Chapter 8

“What are you two doing together?”

As soon as I turned the corner, it was Abel who appeared. The uniform is covered with dirt, screaming about what he has been doing.

Why aren’t you wearing armor? I tilted my head, but he pulled up the tail of his mouth, and then pulled me with a straight face. And he lifted me up like a sack, and began to walk to the other side.

“Oh! Hey! Are you crazy? Why are you, really!”

“I told you to use your powers only for me. How long have you been overworked, do you want to die?”

Abel, who put me down on the couch in the office, said expressionlessly.

Did he?

I felt some threat from the dim glow from the eyes resembling a sunken ruby, so I ran away to the end of the sofa, and he grabbed my shoulder and looked down at me. Instead of growling like before, Abel quietly opened his mouth.

“One more time you stay with Karein … I’ll kill.”

“Hey, really?”

He’s also good at jokes. He can’t even kill me anyway. Why are you saying such nasty things?

I laughed awkwardly and pushed his shoulder out, and he replied as he was gently pushed back.

“Oh, I mean Karein.”

It was even more terrifying because it was a very sincere expression.

*

The next day, when the news that a lot of injured people had arrived, I went to the central temple as usual and everyone was busy chasing me off, saying that everyone didn’t need to be treated.

“What happened?”

When I asked Yuuda, a senior official I had encountered several times, he laughed awkwardly and said it was Abel’s command.

What kind of order is that? I became embarrassed and went to find Abel.

He wasn’t in the room, so where did he go?

While wandering, I heard from the monster maids that he was in a ruined temple behind.

I gazed anxiously at the temple. The red thread is strung around like a spider web. The silver hair was shining hazy in the dark.

“Abel?”

As he was looking through something, he looked back at me with dread.

What I can see behind him is a box. At first glance I could see something fluttering in it. Looking at the red thread that followed, the heart was clear.

It must have been kept in the temple. Maybe because the real heart was in front of me, the red thread on my wrist had moved there.

Suddenly a strong impulse came. If I touch that, does the connected thread break?  But rather than that, I had to worry about Abel who was in front of me.

Abel is enthusiastically obsessed with his self-confidence as a demigod. It was because of vivid memories that he was despised by humans and ignored by the gods since childhood. Because of that, he did not want anyone to see this real heart, which is a symbol of a demigod, and he didn’t even believe in himself, so he erased it from his mind and only recalled it for a certain amount of time.

I stumbled and stepped back.

“Hey, sorry. The door was open.”

“……Come here.”

So, unlike what I thought he would be terribly angry at me, threatening me, and erasing my memories, Abel was surprisingly gentle and showed it to me. Inside the box covered with gloomy glow was a fluttering red heart. It was a bloody red heart that was as clear as his eyes.

“I am actually a demigod.”

Abel, who had been silent for a long time, suddenly opened his mouth.

“I may look like an immortal, because the heart inside my body is fake.”

And I couldn’t help but panic. He was reciting in front of me the secret that he tried not to tell anyone, even the female lead in the original story, he was trying to hide until the end.

“This heart is real, so if you stab it, I’ll die.”

Because of the curse, Abel cannot have a real heart in his body.

Because of this, he doesn’t know his feelings, and he’s never really been loved. He believes that love is obsession and obsession is madness. As soon as he saw the female lead, he tried to kill all the people around her with a possessive desire, and he tried to imprison her.

He was saying something more about what he was, but another thought came up.

I hesitated and opened my mouth.

“You’ll find someone who will solve it soon. You just have to wait a bit.”

Abel, who was born in the spirit of a thousand spirits and became a half reaper with the greed of men, was even cursed by Solar, and was born with his red threaded heart removed. That’s why he needed someone to get rid of the red thread and put his real heart in its place and make him immortal, and that’s Saintess Lucia. That’s why Abel was so obsessed with her.

He looked particularly depressed, so I said as I wanted to give him hope, but Abel’s reaction, which I thought would be happy, was somewhat strange.

“…does this mean we haven’t met yet?”

“Yes.”

And when he meets the female lead, he persuades her to fit his heart. Then Abel will be immortal, and he is free from this red thread. In the original, Saintess Lucia was a good-natured, normal-minded woman. However, Abel destroyed her heart by attacking the people around her and forcibly trying to get her, so I should restrain him from doing that and explain the circumstances well……

“Oh! Oh, Abel?”

Thinking about something else, Abel grabbed my wrist and pulled me to him. There was a moment of fear in his red eyes, looking down overwhelmingly at me. My heart is choked by a feeling of overbearing. I had never been weighed down by this kind of power.

As he gasped and breathed a shallow breath, a low voice rang out at the temple.

“Why do you think so?”

“……uh?”

“Why do you think I haven’t met it yet?”

That’s because I know your future.

I couldn’t say that, so I went speechless. As Abel stared down at me stuttering, his eyes sank at his thoughts. And he sighs deeply.

“……Are you going to use me too?”

“What! You used me.”

“At first it was! Now, now……! Damn, this bearish girl!”

Bang! As Abel knocked down the wall, the temple, which was still unstable, shed a few pieces of stone. The feelings of pressure flowed out, but I looked straight at him, struggling with nausea.

“I was thinking. Let’s do this.”

It was better to settle it clearly at this time. Since we have unintentionally shared our life span, it would be better to win-win.

“As you wish, I’ll help you become immortal. Instead, keep me safe until then.”

“……Is that it?”

“What, do you want anything more?”

When asked, Abel sighed with his red eyes slightly open. His red eyes, always arrogant, shake wildly. Abel, who hesitated for a long time, said,

“……To me, do you really don’t have any feelings?”

I was speechless for a moment. Feelings, feelings. It felt strange as the word came out of Abel’s mouth. A reaper who doesn’t know feelings.

Honestly, I know that he has lived a much pitiful life than at first glance in the original story, and he is a man who is more lacking than expected. But it’s out of my scope.

“I’m sorry. I think it would be good to not care about each other and stay as we are now.”

As I bend my eyes to pretend I don’t know, emphasizing like it is now, his eyes shake as if he was a little hurt.

I flinched without knowing, but turned around pretending to be calm. I felt the glowing red eyes fiercely behind my back, but I closed the door without looking back.

I thought it was a very wise decision. Even for me and for Abel and for the unspecified majority.

But the very next day, I realized that the decision was terribly wrong.

“Miss, Miss Lian! Please stop him!”

It was a sin to overlook the fact that the other person was Abel, not anyone. As the weeping priests rumbled, I was led to the field, and there was Abel in a strange form.

Abel, who pulled up his death scythe, was like a real reaper. Only once, it looked different from the one I saw at the Temple of Lemda at that time that he threatened.

Chop, chop!

Whenever he wields the scythe of death, the bodies and souls of the monsters and other spirits are cut off. They screamed.

“Stop! Abel, stop! What are you doing! That’s hard to get!”

The temple was trying to restore all the souls that had been hardly gathered to maintain its solidarity and power. That was the reason he went hunting so hard until he was covered with blood, but there was only one thing that suddenly hit him wrong.

“Hey!”

“Don’t mind me. You said we shouldn’t care about each other? As long as I don’t die, isn’t it? I won’t ask for your treatment, so leave me alone.”

Abel, spitting out, wasn’t even looking this way. Whether he was firmly upset or offended, I was stunned by a very cold attitude and only smiled.

Is he supposed to be such a childish guy?