No Dark Secrets In This Book

Episode 95

“Even though you’re just a young brat with only a unique name, how dare you…!”

Thud, crunch!

…The situation was quickly sorted out. To be precise, that’s how it felt to me. To me, who was pitifully rolling on the floor. As soon as Ryuseong came, everything progressed quickly. Or too slowly. I wanted to close my eyes but I didn’t even have the energy for that. While everything was happening, I just lay there motionless.

I think I was trying to kill something a little while ago, but I couldn’t feel anything. It felt like there was a thread capable of destroying something at any moment tangled on my fingertips, but I didn’t have the strength to unravel it, so I stayed still.

It felt like all the material called emotion was bleached, like clothes ruined from wrong laundry.

I couldn’t feel any emotion, just like when I had to secretly open the rice cooker lid during our family’s cozy dinner time, scoop out all the rice, and steal a few pieces of scorched rice remaining.

Our family is a super rich chaebol family. So they didn’t respect a single grain of rice soaked with farmers’ blood and sweat that much. That fact was a blessing to young me.

You couldn’t understand me if you didn’t understand this.

‘…Who would understand though.’

If you scrape the pot with a plastic spoon, you get about half a spoonful to swallow. When I was younger, I scraped the pot with a metal spoon and got caught, becoming a “dog on the dog days,” so I didn’t make that mistake again. The “dog on the dog days” here doesn’t mean being boiled in a pot. It was a reference to the old idiom of being beaten like a dog.

Before possessing this body, when I looked back on those days, I thought, ‘Kya, even thinking of stealing a plastic spoon from the trash can. A damn smart kid.’ But at the time, I don’t think I had room for such thoughts. Was it because my perspective was narrow? Grandfather liked scorched rice, and what was left in the pot after abundant scorched rice was served on the table was mostly burnt rice. Scraping that together with a plastic spoon, a tiny plastic spoon used for eating ice cream, was something that would get me killed if caught, but at the same time, it was a worthwhile adventure. Because it could fill my stomach anyway…

I got sidetracked for a bit, but I just wanted to use a metaphor. I was just beautifully comparing my attempt to look around using my last strength to scraping off the scorched rice stuck to the bottom of the pot.

‘I can’t say I used the strength of suckling since I was fed formula.’

Anyway, I slowly turned my eyes and looked down at the floor. I hadn’t paid attention until a little while ago, but on the floor where I was lying, there was one more person collapsed besides me. Somehow I felt a dazed feeling as if looking at an inanimate object, but I observed steadily and closely. He had a miserable and pathetic appearance like me. But he looked a bit worse. Someone who lost consciousness while bleeding profusely with broken arms, legs, and head must be more serious than me, who didn’t feel much pain.

‘It’s that bastard. Dick Baskerville or whatever.’

Dick Baskerville, who had strangled my neck and wielded violence against me, was now wriggling like a bug. It must have been done by Ryuseong, who came in through the open door and discovered me when I couldn’t feel anything. I didn’t feel anything special even looking at him dying. Rather, I might admire Ryuseong’s training results.

The regressor who had me focus on solo training and devote himself to practice in the early days of the academy seemed to have digested his pre-regression skills well. With the skills Ryuseong showed at this age in the original story, he wouldn’t have been able to defeat Dick Baskerville. Because no matter how talented an ordinary academy student is, they still can’t surpass the level of a promising prospect or elite candidate. Since the experience points differ that much between those who have been through real battles and those who haven’t.

In that sense, I thought if the battle-experienced Cassice Demirang had been here, he would have done better than me. At least he wouldn’t have had a reason to roll on the floor without being able to take revenge with his own hands, haha.

‘If I started a revenge service company in the name of Hanra Sect, it would be a big hit.’

Thinking about it belatedly, he had shown transcendent movements that I couldn’t fathom when taking down Dick Baskerville, and at that moment, I thought there was no way my dynamic vision could keep up with it. But I saw it. It wasn’t interpreted because my brain couldn’t keep up with my eyes, but looking back, I could grasp how fiercely Ryuseong took down Dick Baskerville.

They say those with chosen talents sometimes fall into a temporary transcendent state when experiencing a shocking event, and it seems that’s what happened to me.

‘Like Hae Yuna, who had to witness her parents being murdered by a serial killer right in front of her when she was young.’

The sensation at that moment was too contradictory. But I was confused about whether what I experienced was such a dramatic tragedy… I didn’t want to think about it anymore.

I rolled my eyes again. And I quietly stared at Ryuseong, who was approaching me while urgently fumbling inside my clothes.

Ryuseong, who opened the potion lid he found in my pocket and knelt on one knee in front of me, seemed to be saying something while moving his handsome lips, but I couldn’t hear anything. Ah, so the reason I felt my senses were strange since earlier was probably because my hearing had temporarily gone out and I couldn’t catch any sound.

‘It doesn’t seem like my eardrums are ruptured though.’

I knew well what to do at times like this. I raised my hand and slapped my cheek. It should have made a slapping sound, but I couldn’t hear anything. I couldn’t feel the pain either. Thinking that my nervous system had finally completely broken down, I turned my head and discovered my wrist grabbed by Ryuseong. Seeing Ryuseong forcing me not to slap myself, an inexplicable anger rose up. Really, I don’t understand… There’s no law that says you can’t express it even if you can’t accept it. Even if there was, I would break it. With my other hand, I slapped Ryuseong’s cheek.

Since I couldn’t hear the slapping sound, it all felt like a dream. The stupid Ryuseong took it quietly again, but it didn’t seem to be an effective hit as his head didn’t even turn. Ryuseong was just staring at me with his vivid blue eyes, his skin didn’t even turn red, and only my palm, the only thing letting me know this wasn’t a dream, hurt like hell.

‘Fuck.’

Am I going crazy? Suddenly, something hot surged up from below my neck. I thought this kind of fierce pain would surge if you swallowed a whole burning firewood or coal. Unable to endure it, I vomited it out. Blood was thrown up.

The thought that I might have suffered internal organ damage from not being able to tighten my abs when hit in the stomach spread hazily. The fact that the role of splashing blood on the protagonist, who easily took down a fairly huge villain like Dick Baskerville without getting a single drop of blood on himself, was given to me felt quite undeserved. I clung to Ryuseong like trash and laughed. Like a madman.

‘Why am I laughing, you ask?’

Does laughter always need a reason? I suddenly felt exhilarated and wanted to dance. That was all. Since my body couldn’t keep up with holding Ryuseong’s hand and dancing, I was just throwing out laughter.

And after vomiting blood a few more times and shedding vulgar laughter, finally, piercing through the silence where I couldn’t hear anything, the sound of a trumpet song got stuck in my ears. From then on, the sounds around me gradually started to be recognized.

“Damn it. Damn sons of bitches…”

Ryuseong, who was trembling his handsome hands without even being able to use a potion for fear that the bones might heal wrong in the shape of the injury, was crying prettily and boosted my mood. And I remembered that the humming sound I was making was jazz.

Come to think of it, I had jazz playing on the speaker. Although the jazz prevented Ryuseong from quickly discovering my crisis, it also returned sound to me.

Is it that if you lose something, you gain something too? But life doesn’t give anything back to me.

‘Fucking bastards.’

Listening to the jazz, I laughed. Still, if I leave it like this, my favorite eyes might swell. I decided to kindly consider him.

“Ah, Mr. Ryuseong. It’s okay now. Haha. It’s alright. I think my ears were briefly out of order, but I can hear sounds again.”

“Cassice…”

“It’s fine. Rather, I want to gather opinions on how I should persuade Reverse about Dick Baskerville’s ‘disappearance’…”

“You’ve been crying this whole time.”

“What?”

Only one sentence came back to my question.

“You haven’t been okay at all until now.”

…Come to think of it, I who was thrown into silence might have been gripped by fear.

Yeah, I might not have been okay at that moment. But not now. I’ve recovered now, everything has returned to normal…

“You don’t have to force yourself to smile, please…”

I don’t fucking need to hear this kind of bullshit.

“…”

I couldn’t smile anymore. Everything felt strangely detached, then it suddenly strangled my neck.

Suddenly, I thought of what I wanted to say to Dick Baskerville.

‘It was too naive of you to try to break me down using only violence.’

To break me down, you should have done at least this much. Violence is familiar, tedious, and boring. But Ryuseong made me happy. That was the problem.

There was no better way to break me than that.