Chapter 91: 78 - Deduction II
My first suspicion of him arose when he casually suggested renovating the basement without the supervision of permanent instructors. He called it a project for "privacy for special research students." He used polite words, reassuring words, words designed to lull any suspicion to sleep. But I knew better. I knew he was hiding something, something far more sinister than I could possibly imagine.
I am no detective. I do not possess an investigative license. But ever since childhood, I’ve had a profound familiarity with crime... albeit in a more elegant form. I grew up steeped in tales of murder, of intrigue, of betrayal. I had immersed myself in a dark, fictional world, studying every nuance of criminality, every shade of human depravity.
Manga. Novels. Mystery stories. In that order.
I devoured everything I could get my hands on. Detective Conan, Agatha Christie, even bizarre combinations of fictional and real poisons that inspired my insane experiments as a child. I was fascinated by crime, by the darkness hidden beneath the surface, by the ways the human mind could twist itself into something monstrous.
I still remember, I once concocted a brew of wild ginseng root and Mindrose leaves, then tested it on myself purely out of curiosity to see if its effects could induce visual illusions, just like I’d read about in those novels.
The result?
I passed out for a horrifying 18 hours and awoke with agonizing double vision for two full days. I saw the world split in two, I saw dancing ghosts swirling around me, naked silhouettes writhing in terrifying ecstasy, shadows lunging at me with lewd laughter and icy, violating touches.
But that experience, too, shaped me. Those strange and perilous experiments had sharpened my mind, honed my instincts, skewed my perception of reality. I learned to see beyond the mask, to smell the stench of decay beneath the intoxicating perfume.
Becoming a doctor wasn’t my dream. It was a hobby.
A way to satiate my insatiable curiosity about the human body, its diseases, and its poisons. I wanted to understand how the human body functioned, how those organs could work so perfectly, yet how disease could ravage it, tearing it apart from within, how poisons could murder it, slowly eroding every fiber of its life.
And that’s where it all began. From an unquenchable curiosity, from a morbid desire to comprehend the darkness, from an obsession with tinkering with the boundaries between life and death.
I don’t want to remember that night. The night I first felt the touch of sin, a touch that soiled my soul, leaving an indelible black stain.
A bottle of gin clutched in my left hand.
I gulped it down, letting the bitter liquid scorch my throat, trying desperately to extinguish the fire burning within me. A fire of lust, a fire of hatred, a fire of madness.
I swallowed another mouthful of his. My throat burned. And my body felt strange.
A foreign sensation, a repulsive one, a sensation that made me want to vomit. A sensation that twisted my stomach and made every fiber of my being scream.
I writhed on the narrow dorm bed. Heat radiated from my skin, an unknown desire burning every nerve ending. My hands instinctively traced parts of my own body, seeking a monstrous relief. I gripped the bedsheet, squeezing it until my knuckles turned white.
"Ahh... f*ck it! Satoko, keep going~" The moan escaped my lips, choked, filled with both disgust and a shameful pleasure. "Ngggh, it hurts... but please... more... more..."
There were moans, humiliating moans, begging moans, moans that erupted uncontrollably from the darkest depths of my soul, exposing me fully.
There were bites.
Painful bites, sickening bites, like marks of possession by something alien.
And finally... it spilled. A viscous, hot fluid that filled my body with revulsion, that made me feel utterly perverted, that made me want to kill myself for being such a sinner.
But hey, maybe I did enjoy it and never regretted it either. It’s him, after all.
Satoko! You f*cking bastard! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?! IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED?! LOOK AT ME NOW, YOU SCUM!
No, it’s not that. I truly love him deep down, but too afraid to admit it.
And yes, It was my fault. I forced an entry to relish every single pleasure out of curiosity.
I gripped my hair, pulling it hard until my scalp burned with a painful ache. This real pain, for some reason, felt better than the horror in my mind. I wanted to destroy something, to scream until my vocal cords shredded, to tear every painful memory from my brain.
And none of them knew... that the necklace contained not just healing magic.
I opened my eyes. I jolted awake, gasping, my body slick with cold sweat.
Never mind, it was only a fantasy. A terrifying nightmare.
My virginity lost in a dream.
Sweet yet horrifying.
Sweet because of the sensation, horrifying because of the agonizing realization that it was my own imagination that had betrayed me, my rotting imagination, serving up this lewd fantasy. I hated myself, I hated my suppressed desires, desires I could not control.
I hated that night. The night I lost my innocence, the night I felt the touch of sin, the night the darkness within me began to crawl out.
I even asked him to stay after committing to it. What a stupid b*tch I was.
I took a deep breath. Trying to calm myself, trying to erase that nightmare from my mind. Back to reality. Back to the lies I had so carefully constructed.
Selene was free. Azalea had succeeded. They had done what they needed to do.
They had stepped forward, unknowingly walking towards the edge of an abyss.
But I never thought... she would go that far. I never thought Azalea would be able to bear such an immense burden, a burden capable of tearing her sanity to shreds.
Laughter. Tears. Even unconsciously screaming Selene’s name, her voice cracking, filled with despair and exhaustion. She had given everything, she had risked everything, she had sacrificed her very soul for a fleeting hope.
Azalea might appear calm on the outside, but she was a powder keg of emotions, hermetically sealed by her own isolation. She concealed her feelings, suppressed her desires, locked away all her madness within herself. But deep inside, a fire raged, a fire ready to explode at any moment, a fire that would consume everything in its path.
But one thing still kept me awake—
That aura.
What exactly was it? A horrifying power, a disgusting power, a power that sent shivers down my spine every time I even thought about it.
Aura isn’t just magical radiation. It’s a manifestation of will. It’s a reflection of the soul. It’s the very breath of existence itself.
Monsters possess it biologically. Generated by their energy systems fusing with their innate will to survive. Aura is their breath. Aura is their essence. Aura is the stench of decay they carry within them.
Elves are different. They learn to regulate their aura through meditation, nature, and precise dietary choices. They control their power, they control their emotions, they control every pulse of their life force. However, aura isn’t their primary need; it’s a secondary, adaptive system.
But humans?
We, no... they don’t possess that naturally.
Not by default.
They are weak and vulnerable, mere puppets, helpless before greater forces.
And when we absorb the aura of other creatures, our bodies simply don’t recognize the source. Our magical immune system goes haywire, collapsing into chaos. We become sick, we become insane, we become monsters ourselves.
Azalea is human.
And now she carries something. Something that doesn’t belong to her. Something filthy, something repulsive, something that will gnaw at her from the inside out.
I’m worried... not that Selene won’t heal.
But that Azalea... will break or be in a huge trouble.
I’m terrified she won’t be able to bear the weight of that aura, terrified she’ll lose herself, plummeting into endless madness.
Or if she did manage it, I really hope she wouldn’t be so confident with her Isolation.
But the lingering will of something that...
Hasn’t fully died.
Remnants of unimaginable horror, vestiges of unforgivable evil, fragments of a vile and sickening lust. And Azalea, in her innocence, in her courage, had taken on that burden. She had shouldered that horror, she had accepted that curse into her very soul.
