Irresponsibility Chapter 0

‘Hello?’

The man’s voice was low. It was a voice that suited his massive build, which was large enough to cast a shadow over me for a moment.

He was quite nonchalant. There seemed to be no threatening intent in the way he sat loosely in the chair opposite me, or in the gesture of tilting his head to peer into my face.

However, I was completely frozen, unable to even move a finger.

It was not only because I had an intuition that he was the one in charge here. Unlike his relaxed attitude, his gaze, when our eyes met, was as chilling as a well-honed blade, making my whole body feel not just cold, but as if it were being cut.

Thump, thump. My heart beat rapidly. My mind was a cold, tangled mess.

I have to demand to know why I am here.

Despite the resolution I had barely managed to form, my lips only let out a weak breath. The man was staring blankly at me like that. And suddenly, he spread both his hands in the air.

‘Whoa.’

It was a half-hearted joke, spoken in a quiet voice with almost no change in his expression.

However, I fell for it completely. Flinch, my whole body tilted, and the metal chair made a sound as it was dragged backward.

The man, who seemed to glance down under the table for a moment, soon straightened up. Good work. He patted the shoulder of another man standing beside him and went back out through the door he had come in.

And slam.

From the moment the door closed, time flowed slowly.

‘I think there’s been some kind of mistake….’

The cold air,

‘I don’t know anything about this.’

The gush of hot blood pouring out, the smell of iron, pain,

‘I, I don’t know. I really don’t….’

A faint consciousness, darkness, cold, light, and then pain again. It was an endless repetition.

‘…Hahh, w-why are you doing this to me.’

To whom was the resentment I spat out directed, was it not words but merely sobs that I had let out, from where to where was my body broken, or perhaps it was not the body but the mind. I could not know anything.

And at some point, I was once again sitting in the chair I had first sat in. My vision, swaying dizzily because it was difficult to hold my head up, was blood-red, and in front of me was that man. With that same chilling gaze from before.

At that moment, I think I suddenly wished for something. For the end.

Screech. The sound of a chair being dragged backward, a massive shadow rising to its feet, approaching footsteps, a gaze looking down quietly, a large hand finally touching my neck. The sensation of my windpipe being slowly compressed….

Through my blurry vision, I saw the face of a grim reaper. The darkness that gradually encroached was cold, and death was not as comforting as I had thought.