Blame v2c9

“You’re right. Civilians could barely use them.”

“Fine. Stop talking about Tar and hurry up and get in. It’s nice and warm.”

“Director-nim, please come in too.”

“Wh-what?”

Evil was so surprised he forgot to cover his front and twisted his upper body. Cheche looked up indifferently and added.

“If you haven’t finished washing, that is. …Do you… normally wash like that?”

“……”

Evil had the shower turned on full blast like someone trying to master vocalization, receiving water pouring down like a waterfall. Water mist rose all around and with the whooshing sound, even voices were almost drowned out. A normal person would have turned it down right away from their scalp stinging.

Evil cleared his throat and turned the faucet.

“For someone like me, normal intensity doesn’t even feel like washing. And you…”

“……”

“You…”

Evil saw Cheche’s naked body for the first time. Cheche was half-twisted outside the bath looking this way, completely naked. Dark brown skin glistening wet with moisture, water droplets flowing down his fine neckline, hair that looked like dark silver when wet, and golden eyes that became even more alluring as they held moisture. It was just as imagined, but there were also things that weren’t.

Scars large and small covered the small body—calves and thighs, arms, chest and the flat stomach below.

The one on the inner thigh was a cut from a blade at least 20cm long. The burns on the abdomen and solar plexus were traces of third-degree burns, and there were also second-degree burn scars on the lower abdomen. The back was even more serious. Burns and cuts were packed densely on that small back. Traces of skin torn and reattached, burn marks someone had intentionally inflicted.

Looking at the traces of desperately surviving, Evil could no longer think it was sexy.

If it had only been those, he would have just felt sorry and left it at that. Evil’s excessively good vision ended up discovering even really small wounds. Although it had been over a year since Cheche escaped from Tar, abrasions and bruises that looked like they were made yesterday were gathered in the center of his chest.

Evil knew. That Cheche sometimes hit his chest. And he also knew that sometimes there was a smell of blood. However, he hadn’t thought it would be this much of a mess, as if butchered. Because Evil himself, even if he self-harmed, wouldn’t become such a mess. Evil, who was born with SSS Motion Aura from the start, hadn’t been able to anticipate what condition a normal person’s body would be in.

“I’ll go in first.”

Cheche, knowing where the gaze was directed, entered the bath. If it was an action to hide his ragged body, it was after Evil had already seen everything.

“The burns… are you managing those?”

Evil’s voice had sunk considerably in the meantime.

“Yes.”

It’s a lie. When Evil went to Cheche’s studio room, there was no burn ointment visible at all.

“It’s fucking hideous and disgusting.”

“I’m sorry.”

Actually, he wanted to say something else.

Does punishing yourself like that make the guilt disappear even a little?

You survived anyway and the dead don’t come back.

It’s not like they died because of you.

However, the words that came out of his mouth were completely different.

“Even the stitching is sloppy. What idiot sewed it?”

“I did it myself.”

“…Really looks like shit.”

Evil had never said a kind word in his life. He had never comforted anyone’s pain, and had never even thought of wanting to comfort anyone. He didn’t know how to comfort or what comforting words were, so all he could do besides cursing like a moron was nothing.

“Are you not coming in because it’s disgusting?”

“…I’m getting in.”

Evil walked boldly in the sunken atmosphere.

“……”

No, he didn’t walk boldly but walked awkwardly sideways like a crab with its pincers cut off.

Why! How come! This won’t go down!

His head had become solemn, but blaming his body for not reading the atmosphere, Evil also awkwardly entered the bath.

Evil couldn’t sit boldly facing Cheche and sat diagonally in a corner. It was diagonally opposite from Cheche.

“Why are you wearing a towel entering the bath?”

“Shut up. I always wash like this.”

“……”

Evil, not satisfied with sitting diagonally, bent his upper body to rest his elbows on his thighs and pressed his forehead with both fists. Water dripped from his golden hair that had received the waterfall-like stream for a long time. A normal person would look like seaweed mixed with sand, but because the subject was Evil Endem, he looked like a seductive male god from legend. Currently, that male god’s head was very complicated.

Did it hurt? It couldn’t not have hurt.

Isn’t it kind of weird to react to a body like that? Am I weird? No, what’s wrong with a body like that? What kind of body is ‘a body like that’?

Fuck, I’m going to kill them all. I’ll find all the bastards who tormented that small sparrow and kill them.

He’s a small guy with nowhere to hit.

They filled that small body with scars.

…It must have hurt a lot.

Among the trash who made scars on that small body, he himself was included. And Cheche was the same.

‘Haah….’

Evil let out a hot sigh. He had to calm his anger. He didn’t create this situation to take out his anger on Cheche. His insides felt stuffy as if a boulder had been placed on them.

It would have been better if it was a cold bath. Far from his head cooling down, his heart wouldn’t calm down, perhaps because it was heating up. A normal person couldn’t have been excited for this long, but Evil wasn’t a normal person, so it was possible. It would have been better if it had been impossible.

Evil just raised his head slightly to check what Cheche was doing.

Cheche was staring blankly at the other side.

It was the fountain. In this wide bathhouse there were several fountains, and currently only the largest fountain in the center was operating. It was a fountain carved with several winged child angels holding hands and spinning around in a circle.

Cheche looking at the brightly smiling child angels didn’t have an impressed gaze, nor an emotional expression. It was the same as his usual indifference, but Evil read something in that indifferent face.

From watching the fountain with splashing water droplets to slowly stirring the water with his hand before entering the bath. There was a scene that came to mind. It was the day he first met Cheche. He had thought Cheche was a country bumpkin when he saw him put his hand into the fountain as if it was fascinating.

Now that he thought about it, he really was a country bumpkin. But he was too, excessively much of a country bumpkin, so perhaps… perhaps.

“Why, is the water precious?”

“……”

Only then did Cheche turn his gaze to Evil.

“No, at first I thought it was precious, but now I understand the principle of fountains.”

“This isn’t that kind of method. It’s different from the one in front of the Center. Even now, fucking precious water is being wasted.”

“Can’t you turn it off?”

“This isn’t Tar, there’s no need to save water.”

When Evil answered mockingly, Cheche’s moistened lips quietly closed.

Cheche looked at the wasted water stream of the fountain again. Evil was a Soul Aura User and felt Cheche’s emotions. The faintly seeping emotion was once again guilt, that disgusting guilt.

If Evil weren’t a Souler and couldn’t read emotions and hearts, he would have urged Cheche to say something or rebuked him, but Evil held back and waited. He felt that right now Cheche had words he wanted to say piled up to his chin. Words he wanted to say that he had always suppressed and endured.

Until now, he had passed by countless opportunities to hear those words because he didn’t know about Cheche. However, now Evil knew to some extent about Cheche. The fact that he wasn’t just sitting with an expressionless face thinking nothing, but was continuously holding back words he wanted to say. What was needed at this moment wasn’t urging but waiting.

“Director-nim…”

As if proving that deduction, Cheche opened his mouth.

“Do you know an object that looks like this?”

Cheche drew something in the air with his finger. Even Evil couldn’t recognize that.

“Use illusion arts. You learned it.”

“……”

Cheche raised his hand to the air again. Intangible aura flowed from Cheche’s fingertips and a form began to be created.

The color was dull and the form shook as if noisy. It was a semi-transparent black cylindrical object. Evil still couldn’t identify what it was, not because Cheche’s illusion arts were immature but because it was an object Evil didn’t know the name of.

“Tar is… a place short on water, that’s correct. Bathtubs and bathhouses are luxuries. Wells often dried up, so we relied on purification devices that the Peace people occasionally brought.”

“Is that the purification device?”

“Yes.”

“……”