The Way to Love in the Place of Dead Chapter 3

Kay’s red eyes slowly took in the scene on the screen. A landscape he knew well revealed itself. The image of bright, innocent children talking to a teacher at the orphanage. A scene of utter peace, the complete opposite of the situation he was in.

“Watch until the end.”

Charles drew a pistol from his thigh.

After loading it, his hand pierced through the air and vanished somewhere.

When Kay furrowed his brow in response, Charles bared his teeth in a grin.

“You know firsthand, don’t you? My ability.”

Charles possessed the ability to make his hand penetrate anywhere he wished under certain conditions, and the hand that could either mend or shatter someone’s body had now vanished into thin air holding a gun.

The vanished hand appeared within the orphanage on the screen he had projected.

[“Teacher. There’s something weird here. Is this a gun and… a person’s hand?”]

At the voice heard from the screen, Kay’s voice grew louder.

“Don’t… don’t, don’t do it!”

The moment he realized what Charles was about to do.

Bang!

Along with a sharp crack, a bullet lodged itself in a child’s body on the screen.

[“Huh?”]

The image clearly showed blood seeping from the body of a child who hadn’t even recognized what had happened, soaking through their clothes.

∞ ∞ ∞

A century-old building crafted from a fitting blend of marble and new materials collapsed in a single moment. The walls entwined with vines burst apart and melted, and the blazing heat made the skin of those attending the initiation ceremony feel as though it would split and burn, forcing them to stumble backward.

Screams continued from the smoke within the building, and from its midst, Charles came fleeing out, seized by terror.

“Uwaaaah! My arm! My head!!!”

The flames clinging to his body ate into the fabric, scorching him with burns, and Iris, spotting this, conjured water from her hands to extinguish it, but Aran, who had approached before she knew it, stopped her.

“Aran? What’s wrong. I need to put it out quickly…!”

“Someone else will do it.”

Even if not her, even if not an esper, the fire could be put out.

“Save your strength.”

Aran, who had been at the farthest spot from the wrecked building, focused his entire consciousness on a shadow walking out of the thick smoke, as if he’d never been drowsy at all.

The sharp clatter of chains and the sound of the straitjacket’s leather dragging along the ground were cold, in contrast to the heat. As the wind blew the smoke away, the true form of the shadow began to show itself to the naked eye.

Though they all knew well that with a breed like espers or guides, one could never gauge their power by visible appearance or looks.

“No way… you’re joking, right?”

Iris couldn’t help but react with disbelief for an instant.

“No joke. Guiding doesn’t work on him either.”

Jude, who had joined them from behind, was trembling—not just his voice, but his hands as well.

“…Save… me…”

At the ends of his fluttering black hair, flames flickered.

His body itself blazed like a single live ember as he walked out.

An emaciated frame, so thin you felt you could lift him with one hand. Eyes brimming with red fury and deep-seated resentment were visible.

“Save me.”

Having emerged from the building, he did not stop.

With each step, sparks flew and scorching heat carved a path. He advanced on unsteady feet. His target was clear. It was Charles, writhing in agony from his burns. Fear rippled across the faces of the healing espers crowded beside him.

“Iris. Prepare a water prison.”

Aran pulled black gloves from his pocket, drew them onto his hands, and tugged them snug. Once they were on, he reached out and lowered Jude’s still-trembling hand as Jude continued attempting to guide.

“Jude, you ask Charles what he did to him.”

“What he did?”

“If a guy who stayed quietly locked up even after being dragged here suddenly rampages, there had to be a trigger, right? Ask him, and if it’s something we can resolve, resolve it.”

“…And if it’s something we can’t resolve?”

Aran’s sigh scattered into the air.

“Well. The center probably won’t survive it, for one.”

As soon as he finished speaking, Aran snapped his fingers, and a lightning bolt struck down upon the young man’s head. A bolt from the blue, just as the saying went. Even though a flash of lightning so intense it left afterimages seared into people’s retinas had struck and passed, the young man merely turned his body slowly, as if someone had tapped him on the shoulder.

“He’s right. A monster.”

The impression he gave was undeniably striking.

Hair that resembled the deep night, a face that, though mottled with bruises, must have once been serene, and red eyes. Within that fierce rage hung a despair that looked ready to spill over at any moment.

“…Don’t interfere.”

“That depends on your point of view. From ours, you’re the one interfering with a perfectly fine initiation ceremony.”

As if he had anticipated the move, Aran blocked the flames flying from the side and the young man’s body with light. A barrier gleaming gold collided with dark red flames. The attacks directed at each other met, condensed, and then exploded.

A massive shockwave swept through.

Aran planted his military boots firmly onto the drill ground floor, bracing himself for the attacks to follow and putting strength into his stance, but as time passed, he still couldn’t read his opponent’s movements.

The killing intent that had been so vivid just moments before was completely gone… and the young man was simply standing before Aran.

“…El?”

He murmured a single syllable lowly, something that sounded like someone’s name.

Because he had stopped so utterly defenseless, Aran could no longer attack first either. Shifting his thinking toward subduing him, Aran reached out his hand. But whether the young man was accustomed to combat, he dodged the hand reflexively, and his eyes lit up with a strange glint once more.

A left punch. A right leg. Then an elbow thrusting in, which Aran blocked with his arm, and as if he’d been waiting for it, a kick that spun his body using centrifugal force. The fundamental movements flowed like water, relentless and without excess.

The attacks themselves were simple but so fast that he couldn’t dodge without full concentration, and when he couldn’t dodge and had to block, the flames wreathed around the young man’s body transferred onto his uniform.

‘Can’t even grab hold of him.’

Even when he turned his head and the incoming fist merely grazed his cheek, the temperature felt searing enough to burn. His cheek stung, hot and smarting, as if it had been cut. Simply capturing and neutralizing him seemed nearly impossible.

‘Only three out of twenty… they were lucky.’

If he was like this even while wearing a straitjacket that suppressed esper abilities, Aran couldn’t even imagine what he would have been like normally.

‘Now, what to do about this.’

Perhaps just letting him go like this would end things with the least damage.

Just as that thought crossed his mind, dozens of fire arrows flew at him simultaneously from outside his field of vision.

“Tch.”

The moment he leaped to dodge the fire arrows flying from an unexpected direction, he realized it. That this, too, had been part of his opponent’s calculation.

As his opponent, as if waiting for this, lunged at him in mid-air about to drive a fist down, Aran could think of twelve different ways to stop him and could have executed any of them, but he chose none. When he didn’t, the opponent who had been charging at him with flames swirling around his body bit his lip and pulled his strength. In the end, his fist, left unswung, grabbed Aran by the collar instead. And pressed him to the ground, demanding.

“Who are you?”

Having reflexively seized that wrist, Aran could feel the pulse pounding painfully beneath the skin.

“Who the hell are you, to have that face?”

Some called him a monster, but Aran saw a human blazing within the eyes he looked straight into. The fury that had shadowed the face of the man struggling desperately, forcing a body that wouldn’t have been strange to collapse at any moment, soon shifted to sorrow, and his trembling lips barely managed to force out the words.

“Answer me.”

Those intense eyes bored into Aran. Pinned by that gaze, his breath caught, and Aran felt a chill as he vividly realized he was alive through the presence of his opponent. But Iris’s shout was faster than Aran’s answer.

“Aran! Get back!”

It was the moment all the young man’s nerves were focused on Aran. Twisting his wrist and kicking him in the side to flip him onto the ground, Aran pulled back. Then an enormous water prison swallowed the young man whole, starting from his head. The buoyancy and water pressure of the condensed, transparent blue sphere of water seized his body, and from between the lips of the suffocating young man, oxygen burst out in bubbles.