Chapter 311: Episode 311

She loved him.

From the very first moment she saw him at her interview.

“Well done. I highly rate the attempt itself to establish your own style.”

When she passed the interview and joined his team.

“It’s only natural for family to help each other out, right?”

When he gently held her hand.

“Now, everyone line up and hold hands. Be careful, because if you let go, you’ll get lost.”

Right up to the moment he proudly acknowledged her abilities.

“Congratulations. Ms. Seo Shimhee, the world’s first transformation mage.”

She loved his smile. She loved his unwavering confidence. She loved his composure, the way he moved with cool-headed precision in the face of any adversity.

She loved the veins that faintly corded along his forearms when he helped with the dishes. She loved the way his nose crinkled at the bitter taste of a health tonic.

She loved his slightly splay-footed, trudging walk with his hands shoved deep into his pockets whenever he was exhausted. She loved the clean scent of herbal shampoo radiating from his damp hair after a shower.

She loved the rough, stubbly shadow along his jaw right before he shaved in the morning, and she loved the dejected pout he wore whenever he offered weird food to his colleagues, only to be flatly rejected.

Seo Shimhee loved him.

More than anyone else. More than words could ever express.

Her heart would pound frantically, and her face would flush red just standing by his side.

But despite loving him with everything she had, she couldn’t show or express a single hint of it.

Because there’s no way someone that wonderful would ever like me.

The 1st-floor manager, Jin Bora, was undeniably cute and bursting with bright energy, even to another woman’s eyes, and her casual, physical affection with Kim Yusin felt completely natural.

Then there was the homunculus, Ea, who was so blindingly beautiful it felt as if she were a divine being descending from another world.

On top of that, Cha Doyeon and Kim Sarang from her own 4th-floor team were incredibly stylish and charismatic. Looking beyond the Tower, there were women so flawless in every aspect that Shimhee didn’t even dare feel jealous. Hong Yeon, the Korean Association President Hong Yul, the top industry management CEO Shin Nara, and even the Egyptian Pharaoh, Menes.

That was the harsh reality. Everyone surrounding Kim Yusin was extraordinary.

There’s no way a place exists for me in a crowd like that, Seo Shimhee often thought.

If it was a love that could never be realized, neatly folding away her feelings and abandoning all lingering attachment would have been the logical choice. But she couldn’t do it.

As time passed, her unrequited love for him only grew stronger, until a living hell unfolded within her heart.

Sometimes, the yearning was so agonizing she considered just confessing everything, but she was terrified that doing so might shatter their comfortable master-disciple dynamic.

She had no choice but to endure. She had to swallow it down.

However…

“The patient, Mr. Kim Yusin, has passed away.”

That incident happened.

Without her being able to do a single thing, without her conveying even a fraction of her feelings, Kim Yusin left this world.

It felt utterly vain. Agonizing.

Still, since she could never see him again, she convinced herself that she would eventually be able to forget him as time went by.

But… even that was a delusion.

Day by day, the hell inside her chest only grew larger. Her insides slowly rotted away from grief.

Even Seo Shimhee realized she was slowly going insane. The pain was so suffocating she even entertained extreme, dark thoughts.

She hated herself. She hated that she had to suffer this profoundly over someone she had never even dated.

Then, one day, after staying awake night after night engulfed in a bone-deep yearning…

She had a dream.

“Ms. Seo Shimhee, come over here.”

A dream where she and Yusin were lovers.

She knew the truth. She knew it was nothing more than a cheap, pathetic delusion born of her own desires.

Even so, in that brief dream, Seo Shimhee felt indescribable happiness. Being with him, even if only in her subconscious, made the waking hours a little more bearable.

So, she kept imagining it.

She kept dreaming.

Right before bed, she would stare obsessively at pictures of him until her eyes drifted shut, desperate to dream of Kim Yusin no matter the cost.

To survive the waking world, she built a home inside her delusion.

As time continued to bleed away, Jeong Seojin eventually announced the construction of a memorial museum so the citizens would never forget Kim Yusin. To stock the exhibits, she confiscated his belongings.

Among the various artifacts and equipment Kim Yusin had left behind, there was one item that hooked Shimhee’s attention.

It was none other than the necklace imbued with the Water Veil magic.

It was widely known as an item that no one but Kim Yusin could activate, but Seo Shimhee didn’t care about the magic at all.

She desperately wanted to get her hands on the physical necklace, the very one Kim Yusin had worn around his neck through every shower and every sleepless night. The one that surely still held his lingering scent.

Driven by obsession, she secretly sought out a master jeweler to commission a flawless replica. Then, operating entirely behind Jeong Seojin’s back, she successfully swapped the fake for the real one.

She couldn’t risk wearing it openly during the day, but every night when she slipped into bed, she was overjoyed to fall asleep with the heavy metal resting against her collarbones, pretending she was sharing the bed with Kim Yusin.

A few days passed in this quiet, obsessive routine. Then, one night, as she was absentmindedly fiddling with the pendant to fall asleep, she was startled entirely out of her wits.

Yusin was right there, sitting beside her.

It was a complex illusion formed by the Water Veil’s residual magic, but it undeniably took on Yusin’s exact appearance. From the messy texture of his hair to the depth of his eyes, everything was a perfect match. The phantom could even move freely and walk around the room.

…She had found paradise.

Except for the mandatory hours she spent working at the Tower, she dedicated every waking second to the phantom of Yusin created by the Water Veil.

The toxic, festering emotions she had bottled up for years finally exploded out of her, and her sheer, desperate delusion somehow breathed a twisted sort of life into the magical artifact.

She conversed with him. She laughed with him. She ate meals across the table from him, and she went to bed wrapped in his illusory arms.

Surprisingly, her Yusin liked her back.

She entirely monopolized her very own Kim Yusin, far away from the prying eyes of the world. In the safety of her apartment, they even held a private wedding.

But as her blissfully happy days as a newlywed continued…

“I miss him.”

“I told you to forget about him already. Dwelling on it only brings you more pain.”

The mages at the Magic Tower were still constantly talking about Kim Yusin.

“I heard a new regenerative drug was discovered from slime fluids this time…”

“Do you think Representative Kim could possibly wake up, too?”

Why do they keep acting like Kim Yusin is dead? she would think, her mind spiraling.

He’s right here next to me, isn’t he?

Everywhere she went, it was Kim Yusin. Kim Yusin. Kim Yusin. Kim Yusin. Kim Yusin.

People constantly gossiped about the comatose Kim Yusin sleeping in the sealed study, and Seo Shimhee found herself reacting with irritable, defensive hostility.

Because their words felt as if…

They were calling her Yusin a fake.

It felt like they were pointing mocking fingers at her, claiming that her beloved husband, the man she kissed every morning, shared meals with, bathed with, and slept next to, was nothing but sad fiction.

As the mental stress piled up, the fragile dam in Shimhee’s mind finally cracked. During a busy lunch hour at the Magic Tower, she unknowingly interrupted a nearby conversation.

“What do any of you know about Yusin?!”

Her voice echoed across the cafeteria, far too loud and entirely unhinged.

“Yusin sl… slept with me yesterday…!”

She abruptly stopped speaking.

The silence was deafening. She could feel the heavy weight of everyone’s stares locking onto her. She could read the raw emotions contained within those wide-eyed gazes.

Concern. Pity. Contempt. Sympathy.

The sheer humiliation instantly snapped her back to her senses. Her blood ran cold.

I shouldn’t tell these people the truth. The truth must remain a secret only I know.

“Shimhee, did you… have some sort of dream?” a colleague asked gently.

“…I apologize for raising my voice.” She quickly grabbed her tray and fled.

Every night after that, she locked herself away to spend time with the Water Veil’s Yusin.

But the anxiety was eating her alive. This Kim Yusin was undeniably the real one. So why did everyone else…?

“Why won’t the people acknowledge your husband?”

Just as her mind was rotting away from the paranoia, a sickeningly sweet voice whispered in her ear.

“Your husband is the real one. Don’t tell me you’re being swayed by the opinions of others? Are you, his devoted wife, truly going to deny his existence?”

“N… no! I just…!”

Shimhee spilled hot tears of frustration, clutching her chest. It felt as if her entire heart had been scorched pitch-black.

“Then, try to think about it,” the voice urged, dripping with the allure of forbidden fruit.

“What must you do to ensure your Kim Yusin is the only real one?”

She sat in silence.

Leaping up from her bed, she stared into the dark room with wide, bloodshot eyes.

She pondered and pondered the sinister question.

She stayed awake until the sun breached the horizon. She completely ignored her shift at work, pacing her apartment as she calculated relentlessly.

“Right… that’s it.”

Tears streamed down her pale cheeks as a twisted, euphoric smile stretched across her face.

“If I get rid of the fake, my Kim Yusin will become the one and only Kim Yusin left in this world.”

A manic, breathless laugh tore from her throat, quickly escalating into full-blown hysteria.

Her deeply rotted, decaying heart had finally twisted into something truly foul.

Her resolution crystallized in the dark.

I will erase the fake from this world.

I will slaughter the people who constantly chatter about him, treating the fake as the real deal.

No… I won’t be satisfied with just that.

My world, where my Kim Yusin truly exists, is the only real world.

I will destroy the fake reality, and I will live forever with Kim Yusin. Just the two of us. In our perfect world.

If it was for a holy goal like that, what happened to this counterfeit world didn’t matter in the slightest.

She initiated her grand plan. First, she had to blow this detestable Magic Tower, the largest remaining trace of the fake, into absolute pieces.

“Work is so exhausting, Shimhee.”

Her first target was the current Tower Master, Na Daeyong.

An opportunity arose when he invited her out for drinks at a quiet, secluded bar.

Seo Shimhee had always been faintly aware of his feelings. The pathetic fact that he harbored a crush on her.

“I didn’t realize Master’s shadow was this massive,” Na Daeyong confessed over a glass of whiskey. “If I do well, it’s because of Kim Yusin’s foundation. If I do poorly, it’s because I’m not Kim Yusin. Everyone here is kind, so they try not to show it, but… well, I suppose being compared to him is inevitable.”

He interlocked his fingers on the table, offering her a vulnerable, self-deprecating smile.

“Still, I climbed to this position fully prepared for all this. It’s true that this seat is more than I deserve, and it’s true that I’ll never be Master. But I’m going to work myself to the bone. If I do… someday, maybe four or five years from now… I might be acknowledged on my own merits. Even just a tiny bit, right?”

Na Daeyong was a solid, dependable man.

However, compared to a flexible bamboo stalk that sways harmlessly in the breeze, a tree that is merely solid is much easier to snap in half.

“What do you think of me, Shimhee?”

It was a small, hesitant question, pushed out on a wave of liquid courage. He had subtly steered the topic using his insecurities about Yusin, but the romantic intent behind his question was glaringly obvious.

Shimhee scraped her chair back and stood up without a word.

“I’ll be leaving now.”

“W… wait, Shimhee?”

She walked a few paces toward the exit before pausing to look back at Na Daeyong over her shoulder. Then, with eyes as cold as glacial ice, she spat out a single sentence dripping with vile contempt.

“You’re not even Kim Yusin.”

Whenever she recalled the expression Na Daeyong made at that exact moment, that devastatingly crushed, utterly broken look…

It sent a twisted thrill straight to her core.

From that day forward, Seo Shimhee began a methodical campaign to thoroughly break Na Daeyong’s mind.

She planted hidden voice-modulating speakers in his office and cast the Water Veil in the corridors to project fleeting illusions of the Tower staff.

“He’s all show.”

“He’s not even Kim Yusin.”

“I miss him.”

“Ah… if only Representative Kim were here to lead us.”

Everywhere Na Daeyong walked, she bombarded him with these fabricated, judging voices. She tormented him endlessly, drowning his sanity in the cruel hallucinations orchestrated by her mastery of the Water Veil.

“Why don’t we just find a different Tower Master?”

“I wonder if another Child of Mana will pop up somewhere.”

Na Daeyong suffered and agonized in total isolation. Buckling under the extreme psychological pressure and stress, his physical health deteriorated. He even started losing his hair.

Slowly but surely, the current Tower Master began to lose his mind.

Once his paranoia was ripe, Shimhee struck the next match. She pitted Cha Doyeon directly against the maddening Na Daeyong.

Using her illusions, she successfully exposed Na Daeyong to a highly realistic phantom of Cha Doyeon openly badmouthing his leadership in front of dozens of employees.

Eventually unable to bear the perceived betrayal, the unhinged Na Daeyong stormed into Cha Doyeon’s office and violently confronted her.

“What are you talking about? When did I ever say that?!” Cha Doyeon, naturally, denied the entire fabricated event.

“I heard it clearly with my own two ears! Do you think I’m a fool?! Huh?!” Daeyong roared, his eyes bloodshot and crazed. “Does it bother you that much that I’ll never be Kim Yusin?!”

“No, seriously, why are you acting like this?! Have you completely lost your mind, Daeyong?!”

“Daeyong?! How long are you going to keep calling me that?!” he shrieked, slamming his fist onto her desk. “I am the Tower Master!”

Discord erupted among the managers and tower members. Bad rumors about Na Daeyong began to snowball entirely on their own, completely bypassing the need for Seo Shimhee’s manipulation.

In the ensuing fallout, Cha Doyeon, who had been coerced into submission, finally left the Magic Tower. Samia, who had long wished to return to Tanzania, followed suit after a heated clash with Daeyong.

As the situation steadily deteriorated, Shimhee turned her sights on Eunsol, entangling her in Daeyong’s mess.

Three times a week, Jin Bora visited the sealed study to wash Yusin’s comatose body. While heading up to the third floor, Eunsol happened to witness a highly suspicious scene.

Na Daeyong was rummaging through the basket of bath supplies meant for Yusin.

She watched him slip the poison concocted by Jo Yonghee into the body wash, place the bottle back in its original spot, and slip away.

Furious, Eunsol grabbed the basket, stormed down to the golden lobby, and immediately exposed his actions to everyone present.

A makeshift hearing was called.

“I saw it with my own eyes!” Eunsol screamed. “That crazy son of a bitch put poison in Yusin’s bath supplies!”

Red in the face, she pointed a trembling, accusing finger as tears streamed down her cheeks.

“So you’re backing me into a corner now?” Daeyong shot back. “Do you want to kick me out that fucking badly?!”

Daeyong, already spiraling into madness from a severe persecution complex, lashed out defensively.

Eventually, a chemical analysis was conducted in front of the crowd. Naturally, no trace of poison was found in the basket.

“It’s the truth! I’m telling you, I saw it!” Eunsol sobbed hysterically. “That bastard tried to kill Yusin!”

She wailed and screamed at the sheer injustice of it all, but with the test results laid bare, there was nothing she could do.

In the end, Eunsol packed her bags and left the Magic Tower as well.

After the incident, Daeyong’s paranoia only deepened. He aggressively demanded that the remaining staff treat him with the exact same reverence they showed Kim Yusin.

The entire fourth-floor team had abandoned post. Jin Bora and Jeong Seojin remained strictly as a formality to protect the tower Yusin had left behind; their hearts had long since moved on.

Even the homunculus, Ea, had entered a dormant period.

Now, only spineless sycophants remained by Daeyong’s side.

However, thanks to an anxious Jin Bora obsessively fortifying Yusin’s security after Eunsol’s departure, Daeyong couldn’t eliminate the man sleeping in the study.

Like that, the Magic Tower rotted away from within, eaten alive by misunderstanding and distrust.

And it was all because of a single Fiend.

Seo Shimhee departed the tower and joined a global guild. She kept a watchful eye on the tower’s slow collapse while spending her blissful days wrapped in the delusions and illusions woven by the Water Veil.

Then, one day, five years later.

Shimhee woke up as usual, sleepily reaching up to touch her neck.

“…Honey?”

But her fingers brushed against bare skin.

Trembling violently like someone caught in a seizure, she frothed at the mouth and unleashed an ear-piercing shriek.

“Aaaaaah!”

The necklace was gone.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep