Chapter 135: Class: Yandere ’Stage 1’

My blood ran completely cold.

The pain in my leg was intense, but the sheer terror spiking through my chest was far worse. Viora’s thumb was still pressing lightly against my jugular vein. I could feel every single rapid beat of my pulse throbbing directly against her soft skin.

She wasn’t just close. She was suffocating me with her presence.

"Viora... stop," I choked out, trying to pull my upper body back.

I tried to push myself away with my right arm, but the moment I shifted, my broken left leg dragged across the rough floor.

Snap!

"AGH!"

A sharp, agonizing scream tore out of my throat. My vision flickered for a moment. Tears of pain welled up in the corners of my eyes, and my arm buckled under me. I collapsed flat onto my back again, gasping for air like a dying fish.

Viora didn’t even flinch at my scream. Instead, her eyes widened slightly. A strange, twisted light flickered in her dull purple irises. She leaned down even further, placing her other hand directly on my chest, right over my hammering heart.

"See?" she whispered. Her voice was terrifyingly sweet. "You can’t move. You can’t run away from me, Woo Jin. Every time you try to pull away, you hurt yourself. So just stay still. Just let me hold you."

’She has gone completely insane!’ my mind screamed in pure panic.

Cold sweat drenched my shirt. I had fought giant monsters. But sitting here, completely helpless under a girl who was looking at me like I was her entire world, made my hands shake with fear I had never felt before.

I tried to squeeze my wrist out of her grip. Her hands were small, but her hold was like a solid iron vice.

"Viora, listen to me!" I said, my voice trembling despite my best efforts to sound stern. "Look around us! We are at the bottom of a cave! The palace above is falling apart! The monsters are coming! You need to let me go so we can figure out a way—"

"I don’t care about the monsters," she interrupted.

"I don’t care about the palace. I don’t care about the kingdom. They can all burn to ash. The only reason I got out of the hospital was because of ’you’. You are the one who held me. You are the one who looked at me like none before."

Her thumb slid up from my neck, gently tracing the outline of my lower lip. Her skin felt icy, yet it left a burning trail across my face.

"So why are you looking everywhere else?" she murmured, her voice dropping into an unsettling whisper. "Look at me, Woo Jin. Only look at me."

I swallowed hard, my chest rising and falling in shallow, frantic breaths. I was terrified. Truly, deeply terrified. Right now, I was just a crippled guy trapped under a girl who had completely lost her mind.

’Just why the heck is she doing this?’

Suddenly, as if to answer my thoughts, a screen appeared in front of me.

[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: PSYCHOLOGICAL ANOMALY

Subject: Wife ’Viora’

Cause: Extreme Emotional Trauma Combined with Fate Alteration.

Analysis: The host’s decision to act as a physical shield during the fall caused a massive rupture in the subject’s emotions, which has awakened an obsessive behavioral archetype (Class: Yandere ’Stage 1’).

Current Fixation Level: 94% (Critical)

Warning: Aggressive physical resistance will increase the fixation level to 100%, leading to permanent psychological binding.

Recommendation: De-escalate immediately. Pacify the subject through verbal confirmation and emotional alignment.

I stared at the floating blue words in shock.

’Fixation level?! Class: Yandere?!’

The system was literally telling me that *I* caused this. Because I couldn’t bear to see her hitting the floor, because I twisted my body to not let her get hurt, her broken emotional state had snapped completely. My desperate attempt to keep her safe had unlocked a terrifying monster inside her mind.

’And if I keep pushing her away, she’ll hit 100 percent?!’

Really?

A cold shiver ran down my entire spine. If her fixation hit one hundred percent, she might lock me in this pit forever. She might snap my other leg just to keep me from walking away.

"Woo Jin..." Viora whispered, her face coming so close I could feel the faint touch of her eyelashes against my cheek. "You aren’t answering me. Are you thinking about running away? Are you thinking about those people upstairs?"

Her grip on my wrist tightened even further.

"No!" I blurted out, my voice cracking in desperation. "No, Viora! I’m not thinking about them!"

She went still as she searched my face in the dark for every small reaction.

"Then answer me," she said softly. "Say it."

My mind was racing. I had to calm her down. I had to lower that percentage before she did something irreversible. I forced my muscles to relax, forcing the panic out of my eyes, even though my heart was pounding so hard it felt like it would burst through my ribs.

I took a slow, deep breath.

"Viora..." I forced myself to look directly into her sightless eyes without flinching. "I... I’m not running away."

Her expression flickered slightly. "You aren’t?"

"No," I lied, trying to make my tone sound as genuine as possible.

Of course, I am trying to get away from you.

"Look at me. My leg is broken. My back is shattered. Even if I wanted to run, I can’t walk a single step. I’m completely stuck here with you."

Viora listened quietly, her head tilting as if she was analyzing the vibration of my voice.

"You broke your leg for me," she repeated quietly, like a child reciting a favorite phrase.

"Yes," I said. "I did. I took the fall because... because I didn’t want you to get hurt. I couldn’t stand the thought of you crashing into the floor. So please... you don’t need to hold me down like this. I’m already right here."

I slowly lifted my right hand and gently placed my fingers over her hand on my chest. I didn’t push her away. I just held her hand, trying to project a sense of warmth and safety.

"I’m not going anywhere, Viora," I whispered, keeping my voice calm and steady. "I promise. But you’re hurting my wrist. And my leg hurts really badly. Can you please let go?"

Viora stood frozen for a moment.

I held my breath, waiting to see if the system box would tell me that I was successful or if she would pull my arm off.

Slowly, very slowly, the terrifying, sharp smile on her face began to melt away.

The cold mana wrapping around her fingers dissipated into thin air. Her grip on my wrist loosened, her fingers sliding down until her hand was simply resting against my palm.

Phew!

I let out a massive breath I didn’t realize I was holding.

[PSYCHOLOGICAL STATUS UPDATED

Fixation Level: 82% (Decreasing)

Status: Subject has temporarily de-escalated. Proceed with caution.]

’Thank god,’ I thought, my forehead dripping with cold sweat. ’It worked. I managed to calm her down for now.’

Viora sat back slightly, though she didn’t move far. She stayed right on her knees beside me, her hand still holding onto mine tightly. Her face returned to its usual pale, quiet expression, but there was still a lingering, intense gaze behind her eyes that hadn’t been there before.

She looked down at her own lap, then at my leg, which was sitting at a completely unnatural angle.

"Your leg..." she whispered, her voice returning to its normal, quiet tone. "It’s really bad, isn’t it?"

"Yeah," I grunted, letting out a weak, exhausted laugh. "It’s pretty terrible. I don’t think I’ll be doing any running for a while."

"I... I pressed on your neck," Viora murmured, looking at her bare fingers. She seemed slightly confused, as if waking up from a strange dream. "I scared you."

I stared at her in the faint light. Part of me was still trembling with fear, keeping my guard up in case her fixated state snapped back on. But looking at her small, fragile frame sitting in the dirt, I realized how broken she actually was. Just a little bit help from me and she easily turned into most terrifying person.

"It’s fine," I lied softly, squeezing her hand lightly.

’It isn’t fine...’

"Just... don’t do it again. Okay?"

’Please, please, don’t do it again.’

"I felt so strange," she murmured, her voice barely audible over the distant rumbles above. "When you fell... when you didn’t wake up... I thought my heart was going to stop. I felt like if you died, everything else should die too."

I shivered slightly at her words. She was still dangerously obsessed, but at least she wasn’t pressing her thumb against my throat anymore.

"I’m alive," I reminded her, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. "We both are. But we have a serious problem."

Viora raised her head, looking toward me.

"Your leg," she said. "And your back."

"Yeah," I grunted, carefully leaning my elbows back against the stone wall behind me. Every small movement brought a fresh wave of sharp pain, but it was manageable now that my life wasn’t actively being threatened by someone I like. "My leg is definitely out of the socket. I can’t walk like this."

Viora shifted closer, kneeling right next to my injured left leg. "I can fix the bone. But it will hurt very much."

"Just do it," I said, clenching my jaw. "We don’t have time to be delicate."

Viora didn’t hesitate. She placed her hands firmly above and below my dislocated knee.

"On three," she said softly.

"Okay. One—"

*CRACK!*

"AAAGH!"