No Dark Secrets In This Book

Episode 96

‘A person shouldn’t do that. Is it okay for a person to carelessly give love?’

You might not know well, but for someone like me, the emotion called happiness was too dangerous. But this fucking bastard made me into someone who can be happy. Treated me preciously and looked at me with loving eyes. Gently caressed me and didn’t touch me recklessly even if he wanted to. As if a person loves another person, as if I was a person too…

You shouldn’t have treated me like that. I don’t know, but if I’m treated that way, I forget my place and lose my mind. I get entranced. I go crazy enough to break my skull, take out my brain and offer it to you. I know I can be happy. I’m saying that’s the problem.

‘Fuck, how did I get to this point.’

You made me smile like a fool, intoxicated with happiness. You shouldn’t have done that. You shouldn’t have.

If you weren’t trying to break me down, you shouldn’t have done that.

‘I don’t know happiness. I don’t need that. I don’t need sympathy. This is the original me.’

Only that one thought kept me alive until now. Just one fucking obsession made me struggle. Made me flail to live. A person who needs to think it’s okay to live, needs to be able to think it’s okay even if they have to rip out and fix their head. That’s how they could live. Could live. Had to do that to live.

But you say everything I’ve lived through is not okay. You say my life has never been okay at all.

Then, fuck. You son of a bitch. Fucking bastard.

What does it mean that I’m alive then?

‘Why the fuck are you denying my everything?’

I survived until now just because I lived a life where the ordinary and universal happiness you enjoy was not a given. I endured with that.

Even if everyone else laughed at me, I was confident I could continue living if I had this. But you, the only person who has meaning to me, shattered me in an instant. Ripped me apart.

Ah… I had no lingering attachment to this paper scrap of a world. I was just confident I could live lightly as Cassice Demillang’s body, giggling that I possessed a book character, just like how I lived my life. But you had to give meaning to me, and you broke down that meaning fucking horribly and shattered me. Only the lightness of not placing meaning in anything was postponing the rope around my neck, this was my only way to live, but you who suddenly appeared out of nowhere pushed me into the mud and gave me love, so…

‘I’m reacting to you like a tail-wagging son of a bitch…’

I’ve fallen. My self-esteem was broken by your one word that I’ve never been okay until now. The pride that kept me alive was fried in shit water. Are you satisfied? Are you feeling good? Now I’ve become an idiot, a moron who knows nothing. It’s only now that this idiot moron, who was gleefully rolling around, realized how fucking embarrassing his state is.

You don’t know shit, but even I, who has been rolling around like this, had pride in my life. Of course, you made me dream, made me float up to the high clouds, but fuck. Thank you. Thanks. I’m someone who never imagined even for a moment that I could be this ordinarily happy. But you didn’t tell me it would hurt this much when I wake up from the dream and fall back to reality. Why didn’t you write this in the terms and conditions? ‘If you date me, you’ll be happy enough to die. However, you may actually die.’ You son of a bitch. My reality is this miserable. This wretched. What the hell did you let me taste? What miracle did you give me? What if you inflate me with happiness that can’t possibly enter my life and then burst me? How the fuck am I supposed to live? You made me float up to the clouds effortlessly, and with one look, you push me back down to rock bottom. Just with that one look of sympathy and pity for me…

Hey, I keep telling you.

‘Don’t pity me…’

Look, you bastard. Shamelessly feeling embarrassed.

Funny? Absurd? Even you must think… it’s pathetic to live a life like this and even reject sympathy. It must be incomprehensible to arrogantly assert self-esteem when I should be grateful to gain sympathy by acting miserably. But you know what? I’m really fucking confident I can be miserable well. I’ve lived with that until now. But if you, who treated me like a person, do that… I felt like I was a person because of you… It’s unbearable because it’s embarrassing. Embarrassed that I mistook myself for a person.

I’m maintaining this attitude because it’s okay even if I’m worse than a beast, even if I’m miserable and wretched, at least to live, to really want to live.

“Who are you…”

You crazy bastard. Who the hell are you to change me? Fuck, who are you to trample on my pride, shatter me, make me miserable, and make me feel happiness?

“You… Fuck, you. Just you. The likes of you!”

You were unhappy too! I know. I remember that you were unhappy! But you were lucky enough to have a family. So fuck, you experienced people treating you like a human. That’s how you became human! But not me, I’m not, not me. I’ve never had that…!

So I envy you, I’m jealous of you, I feel inferior to you. I want to ruin you. I want to pour ink on your humanity. I envy the morality you’ve built and fuck, I’m so jealous that I want to die that you’ve become leisurely enough to consider ethics even though you’ve lived like me… You son of a bitch. Why are you at ease? Why did you improve? Why did only you escape? From this hell…

What do you think is the reason I projected myself onto you while reading a hardcore dark fantasy epic novel? Because you’re a fucking sewage-born bastard. Because you had such a fucking miserable and pitiable setting that deserves sympathy.

And the story of you, who met a good family and came to the academy looking somewhat human, slowly getting fucked up and becoming exhausted, was selfishly, despicably, and disgustingly pleasing to me. I could only empathize with someone who lived a terrible life like you, and I was a fucking bastard who enjoyed seeing you get ruined. I wanted to feel a tragic catharsis, but you happened to become a real person. I possessed this body, met you, and recognized you as an existing human being. Still, I can’t deny the fact that I enjoyed seeing you get fucked up. I admit it. I’m a fucking bastard.

But not as much as you. I can assert that much. Because you did the worst possible thing to me.

I tried my best to look okay, but in the end, I asked slowly while laughing and sobbing.

“Why are you so cruel when you’re not even going to take responsibility for me?”

“…Cassice.”

I don’t have the strength to correct my speech, whether it’s polite or not. You’re not going to be by my side forever anyway. You’ll die someday anyway. Like all humans, you might disappear someday anyway. But how dare you, a mortal, say you love me? I’ll die if I lose that love. After making me so easy to collapse to that extent, why were you so cruel to me when you won’t even take responsibility…? I feel like my mind is broken. I laughed absurdly, feeling like my brain was mashed and crushed.

“You know, you can kill me. I’ll allow it now.”

I know. I’m talking nonsense because I’m caught up in the heat of the moment. But I feel like I can’t bear it if I don’t say it.

Actually, I think like this…

“The method is simple. You just have to say you love me. Lie to me. I’ll gladly be fooled. I’ll die without lifting a finger. I mean it. I’m sincere…”

I’ve always wanted to tell you. Ever since that moment I realized you loved me.

“I, once I’ve tasted happiness, I’m not confident I can survive in that mud again… But you made me happy. There’s no way I can experience such a miracle without you… You can leave me at any time. That’s unfair.”

I finally said what I wanted to say. I finally realized I could smile a refreshing smile.

“You have to take responsibility… for daring to say you love me.”

I guess a person shouldn’t live restraining themselves after all.

“How about it, isn’t it a good deal?”

***

When he saw you being trampled on routinely, as if it had always been that way, by the clan carrying the name of Demillang.

Ryuseong saw a bottomless despair.

“…”

There was no end in sight. He wanted to die from the misery. But the fact that even that feeling couldn’t compare to yours.

The fact that this was nothing compared to the density of the despair you lived through…