Chapter 165. Hide Well, or I’ll See Your Hair (1)
When had it started?
There was no particular reason.
I simply hated the world.
I hated people who smiled.
People who were happy.
People who rejoiced.
No.
I found them disgusting.
I hated the very fact that I had been born, so why were they allowed to live such shining lives?
What was so enjoyable that they could be happy just to be alive?
I envy them.
I envy them, I envy them, I envy them.
I envied them so much that it became irritating.
And that irritation eventually turned into rage.
When I disguised my family’s deaths as an accident and killed them all, I thought my blind hatred toward the world would disappear.
I believed I would finally be able to live like an ordinary person.
I would smile as I lived in this world.
Surely I would learn to be happy simply because I was alive.
But I was wrong.
My rage and disgust toward the world only grew stronger.
I still hated seeing other people smile.
So I destroyed those smiles.
Fortunately, I was intelligent.
There were countless ways to come up with methods for killing people.
There were plenty of efficient ways to wipe out large numbers of them.
There was only one reason.
I simply enjoyed watching them scream.
Watching them grieve.
Watching them suffer.
If only everyone in this world could die in pain.
With that thought alone, I repeated experiment after experiment.
And the results were quite successful.
But perhaps I trusted my intelligence too much.
I made one small mistake.
I was moving a flask containing a powerful bacteria when I dropped it.
The problem was that the bacteria immediately infected me.
I was swallowed by the very thing I had created and began dying in agony.
My death was certain.
There was no turning it back.
I had no attachment to life.
But I hated the thought that everyone else in the world would continue living happily after I was gone.
Why only me?
Why me?
Why does it always have to be me?
[You’re not going to die.]
[I’ll save you!]
At the very end of my life, I met a goddess.
A perfect, sacred goddess in the form of a young girl.
[I hate this world too.]
[Want to destroy it together?]
[Let’s kill everyone.]
My goddess smiled mischievously and gave me the words I had been waiting to hear.
The destruction of the world.
There could have been no more sacred revelation.
I took the goddess’s hand.
And I received a new body and new power.
Now only one thing remained.
To take tomorrow away from this world.
From this hateful world.
From everyone who smiled and lived happily.
Yes.
I believed that was all that remained.
“Alpha, it’s me.”
“May I come in?”
No. 11 spoke from outside the cold door.
A few seconds later, the door opened.
Alpha’s voice came through the speaker.
[...Come in.]
No. 11 entered with a tense expression.
As expected, the room was completely dark.
The girl who would normally appear on the monitor with a bright smile was nowhere to be seen.
Only the dark, inactive screen remained.
Apparently, she did not even feel like showing her face.
“You seem to have been deeply hurt.”
No. 11 had expected something like this, but seeing it for himself still made him sigh.
He deliberately brightened his tone.
“Please don’t be too discouraged.”
“I’ve already dispatched the Archons throughout the region.”
“We’ll find Victoria soon.”
[But Victoria said she doesn’t want to play with me anymore.]
Alpha answered sulkily.
She sounded as though she might cry at any moment.
[I finally thought I had found a friend who could understand me.]
[I was really happy.]
There was no strength in Alpha’s voice.
The sight made No. 11 anxious.
The Alpha before him was no longer the god he had worshiped and followed.
The moment she gained someone she could call an equal, a friend, the personality of an ordinary girl began surfacing.
She was no longer a god in the form of a girl.
She had become a girl with the power of a god.
“Why don’t you remove the restriction preventing calculations involving Victoria?”
No. 11 carefully suggested.
“If you do, you’ll be able to predict where she is and what she intends to do.”
Alpha’s reply was immediate and cold.
[No.]
[If I keep doing things like that, we’ll never become real friends.]
No. 11 forced a smile.
“Alpha.”
“Your friends are already here.”
“Why search for one so far away?”
[...]
“When I was dying after being infected in that bacterial accident, you saved me.”
“You performed an enormous procedure that transformed every cell in my body into bacterial colonies.”
“Ever since that day, I have devoted my entire life to you.”
His voice grew more desperate than ever.
“Have you forgotten the promise you made with me?”
“You said we would take revenge together on the world that imprisoned you inside that cold cylinder.”
The monitor finally lit up.
Alpha appeared on the screen.
