141) Chapter 20. Because I Hate Villains! (10)

It was the first time.

Hurting someone? Mm, no, it was a little different from that. Of course, it was the first time I had gone this far, but there had been times before when I had reached out intending to go this far.

When I faced Seo Arin.

Of course, back then it wasn’t because I hated Seo Arin and wanted to kill her. It was just that the situation was so dangerous that if I didn’t do something about her somehow, I desperately struggled to do anything I could.

But if I had succeeded, then in the end Seo Arin’s arms or legs would have been completely destroyed, or Seo Arin herself might have died.

Even if it was impossible because of the difference in our abilities.

So when I say it was the first time—

I mean the result more than the intent.

It was the first time I had reduced someone who tormented me to this state.

I had wondered before what it would feel like after doing this to someone. The kids who went to school with me really had been completely defenseless in this sort of thing. They weren’t superhumans, and they weren’t adults capable of resisting power either.

If I had wanted to, I could have snapped the necks of some of the kids who ostracized me, or broken all their arms and legs.

I had already done it countless times in my head. I wasn’t the type to think that if someone struck one cheek, I should offer the other one too.

The reason I hadn’t done it was simply because if I did, there would be many people who would be troubled by it.

Or because Soi might despise me.

Because Auntie Yujin or Uncle Dohyun might be disappointed in me.

What if they hated me if I wasn’t a good child? What if they abandoned me if I didn’t study hard enough? Because I wasn’t really their child. It wasn’t even a proper adoption in the first place, and above all, I still couldn’t bring myself to call those two Mom and Dad.

Even when they hugged me, I trembled in fear, I dropped out of school halfway through, and whenever I stood in front of people I stuttered—I was a child with nothing but lacking parts. So at the very least, I had to be kind.

The only reason I had left the kids in my class alone until the end was because of thoughts like that.

“Go on.”

I spoke to the woman.

As I said that, somehow my mood eased a little. The pain in my chest that still hurt seemed to lessen a little too, and the fear also seemed to fade a bit.

“You know, the thing you were saying.”

She was already a woman broken by me once.

There was no need to fear her.

“Y-you…!”

The woman trembled.

My hand was still resting lightly on top of her arm. Of course, nobody else could see it at all. If Instructor Yustina had been here beside me, she might have found it absurd.

Yeah.

This woman had to live the rest of her life carrying this fear.

Because there was fear this woman had planted inside me. So she too should have at least one fear she would carry for the rest of her life.

It was a little disappointing.

If only I could do it with my own hand, then instead of an invisible hand, I could make her tremble in fear just from another person touching her.

“…Witch.”

The woman said.

At that word, I blinked.

“What?”

Before I could even ask, Soi questioned her from beside me.

The woman looked like she might leap up at any moment, but she acted as if she had no interest at all in Soi and stared fixedly at my face as she spoke.

“H-hii, y-yeah, a w-witch, a witch! You’re a witch!”

The woman moved violently.

The bed rattled loudly. The adults around her rushed over and held her down tightly, but the woman kept muttering while staring at my face.

“I-I heard the witch had a daughter, it was you. Right? Y-yeah, that face. That smiling face. It looks exactly like hers. So, so—”

“……Th-that.”

As I said that, I took a step forward.

“What do you mean by th—”

I was about to ask what she meant.

But the woman struggled even more violently.

“D-don’t come closer!”

At those words, I unconsciously flinched and stopped.

“It’s the same! You really were the same kind of bitch! Fuck, I should’ve known from the beginning! I didn’t realize you were the witch’s brat! Fuck!”

Her voice as she screamed while tears streamed down her face seemed to contain a different kind of fear mixed into it somehow.

I wanted that woman to be afraid.

If possible, I had even hoped she would spend her whole life suffering in fear.

But I never imagined she would spew words like this.

I—

“Let’s go.”

Beside me, Soi suddenly grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the hospital room.

Bang.

Because she shut the door in such a hurry, it made a loud enough noise that my shoulders jerked.

“……”

“Don’t pay attention to it. She’s just a woman who doesn’t know anything.”

Doesn’t know anything?

Then why would she say something like witch?

But at the same time, a question arose.

If that woman personally knew the witch, then wouldn’t it have been impossible for her not to recognize me? Since we use the same ability.

In this world, superpowers are almost entirely hereditary. Very occasionally someone develops one without having it before, but a unique ability like my “telekinesis” is rare enough that there weren’t many people who had it to begin with. For there to be many people with the same ability, our ancestors would have had to work very hard making children.

Even after seeing me carrying a patient, she still approached me and pressed a blade against my side, so I had thought maybe she did it because she knew.

“……”

“Rua.”

“…I...”

“Yeah?”

“Do I… look alike that much?”

When I said that while touching my face, Soi’s face turned pale.

“My face.”

“No.”

Soi quickly grabbed my hand and forcibly lowered it.

“No. Not at all. You don’t look even a little alike.”

Was that so?

But when I thought back on the witch’s face, it definitely did seem like there were parts that resembled mine.

No, not just “parts that resembled mine”—didn’t we practically look exactly alike?

“No.”

Smack.

I was startled a little by the sound coming from both my cheeks.

“No. You don’t look alike at all, okay? Seriously, not even a little.”

“Uh, uh?”

“Got it? You don’t resemble the witch at all.”

“U-uh……”

Only after I answered did Soi finally move her face away again.

“Right. There’s no way that could be true.”

Soi snorted and wrapped her arm around mine, tugging me along.

The warmth I felt through my arm helped me regain my senses a little.

“She’s a villain to begin with, a villain. Comparing you to people like that is insulting. Do you know how kind you’ve been all this time?”

Well, because if I wasn’t kind, they would hate me.

Because I didn’t want to be hated.

“More than anything, there’s no need to listen carefully to what a villain says. It’s all lies anyway, right?”

That was true.

That woman had deceived me too.

And even after thinking about it again, if she had truly known the witch, there was no way she wouldn’t have recognized me on sight.

Well, unless she had been living tucked away somewhere without even watching the news. Even if she didn’t watch the news, she still could have known if she used the internet or something.

Those words eased my mind a little—

“And besides, there’s no way the Rua I like this much could be a villain, right?”

“…Huh?”

When I turned my head, Soi was looking at me with a bright smile.

“Because I really, really hate villains!”

“Uh, yeah.”

“I knew it the moment I first saw you. There’s no way someone this pretty, kind, warm when sticking close to me, soft, and squishy could be a villain, right?”

“Huuh?”

For a very brief moment, Soi’s words almost made me serious, but then my mind went completely blank.

What did being a villain have to do with being warm and soft and squishy?

No, more importantly, I’m warm and soft and squishy?

Ah.

Now that I think about it, the particular parts of my body Soi usually targeted were kind of like that.

“So don’t worry. Rua really doesn’t resemble that woman at all.”

“…Yeah.”

But the mind that had gone blank gradually darkened again.

Soi didn’t know.

The real reason that woman had gone hysterical.

If we had simply stood there talking normally, she might have mocked me a little, but she still would have been able to speak properly.

But I knew she was afraid, and I had pressed my hand down firmly on top of that fear.

That woman had gone mad from fear.

“Rua!”

The children came running from over there while shouting.

Chae-yi. And behind her, Hyeonji and Jinwoo.

“Were you okay?”

“…Yeah.”

I nodded, but the ends of Chae-yi’s eyebrows shot upward. It was the expression of someone thinking there was no way I had actually been okay.

No, seriously, how did these girls read my thoughts this quickly?

Fortunately, since I wasn’t saying anything, Soi also stayed silent. She was probably being considerate of me.

Chae-yi tightly hugged my other arm.

“Let’s go rest. Rua, you’re still hurt.”

“……Uh, yeah.”

And so, almost as if I were being dragged by the two of them, I went to lie down on an empty hospital bed.

And then—

“Rua!”

The person who burst into the hospital room shouting almost as loudly as Soi was Auntie Yujin.

And her face was soaked with tears almost as badly as Soi’s had been when I collapsed.

Seeing that expression somehow made me feel even more at a loss. I didn’t know what I should say, so I stayed silent while trying to choose my words, and that silence only made Auntie Yujin cry harder.

……I seriously have no idea what I’m supposed to do.

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Pub: 24 May 2026 09:20 UTC

Edit: 24 May 2026 13:02 UTC

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