It was a pain so sharp it felt raw.
The hand that had twisted into something sharp still seemed drenched in sticky blood.
If I had realized from the very beginning that my thinking was wrong.
If I had corrected every choice from the start.
Would you have been smiling beside me, then?
"...Fine. I’ve decided. Punishment for cowards."
Shall I carry out evil?
It was a massacre party.
The moment I said those words, my body shot forward like an arrow loosed from a bow.
I didn’t even break a sweat as I flattened every last one of those trash-tier weaklings.
Yeah.
Forget the gutter scum of the underworld.
The reason I was shocked was somewhere else.
These were the things that called themselves heroes?
For a moment, I was so pissed I almost wanted to turn that man who claimed to be an executive of the Hero Association into paste, but.
There was no way I could do that.
In the end, I just stormed out of the place where the Association had tried to rope in people from the underworld.
I didn’t even feel this bad when I was expelled from that old man’s dojo.
Thinking back to the time I got beaten senseless and kicked out, I guess I had expected it already.
It couldn’t be helped.
I’d learned nothing, and at the same time I’d turned everyone in the dojo into a bloody pulp. There was no way that old man would let that slide.
"...Tch. I did go easy on them, too, since I’d known them for so long."
Of course, even calling it a bloody pulp was an exaggeration. I’d only roughened them up a bit.
Somewhere deep down, I had a soft side.
Even though I vaguely knew that about myself.
I couldn’t fix it, couldn’t change it, and I couldn’t even set a direction and move forward.
I was just someone who kept denying and denying.
In the end, it didn’t change the fact that I’d done something worthy of being hit, worthy of being thrown out, and I simply received the karma that had been waiting for me as usual.
My eyes were probably calmer than ever.
Likewise, in the old man’s eyes as he walked over with his hands behind his back, I could read an emotion opposite to mine.
Clear disappointment and anger.
Facing him, I took the stance of Water Stream Rock Smashing Fist.
After that... it was one-sided.
Of course I knew I couldn’t win, and I expected to be beaten even worse than the people I’d already turned into pulp.
But somehow.
The nameless emotion I’d read in the old man’s eyes when I was being kicked out kept stabbing at the back of my mind.
I wished it had only been disappointment and anger.
In those eyes, worn smooth by time, I could see something softer and gentler than that.
Because of that, for a while I could barely use Water Stream Rock Smashing Fist at all.
Whenever I tried, that old man’s gaze kept flickering in my mind.
At least until the moment I entered some game tournament once and got absolutely wrecked by the person who ended up winning it.
I managed to beat my semifinal opponent down with basic martial arts, even without Water Stream Rock Smashing Fist...
...but in the final, I was crushed so badly I couldn’t even move my hands and feet properly.
Only then did I realize one thing.
The emotion I’d read in the old man’s eyes was poison.
A poison so warm and soft it felt gentle.
A poison you didn’t want to spit out, even after you knew what it was.
Because of that, it felt like the poison had taken root deep in my heart,
and the throbbing pain wouldn’t go away.
I tried to avoid it.
Because somewhere in the farthest corner of my subconscious, I knew that it was a tangled mess of resentment, guilt, betrayal, and love.
But now it was time to endure it.
I couldn’t keep standing still for such petty, trivial reasons.
My conviction.
For a world where no one was discriminated against, strong or weak alike...
...so.
Water Stream Rock Smashing Fist.
I’ll wring you dry and use you to the absolute limit.
After that, the hardships never stopped.
From the moment I began hunting heroes to the moment I finished, there were few days when my body was intact.
Breaking a bone somewhere was routine, and every day, before one wound could heal, another would open somewhere else.
I got poisoned, got smashed by iron balls, let gatling bullets slide past me.
But the most dizzying moment of all was... yeah.
When I saw that old man who’d come to catch me again.
The old man’s face, when we met again after so long, was the same as ever.
He was older, sure.
But what was inside him seemed unchanged.
...Yeah.
Not even a little bit had changed.
Not even the gaze he gave me.
His exterior was so cold and sharp.
So why were you showing me the soft thing hidden inside?
The pain rising again stung.
I’d gradually modified Water Stream Rock Smashing Fist to suit myself, and I thought the lingering trace of him had faded... disappeared.
No.
It hadn’t faded. It had only scattered and spread thinly everywhere.
It had spread so wide it was hard to see, but the afterimage was still inside me.
And then it gathered again.
That day, just like the day I was expelled as I’d expected.
The strength in my fist, clenched so hard it drew blood, slipped away.
Naturally.
Even after gaining power, I was still being beaten to a pulp.
Though it was a surprise attack, I had brought down Spring, the master of Whirlwind Iron Cutting Fist.
And yet I still hadn’t changed.
The only thing different from back then was my appearance, maybe.
"Feel the pain of my prized disciple Charanko!"
-Garou!
...Ah.
I see.
That was there too, huh.
Disciple.
...Maybe it was a title too good for me.
I wasn’t the kind of person who had that guy’s courage.
Look at me.
I kept bragging that I’d get stronger and hunt heroes.
And yet I couldn’t even put up a fight against that hero.
Nothing had changed at all.
...Power.
It was power.
What I lacked.
What I craved.
What I longed for.
What I wanted to seize.
Overwhelming power, on a scale nothing like what I had now.
I need more power.
I’m lacking.
Still far too lacking.
There are monsters everywhere.
I have to surpass them.
Over and over.
Again and again.
Until I crush even that bald bastard.
I have to become fear.
I have to become absolute evil.
An overwhelming evil that everyone fears equally.
So strong, so terrifying, that anyone who faced me wouldn’t even think about fighting each other.
If I became the absolute evil the world feared, then fighting and conflict would disappear, and everyone would surely come together.
That would be enough.
Even if I could never see that old man’s eyes again.
I.
Have to do it.
So.
I have to become a monster.
"In equal fear, humans tremble and unite, grateful simply to be alive. In a world without absurdity, and without humans who create absurdity, where there is no room for survival, evil deeds disappear as well. Bullying, discrimination, war... what this world needs is not unequal justice. It is equal absolute evil."
Once all of that is over.
Then.
Surely.
Everything will work out.
[Accept my power.]
Surely.
It will.
[Absolute Extermination Fist]
After I came to my senses.
It took quite a while before I could look back at what I had done with my own eyes.
No.
Was it really that long?
"...Old man."
I.
How stupid had I been?
Without even knowing what I truly wanted.
Even if I had known, I would have kept walking only the path I had chosen by denying it from the start.
And even then, I couldn’t let go of my lingering attachment and kept trying to cling to it.
And after all that.
I destroyed the thing I wanted with my own hands.
Not anyone else’s.
By my own will.
Thud.
"..........."
Had my throat dried out completely?
Despite my will screaming that I wanted to cry out and wail right then and there, only a voice hoarse and cracked as if it had been parched came out of my mouth.
My hands were trembling.
Even when Saitama hit me in the head, I don’t think the shock was this great.
...I wish I’d just passed out back then.
I wish I’d collapsed without knowing anything, forgotten everything as a dream, and returned to reality.
I want to wake up in reality.
But.
There is no dream for me to wake from.
"...Why are you lying there like that."
I carefully wrapped my arms around the body that had gone cold.
There was no heartbeat.
"...Get up."
Very gently, I brought a hand to his face.
There was no breath, not even the slightest trace of one escaping.
"...P-please... get up..."
Thud.
I buried my head in his solid chest.
The warm embrace I had relied on as a child no longer existed.
"...Please. Please... at least scold me. Beat me to death, curse me out, anything..."
The answer from the one who had treated me like his own daughter never came.
Only.
There was an empty shell left behind.
Even so, I didn’t want to accept it.
"So please..."
Because I had begun to feel, with bone-deep clarity, what I had done, I kept pressing down on the thing that felt ready to burst.
Slowly, I began to understand the reality I had already recognized rationally, but whose emotional truth I kept denying.
Only then did I.
Spit out what I had been holding in.
"...I’m... sorry..."
Desolate silence.
There was no one left in this dead world to hear it.
"I’m sorry..."
I killed even the one who had tried to stop me until the very end, with my own hands.
There was no one left to stop me anymore.
"I was wrong..."
But there was no one left to fear me either.
And at the same time, there was no one left to love me.
"...Please wake up..."
It was a world I had made with my own hands.
The coward that I was had denied everything about myself.
If I were given another chance.
If I could go back to the beginning.
If I could set everything right and take back everything that was lost.
Then anything.
Even if I had to give everything I had.
Until I’d used it all up, burned it all away, erased it all.
I’d do anything.
So.
Anyone, please.
Please.
Give me one chance.
I don’t care who it is.
Give me a chance to stop being Garou.
A chance to deny the me who twisted myself and filled myself with contradictions.
"...........Ah."
After longing and longing for it.
I obtained the concept of reversal.
I could also understand what the reversal of [Absolute Extermination Fist] meant.
Only then did I find the clue.
My mind, which had been drying out and fading, finally clung to my body again.
I straightened the knees I had been kneeling on and forced my stiffening body upright.
I carefully laid down the body that had already turned to white bone.
My expression filled with a joy brighter than ever before.
And the fire in my fading life lit again.
But.
That damn god seemed to have noticed my realization already.
[Forfeit.]
In an instant, my hands and feet turned into white salt and scattered away.
Because of that, I lost my balance, and my body, trying to steady itself, collapsed onto the cold floor.
"..........."
If I had no hands.
If I had no feet.
Then with my elbows.
With my knees.
Staggering, I took a half-formed stance.
Tap.
The instant I did, the knees and elbows that had touched the ground vanished.
I slammed my face into the floor again.
Even so.
With the upper part of my remaining legs.
With my shoulders.
I steadied myself again.
And collapsed.
I could feel my vision growing hazy.
But.
My mind, having found a possibility, was clearer than ever.
I went again.
Again.
And again.
With a body scattering and vanishing away, I went again.
My flesh was gradually disappearing.
But the formula taking shape in my mind only grew clearer.
It was a martial art that, in ordinary circumstances, would have been beyond my reach.
But.
By completely converting my own existence into nothing as a sacrifice.
And conceptually reversing it.
Then disappearing once more.
And returning again.
I could feel the very existence of "me" growing faint.
But that was not my concern.
Disappear.
And exist again.
Repeat, and repeat.
Tens.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Splitting the instant into pieces, stuffing them into itself, over and over.
Repeating countless times until I reached the world I envisioned.
I closed my eyes in the sensation of slowly fading away.
When I completely vanished one last time, and existed again.
I no longer had any strength left.
The body I had trained so hard was gone too.
And yet.
Before my eyes, only faintly open, there was...
"...Hm? Why is such a young child in a place like this..."
Ah.
At the wrinkled face that entered my vision, I finally stopped struggling.
There was no reason to struggle anymore.
Because I had a body that had become infinitely small.
Because I could feel air that I had never felt in the world I had destroyed with my own hands.
And so I understood.
I had succeeded.
I had turned the world back to a single moment and rewritten it.
Not merely rewound time, but created a new variable in the world entirely.
The one that had never existed.
"me" instead of "Garou."
Comments (0)
Please log in to leave a comment. Login or Register