plumnovel Chapter 154
Chapter 154
Chapter 154
“…….”
For a moment, silence settled between us.
Normally, he would have laughed idly and tossed out a joke, but he didn’t even twitch a finger, and I, too, kept my mouth tightly shut as I looked at such Werner.
The room, unlike the noisy outside, felt like a different world, suffocating in its stillness.
Werner seemed to have something he wanted to say, opening his mouth several times, yet he couldn’t bring himself to continue and only let out a drained sigh.
“…I’m sorry about your brother.”
It was me who broke the silence first. It seemed he wasn’t yet prepared to speak about what was inside him, so I wanted to give him a little room to breathe.
“…Yeah.”
But Werner only lowered his head deeply, his expression growing even gloomier.
“I never thought my brother would join hands with them. Seeing how strong he was… it must have been going on for quite a while.”
His clenched fist dug his nails into his flesh. Drops of blood seeped from the wounds and fell onto the floor, but I could only let out a helpless sigh.
Werner’s brother, Mersen, had joined hands with the Majin.
Of course, there was a possibility he had been used. But the power Mersen showed back then, and the situation itself, made it clear that he had been the mastermind behind everything.
Even if he had been used, he must have been deeply involved.
“What the hell did I….”
He raised his head, his voice squeezed out as if wrung dry.
“What the hell did I do wrong?”
A scream with no one to blame echoed. A single clear tear slid down his eyes reflecting the moonlight, and both of his tightly clenched hands were already soaked in blood.
“Werner, you did nothing wrong.”
I turned my body and let both legs drop off the bed.
The rough texture of the carpet against my toes felt especially unfamiliar today. The air in the closed room pressed against my lungs, and my mouth was unbearably dry.
‘…Fuck.’
I had deceived myself with pathetic excuses, but it was nothing more than a defense mechanism to avoid what had happened right before my eyes.
A sense of disgust toward myself rose. In front of a friend who had lost his father and brother, I couldn’t say anything and only kept grasping at empty air.
In the end, just like him, I wasn’t used to losing someone either.
So, just as he had done, I barely squeezed out my voice and grabbed Werner’s bloodied hand.
“It was all unavoidable.”
“…You said you saw the future. In the future you saw, did this not happen?”
“This whole thing, starting from this gathering, didn’t exist in the original timeline. The future has already changed a lot. Even I can’t predict how things will unfold anymore.”
Of course, it was unlikely that the major currents had changed.
But the appearance of the Demons and the schemes of the Majin forces had slipped cleverly past those currents. That meant the details—how situations would turn out—were impossible to predict.
“Then this situation….”
Werner didn’t finish his sentence.
But I knew what he was trying to say, so I let out a small sigh and spoke.
“Yeah, maybe your brother wouldn’t have ended up like that. But that’s only a possibility. I know this is cruel to you, but that doesn’t mean you should avoid facing reality.”
Werner pressed his lips shut at that.
Had he realized his own slip of the tongue? Still, he soon tilted his head and looked at me with half-lidded eyes.
“Yeah, that was your original self.”
Not the friend I had known until now, but a face tinged with cynical hostility. My body stiffened under that gaze.
“Maybe everything turned out like this because I was foolish from the start. Your kind are all the same.”
“…….”
“You always want others to follow your words, and you force sacrifices upon them. Even if it’s wrapped in something called friendship.”
At that, I clenched my fist. I couldn’t understand what Werner was saying. What exactly had I demanded from them?
“It may be cruel, but you said we shouldn’t avoid reality. If your fiancée, Petra—no, if Alice—ended up like that, could you still say those words yourself?”
“Werner.”
I called his name quietly.
Perhaps he had been wiping away tears alone before his brother’s corpse—his eyes were slightly swollen.
His thoughts weren’t functioning properly yet. That was why I tried to stop him before he crossed the line, but Werner simply shook his head lightly and continued.
“No, you don’t know. You’ve never lost anyone. Since it was always someone else’s problem, you must have thought of it comfortably. That’s how it’s always felt from you at some point. Your eyes aren’t looking at your surroundings, at us, or at this world.”
Are these things nothing more than a game to you?
At Werner’s words, I swallowed.
Because it was the same thought I once had while looking up at the great moon.
But back then, I had reached an answer for myself and moved forward with conviction according to that belief.
But… was that the wrong answer? Werner, standing before me, was telling me I was wrong.
A dagger flew in and pierced my chest. I had believed I wasn’t wrong. Even if I staggered, I thought the path I walked was the right one.
The resolve that hadn’t wavered even when facing powerful enemies like Aloken, Gremory, Agares, and Baphomet began to shake.
“If that’s not it, then tell me. What happens in the future, what you’re hiding from us, and what you’re afraid of.”
“…….”
At that, I closed my eyes.
The closer I became with them, the more I struggled.
Should I just lay everything bare?
The excuse about what would happen to the world was, in truth, nothing more than an excuse.
Was I afraid they would reject me if they learned I was different from them?
Or… was it simply my greed to keep this future to myself?
“…….”
After keeping my eyes closed for a moment, I finally organized my thoughts.
When I slowly opened them, Werner was still staring at me with a cold face.
‘…What a shame.’
Neither he nor I had done anything wrong.
Things had simply not gone well.
A regret surfaced in one corner of my heart—couldn’t I have done better? If I had, maybe Werner wouldn’t have turned his hatred toward me, unable to find another target.
“So, that’s your answer.”
As if he had read the answer from my expression, Werner turned his body without hesitation. Then he walked straight to the door and stopped in front of it.
“…I’ll kill Isaac. Until then, we won’t meet again.”
No… would there even be a need to meet again?
His quiet murmur as he slightly pushed the door rang clearly in my ears. I opened my mouth several times, but in the end, I couldn’t say a single word.
Soon, Werner left the room. As his presence slowly disappeared, I could only lower my half-raised hand.
“…Ha.”
Even in the original story, there had been several situations like this.
Disagreements, differences in ideology, religious conflicts.
For various reasons, companions left and disappeared.
When I read those parts, I had only worn an indifferent expression.
After all, the important one was the protagonist. The supporting characters were merely devices to enrich the situation and the story.
But as Werner left, a hollow sensation brushed against my fingertips. As I sat on the edge of the bed, staring down at my hands for a while, I sensed someone approaching from afar.
“…Leios?”
At that voice, crimson hair swayed in the darkness. The figure peeking into the room through the slightly open door was none other than Petra.
“I couldn’t really fall asleep.”
At that, I gave a bitter smile and patted one side of the bed. Though she was in her sleepwear, Petra entered without hesitation and slowly sat down on the bed.
After sitting silently beside me for a moment, her eyes narrowed. While most people would have missed it in the darkness of night, her keen gaze didn’t overlook the drops of blood on the carpet.
“…Werner was here.”
“Yeah.”
I nodded lightly without bothering to lie, and she let out a small sigh.
“Earlier, after you fell asleep again, everyone had dinner. Werner also came to the dining hall after barely regaining his composure, but…”
“There was a commotion there too?”
“Yes. Everyone understood, given what happened to his family. But he had a bit of an argument with Alice, and the atmosphere turned bad. For reference, the topic was about you.”
“…I can more or less imagine.”
I could only give a bitter smile.
If he had spoken like he did earlier in front of everyone, of course the mood would sour. Alice wasn’t the type to hold back, so an argument was inevitable.
“Werner is….”
“He left. He said we wouldn’t meet again until he avenges his father and brother.”
I lay back as I was.
The situation had already slipped out of my hands.
He had made his decision, and I had simply accepted it.
I had no intention of running outside right now, grabbing onto Werner’s pant leg, and begging him not to go.
“Up you go.”
As I stared out the dark window, trying to clear my complicated feelings, Petra climbed onto the bed. Then she brought her knees near my head and gently stroked my hair.
“People can’t always align with each other. Childhood friends can become enemies in an instant, and the opposite is also true. That’s what it means to form relationships.”
Perhaps my face had revealed my distress—Petra comforted me with a gentle voice. Her hand running through my hair was warm, and I felt part of my tangled emotions slowly ease.
“Petra.”
“Yes.”
“Am I… doing the right thing?”
A question even I couldn’t answer. She couldn’t possibly know either. But Petra wore a faint smile and placed her hand on my cheek.
“I can’t say my words are absolutely correct, but.”
Then she leaned close to my ear and whispered softly.
“At least from what I see, you’re doing your best.”
“…Doing my best, huh.”
“Yes. You think more than anyone else and try harder than anyone else, don’t you? Since results don’t come immediately anyway, if you stay true to the present and prepare for the future, wouldn’t that mean you’re doing well?”
At those words, I carefully took hold of her hand.
She must have had things she was curious about regarding me as well.
But she didn’t ask anything—she simply comforted me.
My heart wavered again, this time in a different way. In the end, I closed my eyes and slowly opened my mouth.
“Petra, actually I….”
“But you don’t have to force yourself.”
My words were cut off.
She lightly placed a finger on my lips, playfully blowing a soft breath into my ear as she spoke.
“There’s no need to rush. I’ll stay by your side no matter how long it takes.”
Then she gently laid my head back onto the pillow.
As she slowly got off my bed, I felt a bit of loneliness and almost asked her to stay, but I swallowed the words, thinking it would trouble her over a fleeting whim.
“Then, have a good night.”
With those words, Petra left my room once more.