There Is No Hidden Villain in This Novel Chapter 82

Strangely, the original body’s past looked happy.

He looked to be one or two years old, and surprisingly, the Cassis de Millang of that time had chubby cheeks. Pushing the swing he was riding on were his young, silver-haired father and his healthy mother. Laughter bloomed among the flower clusters in the garden. It was truly a peaceful scene. However, I couldn’t help but curse.

‘Fuck. When did I ever ask for this kind of help?’

Common sense dictated that what I had asked the damn forest spirit for help with was the Black Fox raid. I wasn’t saying that I suddenly wanted to go on a trip to the past. But this fucking life forced me to confront ‘Cassis de Millang’ without even asking for my consent. At this point, it seemed desperate to screw me over.

‘Is the spirit senile or something…’

Should I escape using magical reverse-calculation? I can do that. Because I am ‘Cassis de Millang.’ But as long as I don’t know the forest spirit’s intention, I have to figure out if this is an extracted memory or a dimension constructed from illusion before I can decide on a countermeasure. However, seeing a soft, living and breathing Cassis de Millang made me feel sick. I couldn’t understand why, but I didn’t want to see that. It was a violent rejection, to the point that I wanted to run away from where I stood.

Why? I couldn’t understand this either. What was clear was the fact that Cassis de Millang looked happy. The child, who looked to be about six or seven, was hopping around trying to catch butterflies while holding his mom’s hand, and then he fell. The baby, who had been sniffling, smiled brightly, revealing a toothless gap where a baby tooth had fallen out, as his dad dusted off his knees. It was the picture of a very normal and loving family.

And that was what made it eerie. Something like this couldn’t possibly be possible for Cassis de Millang.

I thought Cassis de Millang would have been a son of a bitch from the moment he was born. For him to have a kind and gentle past was somehow disgusting. If you’re going to be a bitchy, smiling villain, then live with that character from beginning to end.

‘Like me.’

Why the hell is some pathetic past showing up?

“…I don’t know what this situation is, but I have to say this first.”

Ryuseong opened his mouth heavily. I didn’t have the energy to look at his expression or give him a proper answer, so I squeezed my eyes shut as if shuddering.

“What are you trying to say.”

However, the words that followed made me go limp.

“You look pale, you.”

“…”

“Are you really okay?”

Ryuseong was the type of person who chose to ask if I was okay instead of prying into the circumstances.

I thought I knew that, but at a moment like this, it felt particularly special. As I hesitated, unsure of how to answer, the scene suddenly changed.

We had been watching the past of ‘Cassis de Millang’ on a screen that burned pure white in the middle of darkness, but a change began to occur in that happiness.

—No, please. Don’t do this.

Am I the only one who thinks that my senses have been put in slow motion? The screen conveyed colors vividly, but everything looked black and white to me. The sound was also coming through, but I couldn’t hear anything. As if I were watching a black-and-white silent film. However, my excellent lip-reading skills, which I don’t know when I learned, allowed me to understand the situation just by seeing the shape of their mouths moving. The young child was being dragged away, and the parents were begging.

—My baby…!

I could see the people dragging ‘Cassis de Millang’ away. They didn’t seem to have any intention of hiding their origins, so I could clearly see the family crest on their chests. It was the mark of de Millang.

But why would de Millang be dragging ‘Cassis de Millang’ away? And not just dragging him, but violently extorting him as if kidnapping him, stomping on his clinging parents with their military boots and forcing them to their knees, as if they were treating a criminal…

There was something else strange. As ‘Cassis de Millang’ was being dragged away by the hand of a person whose face was blotted out by a black scratch, as if it had been post-processed, he didn’t look back even for a single moment. Was it because he was a child of only six or seven and couldn’t grasp the situation? The next moment, as if my blocked eardrums had opened, sound rushed in all at once.

“If you don’t follow quietly, your mommy and daddy will die.”

Ah, fuck. Only then did I realize. ‘Cassis de Millang’ hadn’t failed to grasp the situation. On the contrary, he had understood it all too keenly, which was why he had chosen a terrifyingly complete obedience. To a brat who was only six or seven years old, what kind of… I felt dazed, as if I had been hit on the head. From that very moment, the emotions of ‘Cassis de Millang’ began to be felt by me, just as they were.

As if, a synchronization was taking place…

“You’re so quiet, aren’t you?”

“…”

“Yes, that’s how you should be.”

As he dragged him like a dog, the man laughed with a light snort.

Cassis de Millang could tell. He was pleased with his obedience. It must be the base and vile satisfaction of one who has tamed a beast with violence. However, Cassis de Millang did not resist. He knew he couldn’t. It was an overly rational judgment for a six or seven-year-old to make, but…

Cassis de Millang had been a strange child since he was young. He even remembered being in his mother’s womb before the umbilical cord was cut, and he vividly remembered every sensation he faced upon being born. Speaking, language, academics, culture, refinement, arts, there was nothing he didn’t grasp.

However, although he knew the average growth process of a child, he did not know the fear of humans because he had never experienced it. There would be no parent who wouldn’t be afraid of a newborn who, as soon as he could support his own head and his tongue grew enough to articulate properly, spoke in polite, formal language. But Cassis de Millang acted that way. He would later reflect on it as a disaster caused by ignorance.

And he respected the response his parents showed him more than anyone else.

“‘Mother’ and ‘Father’? You should call us ‘Mommy’ and ‘Daddy’!”

It wouldn’t have been strange if they had fainted in terror or gone mad, claiming a demon had possessed their son, but they showed him absolute acceptance. Isn’t it strange? Not everyone showers their own flesh and blood with love, and yet he became a one-of-a-kind existence for the sole reason that he was within their reach. Not even an ancient blessing could be more wondrous than this. Not even the words praising God could be more filled with joy than this. For Cassis de Millang, birth was a blessing. It was not by the will of the Absolute. It was the embrace of mere humans that bestowed mercy upon him. Perhaps he had used up all the luck he was meant to receive in his entire lifetime. Thinking that, the trembling subsided.

Cassis de Millang loved his parents more than anything else.

“You are a child who should never have been born. Look. Everyone is suffering and in pain because of you.”

“…”

“Don’t forget that your birth is your sin.”

To protect you, I could submit to such words as much as you wanted. In this way, his genius, which effortlessly made thoughts a child could not, reached a conclusion it should never have reached.

In truth, I know. My parents would not want such a thing. Sacrifice? Devotion? What a ridiculous notion. It’s just dirty selfishness. It’s just me passing on the loss to my parents, telling them to lose their child because I don’t have the confidence to survive alone. Since I don’t want to lose you, you should lose me. I would rather die than lose you and live on as a human. Even if I were to suffer a fate more gruesome than death, if that is the price to save you, then I can gladly endure it.

Any other child might not have, but Cassis de Millang truly could do so.

“Do you want to live?”

“Change your question.”

An impertinent answer. A mouth splitting into a wide grin.

“Do you want to keep them alive?”

Cassis de Millang decided to do so.

Was it a blessing? Cassis de Millang was numb to dignity. It made no difference whether it was his own or others’. That was why, despite the brutal daily life where he was hacked to pieces every single day, he felt nothing other than a physiological sense of nausea. Experiments. Torture. No difference. Human. Meat. No difference.

Some people would not have been able to endure it. If one thinks that a human is different from a piece of meat, there is no way they could endure such treatment. But Cassis de Millang was different.

Sometimes, Cassis de Millang would think. For something on a cutting board, I’m in pretty good shape. Every day was like that. He was a fish on a cutting board. The de Millangs hacked him to pieces, scraped off his scales, and cleaned his entrails. What would happen if they removed his fins and sprinkled salt on him? What if they put a freshwater fish in seawater?

‘It would have been nice if it were a funny joke.’

However, there was a light even in those harsh days.

“But don’t be mistaken about one thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“We are making a deal, Your Highness.”

It was because he had flipped the board with his glib tongue.