Chapter 1: Erect The Knife

Human beings were truly terrifying.

"Hmmph! Mhpph!!!"

They were always wearing masks, not faces—hiding their true selves behind insincere expressions.

"It's that time of the month… Ah, the gag is getting loose. Well, you can freely speak if you want to."

Each smile and frown was a calculated lie, a shield against the world.

"Phwah…! Please! Spare me! I've done nothing wrong!"

Their minds harbor thoughts too dark to reveal, as they navigate social niceties with false words, building trust on a shaky ground.

"You forgot that you stepped on my new shoes, then walked away without apologizing." I sighed, exasperated to give the minimal amount of reason for why I chose this man as my latest victim. "You're very selfish and uncaring back then. But! I'm a kind person, so it hurts me to do this to you."

This discrepancy between the expression and the mind, together with the unsymmetrical imperfection that appears on their faces…

It compulsively urges me to strip it apart.

"What kind of world where kidnapping is attributed to kindness!?"

"Nuances exist, you know? Everything isn't black and white."

"I-I don't even know you! I don't know jack shit about you!!"

"Huh, are you saying that my existence is too insignificant for you to care about? Like an ant that deserves to be trampled on until their entrail drenched the concrete on the sidewalk?"

"Hiikh!! I don't mean it that way!"

Well, not like it mattered on whether he remembered me or not.

None of his actions really mattered.

In the end, this man was just unlucky.

"Yeah, right. Any last words before I go full-on jigsaw on you though?"

"Forgive me! Please!" This man in front of me tried his best to shake himself from the chair that was bound to him. "I will do everything that you told me! You want money!? My wife!? You can have it!

P-please, just don't kill me and I'm ready to abide by everything you command! A-Atleast put that knife away!"

"Womp womp."

"AAAAARGH!!"

Uncaring of the human's noise, my hand weaved the instrument, delicately rowing the handle of the blade as I attuned to the visceral scene.

Ripple was the excess liquid as they leaked evermore.

Like a painter who got reversed in time, my knife took away the blessing of our creator.

"Aaaaaaaa-"

The 'mask' was extracted.

After that, it was time to remove the scream.

"... Not so loud anymore, aren't you?

When I was done, gushes of relief surged every inch of my body like a wave of calming symphony.

The itch for sacrifice in my body subsided

It had been sedated peacefully.

"Man, I'm horrified that I already got used to this…"

I had been afflicted with this weirdly extreme compulsive behavior of wanting to strip the face of someone since the age of ten.

Everytime I look at someone's face, the urge grows stronger.

And when it grew too much, my body started to severely break down.

"... I need to burn his fingers and chop him to pieces."

Back then, my body was satisfied by just striping the face of a doll, reapplying it, and then stripping it again.

I even played those obscure and horrifying mobile games that involve skinning or removing the face of the character.

Nowadays, a fake one wouldn't do.

It needed to be the actual face of a living and breathing person.

"A call?"

My phone was ringing loudly as I drew it from my pocket. Sёarᴄh the NôᴠeFire.ηet website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

I hung the call and redirected the conversation to a third-party messaging app. There, I texted a simple "What's up?" before I got dragged again into the same call. This time, it was through the messaging app.

"Something's up, big sis?" I started the conversation as casually as I could.

"Are you okay, Lothair?" she asked.

A worrisome tone could be heard from her.

"Ah, I'm fine, something worrying you?"

"You know, I noticed that you have been looking very sick lately… and the last time we met, your hands were trembling… So I just want to check up on you to make sure that you're doing fine."

Ah, right, my condition is getting worse as time passes by, and I have been trying my best to limit it to one person a month.

Despite my obsession, I'm not enjoying this whole 'killing' thing at all.

"Yeah, I wasn't feeling that well back then, but I'm fine now!" I said with a jolly sound ringing in the phone's ear. "Just got my medication yesterday after counseling with a doctor. It shouldn't be a problem anymore the moment I get back."

"Thank goodness… Just don't be afraid to tell your big sis everything if you have any complications, 'kay? You might be a fine graduate tackling an actual job in a society faraway from home, but this doesn't mean you should bottle up your stress in a jar."

"As if you can put your stress in a jar."

"It's a metaphor!"

"Ahaha, thank you for checking up on me then. I really appreciate it."

My older sister was a good person.

"Mmm~! Don't forget to bring a girlfriend or two when you get back here from working on your current project, alright?"

"You're saying as if you can get those things from a grocery store."

"Come on~ be confident! You're handsome enough to reel in some chicks by just whistling at them!"

"What are we? Ten? That's not how relationships work."

It was quite a long call, yet relieving.

And the longer it was, the more assured my sister would be, which was a good thing.

After a couple of playful banter back and forth, the call ended in a harmonious term.

"Well, what I'm doing right now is definitely not how relationships work."

The less my family knows about what I'm doing behind their back, the better it would be for all of us.

I still remembered the fear and disgust back then, when I was found out satiating my compulsive urge with the dolls that I bought with my own spare money.

My family, they were too innocent.

I didn't want to sully them with the realization.

Because I had fallen to the deepest trench, lower than the lows of society.

"And that's why I hid the truth from them for years, you hear me? Ah, right, you're no longer able to speak, let alone live."

Regardless of how many times I unmask people, I always wondered if there was something beyond the faces of the people that I interacted with.

"Everyone is only a sack of flesh, in the end."

After I wrapped everything about the preparation for the removal of my victim, I took a moment of clarity as I inspected the room of the abandoned house that I'm currently in.

There is one bedroom and a crib with many weathered children's toys clumped at the edge.

A family resided in this place once.

Whether they were happy or not, they marked their existence enough for a total stranger like me finding out about them in this world.

"My hands are still red."

Leaving my knife beside the bodysack, I went to the bathroom holding the cleaver that was covered with the same bloody hue.

The scene was still a little bit messy, but it won't be for long.

I got all the chemicals and tools to make this abandoned place squeaky clean.

Not a single trail would be noticeable after I'm done.

"I need to do this every month now…"

Cleaning my hands on the wash basin, I stumbled upon the reflection of myself as I gazed at the vanity mirror.

"This man."

198 centimeters in height, with a fit body and a facial complex that many deem to be very attractive in modern standard.

An enviable person, they say.

If only they knew what was beyond those skin.

"And this face…"

Whenever I gazed at a person, with no exception, I see it—the subtle, unnerving asymmetry in every human face.

Eyes that should be mirrors of each other are misaligned, one sitting just a millimeter higher than the other.

The slight droop of an eyelid, perhaps by two millimeters, and the uneven curve of a brow, each hair seemingly out of place.

Noses lean ever so slightly to one side, deviating by a mere degree or two, with nostrils that aren't quite twins but distant cousins, differing in width by a fraction.

Cheeks don't match, one fuller, one more prominent—one cheekbone jutting out a few millimeters more than the other.

The jawline too, is often uneven, with one side more defined, perhaps half a centimeter longer. The chin never perfectly centered, often off by just a few millimeters.

Ears don't sit evenly; one is higher by a few millimeters, or slightly larger in dimension.

Even skin texture varies, with blemishes and scars adding to the disarray, each imperfection measured in millimeters but still impacting the overall symmetry.

I found these kinds of imperfection on every face I found, no matter how beautiful they were.

Including this face of mine, the one that many praised to be blessed by luck and genetics.

This urge of mine, made me want to rip it all apart.

"Yet, I can't stop but latch my eyes at those imperfections…"

Because of this, living itself was a curse to me.

However, the concept of suicide felt cheap and cowardice, and to a great extent, horrifying.

'I don't want to die, but I'm afraid to live another day,' a quote that kept on repeating inside my head.

"What the-"

And just as I thought that the view couldn't be any worse, I saw a face other than mine faintly peeking inside the corner of the vanity mirror.

An eerie face with jotting eyes and wide, distorted, empty smile.

In a blink of an eye, that face covered the entirety of the mirror. The rash texture of this creature's face, the uncanny anatomy of its false emotion, all of them were displayed clearly to me.

And the situation just got worse as it tried to speak.

"Give your weiner to me, handsome."