You think it's easy to take another's life?
I was a bratty kid even far into my adolescence. I hated school. I hated teachers. I hated authority. I was trying to be different, so I hated the word hate, and I hated hating people as well.
But whenever someone crossed the line, said someting wrong to me, something that just didn't sit right. My mind would race at the opportunity to have them killed. I believe I'm like others when it comes to that. There's a reason all the light novels I have on my shelf is about revenge, about death, about a weak protagonist who becomes someone strong.
Someone who proves their right to exist in this world.
It's because it's awesome. The feeling of exhaltation the moment a villain is ridded off. When you no longer have to look at their smug face.
That's because stories are really good at making evil people look evil and good people look like heroes.
It dissapoints everyone when you tell them reality is more grey than that.
We want opposites. Otherwise we'd all be confused. Especially as readers.
So it's a nice fantasy. You can snuggle up in a comfortable sofa and dream of becoming a Count of Monte Cristo. Then death is so damn simple.
I don't like people. Never have. But I'm not a loner because of that. It's the opposite. I don't like people because they don't like me. They don't like me because of the way I act. I act the way I act because they don't like me and I don't like them. I've tried to explain that to a few people, but they always turn around and scoff.
'It's not my fault they can't understand me!'
So I even got to the point where I thought about becoming one of those "newspaper loners"
But so what? Fear is the same as respect.
A young adult thinking these things is the same as wearing black because you think it's going to make you look like a deep and well-thought kind of person.
It's stupid. I was stupid.
You think it's easy to take another life? Rarely is a human strong enough to slice right through the skin in one try.
I saw those animes and web novels that tried to describe killing. I was excited at first. A bandit with a confident look about him that was trying to rob innocent people.
But my blade was dull. I was strong. Something to do with a skill. A world of fiction, of swords and magic, that I had been thrown into.
A bandit, an evil person, a person beyond redemption. But then he shrieked. The blade had missed the artery, and his face twisted together. His glossy eyes looked at me with such terror and indescribeable horror.
I cried at that point when I realised I couldn't kill him. That didn't mean I didn't try to. I wasn't... I didn't try to become a killer in the first place... I didn't have a choice you see... But I was stood there, in the midst of a hot spell, the warm suns heating the ground, preparing a haze.
I could feel the muscles in my hand gripping tighter on the dull blade, the same kind of feeling I had once as a kid when I knocked over one of my mom's favorite vases. The kind of feeling when you're trying to put something together you know you can't.
My body moved erratingly, trying to fix what I had done. So I shook and I continued to slash. I raised my arm to the side, and pushed with even more forced towards his throat. It wasn't a battle, it was an execution.
Tang! A sudden thung shocked through my body, like hitting rock. One little point that light novels usually miss. Bone. The human body has 197 bones in total. Each one of them is brittle. But trying to cut through wet bone, soaked in blood and filled with what would be blood.
You can't just cut through it. You have to hack. Hack, hack, hack... If you haven't a saw, then the best you can do is try to... cut around it... My body was shaking, I was anxious, I was guilty, I felt all the worst emotions, I had been stood for two minutes in a world of fantasy, in a world of hero's, hacking the head off some crying stranger who I assumed to be the greatest evil in the world.
'Why...?' I thought. I didn't even have a reason to do so... A reason...?
I held his decapitated head in my hands. My body stopped shaking. My breath instantly felt replenished. I love this. My mind was not the same as my body. I could not do anything about it.
'Right...' I thought. 'The people I saved...'
Out of the carriage they peeked. Their eyes had a thousand yard stare. They had pretty much seen a mafia execution before their eyes. This wasn't much different from a chainsaw.
After it happened I was indifferent.
Looking at their eyes, their gazes, their fear... the horror that stood in front of them... was much more of a beast... of a monster... than the bandit could have ever been.
Did I need a reason for it? 'I had saved them...'
I was chosen to be an --{Assassin}-- after all.
A title given to me shortly after arriving in this world.
{--You are cursed with death--}
Cursed with death...
I thought I was born with it. It surrounded me my entire life. But now logic fell apart. All my fantasies came through in a sick way.
And as I took my very first life, a hollow voice sounded in my ear:
--{--You have reaped a soul--}--
--{--You grow stronger...--} --
It didn't refuse to remind me. Who he was. It was like those cringy animes who always showed the backstory of the villains. I was the one who was screaming: "Just kill him! He'll do it again! Bad people shouldn't be given a chance!" In school I would advocate for the death penalty whenever I could.
For some fucking reason I thought death was the coolest thing.
I'm tired...
The voice whispered again in its hollow tone. With words that would come back to haunt me for the rest of my life.
--{--Your soul yearns for death--}--
--{--1/139 souls reaped--}--
It was like a chain clinging to my throat. I couldn't do anything about it. Could I?
How did I even get here...?
It was two days ago that I last saw my classroom.
It was one day ago that I did a ritual.
Something akin to reality shifting.
I didn't think it would work...
I didn't want it to work...