96 – Blood-stained tree branch

When I was young, I lived alone with my younger sister, who was about 5 years older than me.

I have no memories of my parents.

I don’t know if she was with me until her younger brother was born… At least I don’t remember my parents.

Unlike me, my younger brother was unnecessarily healthy and sickly.

He complained of pain when exposed to sunlight, so he just lay quietly in a back alley where there was no light.

“Oppa… I brought you a fairy tale today too… “

My younger brother liked books.

The fairy tales that upper-class parents threw away after reading them to their children were all over the back alleys, and I brought them and read them to my younger brother.

While reading several books to chat with my younger sister, I suddenly fell in love with books just like her younger brother.

“I hope the warriors… Everyone goes out and travels… “

She would mumble like that every time her younger brother read her a fairy tale.

Her desire to treat her younger brother’s illness and go on a trip was strong, but with her low status, it was not easy to even go out of her back alley, let alone go to the hospital.

Let alone traveling, I was worried about starving tomorrow.

In the end, I became a mercenary to support my younger brother, my only blood relative.

Even people of low status could easily become mercenaries, and above all, if their performance was good, they could receive a lot of money.

Mercenary work suited me very well.

Everything that comes in is about killing something.

If I just killed and killed again, I could get the money I wanted.

That’s why he killed so many people and monsters.

I killed monsters to buy food, killed humans, escaped the back alleys, and found a suitable home.

I felt guilty every time I killed someone.

They became evil spirits and tormented me in my dreams. But every time that happened, my sister comforted me.

“My brother seems like a warrior… After defeating a bad villain, you go on a trip… “

I could break free from the realm of guilt and kill a human just to see that child smile.

As I lived like that, before I knew it, I was known in the city as a quite skilled mercenary.

The number of clients coming to me increased, and I was able to earn money for my younger brother’s treatment.

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I imagined the days ahead where I would live with my younger brother, with money that I couldn’t even contain.

Her younger sister, now healthy, runs and plays in the sunlight, while her younger brother goes to school.

A younger sister who went to school suddenly finds a man, and her adult younger brother marries that man.

Her younger sister goes on a long-awaited trip with her husband.

I just smile as I look at my younger brother who has transformed into a warrior from a fairy tale….

It had to be…

When she arrived home with the treatment money, her younger brother was sleeping quietly in bed.

You did not answer my call… Even though I read her favorite books, I just… She closed her eyes quietly…

As I looked at the medical bills on the floor, I realized that something inside me had disappeared.

I lost my reason to live.

I don’t need money, fame, or power.

Only for her brother, for her brother’s happy future, for her brother to just smile…

My life, which I lived only for those things, ended with my younger brother’s death.

I couldn’t fulfill any of the child’s wishes and sent him away.

It came back to me as a feeling of guilt and weighed on my shoulders.

No matter how hard I try, my inability to save my younger brother is so pitiful that I feel sick.

I no longer knew what to live for or what to die for.

That’s why I decided to die.

But I didn’t want to die in vain. Above all, my younger brother wouldn’t want it.

After careful consideration, I took on all high-risk requests.

To find a human or a monster to kill me. To tell a wonderful story to my younger brother in the afterlife.

Fought dozens, hundreds, and thousands of opponents.

But I always survived.

No one could kill me.

The number of people who survived by killing countless people and resenting and hating me continued to increase.

My desire to die and my guilt for the people I killed grew.

When my body and mind were exhausted from overworking myself, one of the many requests caught my eye.

A simple request where you have to protect the client in the back alley where my brother and I lived.

The money given was too much compared to the difficulty of the mission. Even though it was a request from a high-ranking researcher, there was no way they would give this much money for such a simple mission.

I thought the client gave me this mission to kill me.

If I go to the client’s lab, won’t they lead me into a den of monsters? I had such expectations, and I accepted the request without hesitation.

When I went to the request location and met the client, I realized that my thoughts were wrong.

“Oh, you are Mr. Ardin?”

At the lab I visited, fully expecting death, a female researcher who seemed to have barely become an adult was welcoming me.

The innocent smile did not show any dark intentions to kill anyone.

“Wait a minute! “I haven’t even said hello yet, where are you going?”

The woman caught me on the day I was about to leave after realizing I had been fooled.

I didn’t want to waste time on something like this. I had to immediately find an enemy who would slit my throat and end this life.

I wanted to visit my younger brother in the underworld and tell him the story I had accumulated so far.

I always, always, just wanted to tell stories as usual and see my younger brother smile.

So, I had to end my life and escape from the researcher who had no idea what was going on in this world.

“Truly, that’s right! “If you want to go, go!”

As I tried to leave the place, the woman seemed to have given up.

I decided to go back to the request center and look for a new request.

I was about to leave the lab.

“Oppa… “

If only I hadn’t heard the voice of a girl similar to my sister inside the lab.

“…”

I felt like my heart would freeze when I heard the girl’s voice.

The guilt inside me was stimulated by the girl’s voice.

“Inside…” There is… case… Who is it… ?”

I asked the researcher with a trembling voice.

“What is it? “Have you suddenly become interested in the request I gave you?”

“Don’t talk nonsense… Tell me what you’re doing inside… “

I was so excited at that time that even I was surprised.

Just because the voice of the girl in the lab was similar to that of her younger sister, the anger inside me was directed at the researcher.

“If you’re curious, follow me. “Let me show you what I’m doing.”

I was puzzled by the woman’s more relaxed attitude than I expected and followed her inside.

The inside was similar to the operating room she had once seen to treat her younger sister.

In a small space, there are several surgical tools and medicines, and a machine that checks heart rate.

More than anything, what catches the eye is a young child lying on the operating table with bandages wrapped around his head.

“This…” “

Parts of the girl’s body were grotesquely bent, and her skin was burned.

I knew at a glance that the girl was a demon.

“As you can see, this child is Mine. “She picked up a child who had collapsed on her shell a few days ago and brought him here to treat him.”

The woman looked at the moaning girl and changed the bandage that had cut her.

Whenever the girl was in pain, the woman swallowed her saliva as if she were in pain.

“Why… She did that… ?”

An inferior race driven out of the city and hiding behind the walls, those were the demons I knew.

A plague that spreads bewitched mana across the ground. I couldn’t understand how they cared for something like that with such sincerity.

“Why? “It’s because these people are ‘human beings’ who also feel pain.”

“Human… ? No. The demons are the ones spreading the plague in the city… Just because they are alive and breathing makes this world sick… Demons are demons that make humans sick….”

“Then Mr. Ardyn, do you think this delicate child is a devil?”

After hearing her words, I looked at the Mine girl.

A girl with a major deformation in her body unconsciously searches for her older brother. Her appearance overlaps with that of her younger sister, who was always lying in her hospital bed.

“Oppa… I went inside the wall… Eat your fill… I want to play… “

The bandages around her eyes are becoming damp, as tears flow from Mine’s eyes as she desperately calls out for her brother.

The woman took off the bandages around her eyes to change them, and her girl’s eyes were revealed.

The girl seemed to have lost her eyesight as the grime had spread to the whites of her eyes.

I’m just staring at the ceiling with empty eyes.

… Is she really just an ordinary human being, as the Main Island woman said?

Is this Mine also someone’s younger sister, and is she just an ordinary girl living with a small dream…? ?

My values regarding Mine have collapsed.

“Why is this child in so much pain…?” ?”

The woman shrugged her shoulders in response to my question.

“I also just started researching, so I don’t know much. “I’m just trying to treat it blindly.”

“This child’s older brother…” What happened… ?”

“… When she first found it, Mine, who appeared to be this child’s older brother, was dead nearby. Judging by the bite injuries on her body, she probably died after protecting this child from a wild animal… “

The woman, looking at her girl with her sad eyes, sat back in her reclining chair.

She stared blankly into the air, then slowly lowered her gaze and looked at me.

“I’m sorry. You felt bad, right? “It probably wasn’t a particularly pleasant story.”

“If you want to go, you can go. Even if it were me, I wouldn’t accept a request from a researcher who is obsessed with Mine and wants to treat her.”

“But it’s true that I want you to help me.”

“…Why?”

“…I see. Why? Is it just a feeling? “I thought you would really help me.”

“You actually listened to my story to the end and even asked me questions, right? “As soon as other people saw this child, they frowned and refused her request.”

Persimmon, Ira…

“What is your name?”

“My name is Eve.”

“Okay. Eve, I will accept your request.”

“Yes? Why?”

“…Feel. “I have a feeling that I will be able to repent if I work with you.”

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