There Is No Hidden Villain in This Novel Chapter 96

‘A person shouldn’t act like that. How can a person give their love away so freely?’

You may not know this, but to a person like me, the emotion of happiness was too dangerous. But this son of a bitch made me into a person who was allowed to be happy. He treated me preciously and looked at me with loving eyes. He caressed me cautiously and didn’t touch me carelessly even when he wanted me. As if a person loves another person, as if I were a person myself…

You should not have treated me like that. You may not know this, but when I’m treated that way, I lose all sense of proportion and lose my mind. I become entranced. I go mad enough to smash my skull, take out my cerebrum, and offer it to you. I start to think I’m a person who’s allowed to be happy. That’s what I’m saying the problem is.

‘Damn it, how did I manage to climb all the way to this position.’

You made me get lost in happiness and laugh like a fool. You shouldn’t have done that. You really shouldn’t have.

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

‘I don’t know anything about happiness. I don’t need things like that. I don’t need pity. Because this is who I originally am.’

That one thought alone has kept me alive until now. A single, stubborn pigheadedness made me scream and struggle. It made me fight to live. A person who could only live by thinking they were okay could only live if they could think they were okay. The first sentence refers to environment, and the second sentence refers to thought. A person who had to think they were okay to survive, no matter how shitty their environment was, had to be able to think they were okay, even if it meant rewiring their own brain. That was the only way to live. They could live. To live, they had to do that.

But you’re telling me that everything I’ve lived through was not okay. You’re telling me that nothing in my life was ever okay.

Then, damn it. You dog. You son of a bitch.

What does that make my being alive?

‘Why the hell are you negating my entire existence?’

The only reason I’ve survived this long is because I’ve lived a life where the ordinary and universally accepted happiness you all enjoy was not a given. That’s what I endured with.

Even if everyone else laughed at me, I was confident I could keep on living with just this. But you, the one person who means something to me, shattered me in an instant. You tore me to shreds.

Ah… I didn’t have a single shred of attachment to this paper-thin world. I was confident I could live on lightly in Cassis de Millang’s body, just cackling about being transmigrated into a book, just like I had in my own life. But you just had to become meaningful to me, and then you shattered that meaning so shittily and broke me down. The only thing that had stayed the noose around my neck was the lightness of not placing meaning anywhere, that was the only way for me to live, but you appeared out of nowhere, threw me into the mud, and gave me love,

‘And I reacted to you like a dog wagging its tail…’

I was ruined. With your single remark that I had never been okay, my pride was shattered. The pride that kept me alive was deep-fried in sewage. Are you satisfied? Are you pleased? Now I’ve become a stupid, idiotic bastard who knows nothing. A stupid, idiotic bastard was giggling in bliss, and only now did he see how pathetic his own situation was.

You don’t know a damn thing, but even for me, who has lived by rolling around in filth like this, there was such a thing as pride in my life. Of course, you let me dream, you let me float up high above the clouds, but, damn it. Thank you. I’m telling you, thank you. I am someone who has never once in my life thought I could be happy this ordinarily. But you didn’t tell me it would hurt this much when I woke from the dream and fell back to reality. What were you doing not writing this in the terms and conditions? ‘Dating me will result in happiness to the point of death. Note, you may actually die.’ You bastard. My reality is this shabby. This pathetic. What on earth did you let me taste? What kind of miracle did you give me? What am I supposed to do if you inflate me with a happiness that should never have entered my life, and then pop me? How the hell am I supposed to live? You nonchalantly lift me up above the clouds, and then with a single look, you plunge me back into the abyss. With just that one look of pity and compassion for me…

Hey, I keep telling you.

‘Don’t pity me…’

Look at this bastard. He doesn’t know his place and feels ashamed.

Funny, isn’t it? Pathetic, isn’t it? Even to you, this sight of me living such a life and yet rejecting pity… it’s pathetic. It doesn’t make sense that I dare to hold on to my pride when I should be groveling to get even a scrap of pity, right? But do you know what? I’m confident I can grovel really fucking well. That’s how I’ve survived until now. But if you, who treated me like a person, do that… because of you, I felt like I might actually be a person… I can’t bear the shame. I’m ashamed of myself for mistaking myself for a person.

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

“Who do you think you are…”

You crazy bastard. Who the hell do you think you are to tell me to change? Damn it, who do you think you are to trample my pride, break me down, make me miserable, and then make me feel happiness?

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

You were unhappy too! I know. I remember that you were unhappy! But you were lucky and got a family. So you experienced people who treated you like a damn human being. That’s how you became human! But I didn’t, I, I didn’t. I never had that…!

That’s why I’m envious of you, jealous, and feel inferior. I want to ruin you. I want to pour black ink on your humanity. I’m envious of the morality you’ve built, and damn it, I’m so jealous it makes me want to die that someone who has lived like you and I has become leisurely enough to consider things like ethics… You bastard. Why are you at ease? Why did you get better? Why were you the only one to escape? From this hell…

While reading a hardcore dark fantasy epic novel, why do you think I specifically empathized with you? Because you came from the damn gutter. Because you had a character setting that was so fucking pitiful, pathetic, and worthy of sympathy.

I selfishly, despicably, and disgustingly enjoyed the story of you coming to the academy looking a bit more human after meeting a good family, only to slowly get fucked over and fall into despair. It’s because I’m a bastard who can only empathize with a guy who’s lived a terrible life like you, and who enjoys seeing someone like you get broken. I wanted to feel a tragic catharsis, but you just had to become a real person. I was transmigrated, met you, and came to recognize you as a real human being. Still, I admit, I can’t deny the fact that I enjoyed seeing you get screwed over. I’m a son of a bitch.

But not as much as you. That much I can say for sure. Because you did the worst possible thing you could do to me.

I wanted to look okay with all my might, but in the end, I sobbed and laughed before slowly asking.

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

“…Cassis.”

I don’t have the strength to correct my speech, formal or otherwise. You’re not going to be by my side forever. You’re going to die someday. Just like all humans, you might disappear one day. So how dare you, on that subject, a mere mortal, how dare you say you love me? I’ll die if I lose that love. After making me into someone so fragile and easy to break, you’re not even going to take responsibility, so why on earth were you so cruel to me…? I feel like my head is broken. I felt like my brain had been mashed and crushed, so I laughed for no reason.

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

I know. I’m delirious with fever and talking nonsense right now. But I feel like I can’t bear it if I don’t say it.

This is what I’m actually thinking…

“The method is simple. All you have to do is say you love me. Lie. I’ll willingly be deceived. I’ll die for you without lifting a finger. I’m serious. I mean it…”

I wanted to tell you someday. Ever since that moment I realized you loved me.

“Once I’ve tasted happiness, I don’t have the confidence to survive in that kind of mire again… But you made me happy. There’s no way I could experience such a miracle without you… and you can leave me at any time. That’s not fair.”

I finally said what I wanted to say. I finally realized that I could manage a fresh smile.

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

I guess a person really shouldn’t live while holding things in.

“How about it, a good deal, right?”

When I saw you being trampled on as a daily routine, as had always been the case for the kin who bore the de Millang name.

Ryuseong saw a bottomless despair.

“…”

He could not see an end to it. He was so miserable he wanted to die. But even that feeling couldn’t compare to yours.

Compared to the density of the despair you had lived through, something like this was nothing…