I Possessed The Worst Character In The Hellish Game

Liren’s pair of cold, slender arms encircled Mikael’s chest from behind as her cheeks rested against his back.

She silently pressed herself closer as if trying to anchor him.

Mikael’s body continued to tremble.

The shivers ran through him in waves as his hands still gripped the edges of the washbasin, turning his knuckles white beneath his black leather gloves.

He hadn’t even noticed when Liren silently emerged from his core and materialized behind him.

"Liren.... What’s... what’s happening to me?" His voice was fractured, barely above a whisper. "What’s wrong... with me? Why is...."

He couldn’t even finish the question. He wasn’t sure what he was asking anymore.

What was wrong with his body? With his mind? With whatever was left of the soul he wasn’t entirely certain still belonged to him?

He was just an ordinary software engineer in his previous life.

He had never hurt anyone.

Never killed anyone.

And certainly, he had never enjoyed hurting someone or watching someone get hurt.

So why now?

Why did the memory of Thomas’s one remaining eye, wide with terror before the essence bullet punched through it, bring that faint, horrible smile on his lips?

Why had he felt that surge of triumph when Jeanne turned away, convinced by a lie that had slipped from his mouth as easily as breathing?

Why did it feel like winning?

"I don’t.... I don’t understand myself anymore, Liren. This... this feeling of triumph.... this joy.... like I had won something. It’s disgusting. I’m disg--"

"Stop."

Liren’s voice cut through his spiral of words as she tightened her arms around him.

"Stop calling yourself that. You’re not disgusting."

Before he could argue.

Her grip shifted as she released his chest and took hold of his shoulder, turning him around with surprising strength towards her.

His back met the edge of the basin as she moved him in front of her.

"Lire—"

"Shh."

She pressed a cool finger to his lips before he could say another word.

Then her hands rose to cup his face as her fingers cradled his jaw, lifting his face upwards until he had no choice but to meet her eyes.

His eyes met her beautiful face as he stiffened.

She was a beauty that didn’t seem to belong to the mortal world.

Her long white hair fell around her back like silver moonlight, and her greyish blue eyes held his gaze with a quiet intensity that made his breath catch in his throat.

"Shh. Not a word."

Her voice was just barely above a whisper, and yet it carried a strange, musical resonance that seemed to settle somewhere deep in his chest.

Her brows drew together in a faint furrow as she struggled to put the words together.

Her lips parted and closed again.

"I.... I don’t know how to do this. I never... comforted anyone, or probably I have... I don’t remember. Words are..."

She paused as frustration ghosted across her features.

"The words are difficult for me... after spending this much time alone."

Her thumb brushed softly against his cheekbone below his eyes, wiping the moisture away.

The coolness of her touch seeped into his skin... but it wasn’t unpleasant.

He hadn’t even realized he’d been crying.

The tears had come silently, trailing down his face without his notice.

"I was a wraith for more than a century. A Red Spirit.... For all that time, I didn’t speak. There was no one to speak to. Only rage, only grief, only.... Only hunger to hurt the ones who had hurt me first. And when I finally did... when I finally made them pay for what they had done...."

She trailed off as her hands trembled a little over his face and something flickered in her pale eyes.

Perhaps Shame.

Perhaps it was disgust.

The memory of a feeling that somewhat mirrored his own.

"I remember the joy in it." She confessed.

"The thrill in it.... The thrill of watching them suffer the way I had suffered, feeling their pain and knowing I was the cause of it... It felt good. It felt righteous. Like I was finally, after all those years, setting something right."

"And then afterward... when the rage faded, and I was alone again...."

She swallowed.

"It felt like poison. Like I had become something I couldn’t recognize anymore.... Something twisted.... something wrong."

Mikael stared at her as his ghostly grey eyes widened.

"But here is what I learned...." She continued as her brow furrowed with the effort of putting thoughts into language.

"What I felt... what you’re feeling now... it doesn’t make you a monster. Feelings like this. It makes you..,. Someone who is trying to survive in a world that keeps trying to break you."

She paused, checking the sentence as her lips pressed together before she nodded faintly to herself.

Her words were clumsy, stitched together with obvious effort.

Every few syllables, she would pause-- testing the shape of a word, checking whether the sentence made sense.

She was a being who had spent over a hundred years in silence, who had forgotten how to speak because there had been no one to speak to.

And yet here she was.

Fumbling through the wreckage of her own forgotten language to try to pull him back from the edge.

As something warm stirred in Mikael’s chest.

"Surviving twists things inside you. It has to. If it didn’t, you wouldn’t be able to keep going. You would shatter under the weight of every terrible thing you had to do, and then you would die. And if you died..."

Her voice faltered as the fierce light in her eyes dimmed into something fragile.

"If you died... I would be alone again. I would die too, even if I were still alive."

He met her pale eyes as he watched her expression soften.

"So I’ll say this again. You’re not a monster, nor are you disgusting. I know what monsters look like. I was one for a very long time. A monster wouldn’t be standing over here, vomiting and hating himself for smiling. A monster wouldn’t be asking if he was a monster; they would never question if they had done anything wrong or not."

She pulled him down as her forehead pressed against his.

"And a monster wouldn’t have saved someone like me."

Mikael found himself lost in her pale, greyish-blue eyes.

"So remember this, you’re not disgusting. You’re not a monster. You’re... someone who’s been hurt, and who’s hurting, and who’s still trying anyway."

"...."

"And even if... even if you do become a monster someday. If this world finally twists you into something you can’t recognize anymore. I want you to know that I’ll still be with you. I’ll follow you into that darkness."

A beautiful smile formed on her lips.

"In return, you can do the same for me if I start to lose myself again. If the rage comes back. You pull me out. You remind me of who I used to be. The girl I was before the wraith. Can you do that?"

"...."

Mikael stared at her for a long moment.

Then, unexpectedly, a quiet chuckle escaped his lips.

"You know...." His voice came out far steadier than it had been a few minutes ago. "For someone who claims she’s forgotten how to talk to people, your clumsy words did a damn good job of calming me down."

He reached out and pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her slender frame.

She was cool to the touch as she wrapped her arms tightly around him, feeling his warm embrace.

"Thank you."

He murmured against her hair.

"I think... I think I’m okay now. And I promise. If madness ever takes hold of you again--if the rage comes back and you start to lose yourself--I’ll pull you out. I’ll remind you who you are. And in return, you do the same for me."

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