Chapter 72: Are You Upset With Me?
The assassin’s corpse still lay a few meters away from us, motionless and cold, yet my attention remained entirely on the girl sitting beside me.
Viora remained inside my embrace without resisting or moving. Rather, she moved her head and now it was resting lightly on my shoulder while my hand continued moving through her hair.
It should have been a peaceful moment. Yet every time my eyes drifted toward the corpse lying on the floor, my thoughts became complicated again.
"..."
I slowly lowered my gaze toward her and held her even tighter.
The strange thing was that she didn’t look like someone who had just taken a life. Her expression remained calm. Like she couldn’t understand how much of a big problem it was for her to kill the man.
If Elena somehow finds out what she had done, I don’t think she will be angry. She will be enraged and kick her out of my life, thinking she might hurt me too.
After several moments of silence, Viora suddenly spoke.
"Are you upset?"
The question pulled me out of my thoughts, "Huh?"
"With me."
Immediately, I looked down at her. For the first time since waking up today, I noticed something unusual.
She seemed nervous. Not visibly. Most people wouldn’t even notice it. However, after spending so much time around her, I could tell.
The way her fingers tightly gripped my shirt. The way her shoulders remained slightly stiff and the way she kept her head down, all of it told me the same thing.
She was worried about what my answer would be. She might be wondering if I was upset with her or worse, disappointed in her.
But she was overthinking it. I wasn’t upset nor disappointed in her. So, to clear her confusion, I let out a sigh and began.
"Viora."
"Mhm?"
"Do you know what you did?" I asked and without hesitation she replied, "I protected you."
"Yeah, if you did all that just to protect me, then why do you think I would be upset with you for it?"
"So you aren’t upset?"
"No, I am not. Just don’t try to blame yourself. Okay?"
"Okay."
I assured her by saying everything I could think of and honestly... From her perspective, she wasn’t wrong about me getting disappointed.
She may be able to kill him, but she also sustained many injuries which made her come to that conclusion.
She had completely forgotten about the life she had taken and was only worried about me. There was no guilt or regret on her face. As if death wasn’t something particularly shocking to her.
’A-Rank Hunter...’
I knew about her tragic future. I knew about her past suffering. But her cute and clumsy side had made me forgot that before becoming the Viora I knew, she had been a hunter.
Not just anyone but one of the strongest. In reality, she was supposed to move up into S-Class if that specific incident hadn’t happened to her.
She was someone who had entered Gates countless times and had fought monsters for years. She probably would have witnessed more death than I could imagine.
’So, the life of an enemy doesn’t actually mean anything to someone like her.’
While I was busy trying to justify her actions, Viora spoke up and tried to explain herself again even without me asking.
"He wanted to kill you. If I let him live... he would try again."
I couldn’t argue against that. Because she was right. The assassin hadn’t come to negotiate or just threaten me. He had come to kill me.
Immediately, she continued speaking, "If his life was important..."
"...then was your life not important?"
To her, there wasn’t a choice between killing and not killing.
The choice was between the assassin living or me. And she had chosen me without even considering another option.
"No. I don’t want to die," I answered and she nodded. "Then I made the correct decision."
"Yeah. I already told you not to feel bad about anything. Also, we have a bigger problem to take care of."
With that, I finally stood up and looked over the dead body. The assassin’s mask was still covering his face, and the morning breeze occasionally stirred the dark fabric of his clothes.
"..."
I rubbed my forehead in tension. This was a problem, a very big one at that.
Leaving the body here wasn’t an option. If Elena returned and found a dead assassin on the balcony, I wasn’t sure what would happen first.
Would she interrogate me?
Or would she send Viora away first?
Neither option sounded appealing.
So what should I do with it? Bury him? Call the police? Run? Pretend nothing happened? No. None of those sounded like good options.
Subconsciously, my eyes drifted toward the garden below. There was enough space there.
’Maybe I should dig a hole...’
The thought appeared in my mind and immediately felt ridiculous. I had never buried a body before. Then again, I had also never been targeted by an assassin before.
So maybe this was simply another strange life experience of getting transmigrated.
After a few seconds of consideration, I nodded to myself. "Yeah. A hole sounds good."
"What hole?" Viora immediately asked and I looked at her as I responded, "Yeah. The kind that people usually don’t come back out of."
She tilted her head. "A grave?"
"Exactly."
For some reason, she sounded genuinely curious instead of disturbed.
"Stay here. I’ll take care of the body."
The moment those words left my mouth, Viora placed both hands on the armrests of the chair and stood up.
"I will help."
"No."
"Why not?"
Her words were really strange. How could she say ’Why not?’, has she forgotten she is injured?
"Do you remember getting stabbed?"
She remained silent for several seconds. Then her fingers moved and touched the cut on her cheek.
"Oh."
This was the same girl who caught a dagger with her bare hand and acted like it was a minor inconvenience.
"You are injured."
"But I can still help."
"No."
"I am strong."
"No."
"I can carry him."
"No."
"I can dig."
"No."
After getting rejected continuously, a frown appeared on her face.
"You are being unreasonable."
Her words almost made me laugh.
"Me? You’re the one who got stabbed three times and wants to help bury a corpse."
Viora opened her mouth but didn’t say anything. Apparently, even she couldn’t argue against that. Seeing her finally become quiet, I nodded in satisfaction.
"Good. Stay here and by the name of God don’t try to follow me."
"Fine."
Even though she agreed, her tone clearly said she wasn’t happy about it.
Still, I couldn’t waste any more time here, so I turned toward the assassin’s corpse. There should be shovels somewhere in the storage shed near the garden.
I just needed to bury a body before Elena came home.
Honestly.
What a completely normal morning.
