Chapter 113.

Chapter 113. New Year’s Eve. The Dazzling Fireworks Explode, Start of a New Year. (5/6)

What! I nearly blurted that out but maintained my poker face. What the hell does she mean I want her to kill me when we get married?

“Why would he want something like that?”

Rosa placed her hand on her cheek then went on a giant lying spree, “Well… I was the one who fell in love first with this idiot here. When I revealed my feelings to him and my identity as an assassin, he asked me to be his girlfriend but under the condition that I’d kill him once we got married. Meaning, I can never marry him even though I really want to and already accepted his marriage proposal!”

“But… get this Alicia, there’s a big loophole I thought of in this agreement. What if I’m not the first one to marry him? If someone else marries him first and I marry him second, could I not annul the agreement and still marry him anyway? If he marries someone else first, I could void our agreement with the excuse being that he’s a horrible cheater. If he can cheat on me, why can I not cheat him out of the agreement we made?”

“Ran! Why would you set such a horrible condition to start dating Rosa!” Alicia looked at me furiously. What the… she’s actually really scary when she’s enraged.

Don’t look at me! I’m innocent damn it! I’m being framed! But I couldn’t expose her lies.

I simply closed my eyes and refused to answer. That was the best response I could give. Neither affirming nor denying Rosa’s claims. That was the correct decision.

“Ran! Answer me! You want to die? Then when you said you wanted to disappear like a snowflake melts away and return to the atmosphere as though they never existed, this was what you meant?”

“Haaaaah. Well, I suppose.” It’s true that I wanted to one day die the way I chose to and just disappear without causing anyone any problems. Without being remembered or mourned. I’ve never wanted a long life, just one where I could live doing the things I enjoyed the most before I meet my inevitable demise and pass on in peace.

Perhaps Rosa wasn’t entirely wrong. Maybe I would one day, up, and disappear. Perhaps she can instinctively feel that and wants to tie me to this world forcefully using whatever means necessary.

That man just up and left one day without a word. What was stopping me from turning out just like him? He was greedy and selfish, I’m not much different at the end of the day.

His shadow always looms in the darkness behind me. It’s always there no matter how hard I try to look away from it. The ugly darkness hidden away in my heart is him.

I’ll one day turn into that.

Which is why, before I do, it’s best if I die.

Forty was the self-imposed age I’d determined was the limit I could maintain my lifestyle all alone without anyone. The times would change. I’d become old and have nobody else to rely on as my health declines after that point. In such a situation, I’d find myself turning into him. Controlled by greed and my own selfishness, I’d sink to the lowest of lows to survive.

If it meant robbing the happiness of others so I could stay happy myself, I’d probably end up doing it. That was the exact same sort of person that man was. He’d do anything, going so far as deporting the wife he divorced and abandoning his own child just to get out of paying child support. Even after we somehow returned to this country, through my mother fighting countless legal battles, he never paid a cent in child support. 

My mother didn’t bother to try and find him; she neither wanted to ask him to nor even take a single penny from him when she returned, she only wanted to move on with her life, weary from all the battles she fought to get back. After she returned, she worked herself into her grave, both her physical and mental health was destroyed. She tirelessly overworked herself with hardly any breaks because of the demanding concurrent jobs she had. 

As for that man, he went into hiding, off the radar to this very day. That man would do so until either I died, or he died.

Because I didn’t want to become a pathetic person like him, I’d cut things off at forty when I’d led a long enough life. I’d ensure I didn’t end up like him.

That was how things played out in my first life.

While I sat there in silence recalling all of this, Alicia had approached me. She suddenly extended her hand out wide with her head downcast. It swished through the air and a loud slap reverberated through the air.

My head snapped to the side from the sheer force behind her powerful slap.

“Don’t go and ask someone to kill you after marriage, idiot! Don’t go off and die on your own either, idiot! Don’t be an idiot, you idiot! Nobody’s going to be fine if you just up and disappear like a snowflake, idiot! Stop looking like you’re about to disappear, idiot! Idiot! You idiot! You’re an absolute idiot! Why are you making that sort of self-deprecating face, you idiot! I don’t know what you’re hiding! I don’t care if you never tell us! Just don’t go and die on us out of nowhere, YOU STUPID IDIOT!” Alicia screamed all that out rapid-fire with tears welling up threatening to roll down her cheeks.

She was holding it back. She didn’t want to cry in front of me.

“Rosa, I’ll do it. I’ll make this stupid idiot marry me first no matter what. I don’t want him to go off and die for no reason. I definitely don’t want you to be the one to kill him either. I’ll kill him myself if he thinks he can get you to kill him.”

What? What! No, no, no. Give me a break here. Even if I were to die after marriage with Rosa, it wouldn’t be until I'm at minimum, forty years old. I’m not going to die before that. I never personally said I’d actually ask her to kill me either! Damn it! I’ve been framed! Don’t go and look like you’ve got the resolve to kill me if it really came down to it! And hey, it’s not even like I set any of this as my objective in this lifetime anyway.

“Really? You’re willing to cooperate?” Rosa confirmed ecstatically.

“Yeah. Screw him. Who does he think he is? He thinks he can make women fall for him and then go off and die whenever he wants? Is he looking down on us?” That wasn’t Rosa… Alicia was the one who said all that. It was pretty obvious, but because of how uncharacteristic it was for Alicia to say, I had to do a double-take and reconfirm that my brain matched up with my eyes.

With that information verified as accurate, I finally had a chance to retort in my head.

I’m not! I swear! I find women to be terrifying creatures not to be trifled with! I have the utmost respect for them! They’re freaking scary, okay?

I was about to have a nervous breakdown. What was with this?

Are ten minutes over yet? Can I stop covering for Rosa’s lies now? Better yet, can I just go home now? I want to sleep. I’m tired. My stomach hurts from hunger too. My feet are killing me. It’s cold. My back hurts. My left hand hurts. 

Damn it! Am I just a cranky old man?

Well… I mean… I was one at heart.

I stood up.

“I’m going back now,” I grumbled in irritation. At this point, I was done. Enough going along with this youth crap. Just get me back to a nice warm house where I’m not freezing my ass off.

I took one step and the next thing I knew a pair of hands wrapped around me from behind. It was Alicia.

“No. You’re going to stay here with us. You don’t have the right to leave whenever you feel like it right now.”

“Says who?”

“Says your girlfriends, no, your future wives.” I nearly fell over when those words were uttered by Alicia. Where did the good girl in her go? When did she become the bad sort of girl who’d say something like that so casually?

“My… wives… you say?”

“Yeah.”

“In my entire lifetime, those are probably the two scariest words I’ve ever heard spoken consecutively in a single sentence. How does it feel to say something that scares me more than any horror movie out there?”

“It feels pretty good actually,” Alicia said that as if it was nothing.

“Haha. Right, Alicia? It does feel pretty good, doesn’t it?”

“I never thought I’d ever say something like this. Rosa, am I a bad girl now?”

“Jeez, no way.” “Yes, you are.”

The two of us responded simultaneously. I hadn’t been the one who was asked but I still put in my own two cents.

“Nobody asked you.” Alicia denied me my right to freedom of speech. Really, where has that good girl gone? I want her back!