There Is No Hidden Villain in This Novel Chapter 61

“Why are you… here?”

My voice came out cracked. It was embarrassing, but my throat was choked with emotion. I was trying to get away with it by pretending to clear my throat with a small cough, but you came closer.

My fingers, tensed without me realizing it, gripped the bedsheet tightly, but he saw it all plain as day and, unconcerned, tilted the kettle on the bedside table to pour water into a cup.

“Drink this and then we’ll talk.”

I knew I had to take the cup he was holding out. But I didn’t have the courage to lift my hand. I was half-trembling, and if I released the grip I had on the bedsheet, I would end up revealing my pathetic, violent shaking.

At that, Ryuseong looked down at me with a hollow expression, then drank the water himself. I wondered if he was trying to provoke me, but then he gently lifted my chin.

By that point, I was about to get angry. An irritation with no clear reason or cause was surging up, and I wanted to push him away, but I couldn’t muster the strength I intended, so it ended with me just placing my hand on his chest.

What came next was as expected.

Our lips met. It seemed you didn’t particularly take care of your lips. They were more dry and hot than soft and plush. But the moment you opened your mouth, it transformed into a moist heat—that was your mouth, but this time it was different. Lukewarm water flowed into me. It was sweet. It was so sweet that I couldn’t tell if it was because it was the first water I’d had in a while, or if sugar had been added for the patient, and a sense of inexplicable desperation made me cling to you.

When the water was gone, you tried to pull away from me. I grabbed your hair to stop you. I dug my fingers deep into the hair at the back of your head, snaring you so you couldn’t leave. I wanted to kiss you. I had to kiss you.

Actually, I knew it too.

‘This is a trap.’

Taking advantage of my weakened state, this bastard had slithered in like a serpent over a wall.

Because of that fucking X-rated dream, just fuck.

At the very moment I so foolishly wanted to pity myself for just one day, you.

‘Why, of all times, were you by my side then?’

At the very moment I wanted to beg for anyone, whoever it may be, to hold me.

‘Why did you appear there…’

I was dying for warmth, and the person who could give it to me just had to be you.

But I knew it too. That if I crossed the line now, I’d be X-ed.

That this would ruin something I had drawn as a line I must never, ever cross.

So, fuck.

‘If I, fuck, end up falling in love with you.’

Then from that point on, I’m X-ed.

Kiss or whatever, I had to push you away. You would back down meekly if I pushed you.

It’s you who is adjusting the angle so I can kiss you comfortably, not even pressing down on me with your weight, maybe because I’m sick. I’m the one rushing at you greedily, and you are just being mannerly. If I gave you a light push right now, you would back away.

But fuck, you slept in snatches in a chair until dawn just because I was sick.

You did that, like an idiot, on wooden chairs pushed together when there was a soft bed right next to you.

You stroked and soothed me until I fell asleep.

‘This, fuck.’

I must have gone crazy from studying too much.

No, no. Be honest. I’m so X-ing X-ed up right now because I had an X-rated dream. I feel like I want to grab onto something, and whatever it was, whatever kind of playing with fire it might be, I was confident I wouldn’t fall in love.

But of all people, you appeared.

‘With you, I think I might fall in love.’

If you hold me in this moment. If you embrace me.

No, even if you just don’t push me away.

It feels like just that alone will be enough for me to fall for you.

‘I’m begging you, please, get lost…’

But he stayed by my side until the very end, and it was my fucking first time feeling a hand patting me comfortingly.

Hey, you’ve fucking done this kind of thing a lot, so why am I.

Why do I have to be shaken by something as trivial as this?

He thinks it’s pathetic how he can’t say the single phrase, “Stay with me.”

Ryuseong was lying next to the sleeping him. He thought that sharing a bed would be quite unpleasant for someone with such severe mysophobia, but he had clung to him and wouldn’t let go, tears streaming down his cheeks, so he had wrapped the blanket only around him and laid down beside him.

He fixed his gaze on his side profile and thought for a long time.

You were still biting your lip and sobbing. Even in sleep, you never cried out loud.

People can get sick at any time. They can be lonely. They can be miserable, and they can be in pain. Everyone is like that. Therefore, people live by leaning on one another. But you, it’s as if you’re someone who has never once leaned on anyone.

‘…’

Your gestures were closer to a plea than a seduction. It might have even been begging.

Because you couldn’t say out loud, please don’t let me go.

The only way you could express it.

‘Was a thing like that.’

If so, how sorrowful must have even the things you’d clung to until now been?

It was certainly not the image of a human who grew up being loved.

The home of Cassis de Millang, which he saw on the day he had barged into your house without warning, had looked happy. They had looked like they loved each other and were affectionate.

Ryuseong’s eyes sank even deeper.

Why are you so isolated?

Why did you alone have to suffer like this? What did you do wrong?

You’ve done nothing wrong to this world, so why do you alone have to keep silencing your voice?

‘It feels like I’m looking at rock bottom.’

But looking at your bottom is a process of confirming that my own bottom is at that level.

So you have no need to be pitiful.

There is no room for doubt that this moment will be shorter than the countless nights you must have stayed up alone.

You will get up again, and you will be fine.

“…Even if you, once again, destroy the world.”

Now, the one thing I can’t bring myself to do is kill you. You made it that way.

Even if you don’t ask me out loud to stay by your side, I will not disappear.

‘You can sob out loud as many times as you want.’

Until the dawn finally seeps in…

Uh, um.

Actually, I’ve been awake for a little while now, but I was too embarrassed about crying to get up, you know?

But I think I heard something strange.

Please, can you tell me I’m mistaken?

“…Even if you, once again, destroy the world.”

So, you.

Even if Cassis de Millang destroys the world once again…

Ryuseong said that…?

‘…?’

My head is spinning. My vision turns whitish, and I feel a sweet taste in my mouth.

‘How does he?’

Right. How in the world would the Ryuseong from the original novel know that Cassis de Millang destroyed the world to be spouting that kind of nonsense?

Destroying the world once again. Once again.

‘Why do you know that Cassis de Millang is the final boss…?’

My whole body grows cold. I started to turn all my memories back to the starting point and reconsider them.

One day, I was suddenly transmigrated. Into the body of the final boss from the original novel. The timeline was the beginning of the story.

But, the protagonist from the early part of the story knows the identity of the final boss, which is revealed just before the last volume.

…Why?

‘What the hell happened…?’

I’m not the dumb type.

I’m really not, but maybe because I want to deny everything, no thoughts are coming to my mind.

Uh, so.

‘…Don’t tell me Ryuseong is a transmigrator too?’

He read the original work and came here, so this Ryuseong transmigrator also knew the identity of the final boss…?

‘No, that’s not it.’

If the other party was also a transmigrator, he would have suspected that Cassis de Millang was also a transmigrator when he was acting so bizarrely.

But the Ryuseong I’ve seen, while he found Cassis de Millang’s out-of-character behavior strange, never regarded me as a completely different being.

‘Then what?’

At this point, I gulped. It was because another keyword, not transmigration, had just flashed through my mind.

‘…What if Ryuseong is a regressor?’

A regressor. One who has returned through time.

Let’s reconsider everything under the premise that Ryuseong is a regressor.

He said ‘once again.’ He said, even if you destroy the world once again.

Which means.

‘In the previous turn, Cassis de Millang succeeded in destroying the world, right? Then to Ryuseong, I must be his sworn enemy?’

According to the original novel’s plot, it was Cassis de Millang who killed all of Ryuseong’s friends, relatives, and acquaintances and left them strewn across the wasteland.

Under this premise, all the turning points make sense.

The way Ryuseong acted like he was testing me during the entrance exam, the dorm change, him harboring a desire for dominance and possession without love, the change in my registered courses, him bringing up talk of a marriage proposal that wasn’t even mentioned in the original, him stubbornly chasing me wherever I went and whatever I did, even taking drastic measures like a contract relationship and unwanted skinship, and him persistently digging into my relationship with Shin Myo-han.

‘…I just thought it was jealousy.’

All of Ryuseong’s strange behaviors that I had been inwardly pretending not to notice suddenly made sense, and my head rang with a thud.

That crazy bastard thinks I’m the final boss who will destroy the world.

So that’s probably why he was constantly following me around and monitoring me. He wasn’t jealous of Shin Myo-han, he was probably wary of what I might do.

‘Then that time that bastard choked me…’

It wasn’t play, but a genuine attempt to kill?

‘…I almost died…?’

Then is he sizing me up now too, wondering when to kill me…?