CHAPTER 2

[Unknown?]

[Memories—Jail]

What is a child to their parents?

Is it a form of their affection? A symbol of intimacy? A child, born of their unrivaled love for each other?

“The child of a whore.”

“Disappointment.”

“You should have never been born.”

Love, such a bullshit thing.

I digress—a child is merely an accident, if not a burden. Love has little to do with it. It is simply the parents wanting something to exploit for money so their lives would become more lavish. Or maybe something to hit while they’re bored.

Either way, my point still stands—children, more often than not, are just convenient burdens for their parents to twist into something useful. At least, that’s how it was for me.

I suppose it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things—you have to gnaw at everything to survive, after all.

That was what I’ve been taught by my own father.

. . .

“If only you weren’t born.”

The man in front of me was my father. He was dying. I never said a word to him and just listened. I’ve been sitting across him for a few hours now, this was the only time he regarded me.

He lowered the book he was reading and turned his eyes towards me.

“You and that mother of yours. That whore. Well, does it matter? You make money, and I take it. You being born was a mistake, and I changed that mistake. Look at you now. Wearing a suit, like a functioning member of society. If only those bastards knew how much I had to endure to make you into this.”

If there was a word that could describe him thoroughly, then it would be ‘monster’.

Then, by this metric, shouldn’t I be stabbing him with a ‘short-sword’? Perhaps even with that useless mind of his, I can still gain ‘exp’ from him.

Ahhh. I’m getting lost in thought.

“I could have drowned you, but I didn’t. Be grateful. You’re nothing without me. Remember that.”

He said that in a plain tone as if noting the weather. I couldn’t care less about whatever went out of his mouth as it came in one ear and passed through the other.

“Father.”

I opened my mouth. They were dry, and flakes from my lips tore as I continued.

“You finally opened your mouth. I thought you might have gone mute, or perhaps deaf.”

“......”

“Well? Keep talking.”

There was a slight frown from his otherwise emotionless face.

“I will leave.”

“Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“And here I was thinking something important would come out of that useless mouth of yours.”

I stood up.

“Be sure to die quietly.”

My father didn’t reply and only went back to reading the book. I left the hospital that day with an unimaginable amount of bitterness in my mouth.

A small part of me still wondered...... why? What did it have to do with him nearly drowning an innocent child? I became adept at analyzing systems of thought and psychology to comprehend why a monster like him existed, yet I could not find answers.

My father truly is one self-serving bastard who was only adept at snorting money up his asshole.

Pathetic.

Disgusting.

Pardon my language. I should be watching how I think—it may come out of my mouth.

Even at his funeral, my opinion of him didn’t change.

As I stared at his pale face beyond the coffin, I felt a tick on my heart—an unnerving feeling of regret. I should have made him suffer. I am rather dumb for not being able to feel this way sooner. That, I will say sorry about. I shouldn’t have let you die such a peaceful death.

Now he lies in a bed, devoid of regret or responsibility. He died knowing what he did was justifiable, that he was supposed to, and that all he did was for the better.

An irredeemable monster.

It was your fault that I’ve become like this.

“I should have been the one drowning you.”

. . .

Ring.

A noise.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

A small ring ran through my head.

Around me, there was nothing—a void of nothingness, devoid of everything other than that noise going in my head. There was an oppressive darkness and emptiness that surrounded me.

It swallowed everything—the space, my senses, and even the air weren’t there. It was suffocating.

The noise became clearer. It was not simply noise anymore. No, it was memories......

These were my memories......

“You should have never been born.” Disgust. “Disappointment." Anger. “Why?” Confusion. “The child of a whore.” Hatred.

Nightmares......

My life flashed before me in a matter of seconds. It was not just noise anymore—they were voices.

“Filthy mistake.” Contempt. “The world would be better off without you.” Resentment. “You’ve ruined everything.” Blame. “If only you had died sooner.”

The feeling of my neck getting strangled by gigantic hands, the sensation of that fuzziness when you run out of air, and the coldness of the water.

“You don’t belong here.”

“You never did.”

The agonizing voices slowly echoed and dispersed.

Then silence.

I woke up.

. . .

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The light that came through the small wedges of my half-opened eyes was dim. The light flickered softly as my eyes adjusted to contrast it. Slowly, my vision cleared, and I was able to see what was below me.

The floor......

The floor looked horrible.

It was a floor with multiple colors of mold growing on it, and the feces of rodents littered the corner where the floor met the wall. In front of me was a door composed of metal bars.

From the touch of my cold fingertips and the unconscious breathing of my chest, it all felt so surreal. It’s weird. It felt like I had been sleeping for days. My head hurt, and my vision was blurry. A foul stench ran about, mice squeaking and water dripping.

I’m alive?

What happened?

I remember the weight of the concrete crushing me, my numb legs, and the extensive labor I had gone through just to breathe.

Why am I here? Wasn’t my body crushed?

Did I survive that incident? Then why am I in such a place? Shouldn’t I be in a hospital?

My hand...... my guts...... my legs...... they’re here, intact.

I tried to move my body, and when I did, there was a sound that followed—a clanging of metal, likely of a chain. A painful throbbing suddenly jolted throughout my body and resonated with every fiber of my muscles. I threw up because of that.

After some time, the throbbing feeling lessened, and a plate with gray slop on it greeted me.

“[Eat up.]”

I heard someone’s voice.

There was a man in front of me beyond the metal bars. He had long brown hair with armaments around his chest and a silver, ornate sheath hung at his hip.

“Whe—?”

Cough—cough

I cut the word midway and gasped for air. It hurt to speak.

“[Tsk. Demon brat.]”

The language spoken was foreign to me but felt oddly familiar. The man frowned and left, slamming the door shut with a loud clang.

I looked around me—it seemed like I was in a decrepit place, a jail.

An annoying silence was all around me. It was broken only by an occasional echo of a step taken by men walking about and the low whispers they said to one another.

Even in these unusual situations, my mind would be oddly calm, and I could think much more rationally than most people. It might be from my earlier experiences in life that I’m not even surprised by suddenly waking up here.

Think......

Jail. Foreign language. The man. My body.

— Jail. Am I being held hostage? This place does have the quality of an abandoned storage house or something similar. There is a high possibility of that.

— Language. From what I’ve heard, he wasn’t speaking a language I knew. Korean, Chinese, Japanese, German, Russian. None seemed to match.

— Man. From what I could see, he’s someone who guards this place. If so, this information only cements the fact that I’m being held as a hostage.

— Body. How? How did my body heal in such a short amount of time? It also seems like my body shrank. Is this even possible given that I was on the brink of death? I don’t know.

The clothes I was wearing were also different. From my office working clothes, consisting of a slux and a suit, now it was a white long-sleeved shirt and a black leather-like jeans.

I had a rough understanding of what was happening. But I’m still in the dark here, both figuratively and literally. Not only do my current circumstances give me more questions than answers—I’m also bound to a wall.

As I regained more of my senses, so did the pain around my body become more pronounced. My body ached in places I didn’t know could ache. There was a small taste of bitterness lingering at the back of my throat from vomiting earlier. I pushed myself upright, feeling the cold metal chains biting into my wrists.

I stared at the unappetizing gray slop thrown at me earlier. I’m dreaming, correct? Let this be a dream...... I hope it is......

. . .

A few minutes later, the door rang open, and two people came in.

“[Seems like our petty young lord here is still dazed.]”

The man who entered laughed. He was well dressed. He had groomed hair and rings of gold and silver in both hands. He was a gigantic man by the likes of what I’ve seen before.

I observed the man as he cackled while hitting the cheeks of my face with the back of his hand. He then put his hand on my head and stopped laughing.

“[Why so quiet? You didn’t bust his throat, did you?]”

He turned to the man behind him—the other shook his head.

The man with a suit then grabbed me by the hair. I could feel my scalp being ripped from my head as he raised my body and stared at me and squinted his eyes. They were uncaring, as if he found some vermin running around his house.

He spat on the floor and slammed my head on it.

He lifted my head again and looked at me.

“[You sure this is the right one? Aint this little shit supposed to be squirming in pain right now?]”

“[I believe so.]”

His lips curved downwards, his grip loosening before he tossed me back to the wet floor.

I coughed, blood splattering from my mouth. He pried one of my eyelids open.

“[Tsk...... the fucking drug they used may have been too strong, those goddamn rascals. Better to wait for this shit out...... couldn’t they have handled this precious cargo of theirs with care?]”

He whispered to himself.

The man’s eyebrows furrowed. He made a huffing noise and called out to the other.

“[You made sure that you weren’t followed?]”

“[Yes.]”

“[Good, good. I suppose even shits like you can do simple things.]”

He stood up and said something that I couldn’t hear. The metal door clanged when it opened and closed as both of them left.

I lay there, still dazed, staring at the moss in the corner, trying to regain my breath. I could feel a slight coldness at the side of my face. I moved my already aching body and took a seated posture. There was a tiny puddle where my head was. It had traces of red blood on it. I could see my reflection—faint it was to the dim light.

“......”

Who......

Who is this?

The one that stared back at me was a person who had a young face and dark red eyes.

It wasn’t a middle-aged man who was supposed to be dying. No, that wasn’t the case.

The young man’s appearance was sickly and disheveled. It was a face that did not resemble someone already done with life—but someone who was getting to that. I blinked, and the reflection blinked. I moved, and it moved.

The face was mine, yet it wasn’t my face.

. . .

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