The moment I saw Celine… a thought came to me.

Right when she first entered the room, no… when she glanced at me through the door.

Could she make me feel something?

Like… if I kissed her, would I feel guilty?

After Sue died… would I feel like an asshole for doing something like that?

Can I overcome the Absolute Mind just a little bit?

“S- stop!”

I paused for a moment.

Only a few millimeters separated our faces. Her violet eyes were flickering so hard she couldn’t stay still. Her cheeks were so red.

…

…

“Ah…”

…

My mouth hung open. I just stood there as if I wanted to say something but… couldn’t.

I closed my mouth, stepped back. Never looking at Celine again, I used my mana to limp to the balcony and flew outside.

I went into one of the woods on campus, a very familiar one. I found that big boulder and… I just dropped myself on it.

I was suddenly alone with my thoughts.

What… was I doing?

Just to feel something, look at what I was about to do…

I raised my hands, turned them to the sky, and ran them over the stars, over the moon shining in the middle of the night.

I narrowed my eyes, my mind went back to that moment, the very moment I approached Celine.

I wasn’t under the control of my emotions or whatever else.

On the contrary, I was so in control of my emotions that… even for a brief moment, I thought that it was really ’logical’. I didn’t think about Celine or the future, if I wanted to feel something, I went for what I believed to be the surest solution I could do at that moment.

I lowered my hands and continued to watch the night in silence.

“…”

I closed my eyes and let myself go into the cool autumn breeze and the darkness of the night for a while.

Silence…

Completely.

But, then…

“I’m… sorry…”

Her last words echoed in my mind.

“Please… forget me…”

I opened my eyes slowly.

How… do you expect me to forget you?

How can I… do that?

How am I supposed to forget?

“…”

I felt my face twitch for a moment. Slowly, I sat up from where I was lying down and assumed a sitting position.

Involuntarily, I clenched my fingers on the stone, then… so hard that the sound of crackling broke the silence of the forest.

Saligia…

Because of them.

Yes, maybe I’m one of the biggest to blame…

But they are the ones who put their hands on her.

My face twitched even more. As the crackling sounds from the stone grew louder… a familiar system notification dropped in front of me.

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But I didn’t care this time… Even though I had been trying all day to feel something, especially for this moment.

I had only one thing on my mind.

I’ll make them regret it.

I’ll make them pay for every bit of pain she suffered, every drop of blood she lost.

I’m going to burn into their minds the price of touching her.

I will make sure everyone knows what it means to touch my family.

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I’ll wipe them all out.

~crack!

I paused, squinting my eyes slightly, and looked down at my hand.

My fingers were covered in blood, my fingernails broken. Cracks spread around the huge boulder, the spot under my hand was completely shattered.

I tried to lift my hand, and then… realizing how difficult it was, let it go. My arm was even weaker than it should have been because I had used my mana uncontrollably, even for a short time.

~crack!

My brows furrowed, I looked at the rock again, but… there was no widening of the cracks. Immediately afterward, I slowly turned my head back, saw the figure coming through the trees and… couldn’t do anything but wait.

“Aiden…”

She came out with slow steps. Her brown hair was matted with dust and leaves, but she didn’t seem to care. And her eyes… they looked worried and a little scared.

But… the words that came out of her mouth were perhaps what I didn’t expect.

“I’m… sorry.”

It didn’t mean anything.

In fact, there was no point in apologizing.

I was the one who should have apologized. And I did.

But…

“I’m… sorry…”

My eyes widened as my mouth involuntarily opened slightly. But… Celine didn’t stop.

“Everyone pretends to understand you. I… did too. I am sorry.”

She jumped onto a tree right next to the boulder, and then onto the boulder with its support. But instead of coming closer, as she had climbed the boulder, she waited, her violet eyes fixed on me.

“Others don’t know about your skill, I can’t speak for them… But it shouldn’t have taken me this long to figure it out. So… I am sorry.”

Only this time she started walking, coming closer to me. Her eyes were always on me, but at one point, she looked at the part of the boulder I had shattered and at my hand.

She said nothing. Finally, when she was right in front of me, she paused. She slowly bent down and got on her knees.

She took my bloody hand in her hands, her eyes narrowed.

I couldn’t help the involuntary twitching of my lips. I tried to pull my hand back, to turn around and fly away again, but… she gripped it even tighter.

“Your hand is messed up… we should at least bandage it.”

I finally gritted my teeth. I tried to pull my hand away again but… as long as I didn’t use mana with my crippled body, she was much stronger than me.

“Actually… forget the bandage, let’s go straight to the hospital. Your fingernails are broken too.”

I couldn’t turn my eyes to her, I could only wait in silence for a while. And then… I could only bow my head.

“I… don’t deserve this, Celine.”

“…”

She, once again, didn’t say anything, just… waiting as if she knew there was more I was going to say.

“I just… want to be alone for a while.”

“What are you going to do when you’re alone?”

“…”

“Are you going to loop that video and watch it over and over and over again?”

“…”

“Are you just going to lie on your bed and stare at the ceiling?”

“No-”

“Honestly… I don’t care, Aiden.”

I lifted my head slightly, looked at her face.

Her eyes… weren’t worried, angry, or sad. They were just… there, determined, almost… shimmering under the darkness of the night.

“I don’t care what you do.”

She put my bloody hand down slowly, gently.

“No matter what situation you’re in, no matter what mistake you’ve made, I… will always come to you. I will always be there, I will always listen to you, I will always watch you, I will never let you be alone, because you… are not someone who should be left alone.”

Then, she put her arms around my shoulders, her lips curved slightly upward.

“You try to help everyone, you strive for everyone’s good… But when it comes to your own good, you’re always… alone. Adrian, Julian, Lucia, even me and everyone else… even if we try to do something for you, we don’t want to cross the line. That’s why we keep our distance, thinking that in such situations it’s better to be alone unless you want it otherwise. But you… you are not someone like that.”

“No, I just-”

“Being alone only makes you worse. Because you don’t care about yourself. Even if you can help others, you can’t help yourself because you don’t value yourself. You keep saying that you don’t deserve these things, that you’re a terrible person, and you keep falling deeper and deeper.”

She pulled me to herself gently. With her arms, she pressed my body against hers, hugging me tightly.

“That’s why I will never leave your side.”

My eyes widened slightly, my arms hanging limp, I opened my mouth to say something, but… I couldn’t find anything to say.

But Celine didn’t stop.

“Because, as much as I try to pretend otherwise… as much as I know you don’t feel that way about me… I love you, Aiden. And I’m going to help you, whether you want me to or not… whether you think I’m a big, selfish jerk or not.”

She didn’t say anything else. She just… kept hugging me tightly, rested her head on my shoulder, and waited.

I couldn’t say a word, I couldn’t deny or reject anything she said. I wanted to say something but my lips were locked, not a word coming out.

And, finally… I could only squint my eyes and stare calmly into the darkness. As the Absolute Mind began to sort out my thoughts one by one, the only thing I could feel inside me was… a growing darkness.

It was as if I was falling into the darkness, and with each passing second… I found myself growing more and more calm… cold.

I… can’t.

She might love me. And I… may not be as indifferent to her as I thought.

But… I can’t…

I can’t ask her for help, I can’t let her be near me, I can’t…

“…?”

I paused, my eyes gradually widening as I thought back to that evening… what Sue had murmured in my arms as I ran as fast as I could toward the city center.

“I… lo-”

I love you.

She was about to say that.

But she deliberately stopped, didn’t continue. She intentionally changed her words.

“I’m… sorry…”

She apologized on purpose, because she knew this would happen.

And…

“Please… forget me…”

She knowingly told me to forget her.

“…”

She said it all… so that I could leave her behind and move on.

…

…

…

I don’t know how much pain Sue went through saying those words, both physically and mentally.

But… I do know who made her suffer, who forced her to go through that pain, who took away her chance when she was just beginning to try to do something better.

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I narrowed my eyes, slowly looking up at the sky, and… only one thing crossed my mind.

Ah, I… I really want to wipe Saligia, everything connected to it, off the face of the planet.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep