Four in the morning.
Inside Room 203, the thick darkness was torn apart by a violent jerk.
He sat bolt upright in bed, his chest heaving violently as if he had just escaped a life or death pursuit. Cold air hissed through his lungs. His entire body was drenched in cold sweat, plastering his thin t-shirt to his skin. His sinewy hand reached up to grip his forehead tightly, his fingers running deep into his hair, trembling uncontrollably.
It was that dream again.
For a whole agonizing week since the day he gave Chizuru the usb, a terrible, disgusting physiological phenomenon completely outside all logical calculations had continuously besieged him whenever he closed his eyes.
A wet dream.
In that unconscious and lustful space, every barrier of rationality he proudly erected was smashed to pieces. He saw himself embracing Ichinose Chizuru. He felt the softness of her skin, the floral scent lingering at the tip of his nose, and the enchanting moans magnified by the most primal human desire. The more he rejected it while awake, the more madly he craved her in his dreams, casting aside all doubt and fear to drown in that sweet lust.
And then, he woke up in a state of extreme physiological arousal, accompanied by a nauseating self disgust.
"Damn it."
He hissed through his teeth, throwing a hard punch onto the mattress. The angry sound was muffled in the quiet space.
He hated this feeling of losing control. He had personally cleaned up the biggest tumors of this world. Tearing off Nanami Mami's mask, extinguishing Sarashina Ruka's clinging, and completely resolving the movie trouble for the dying grandmother. He had flawlessly speedrun through all the most time consuming obstacles.
In theory, once all the core troubles were cleared, he should be liberated. Or at least, he would regain absolute tranquility for his soul. But no. The first cruel truth struck him. He was trapped here forever. No dimensional door opened. The life sentence in this body was irreversible.
And the second cruel truth, the one driving him crazy, was that his heart and body were betraying his rationality. He had caught feelings for Ichinose Chizuru.
But what scared him to death was not the fact that he knew how to love. It was assimilation.
His brain began to analyze the filthy physiological hallucination clinging to him for the past week.
What kind of person was the original Kinoshita Kazuya? A loser, a brain full of sperm, always restless, delusional, and craving women to the point of gladly throwing away his dignity…
His continuous lustful dreams about Chizuru were a death knell. The vile, cowardly, and lovesick instincts of the old Kazuya's body seemed to be gradually awakening, exploiting his emotional weakness for Chizuru to corrode, assimilate, and hijack his nervous system.
He was slowly turning into the exact trash he despised the most. A massive existential dread crushed his chest. If he gave up, if he accepted these feelings, would his cold rationality be completely dissolved into the sappy, pathetic, and lustful nature of the original Kazuya?
"I would rather kill myself with my own hands than let you swallow me." He muttered, his eyes flashing with cruel intent, speaking to the dark ego lurking within his DNA. He threw off the blanket, dragged his feet to the bathroom, and cranked the shower to the coldest setting, letting the freezing water pour straight over his head to extinguish the rebellious hormones.
…
Late afternoon that same day.
The Tokyo sky wore a layer of gray, swirling clouds, signaling a brewing storm. He hastily put on a windbreaker and strode out of the apartment complex to the convenience store to buy a pack of mild sedatives. He needed a dreamless sleep to sever this disgusting assimilation streak.
However, it seemed this world was not ready to let him go yet.
It felt as though, after he smashed the original sappy trajectory, this world was trying to spawn an invisible, ridiculously absurd drag force to compel him back onto that disgusting, clichéd path.
Just as he crossed the intersection, a young girl carrying a towering stack of books walking in the opposite direction suddenly tripped over some invisible rock, lost her balance, and fell straight toward him. According to the usual ridiculous scripted reflex, the male lead would have to open his arms to catch her, both would tumble to the ground, eyes would meet, and a nonsensical romance would bloom.
But who was he? His razor sharp eyes had calculated that falling trajectory three seconds in advance. Instead of reaching out to be a hero, he dodged to the side with the speed of a predator, stepping exactly half a pace back.
The girl fell face first onto the pavement, books scattering everywhere. He coldly walked around the mess without even sparing a glance, leaving her to awkwardly gather her things in utter astonishment.
But the world's drag force still continued to struggle.
Fifteen minutes later, at the convenience store. Just as he took the pills to the counter to pay, it suddenly poured. A torrential rain that turned the street corner white.
He stood before the automatic glass doors, hands thrust into his jacket pockets. Next to him, a soaking wet high school girl had just dashed under the awning for shelter. She wore a sailor uniform, had a petite figure, and was breathing heavily. She sneakily glanced at his sharp, cold profile, her cheeks flushing. She timidly spoke up, intertwining her fingers.
"Excuse me. It is raining so hard and I do not have an umbrella. Could you…share your umbrella with me to the train station?"
A perfect setup. A scene in the rain. A maiden's flutter. A classic script to force a romantic encounter.
He slowly turned his head, looking at the schoolgirl with eyes devoid of any emotion.
Exhaustion and disgust churned in his stomach. This world was trying to use these cheap interaction traps to force him to sprout pity, force him to play the warm man, things that belonged to the original Kazuya's ego…
He did not answer her. He turned around and walked back to the checkout counter.
The schoolgirl standing outside smiled smugly, thinking this handsome guy was buying an umbrella to share with her…
Indeed, he pulled a large bill from his wallet, threw it on the counter, and bought the only transparent plastic umbrella left on the shelf. He tore off the plastic wrapper, grabbed the handle, and walked to the door.
The schoolgirl happily stepped forward, about to say thank you.
But right in front of her, he abruptly stopped next to the large trash can placed outside the convenience store.
His face hardened, his eyes exuding ultimate contempt for the pathetic script this world was laying out.
Without a single moment of hesitation, he let go. The brand new plastic umbrella, never opened even once, fell vertically into the metal trash bin, emitting a dry sound.
The schoolgirl widened her eyes, the smile on her lips freezing into horrified stupor.
He gave her a bland glance, pulled up his windbreaker's hoôd without saying a word, shoved his hands deep into his pockets, and decisively walked straight out. He let the torrential rain pelt his body, brushing past the stunned gaze of the surrounding world. The act of throwing the umbrella into the trash was a direct slap to the ridiculous arrangement of fate. He would rather walk in the rain and catch pneumonia than let himself be swept into this cheap romantic tide.
As he turned the street corner to return to the apartment complex, his heavy steps were once again forced to halt.
Standing under the awning of a closed grocery store, taking shelter from the heavy rain, was a figure bearing a signature blue ribbon.
Sarashina Ruka.
She was not wearing her usual uniform, but a thin sweater with a patch on the shoulder soaked by the splashing rain. Her chubby face was pale from the cold, but her large round eyes gleamed with a crazy, stubborn persistence.
Since the day he played the recording and dropped the cruelest threat, forcing her out of his sight, Ruka had truly disappeared. She had broken up with Kuribayashi, and he thought this tumor had been permanently excised.
But this stubborn world pushed her back, like a final attempt to drag him down into the mud.
Seeing him walking through the rain, Ruka hurriedly rushed out from the awning, blocking him right in the middle of the road. The rain poured down, soaking her clothes, creating the most tragically sorrowful scene possible.
"Kazuya! Please…!" She screamed, her hoarse voice drowning in the sound of rain.
He stopped. Rainwater streamed down his angular face, dripping from his chin to his neck. There was no oppressive killing intent like last time. No display of violent dominance.
At this moment, the depths of his eyes held only extreme weariness and apathy. The exhaustion of someone who had to fight a disgusting assimilation from within, while dealing with the persistent garbage of the outside world.
"Do you truly not understand human language, or is your brain waterlogged?" He exhaled, his steady, dry voice ringing through the rain. "I recall forbidding you from appearing in my line of sight."
Ruka brought both hands up to tightly clutch her left chest. Tears mixed with rainwater streamed down her cheeks.
"I know you purposely push everyone away! I know you used those threats just to build a wall to protect yourself!" Ruka yelled, assuming the role of an understander, using the sappy romantic logic she deluded herself with to decode him. "But I am not afraid! I broke up with Kuri! I quit that rental girlfriend job! My heart beats crazily whenever I think of you. I am not threatening you anymore, I just want to tell you my true feelings! Kazuya, please accept me."
A tragic confession in the rain. Naive sacrifice. A perfect script to melt the hearts of the toughest men.
But he just stood there. His face as still as a statue carved from a boulder.
He stared at Ruka's chest clutching posture, feeling his chest choke with extreme weariness. He was too tired to yell and curse.
He leisurely lowered his voice, carrying the sharp cruelty of a forensic doctor reading an autopsy report.
"Has it still not penetrated your skull, Sarashina?" He spoke slowly, every ironclad word piercing through the noise of the rain. "You are in love with your own erratic heartbeat, not me."
Ruka froze. Her trembling lips parted but could not utter a word.
"You mistake that reaction triggered by adrenaline for love. Destiny? True feelings? Stop lying to yourself with those lofty words. You are just craving stimulation, and you turned me into a biological pacemaker to satisfy your hallucinatory addiction. That is not affection. It is a psychiatric pathology desperate to play the dreamy victim."
"No, it is not like that." Ruka stammered, stumbling a step back. His words were like industrial drills, boring through the pink bubble she had painstakingly blown up. This bare, brutal truth was too much for a young girl's awareness to bear.
He sighed, a sigh heavy with exhaustion.
"Go home. Take your heart medication and see a psychiatrist. Do not bring that fake, empty mess of emotions out to waste my time anymore. The world does not revolve around your defective heartbeat."
He did not threaten to release the recording anymore. He did not need coercion. He simply stripped bare the truth, spat it into the mud at her feet, and casually walked past.
His tall figure in the soaked jacket brushed past Ruka's shoulder, steady and heartless. He walked straight toward the apartment complex, leaving behind a girl sitting collapsed on the pavement, covering her face and sobbing in the rain, completely shattered when the true love she worshipped was branded as a ridiculous physiological disease.
Stepping up the rusty iron stairs of the apartment building, he felt his shoulders weigh a thousand pounds.
Constantly having to smash this world's clichéd scripts, using ruthlessness to fight the disgusting assimilation from within, was draining his final bit of energy. He craved absolute tranquility.
But just as he dragged himself to the door of Room 203, his eyes unconsciously shifted toward the closed door of Room 204.
His chest ached slightly again. Physical exhaustion could be solved with sleep or the sedatives in his pocket, but the mental exhaustion of constantly tearing himself between wanting to reach out to that warmth, or personally chopping off his own arm to preserve his ego, that was truly a battle with no way out.
He pushed the door open into the cold darkness of the room, wondering how much longer he could maintain this sanity before being completely swallowed by this world.