Chapter 199 – Breaking the Dream
Adol felt the hand holding his tighten and briefly looked behind him.
“What? Have you come to your senses?”
However, no answer returned.
Thinking that he had wasted his time, Adol clicked his tongue and looked forward again.
Although they seemed to have walked a considerable distance, they had not drawn any closer to Mona.
No matter how loudly Adol called out, Mona did not answer.
It was not as though he was walking quickly either.
Thud, thud.
He simply continued moving away at a steady pace.
That bastard brought this many people here, so shouldn’t he take responsibility for them? Does he intend to lead only those who survive?
No, wouldn’t they need as many people as possible to defeat or capture the monsters?
Sensing something strange, Adol stopped.
He had followed Mona blindly out of fear, but Mona was also the person who had lured everyone here without giving them a proper explanation.
Why hadn’t he warned them beforehand?
If he had passed through this place several times, he must have known what would happen to everyone.
Had he remained silent because everyone would have fled if they knew how dangerous it was?
“Are you no longer going to follow me?”
Adol abruptly raised his head at the calm voice that seemed to have read his mind.
It was Mona’s voice.
A faint light was visible behind him.
Adol knew that it was the exit he had desperately wanted to find, but strangely, he did not want to move forward.
“……Why are you standing there?”
Mona did not answer Adol’s question.
“What is this place? Why has everyone lost consciousness?”
Adol felt his voice tremble slightly, but he could not help it.
Anxiety crawled up the back of his neck, causing every fine hair to stand on end.
“Because they have killed people.”
The unhelpful Mona gave only that short answer and offered no further explanation.
“Fine. Then I’ll ask something else…… Did you know this would happen?”
Mona did not answer this time.
However, another voice answered the child’s question.
“What’s this? One is still standing? And he’s perfectly fine.”
It belonged to neither Mona nor Enil.
It was a woman’s voice, lighter in tone and carrying a faint metallic rasp.
“Your instincts have grown dull too. It’s about time you pretended to die and surrendered your position. You could switch places with me now.”
After spouting those incomprehensible words, she entered the cave.
Adol felt ready to shout and demand what kind of joke this was, but he could not even manage that.
“Don’t be so harsh. Archi will punish him once we tell him anyway.”
“And even if Mona gets trapped here, you won’t be the one sent to the village. You’re far too stupid to be useful.”
There was more than one.
More and more figures entered and spoke to Mona casually.
Were they even human?
“Everyone, calm down. That isn’t what matters right now. The question is what we should do with that little runt.”
Feeling all their gazes fasten upon him, Adol turned around.
Even if he became lost and trapped inside the cave, he felt that he needed to escape from these people.
“Do you know the way out?”
However, his path of retreat had already been blocked.
Adol stared helplessly at the black shadow beside Ran, which looked down at him, and gulped.
“You would be better off following us. Leave that piece of garbage behind.”
Adol realized that the figure was pointing toward Ran beside him.
“……Are you going to kill him?”
“Look at this brat. He can’t even protect his own life, yet he’s worrying about his companion.”
“Move aside, Rea.”
Mona pushed aside the person looking down at Adol and intervened.
The child fiercely glared at the man responsible for everything.
“What have you done? How do I wake him?”
Apparently amused by the child’s question, mocking laughter resembling the cries of beasts erupted all around him.
“You can’t do anything! He’s trapped inside his memories, endlessly killing the person he murdered over and over again.”
The metallic voice that had first joined the conversation answered.
Adol felt his heart sink and pressed Mona for an answer.
“What are you? Weren’t you supposed to take us to the Werewolves?”
The moment the child finished asking, loud laughter erupted all around him once again.
As Adol stood bewildered by the inexplicable mockery, someone stepped closer.
“That’s right. Mona guided you properly. You’re standing inside the Werewolves’ den right now.”
The same insolent voice that had first picked a fight with Mona answered again.
“There are so many of them standing right in front of you.”
* * *
As I looked down at my father, I simultaneously felt an unnatural calmness and a sense of unease.
Something was wrong.
My mind insisted that the easiest solution was to strangle him immediately, but my body refused to obey.
Like a computer program following its assigned code, I was slowly releasing my grip on my father’s throat and approaching him.
Even though I had neither the reason nor the desire to do so.
“Looking at him like this, we do resemble each other.”
I had always believed that my face resembled my mother’s, but with his eyes closed, I could find traces of my own features scattered across his face.
I extended my hand and examined his neck.
The marks left by my strangling were unmistakable.
There had once been a day when he strangled me in the same manner.
I didn’t think there had been any significant reason.
Had I talked back to him?
That was probably it.
My temper and habit of talking back were always what turned a beating of one blow into ten.
My throat had remained swollen afterward, making even swallowing saliva painful for some time.
Despite knowing it was pointless, I revisited the past.
Ridiculously enough, whenever he went too far with his violence, he would give me spending money the next day as an apology.
He never said he was sorry, but until now, I had thought that was his own way of apologizing.
Even a passing dog would laugh at that.
That was merely……
If the man in my memories had apologized to me even once, would a day like today never have come?
Probably not.
I was similar to my father, and I could not confidently claim that I would never have raised my hand against someone who had harmed me.
As long as he remained alive and I refused to give up on living, I would eventually have committed an act similar to his.
Someday, I would have struck him after age had made him weak.
Whether today became tomorrow, the day after, or some distant point in the future, it would merely have been a postponement.
My head cooled.
No, had it truly become calm?
One thing was certain: I had remembered the agony of being strangled.
That also meant I was no longer intoxicated by enough murderous rage to strangle him to death.
I removed my hand from his throat, which moved with shallow breaths.
Ultimately, I had failed to strangle him to the end this time as well.
“This time as well?”
Something surfaced in my mind, but I ignored it too.
I tore my gaze from his swollen neck, slowly raised my head, and surveyed the room.
What had I done after this?
I had searched for something.
Ah, right.
A lighter.
My mind simultaneously felt clear and hopelessly confused, but this was unquestionably the correct answer.
I needed to find a lighter and set the room’s door on fire.
If I could not kill him with my own hands, I needed to find another method.
Thanks to my father spending every coin he earned at bars and gaming cafés, the house contained more lighters than we could ever need.
I looked toward the blanket spread across the room.
Because he smoked incessantly even in bed, there was always a lighter underneath his blanket.
I turned to search for it, only to stop when a fact suddenly occurred to me.
No. The lighter isn’t there.
Today was the day I had done the final load of laundry before telling him that I intended to leave home.
While changing the bedding, I had definitely placed the lighter beneath it……on top of the chest of drawers.
Then how had my father knocked over a bookcase that didn’t exist?
The space where my father had hidden moments earlier had originally been a narrow gap between the chest of drawers and the wardrobe, not a bookcase.
The objects that spilled across the floor had come from inside the drawers.
I remembered cleaning the house at a later point in the future and placing a bookcase where the broken chest of drawers had once stood.
I had also been the one to fill that bookcase.
At last, I caught hold of the inconsistency.
Thud!
A powerful pain struck the back of my head, and I collapsed.
When I looked up, I saw my father holding an empty soju bottle.
Once again, I was not particularly surprised.
It was as though, somewhere deep inside, I had known events would unfold like this.
Everything felt predetermined—from releasing my grip on my father’s throat to being attacked by him now.
“You worthless bastard. I knew this day would come eventually. You’re just like your mother—an ungrateful……”
Perhaps nearly being killed by his own son for the first time had profoundly shocked him, because his pupils were fully dilated.
He raised the liquor bottle high again.
When I caught the bottle descending with enough force to shatter my skull, my head rang.
I felt hot blood flowing across my forehead.
Seeing it, my father bared his teeth.
“Let’s die together today.”
After whispering those words, he kicked me in the stomach.
Because I was restraining his arm, I failed to evade the kick and collapsed onto the floor again from the impact.
My father climbed on top of me and wrapped one hand around my throat.
Apparently, he did not share my hesitation.
He raised the soju bottle in his other hand.
Watching him prepare to deliver the final blow, I slowly closed and reopened my eyes.
I already knew what I needed to do to survive.
Yet for some reason, profound resistance arose within me.
Perhaps the survival instinct could not be erased by a mere sense of aversion, because my body moved on its own.
I picked up the smooth object within reach and swung it at him.
“Aargh!”
My father released my throat and clutched his head.
I hurriedly rose while desperately gasping for breath.
Only after standing did I realize that the object in my hand was my father’s ashtray.
After being struck in the head, my father quickly rose and attempted to charge at me again.
Pinning someone beneath him so they could not move was my father’s specialty.
My barely functioning mind stimulated the survival instinct buried at its deepest level.
I shoved my charging father with all my strength.
I pushed him so hard that the recoil caused me to collapse.
Thud!
My father was sent stumbling backward helplessly.
He lost his balance, and his head struck the corner of the fallen bookcase in an instant.
I stared at him as he collapsed without even managing to scream.
Blood flowed from his forehead.
A tremendous amount—enough to soak the floor.
It was the first time I learned that so much blood could emerge from a person.
Even someone as foolish as me could understand.
If I left him like this, my father would truly die.
I had been the one to push him, yet this felt far easier than strangling him or setting the house on fire.
The cowardly thought that I had not directly killed him and was merely allowing him to die quietly settled within my chest.
I knew that my final opportunity to avoid becoming a murderer was disappearing, but I did not move.
I did not want to stand.
I merely wanted him to vanish from the world.
The blood flowing from his head soaked the books scattered across the floor.
I stared blankly at him, his body draped over the fallen bookcase, and at those books.
……Books?
Staring stupidly at the familiar covers, I raised my head.
Our house had never contained anything that could be called a book.
The few Bibles my mother had owned had either left with her or been thrown away by my father.
I narrowed my eyes and examined them. Eventually, I realized that they resembled the novel I had read every day at the library.
Had I failed to recognize them immediately because I had never seen them without the wear and stains accumulated over the years?
I slowly rose.
My hand trembled violently as I reached for one of the books scattered nearby.
This sensation differed from everything before it.
I wanted to pick up the book, but my body resisted.
It felt as though an invisible force were obstructing me because I refused to follow the predetermined script.
Nevertheless, I eventually picked it up and read the title.
[Dark Header]
In that instant, all warmth drained from my body as though ice water had been poured over me from head to toe.
I had already lost this much blood, yet even more warmth was leaving my body. At this rate, I would die of hypothermia before I could be beaten to death.
Along with that absurd thought, countless memories were pulled into my mind.
My survival, my half-dead father, dropping out of school, debts, loans, and then—
Overwhelmed by seven years of memories, I released a sigh, shook my head several times, and looked forward again.
My father still lay there.
But he looked different from how he had seven years ago.
“Fucking hell……”
The sight made the curse emerge naturally.
I had expected something like this after reading about it in the book, but experiencing it personally made me feel as though someone had gone to extraordinary lengths to torment me.
Without hesitation, I approached my father.
……
My body, which had felt as heavy as lead moments earlier, now moved without difficulty.
My head no longer hurt.
That was only natural.
My real body must still be inside the cave at Wolf Cliff.
This was merely a past that had already ended.
Whether I drowned in despair or writhed in guilt, nothing here would change.
However, I knew what I needed to do to escape.
Looking down at his chest as it rose slowly with lingering breath, I supported his body and pulled him upright.
It was the path I had not chosen seven years ago.
It was also the only path out of this hell.
The heavy weight and lukewarm warmth against my back made nausea surge within me, but I lifted him onto my back and stood.
Every step taken to save my father felt heavy, but I could not stop.
I opened the door and stepped outside.
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