four years.

What rose within him was self-mockery.

‘From the moment I left them, I…’

Suddenly.

Shudder.

His fingertips trembled.

His eyes opened wide.

“Ah…”

In the midst of his aimless, drifting thoughts, Deltain realized something.

What his truly was.

‘… it was you.’

It wasn’t anything else that he needed to acknowledge or face.

The true pain that haunted him from that day.

It wasn’t the beatings he endured from rough kids.

It wasn’t narrowly escaping an assault by a drug addict.

It wasn’t the humiliation from gangs or that wretched Verdi who looked down on him like a bug.

What hurt him more than all those things was…

The fact that he meant nothing to his foster parents.

Deltain gazed at the 16th floor of the building, even as his dimming eyes blurred.

And he let out a strangled laugh.

‘How cruel.’

What a cruel thing to prove.

Wasn’t that so?

What kind of proof was this, one that couldn’t be broken with strength or endured with willpower?

A proof that tortured you until you knew the answer…

No, until you admitted to it. Where else in the world was there such a thing?

As Deltain laughed like a dying man driven mad, an alarm rang.

At the same time, his mind grew faintly hazy.

For a brief moment, it felt like his body was floating, followed by a sensation of hazy disconnection.

Somehow, he felt warmth.

And.

— Don’t die, Deltain.

He thought he heard that voice.

Deltain answered absentmindedly.

“… I won’t.”

He hadn’t come all this way just to die here.

Crunch.

Deltain struggled to lift his upper body.

Snow fell off, and the cold began to seep into his damp skin.

Gritting his teeth, he shook it off.

Deltain staggered to his feet, turning his gaze to the building’s main entrance.

He waved the interface away with his hand.

Then, he stepped forward.

Click.

As the door opened.

“… Alex?”

A man and woman stepping out into the hallway called out to him.

Deltain stared at them silently.

They were his foster parents.

His foster father wore a navy suit beneath a trench coat, and his foster mother, also well-dressed, clung to his arm with her own coat wrapped snugly around her.

The smiles they had been wearing just moments before, and the scarf on the mother’s neck, as well as the wristwatch on the father’s arm, made it clear they had been about to go out somewhere.

Deltain let out a dry laugh.

“Your fucking kid goes missing, and all you can think about is going out?”

“What…”

His foster mother flinched, startled, then turned red as she raised her voice.

“How dare you speak like that! Do you have any idea how—”

“Do you even have the affection to scold me?”

His foster mother shut her mouth.

His foster father frowned but then spoke.

“Where have you been?”

“I didn’t come back from somewhere. I left. For good.”

Deltain panted heavily.

The inside of the building was warmer than outside.

Perhaps it was the lingering haze of his earlier delirium, or maybe his recovery was due to the progression of the quest. Either way, his head felt clearer than before.

Deltain dismissed the interface again.

And then he spoke.

“I hated you both so much.”

The four years in Harlem were a period of loathing for them.

Yet, at the same time, they were a period of foolish waiting.

Just those four years.

“After that, I decided to forget about you. I resolved to survive and rise to a place you could never even dream of reaching.”

“Alex…”

“I changed my name, you bitch.”

The name Alex was discarded as soon as he came of age.

It was a choice to survive at all costs and abandon the weak version of himself he used to be.

He fought through every moment of his life with difficulty twice that of others.

And he had always been the victor.

So, leaving them behind that day…

Turning his back on them and enduring all the humiliation that followed wasn’t a mistake.

“That’s why I don’t miss you. I won’t hate you or resent you anymore, either. You’re not worth that much to me.”

His foster parents’ expressions were colored with confusion.

Of course, whether this was a hallucination or not, the boy who had cowered until just this afternoon was now spouting incomprehensible words — it was only natural to find it puzzling.

It was amusing.

Low as the feeling might have been, thinking of it as proof that he had surpassed them wasn’t entirely unwarranted.

“Still…”

Deltain let out a chuckle and continued.

“… yeah, I won’t deny that you played a big part in who I’ve become.”

The reason he strove to be arrogant was because of them.

The reason he pursued perfection was because of them.

He wanted to be like them, to be someone far greater than them.

“I’ll give you that much credit.”

Winter was cold.

The four years in Harlem, the seven years at the shelter he sought out afterward, and the long journey to reach the pinnacle.

It had all been cold. So cold and painful. Yet he endured it because of the resentment he refused to acknowledge, even to himself.

“So, let’s end it here.”

Deltain let go of all the tension in his body.

Then he took a step back.

“Meeting you was shitty. Let’s never see each other again. Even if I return, I won’t look for you. I’m leaving behind the last of my lingering feelings here.”

Thud.

He picked up a stone.

“I’m finally going to become whole on my own.”

For a moment, the image of a woman with cherry blossom-colored eyes flashed in Deltain’s mind.

He frowned.

‘Why is she coming to mind now of all times?’

Pathetic.

A sharp breath escaped him.

Deltain shook off the thought and looked at his foster parents.

At last, he bid farewell to his long, drawn-out winter.

“Live well. Or don’t.”

With that, he raised the stone, bigger than his fist, and hurled it.

Thud!

It struck his foster father’s head.

“Argh!”

“Ahhh!”

“Idiots.”

With those words, the interface appeared again.