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Chapter 82

[Those with overconfident mindsets while saying it’s all going to work out \'anyway\' all end up dying. Your father was like that too. It looks like you’ll soon follow in his footsteps.]

I continued walking while ignoring Legba’s remark. I naturally blended in among the paladins and then casually picked up a firefighter suit lying on the ground. Behind their backs, I observed how the other paladins put on their firefighter suits, and I was just barely able to wear one after copying them. As the final step, I secured the smoke filter mask and was just about to step forward.

Tap.

Someone grabbed my wrist. I could feel tremendous strength being exerted through the clothes. Even with Bossou’s power, it wasn’t easy to resist.

“You’re not even a paladin, so why are you wearing that? What are you doing?”

The voice, low and threatening, belonged to Han Dae-Ho, the director of the Seoul Paladin Order Eastern Branch. He was wearing a firefighter suit and carrying someone on his broad shoulders. It seemed like he had just come out of the building after rescuing people.

"You, when someone asks, then you need to answer...? Huh... You...you bastard," Han Dae-Ho said. He scanned me up and down with a cold expression while gripping my wrist.

"...Hey! Rescue team! Bring a stretcher! Something\'s off with this guy!"

"Ah, yes!"

Han Dae-Ho gave instructions to the rescue team waiting on standby in the vicinity. The rescue members hurriedly responded and retrieved a stretcher from the vehicle.

However, I couldn’t let that happen. I swiftly broke free from Han Dae-Ho\'s grip. The man looked at me with a bewildered expression.

"You, what..."

"I am a second-year student from the Florence Academy Department of Paladins. I was sent here as an apprentice paladin. Please allow me to join."

Intoxicating pleasure flowed from my heart all the way out to my fingertips. My mind felt dizzy, and my tongue felt heavy. Yet, the lies flowed out effortlessly. The lies sounded so convincing that I even surprised myself.

Han Dae-Ho stared at me in a dumbfounded manner and then looked toward the rescue team and gestured to them. The rescue members bringing the stretcher over stopped in their tracks.

"Fine. Florence Academy, Department of Paladins, second year, apprentice paladin... But so what? You\'re still an apprentice, not a full-fledged paladin, right?"

"..."

"I\'ve seen countless foolish apprentices who act tough, only to end up becoming burdens in the end. Do you think you\'re any different? Take off your equipment and just watch what I do. Don\'t do something you\'ll regret."

Han Dae-Ho grabbed the fire-resistant mask on his forehead, placed it back over his mouth, and then proceeded to draw a blessing array. A custom-made blessing that had been repeated millions of times to fit his body perfectly wrapped his body.

Just before entering the building, Han Dae-Ho briefly glanced at me.

"If they\'re sending apprentices, they should send someone competent, not some clueless kid..."

Whoosh!

Han Dae-Ho clicked his tongue and charged into the building. His movements were threatening and swift, just like a bull. Unlike Han Dae-Ho, who entered the building to rescue people without a moment\'s hesitation, the other paladins hesitated to enter the building ahead of them that was engulfed in massive flames.

"Make choices that you won’t regret."

"Don\'t do something you\'ll regret."

[Today, you will stand at the crossroads of a choice.]

My father, Han Dae-Ho, and Baron Samedi\'s words flashed through my mind.

A choice I won’t regret.

I finished putting on the firefighter suit, grabbed the necessary equipment, and stepped into the building with large strides.

The fire had grown stronger, and the smoke had become thicker and more suffocating. It was a despairing sight. If hell or the abyss existed, then perhaps it would look like this. But I couldn\'t stop my footsteps. The moment I stopped, I was convinced that I would regret this day for the rest of my life.

I had to enter the building and rescue people.

Even if I ended up dying, I wouldn\'t regret this choice.

*

Bang!

"Ouch! Ahh..."

Jin-Seo, who abruptly sat up, rubbed her forehead and rolled on the bed. She had bumped her forehead against the phone holder while getting up from the bed.

As the pain subsided, she rubbed her forehead and got up. Then she threw herself onto the chair right next to the bed and leaned her back against it. Her back sank into the backrest. In that state, Jin-Seo stared at the ceiling for a long time. She felt dazed. It was because of a dream.

"Am I going crazy?"

The dream she had today was technically a nightmare. It was a dream where Sun-Woo was casually chatting with a female student. But when he spotted her, he scratched his head awkwardly as if feeling perplexed and then ignored her as he passed by. For some reason, it made her feel worse because it felt like it could easily happen in reality.

She rarely dreamed, but the reason why she dreamed today was probably that today was the appointment ceremony for the Holy Name of Charity, and Sun-Woo was a prominent candidate for the Holy Name of Charity.

"This is insane, I\'m going insane..."

Jin-Seo shook her head, trying to shake off the traces of the dream flashing through her mind. The clock showed it was ten o\'clock. Since the appointment ceremony was at one o\'clock, she still had time, but Jin-Seo immediately prepared to leave. She intended to go to the training center. Exercise was the perfect way to calm her complicated emotions.

"...You\'re crazy, aren’t you?" she suddenly muttered to herself as she washed and changed into her workout clothes.

She couldn\'t tell if she was saying it to herself or to Sun-Woo, who had been playing with another girl in her dream.

Arriving at the training center with a depressed expression on her face, Jin-Seo immediately wrapped her hands with bandages and started her workout. It was still early in the morning, so there weren\'t many people. Most of them were aspiring professionals.

"Oh! Jin-Seo, you came early today... Oh, wow, your face looks fierce today. It looks like someone’s going to die today, huh," the supervisor teased after approaching her as she was stretching her body.

Puzzled, she looked at herself in the mirror. Just as the supervisor said, she had a very ill-tempered expression on her face. It was because of the dream.

"What\'s wrong? Come to think of it, you came to exercise early today. Did you break up with your boyfriend?" the supervisor asked jokingly.

The gaze of the men in the training center turned to Jin-Seo. She looked disgusted as she glared at the supervisor.

"It\'s not that."

"If it’s not that, then it’s not that. No need to get all moody about it~ Ah, right, are you not going to school?"

"I just...said that I\'m not feeling well."

"Oh, so you\'re skipping school but coming to the training center?"

Jin-Seo turned her gaze as if she had nothing to say and dropped her head. Lately, she had been frequently skipping school and coming to the training center by using various excuses. There were various reasons for doing so.

"You’ve become a complete delinquent. Come to think of it, you smoke and everything—"

"Ah, supervisor. Seriously."

"What? Dang, look at your eyes. Since you have no one to hit, you want to hit your supervisor now?"

Jin-Seo reacted as if she was in a dilemma, and the supervisor laughed as he found this situation enjoyable.

Jin-Seo finished her stretching without responding and then moved on to the main workout after doing some jump rope. The sound of hitting the sandbag with the mitts was loud.

Bang!

As she was hitting with the mitts, one of them broke, and Jin-Seo took a break. Her punches felt sharp and solid today. It seemed like her emotions were pouring into her fists. The supervisor wrapped tape around the broken part of the mitt and approached Jin-Seo.

"Jin-Seo, no matter how much I think about it, it seems like you need to pay more fees. How many mitts have you broken? Seriously, the damages are severe."

"How much more do I need to pay?" Jin-Seo asked.

"What? Never mind, forget about it. I was just joking, man," the supervisor said while laughing despondently.

Seeing Jin-Seo\'s innocent reaction to his joking words, the supervisor felt all their tension fade away. The supervisor was amazed that an innocent-looking girl like her was also the same girl who had broken countless mitts and sandbags.

"So, how\'s the competition? Are you ready for the weigh-in?" the supervisor asked.

Jin-Seo drank water without answering and then abruptly stood up from her seat.

"I\'m going to get some fresh air."

"Huh? Are you not going to answer? This competition is important. You have to be prepared for the weigh-in, you know?"

"..."

Ignoring the supervisor\'s words, Jin-Seo left the training center. Her footsteps led her to the rooftop. Jin-Seo stood on the open rooftop for a moment and enjoyed the breeze. Then she looked around her surroundings before taking out a cigarette from her pocket. The process of putting it in her mouth and lighting it was so natural.

Puff.

The exhaled smoke rose up to the sky and disappeared as it was pushed away by the wind. It didn\'t feel like she had smoked for that long, but the cigarette had already shortened to just an inch. It burned quickly, perhaps because the wind was blowing strongly.

"...Hmm."

She lightly sighed as she looked at the cigarette butt that was extinguished due to a gust of wind. She had thought about quitting for a long time, but it wasn\'t easy. She should have never started smoking in the first place. Such a brief regret passed through her mind.

Like everyone else, curiosity was what led her to start. The first time she smoked, her head spun, so she wondered why people did this kind of thing. But now, her head spun when she was not smoking.

This was why addiction was terrifying.

While addiction seeped into her life, she wasn’t able to realize it. Yet, by the time she became aware of her addiction, it was already too late.

Jin-Seo walked toward the training center while clearing her fleeting thoughts. She didn’t know whether it was because of her mood, but it felt as if the building was shaking. She wondered if there was an earthquake or something.

"Oh, Jin-Seo! You need to pack up and leave quickly, hurry!"

The person ushering her to leave was the supervisor. The training center was strangely empty. The people who were working out diligently just moments ago were nowhere to be seen. Ropes and jump ropes were scattered messily on the floor.

"Huh? What\'s happening all of a sudden?"

"Don\'t you feel the building shaking? Damn it, no wonder the rent was so cheap. It was because the building was constructed poorly. Anyway, hurry! We need to get out quickly. This place might collapse soon—"

Boom!!

A loud explosion shook the ground. Caught off guard by the sudden explosion, Jin-Seo and the supervisor lost their balance and stumbled onto the ground. To be precise, it wasn\'t that they had lost their balance, but rather the building had tilted.

"───, ──!!"

Jin-Seo\'s ears were ringing. Although the supervisor was shouting, she couldn\'t hear his voice—only a sharp, high-pitched whine echoed in her ears. Dark smoke was flowing out from the broken windows and billowing up into the sky. Not even the strong winds could disperse that smoke.

With her hazy vision, Jin-Seo could see that the supervisor was holding onto her and yelling something. It all happened so suddenly that it felt surreal to Jin-Seo. She felt as if she were floating in a dream-like state. Perhaps she wished it were just a dream.

"──...Mental, mental control. Didn’t I tell you that it’s important, or─!"

Thud!

As the ringing subsided and the supervisor\'s words began to make sense, they were abruptly cut off. Jin-Seo opened her eyes at the ominous sound that filled the air. The ceiling of the building was collapsing. The supervisor was lying on the ground with his eyes open. It was because a tile that had fallen from the ceiling had struck his head.

“Ah...?” Jin-Seo let out a cry filled with confusion as she approached the supervisor. Blood poured out of his shattered head. The blood was as dark as the smoke that was billowing out the windows. Rather than red, it was closer to purple in color.

Creeaak...

An ominous groan reverberated in all directions as if the building was collapsing. Jin-Seo approached the supervisor as if she was crawling toward him. She tried to apply pressure to stop the bleeding, but it was a futile effort. The blood continued to spew out relentlessly.

"...Supervisor?" Jin-Seo called out in a weak voice.

There was no response. The supervisor\'s pupils were blank and unfocused.

"Supervisor... supervisor, please! Don\'t play around. Supervisor..."

She checked the supervisor’s pulse with her hands, which were soaked with blood. His pulse was faint. Similarly, his breathing was so faint that it could barely be perceptible. His body simply lay there with no signs of moving.

She drew healing arrays and blessing arrays and then directed the light of blessing toward the supervisor\'s head, but there were no signs of improvement.

No, no, this can\'t be happening...

Creak... creak–!

“Kyaaak...!”

Jin-Seo instinctively crawled backward as debris, tiles, and other materials rained down from the crumbling ceiling. The fallen debris covered the supervisor\'s body, leaving only their arm jutting out unnaturally from the accumulated wreckage.

"Ah... ah..." She let out a cry of despair as she gazed at the scene.

Heat began to radiate from her back. The fire caused by the explosion had spread all the way up to the second floor where the training center was located. However, she couldn\'t bring herself to look back.

Her consciousness felt like it was melting down. Incoherent sounds flowed endlessly from her mouth. She tried to get up, but her body wouldn\'t respond to her commands. It felt like her legs had lost their strength.

It\'s my fault.

If only she had regained her senses earlier and left the training center, the supervisor wouldn\'t have died. No, if only she hadn\'t gone to the rooftop to smoke.

It was the same when her mother died. The reason why her mother died was because she happened to leave the house that day. And before that, if she hadn\'t boasted about knowing how to use miracle replication, the demons wouldn\'t have come to her home.

Both her mother and the supervisor, people she relied on, had died. Perhaps she had a misconception about the cause and effect of all these incidents. It was not that the ones that she relied on died, but perhaps they had to die because she relied on them. Jin-Seo tightly closed her eyes, surrendering herself to the intensifying heat and rising smoke. Her life had been more about contemplating how to die rather than contemplating how to live.

Feeling fear now was pointless.

"Cough... ugh..."

The smoke approached. The rough sensation burned her throat and entered her lungs. She coughed and felt a headache.

The area in front of her became dark with smoke, and her head began to feel heavy. The strength in her legs had long since faded, and even her arms felt limp. It felt as if someone had taken the batteries out of her body.

Creeeaaaak─!

"Cough, cough. Cough, urghhhh...!"

A sudden urge to vomit engulfed her and made her collapse. Jin-Seo gagged so hard that it looked as if she was trying to smash her head on the floor. However, nothing came out, and the urge to vomit became stronger. Only tears fell out uncontrollably and stained the floor.

Death wasn\'t as comforting as she had expected. Jin-Seo pushed herself up from the floor with her weak arms.

"Ha, haa. Cough, ugh... Cough! Cough!”

She barely managed to get up but collapsed back down as if her strength had given out. Her legs no longer had any energy. Dizziness occasionally came over her and constantly knocked her legs away. It was because she had consumed too much smoke and because she had forcefully used too much divine power.

"Wheeze, wheeze... "

She stood up and then slumped back down, stood up again, and slumped back down again. Jin-Seo realized that she no longer had even the strength to crawl. She began sobbing endlessly in that spot.

She didn\'t want to die.

She just wanted to escape from her agonizing life. She just kept running away and running away until there was nowhere left to run. At that point, the only place left for her to run to was death.

But now, it was too late to desire life. The training center was filled with smoke, and flames were ready to engulf her at any moment. Her consciousness was frequently getting cut off and was becoming more and more distant.

Slash!

At that moment, a jet of water sprayed from the air and extinguished the flames.

"It\'s okay."

Someone walked through the thick smoke and approached her. They were wearing a firefighting suit and a breathing mask. Were they a rescue team member? There was no time to question as the person lifted Jin-Seo and swiftly carried her out of the training center.

"Wheeze, wheeze, ughh... "

Jin-Seo sprawled across the back of the rescuer, sobbing and unleashing a fresh onslaught of coughs and wheezes.

As the rescuer approached the outside of the building, the air gradually cleared. Her hazy mind, obscured by the smoke, was slowly regaining clarity.

"It\'s okay. You\'re not dead yet, so it\'s okay..." the rescuer murmured.

It was unclear whether those words were meant for Jin-Seo or whether those words were spoken to reassure themselves. There was an indescribable determination in the words that they muttered to themselves.

"Hurry, get her on the stretcher!"

"Seoul Paladin Order, Eastern Branch Fire Fighting Team here. Requesting support from the Central Paladin Order. Please, as quickly as possible, we need your assistance!"

"Fuck, why is one firefighter missing their gear? Who the hell messed up equipment management–?!"

It was chaotic outside. The fretful shouts of paladins resounded from all over the place. Without hesitation, the rescuer stepped forward and laid Jin-Seo down on a stretcher. Then they entered the building to rescue another person. It was the supervisor.

After a while, the rescuer removed their fire mask and revealed their face that had been obscured.

As Jin-Seo\'s consciousness faded, she just barely opened her eyes. Her unfocused, blurred gaze fixated on the rescuer\'s face. The scene unfolding before her lacked a sense of reality. It felt dreamlike, almost ethereal.

"Contain the second-floor fire. We rescued... everyone we could find," the rescuer said, their voice trembling.

When she had her finger severed by a demonic beast, when her classmate turned into a demon and attacked her, when she became the bait to distract the bird-type demonic beast, and when she resigned herself to death after getting engulfed in an explosion. Through all those painful moments that she wished were just nightmares instead of reality, he had always been by her side, slowly seeping into her life. When she finally realized it, her life had already become intertwined with his.

"Thank you for the equipment. I\'ll be on my way..."

"What? Weren’t you dispatched here? Where do you think you’re going...? Hey, where are you going? Hey!"

Jin-Seo watched his figure fade into the distance.

Occasionally, she thought all of these moments might be a dream. Maybe, it was just a fleeting dream she was using as a crutch to cope before facing the harsh and agonizing reality. When she opened her eyes, maybe she would wake up from this dream and return to the miserable reality.

In the fleeting and hazy state of consciousness, she made a brief wish. If this moment was all a dream, she hoped she could never wake up from it. She wished to forever remain in this dream, never to awaken, and to spend her whole life living in this dream.