I tried to keep the story from getting too long. What I needed to convey were my experiences and the ‘facts,’ not my feelings or thoughts. The longer I spoke, the more inevitable it was that my personal emotions would get mixed in, so I used the driest vocabulary possible, explaining everything as briefly and concisely as I could.

I didn’t ask Geon-joo a single question, nor did I look at him as I spoke. I simply kept my eyes fixed on Fenrir, who rested its head silently on Geon-joo’s lap, and continued my tale. The feeling was unfamiliar.

It felt a bit like writing in a diary, or perhaps leaving a record. As I spoke, my heart would feel heavy, as if filled with lead, only to lighten again, a cycle of emotions I couldn’t quite fathom.

Then, a single thought occurred to me.

Even if I die, if I leave you behind, you’ll know my whole story. You would be the proof that I lived as a human. I didn’t know why that thought suddenly came to me. It must have been because dredging up the past was making me sentimental.

Realizing my rationality was clouding over, I paused for a moment. When the lips that had been moving mechanically fell silent, my mind went blank. For a second, it was a white canvas. I blinked once, then narrowed my brows.

Where was I?

At sixteen, the System forcibly Awakened me. It wasn’t like the System others had; it was a rather unhinged version. Without any prior consent, it designated me as the ‘true evil of humanity,’ destined to destroy the world, and then out of nowhere, it ordered me to kill the person who had helped me. I resisted for a bit, but when there was no other way, I killed him. I thought that would be the end of it, but it turned out it wasn’t. It was just the beginning.

I couldn’t tell if I was smiling or expressionless as I finished that part. Was that as far as I had gotten? Confused, I looked up at Geon-joo. Our eyes met. His dark, black irises maintained a placidness that made it impossible to guess what he was thinking.

That impenetrable darkness felt like staring into the depths of a profound abyss. The feeling was so consuming that my mind started to feel a little more at ease by simply imagining I was in the ocean. I felt buoyant.

Thanks to that, I was able to continue the story I had paused. The sensation of floating alone in the sea made it feel less burdensome. It was as if I were just muttering to myself.

And talking to myself is easy.

I was so adept at speaking alone that I probably could have generated a monologue skill. In the past, there was no one to listen to my stories. It would have been better if I had been trapped in a place like a Gate, somewhere devoid of people. But back then, I wasn’t in a Gate or an empty space.

I was just on the streets, at school.

My consciousness descended once more, bringing the past to the surface.

After being designated as the true evil of humanity, I lost everyone I knew. It was because the System had erased their memories.

Even though my identity could be verified at the community center, everyone I knew acted as if they had forgotten me. I went to see my homeroom teacher. I went to see my friends. I had lived for sixteen years under the name Kwon Sa-yoon, a period far longer than the time I had lived as the evil designated by the System, but it was as if those sixteen years had been completely uprooted.

As if my name had been erased from the world.

Maybe they were just scared. At that time, whether I wanted to or not, I was a murderer who had killed dozens of people. My clothes might have been stained with blood.

I went home, washed myself, and changed my clothes. When I went back, still no one recognized me. Accepting that I had been forgotten was harder than accepting the System. By the time I acknowledged and accepted that fact, I had left the house where I lived with my parents and never went back.

It was too full of traces of Kwon Sa-yoon.

What am I even saying?

With a jolt, I blinked. The lips that had been moving without conscious thought stopped once again.

“…You got to the part about killing the people in the shelter and leaving home.”

After I remained dazed for a long while, the man in front of me explained what I had been wondering about. The timely support made a small sound of surprise escape my lips.

So I didn’t say anything useless.

If I went straight from killing the shelter residents to leaving home, it meant I hadn’t included the unnecessary stories in between. Relieved, I started the next part of the tale. It wasn’t hard to recall what had happened.

Once the System saw that I had grown somewhat accustomed to killing, it began special training to make me stronger as an Awakened. Having only watched Gate saturation events, I had no real idea what a Gate was, and that was my first experience with one.

Perhaps it had a shred of conscience, because the bastard didn’t throw me into an S-rank Gate from the start. It let me experience a beginner Gate, then a B-rank and an A-rank once each, before throwing me, a D-rank at the time, into the Field. I spent about a year there, dying and reviving repeatedly, and my rank jumped three levels to A-rank.

“…”

As I said that, I heard a rustling sound from in front of me. I flinched for a moment before continuing my story.

After getting out of the Field, I received a quest with a forced execution penalty for the first time in a while. It was terrorism. Unlike my past missions, which had been limited to the scale of a single station, the scope of the new quest was an entire city. Feeling burdened, I resisted and dragged it out for two months. In response, the System added the deaths of my friends to the penalty, along with forced execution.

Those same friends who had forgotten me.

A lot of time had passed, but I still hadn’t forgotten them. They were once my friends, and I couldn’t let them die so meaninglessly as just another item on a penalty list. In the end, I made my move. The next quest I received…

“…After I finished the terror mission, that crazy bastard of a System told me that the true evil of humanity doesn’t cling to past connections and ordered me to kill my friends. It was just like training a damn dog.”

That was the System’s process of eroding my humanity. It was then that I realized resistance was futile. The more desperately you struggle, the more desperately you try to protect something, the more tragically you lose it.

I had to keep things by my side that I wouldn’t mind losing. If that wasn’t possible, then I had to walk alone.

Wanting to avoid creating anything important ever again, I chose to kill everyone and be alone. Then, as if to mock my solo play, the System ordered me to create a guild. It was a relentless bastard that would never move according to my will.

So, I made a guild. After a few years, the line between good and evil started to blur, and there was a brief period when I enjoyed committing crimes. At that time, I was doing drugs, forgetting reality in a hazy stupor. As I lay wasted like an idiot, the System would force me to consume poison, claiming that the true evil of humanity couldn’t be affected by it.

Every escape route I tried to take was cut off like that.

When I tried to escape with drugs and alcohol, it made me ingest poison periodically, changing my body until it was immune. When I tried to find pleasure in pain, it subjected me to regular torture until I couldn’t feel any pleasure at all.

With all avenues of escape gone, the only option left was to live life as it came and pursue stimulating acts that the System wouldn’t block. Things like murder or clearing Gates, for example. So I focused on that. I immersed myself in it day and night, and it wasn’t long before I was being called the strongest among the most renowned Awakened.

That was my life.

I finished my story, summarizing the events that had happened to me as simply as possible. It probably took about ten minutes. Maybe longer.

It had just been eleven years since I started living with the System, and I’d summarized it in ten minutes. That meant I had condensed a year’s worth of events into one minute of speech.

I’d say I did a good job shortening it.

Satisfied, I nodded. As the focus returned to my blurry eyes, I saw the man sitting in front of me. I had been so caught up in the feeling of talking to myself that the presence of someone else in my room felt strange.

“Is this enough for you?”

After summarizing the life of mine he had been so curious about, a thought struck me. I’d forgotten to mention something important.

“Living like that, I recently found an interesting quest. Turns out I have another disposition.”

I didn’t talk about ‘The Resistor.’

That was what Han Geon-joo would be most curious about.

Muttering to myself, chiding my own absentmindedness, I clicked my tongue and explained how I found ‘The Resistor’ in my status window and accepted the quest to find its holder, which led me to bring him here. After informing him that the quest was still ongoing, the entire story finally came to an end.

There was nothing more to tell.

“Now, it’s really over.”

I sifted through my memories one more time just in case, but there was nothing left to add. Had about fifteen minutes passed? I had been talking to myself for a long time. At this rate, my monologue skill might just level up.

I was feeling disappointed that no system window was popping up in front of me.

“…What are you going to do when that disposition activates?”

Finally, the one-sided record turned into a conversation. I paused at the question that followed the silence, lost in thought for a moment.

What will I do?

“Who knows.”

How can I have such hopeful thoughts when I don’t even know what effect that disposition has? I was only striving to activate it because I thought it might finally make the System disappear from my life.

With nothing to say, I casually brushed off the question. Silence fell again.

Maybe I should have thought about it then.

Wondering if I’d made a mistake, I ran a hand through my hair. It would be nice to pet Rai at a time like this, I thought wistfully. As if on cue, the large summon who had been resting its chin on Geon-joo’s knee got off the bed and approached me. It rushed towards me, and I braced my legs to keep the chair from tipping over as I hugged the white Fenrir.

Its fur was still so fluffy.

Strok, strok.

I ran my hand through Rai’s white fur, finding a familiar sense of calm.

“…Then what do you want from me? Do I just need to help you activate that disposition?”

As I stroked Rai with a practiced hand, another question came. But unlike before, the questioner’s voice seemed to tremble slightly. I lifted my head from Fenrir and looked at Geon-joo.

“…”

For an instant, my breath caught. The pale fingertips that had been caressing Fenrir froze, betraying my shock.

…What is this?

The shock was so great that I forgot what he had even asked me. The face I had once thought was handsome was now a complete mess.

A clear liquid streaked down Geon-joo’s face, and the tip of his nose and his neck were tinged with red. I had been so lost in thought after starting my story that I hadn’t looked at him properly, but now, meeting his wet gaze, I finally realized he was crying.

Since when had he been crying?

I couldn’t even guess. My mouth opened and closed, but no words came out as I just blinked.

It was absurd. How much time had he even spent with me to cry for me like that? I hadn’t even cried while telling the story myself.

Unsure how to react, I hesitated. I couldn’t cry along with him, so I just let out a wry laugh.

Then, I replayed his question in my mind.

He asked what I wanted from him.

“Who knows…”

In the past, I wanted you to save me, but now, I’m not so sure.

As I drew out my answer, the man clenched his jaw and avoided my gaze. As I watched him cry, his eyes lowered to the floor, a future seemed to predict itself, as if Lee Jaehee’s disposition had been transferred to me.

Or maybe I knew because I had already experienced it once before.

An image of a young boy with an impressive, yet fragile, smile overlapped with the crying Geon-joo. I closed my eyes. The memory of Noah, who couldn’t bring himself to kill me, came to mind, and a hollow smile touched my lips.

When the day comes for you to choose, you won’t be able to kill me either.

Just like Noah couldn’t.

‘I feel sorry for you, hyung.’

Why are good people so kind, only to be cruel to themselves?

“…”

Silence filled the room. With my eyes closed, I took a slow breath, feeling a strange sensation.

I couldn’t tell if the feeling filling my chest was satisfaction, despair, or sorrow. I had been eroded by too many waves of emotion for too long to accurately discern my own feelings, worn down to my very limit.