Villain: Your Heroines Were Delicious - Chapter 119 - 40
Chapter 119: Chapter 40
In the absolute vacuum of the Mirror of the Void, Seijirou’s sense of “self” began to bleed out into the darkness.
There was no up or down, no cold or heat.
He was a disembodied consciousness, a flickering candle in a hurricane of nothingness.
At first, he tried to count his steps, but without the sensation of feet hitting the ground, the numbers became meaningless symbols.
Then, he tried to recite the names of the people he knew, clinging to them like lifelines.
Suzune. Emi. Yukina. Retsu. Rindou.
The moment he thought of them, the Void struck.
Images began to coalesce in the dark, vivid, high-definition hallucinations that felt more real than reality.
He saw Suzune laughing, leaning into his chest.
He saw Emi’s shy smile as she showed off her piercings.
He saw Yukina’s fierce, protective gaze.
He saw Rindou, smiling gently, caressing his cheeks.
They were all there, radiating a warmth that he could almost feel.
’But they aren’t looking at me,’ a voice whispered in the back of his mind. It was his own voice, but it sounded distorted, dripping with the cynicism of a man who had died once before.
He looked closer at the visions.
Suzune wasn’t looking at him; she was looking at “Kageyama Seijirou.”
She was in love with the charismatic, dangerous delinquent who had saved her from her father’s shadow.
Emi loved the man who gave her a new identity.
Yukina loved the one who turned her into the woman she is now.
Rindou loved the man whome she thinks is Kageyama Seijirou.
They love a character, the voice hissed. They love the skin you’re wearing, they love the script you’re playing.
If they knew the “me” from that other world, the guy who died in a messy apartment, the guy who was just a face in a crowd, they wouldn’t even see me.
They’d look right through me.
Seijirou tried to shout, but he had no throat.
He tried to push the thoughts away, but he had no hands.
The Void began to peel back the layers of his ego. He remembered the ’thrill’ of the game, the satisfaction of saving the characters from bad events, the pain of seeing the characters he loved fall into depravity.
But as the sensory deprivation dragged on for what felt like centuries, that thrill turned to ash.
’I’m a fraud,’ he thought.
The realization hit him with the force of a physical blow.
He didn’t earn this life. He didn’t earn this power. He’s just a ghost possessing a body that was already designed for greatness.
Everything he have, the money, the girls, the Ki, it’s all borrowed.
It’s all fake.
The visions of the girls began to distort. Their beautiful faces melted into terrifying, blank masks. Their laughter turned into a mocking, high-pitched screech that filled the vacuum of his mind.
They weren’t his salvation; they were the chains that bound him to a lie.
His will, the iron-clad determination that had carried him through the Ki awakening, began to crack.
A profound, soul-deep exhaustion washed over him.
Why was he fighting? To win a game? To satisfy an old man’s expectations? To keep up a charade for a group of girls who loved a man who didn’t exist?
’It’s too much,’ he whispered into the silence. ’I’m not the hero. I’m not even the villain. I’m just tired.’
He didn’t want to transmigrate into this world. He didn’t want to take over the body of this character. He was satisfied with his life in his old world!
The flickering silver light of his Ki, the only thing that had been visible in the dark, began to dim.
It sputtered and faded, receding back into his core.
The “irritation” that had fueled him died out, replaced by a cold, numbing acceptance of his own insignificance.
He stopped trying to “walk.”
He stopped trying to think.
He let go of the names, the memories, and the ambition.
He allowed the darkness to seep into the cracks of his soul, filling the void with its own heavy, silent weight.
Just let it end, was his final, coherent thought. I give up.
Just… Bring me back.
Outside the cave, Ichibei’s eyes suddenly widened.
He clenched his fist so hard it turned white.
The thousand talismans at the entrance, which had been vibrating with a frenetic energy, suddenly went limp.
One by one, they began to turn black, the ink of the seals dissolving into ash.
“No,” the old man whispered, a look of genuine horror crossing his face. “The resonance is gone. If this continued, he really won’t be able to make it out alive.”
Inside the cave, a single, rhythmic sound echoed—the sound of a heart stopping.
*
*
*
Just then, the collective unconscious of those bound to Seijirou’s fate suddenly vibrated with a singular, agonizing frequency.
It was a ripple in the fabric of their reality, a sudden, sickening drop in pressure that signaled the extinguishing of a star.
Retsu was in the guest suite, her movements usually a surgical ballet of precision.
She was smoothing a wrinkle in the futon when her hands froze, and almost immediately, the air in the room turned cold.
Her eyes, which usually held a spark of manic adoration, drained of all light, becoming two hollow pits of obsidian.
She didn’t gasp or cry out. She simply stood in the silence, her gaze piercing through the walls of the manor, toward the jagged mountain peak where the Mirror of the Void lay.
Her ’instincts’ are screaming at her. The man she holds dear with all her heart is now in danger.
It felt like a snapped wire sparking in the dark.
*
In the city, atop the roof of the middle school where her life had once crumbled, Suzune stood amidst a swirling vortex of spiritual energy.
The sky above her had bruised into a deep, unnatural violet.
As her eyes snapped open, the air behind her fractured, and for a brief moment a massive, looming silhouette of a gothic castle, wreathed in the wailing mist of ten thousand ghosts, flickered into existence.
And just for a fraction of a second, a crimson spear appeared, completely suppressing those ghosts.
It was only for a moment, and everything soon dissappeared as if it was an illusion.
Suzune clutched the railing, her knuckles white as she gaze at a distance.
She didn’t see the city anymore; she saw a vast, empty darkness that threatened to swallow the man who had pulled her from the lightless depths of her own depression.
“… Seijirou.”
*
Deep in the sacred forest, Emi stood in a clearing, her breathing rhythmic and controlled as she lowered her hand holding a bow.
She had just released an arrow of burning hot fire that had reduced a massive boulder to molten slag.
She should have been triumphant, but as the dust settled, she staggered as a sharp, phantom pain stabbed through her chest, right where her heart beat against her ribs.
She looked up at the sky, her bow trembling in her grip.
The forest, usually a place of solace, suddenly felt like a graveyard.
“Seijirou…?” she whispered, the name tasting like ash on her tongue.
*
Under the crushing weight of the waterfall, Yukina had been a statue of iron and resolve, meditating silently.
The water, falling from a height of fifty feet, should have been enough to break bone, but she had been channeling her newfound power to harden her form.
Suddenly, she surged upward, breaking the surface of the pool with a violent splash.
She ignored the freezing water sheeting off her body, her face contorted in a mask of raw, visceral fear.
She gripped her chest, her fingers digging into the skin over the “Slave” tattoo.
The mark felt cold—colder than the mountain water.
It felt dead.
*
In the courtyard of the Kobayashi estate, Rindou was like a blur of blue light as she moved.
Her shinai had hummed with the resonance of her soul, carving through a foot-thick wall of reinforced concrete as if it were parchment.
She landed in a perfect crouch, her breath coming in ragged bursts of steam.
Then, she faltered.
The blue glow of her weapon flickered and died.
She stood up slowly, her gaze fixed on the northern mountains, and a sense of impending loss, more profound than any she had felt on the battlefield, washed over her.
*
Haruka, sitting in the center of her old family’s home, felt the atmosphere shift.
The air, which had been thick with the scent of old wood and tradition, suddenly smelled of ozone and stagnant water.
Her eyes snapped open, her pupils dilated.
She didn’t spend as much time with Seijirou as the others have, but she had the intuition of a predator.
She felt the “alpha” of her world waver.
A deep, inexplicable unease settled in her marrow, telling her that the axis upon which her new life turned was about to snap.
*
Back at Shunji High, the mundane world continued, oblivious.
Rei was hunched over her desk, her pen scratching viciously as she drafted a particularly imaginative curse involving Erina and a swarm of angry bees.
Suddenly, the pen snapped, and a wave of nausea hit her so hard she had to grab the edge of her desk.
Her chest tightened with a physical agony that made it hard to breathe.
She looked around the bright, sunlit classroom, feeling a terrifying disconnect.
Something is going away, she thought, her eyes welling with tears she didn’t understand. Something precious is breaking.
*
In the hushed sanctuary of the library, Touka had been lost in a book on ancient folklore.
But the quiet was shattered by the sound of her own heart hammering against her sternum.
She gasped, the book sliding from her lap and hitting the floor with a heavy thud.
She clutched her blouse, her face turning pale. The gentle, steady sense of “safety” she had associated with Seijirou since their meeting had vanished, replaced by a hollow, aching void.
At this single moment, across the city and the mountains, eight hearts beat in a frantic, disjointed rhythm, all of them reaching out for a soul that was currently sinking into the absolute silence of the Mirror of the Void.
