No Dark Secrets In This Book

Episode 152

Cassice Demillang spoke with a porcelain-like face.

“Am I the same as the students?”

Damyeon had a lot to say in response to those words. 

Things a poor teacher wanted to say to his student.

They had piled up endlessly.

***

“…What’s different?”

I just spoke the truth, but suddenly the principal responded grimly as if chewing something out, and from the next moment, he started ranting and raving as if he was foaming at the mouth.

“What’s different, you brat! You fell into the Black Wilderness and came back. Are you taking the aftermath of the Black Light lightly? Did the stories of the predecessors who went mad from being eroded by demonic energy not teach you anything?!”

No, why is this sickly old man like this?

I blankly stared at him and frowned. When I raised my hand to press my forehead and avoided his gaze, it felt a little better. Damyeon’s fervent gaze… was something I was afraid might appear even in my dreams. That’s because Damyeon is a skull bowl, a zombie, a monster made of only rotting flesh and bones. That’s right. So it’s just burdensome to look at. It’s absolutely not that I find Damyeon worrying about Cassice Demillang disgusting.

…The only reason I’m desperately denying it is because I’m starting to worry that I, as a person, might become overly immersed in the life of “Cassice Demillang”. Already, the way people call me has changed from “Jeong Ian” to “Cassice Demillang”. But if I lose the center of my heart here, my self-consciousness as myself might disappear, and an idiot who can’t become “Cassice Demillang” but mistakenly thinks of himself as “Cassice Demillang” might be born. In other words, over-immersion.

I’m not “Cassice Demillang”, but if I’m going to continue living in the body of “Cassice Demillang” in the future, I need to firmly protect “myself” before that. I must protect my own origin, my self-identity, which should not be violated by anyone as a human being.

It means I must not forget that I’m a “fake” Cassice Demillang.

‘Right. What more should I say?’

I’m fake. I’m a possessor, and I can’t be the same person as the original Cassice Demillang who was born here and broken down here.

But the damn traumas told me that even Cassice Demillang was once human. It reminded me that even a character who was just a villain in a novel had a life, misfortunes, and unwanted wishes. Up to that point, I could think of it as a rather fun setting game.

But it was different from the moment I started accepting myself as human.

‘Damn goblin…’

Now that I’ve looked into my past through a goblin, and the people who saw that past have started treating me as human despite losing their memories, and even I myself have started to feel like I’m human.

‘If I’m human, then you are too.’

That’s how I started to think.

I realized a principle that was never obvious to me.

If humans couldn’t treat themselves as human, they couldn’t treat others as human either.

So it goes without saying that it’s a sad and miserable thing to rank humans. Because people who do that must have a habit of ranking themselves and comparing with others.

‘Like I did.’

The problem is that I’m the only one who knows the fact that Cassice Demillang and I are separate individuals.

“You could have died…!”

To speak coldly, the reason Damyeon is angry is because he’s worried about Cassice Demillang. Not because he’s worried about me. The words that I would have passed over without a thought in the past feel particularly painful, probably because I’ve come to see myself as human.

And that very fact is the problem.

‘Get yourself together. I shouldn’t sympathize with Cassice Demillang’s emotions…’

I was currently at risk of being swallowed up by “Cassice Demillang’s” emotions.

In the past, I didn’t even care about taking the love given to others for myself. The name “Jeong Ian” itself was not mine but my granddaughter’s, and my great-grandfather was only kind when he mistook me for his granddaughter, so I lived hoping to be mistaken for someone else.

It wasn’t much different in relationships with other people either. I showed them the image they wanted, and that’s how I gained popularity. I lived wrapped in layers of personas to the point where I couldn’t tell what attitude was not an act. Among them, some sensitive people would realize that I’m actually empty inside from the look in my eyes that I occasionally show while taking a break from acting due to physical exhaustion. But that was it.

I drew a line on my true feelings. I didn’t let anyone inside that line.

I thought there was no one who could save me. Then I thought it was better to make them feel disillusioned and send them away for their own sake. That’s how I chased away the few sane people around me and only met bastards like me. Lunatics… those who ruin others…

I think my ex-lovers beating me up happened because I met such people, so it’s closer to me making my own bed. Rather than any violence or offense… it was self-harm. At least that’s how I felt.

That’s how I lived.

But from now on, I can’t live like that anymore.

‘Ryuseong.’

Because this damn bastard, this fool who desperately pushes away his father trying to hug him and tries to hide his lower body, unexpectedly touched my heart. Because of that.

I became human, and I had no choice but to treat you as human too.

Now that I’ve come to treat even “Cassice Demillang” as human…

“What gives you the right to open your mouth to me?”

I can’t stand the anger surging up when I look at Damyeon.

“…”

“…”

The surroundings fell into a moment of silence.

‘This emotion is not mine.’

Still, there was a sharp blade attached to the passion I revealed.

I roughly brushed off the hand touching my forehead and took another step closer to Damyeon.

And looking down at Damyeon, who looked like he was about to collapse,

“What makes you.”

“…”

“Worry about me?”

I spoke as if cutting a person into pieces.

A tension that couldn’t be described as being right after a big battle filled up again.

My bad friends wanted to stop Cassice Demillang but were fidgeting, not knowing if they had the right to do so, and the professors had stiff faces.

Especially in Dohyun’s case, his face was distorted to a strange degree…

But my mind was too exhausted to the point of wanting to die to investigate them now.

I was busy just keeping myself alive.

“What the hell are you to me…”

At that moment, two presences approached. I could tell without looking. One was Ryuseong’s extremely familiar energy, and the other was the energy of a middle-aged warrior similar to Ryuseong’s. Seeing that the two came together, anyone could tell that the person next to Ryuseong was the head of the Hanra clan.

At that moment, I ridiculously came to my senses.

‘Meet the parents.’

It’s because that ridiculous meeting with the parents where the head of Hanra was present came to mind.

‘So is this a real meeting with the parents?’

Recalling the absurd expression of the head of the clan who asked over and over again, suddenly my current anger felt ridiculous. I shook off Ryuseong’s hand that was holding my arm as if to stop me and stood in place, laughing. The laughter didn’t stop. Fortunately. Rather than being caught up in emotions that aren’t mine, it’s better to become a madman who gets angry on his own and laughs out loud…

“Ha, I have to clean this up…”

That was more comfortable. Rather than slaughtering someone.

“I’ll step up. Don’t get me wrong. I’m the young head of Demillang.”

Demillang must be watching this situation. They will definitely be keeping an eye on me. I was quite tired, so I didn’t want to waste any more energy on arguments.

“There’s no one here who can represent me, right?”

My logic was righteous. No one could refute it. I was also feeling smug and satisfied with what I said, but then the head of Hanra stepped up and said,

“We’ll take care of it from here.”

“…On what grounds are you stepping up?”

When I sarcastically sneered, the head of Hanra also glared at me.

Yeah, how much must it displease him that the bastard who fell into hell with his son came back?

But I didn’t have the temperament to meekly take the insult, so I was silently twisting the corner of my mouth…

“On the grounds of being a father-in-law.”

“…!”

A bomb went off.

‘Oh, shit. What he’s saying is true… but.’

Is this something to say here?!

I told you Demillang is watching?!

‘No, but why am I getting a father-in-law before even getting married?!’