One Day, a Villain Fell into My Wardrobe – Chapter 118

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118

Set lightly closed and opened his eyes due to the blood flowing from his eyelids. His vision wasn’t blurred yet, but if he lost more blood from his face, he wouldn’t be able to see well. Instead of raising his arm to wipe the blood, Set squinted one eye to shake off the blood clinging to his eyelashes.

He then looked at the man standing unscathed before him. Hadad, with his red eyes and red sword, was somehow different from the Hadad Set had known before. Red smoke was rising faintly from his body.

Set had come here because of a phone call he received a few hours ago.

“Set.”

From the moment he saw the screen displaying ‘Restricted Number’, Set instinctively knew it was Hadad. Set, who was turning on the boiler as Ji-ho had instructed, took off his gloves and answered the phone.

“I have something to say.”

It wasn’t his usual exaggeratedly cheerful voice. Instead of hastily answering Hadad’s words, Set silently listened to what he had to say.

“I will definitely kill your child. If that’s not possible, Ji-ho too.”

‘…’

Set’s teeth gritted as he bit the inside of his mouth. So, it had come to this after all. Set held his breath at Hadad’s actions, which didn’t deviate from his expectations.

The strange thing was that he didn’t attack but deliberately informed Set of what he was going to do. Even though he knew he would be prevented if he did so.

“You wonder why I’m telling you this?”

‘…’

“Because I have no choice.”

Hadad’s calm tone sounded to Set as if someone was controlling him.

“So, Set, if you want to save them, you come.”

“…Hadad. Are you under some constraint in your actions?”

“Set.”

Hadad’s voice over the phone sank. His subdued voice was muffled as if resonating from beneath the water’s surface.

“Let’s cross swords once more. With our lives on the scales, as we’ve done many times before.”

It was then that Set’s eyes widened for a moment. Before Set could say anything, Hadad briefly told him where he was and hung up. Set looked down at the phone screen after the call ended, and eventually rushed out.

With his speed that was incomparable to any car if he decided to run, he was able to arrive at the furniture factory complex soon.

Sensing a presence at the top of Factory 4 immediately, Set headed there without hesitation. However, the moment Set arrived, hundreds of Hadad’s red sword energies, which had been waiting, poured down simultaneously. And now was the moment.

“Hadad.”

“Yes? What is it, Set?”

Set deliberately moved quickly with a defensive footwork instead of aggressive swordsmanship. He was deflecting or cutting all the incoming sword energies, scattering them into the air. In doing so, a few sword energies that he couldn’t avoid in time grazed various parts of Set’s body.

“Is all this what you truly want to do?”

Set knew that shallow wounds were forming one after another on his body, but he still didn’t use sword energy. No, he couldn’t use it.

If it had been back then, when he was simply opposing Hadad following his father’s words without knowing anything, he would have used sword energy without hesitation. But not now. For some reason, Set wanted to find out why Hadad was doing this.

He had to find out.

“Set. How did it feel to be abandoned by God?”

However, Hadad gave an irrelevant answer. After cutting down all the consecutive sword energies flying towards him, Hadad suddenly stopped moving. Tilting his head, Hadad looked at Set without erasing his smiling face. Set, who had been quietly facing him, slowly opened his mouth.

“Those who were abandoned from the beginning don’t know they’ve been abandoned.”

“…Huh?”

“Even at the first moment when memories begin, I was already abandoned. I didn’t know that place was where the abandoned gathered.”

Just as those gathered in a landfill don’t know they’re trash, Set didn’t know he had been abandoned in his childhood. No, he knew it in his head. He just couldn’t feel it.

People on the streets would point fingers at the poorly dressed orphanage children. Saying they were abandoned even by their families. But for Set, the orphanage was his home to return to, and the children there were his family. Even if that place was worse than a landfill, Set had no thoughts about it.

“You asked how it felt to be abandoned by God?”

“…”

“Since I didn’t know I was abandoned in the first place, how should I answer?”

Set closed his mouth for a moment and pondered his answer. Set’s odd eye stared at Hadad’s reddened eyes.

“I just came to know what the well-fed complaints of those who have everything are.”

At those words, Hadad’s eyes widened. Hadad, who didn’t hide his surprised expression with his mouth open, eventually burst into loud laughter. His laughter was so big that he ended up letting out a small cough.

“I see. Haha, Set. So that’s what it was. That’s why I felt so bad.”

Excitement sprouted from the base of Hadad’s voice. He pressed down hard on his heart, which was making a loud thumping noise, with his bare hand. Now he couldn’t even tell if his heart was beating with joy or anger.

“Set. Do you know what the protagonist gets when they reach the ending?”

“I’m not particularly interested in knowing.”

“No, you should know. You might become the protagonist in the future.”

The corners of Hadad’s mouth slid upwards. He opened his mouth and spoke softly.

“The truth of this world.”

“…Truth?”

“And infinite emptiness.”

Hadad’s smile disappeared like smoke. He spoke softly with an expressionless face.

“God killed my mother and took the lives of all those close to me.”

Set frowned at those words. If one were to count who killed most of Hadad’s subordinates, it would obviously be Set. How many of Hadad’s allies had died by Set’s sword energy during the war?

“And then, it thrust love upon me.”

Hadad struggled to recreate the smile that had disappeared. His raised mouth corners were trembling. Set looked at him with an expressionless face.

“Set, I was born with the destiny to love Gliese.”

“…”

“I devoted everything I had just for that love.”

What’s so great about that mere love?

Anger seeped through Hadad’s smile. His hand holding the red sword trembled. Hadad slowly lowered the tip of the sword to the ground.

“One day, as I gazed at my living, breathing star in my arms, I felt so nauseous.”

Blood-red letters began to be engraved beneath Hadad’s feet. Eventually, Set stepped back slightly and gripped his sword differently. The energy didn’t feel right.

“Then I met Ji-ho.”

Hadad once again savored the elation he felt when he first saw Ji-ho. The joy of seeing another protagonist besides Gliese, besides himself, was unparalleled in his not-so-long life. So Hadad decided.

That this time, he wouldn’t be played as God’s chess piece.

That he would love Ji-ho and seize his own destiny with his own hands.

“You said those abandoned from the beginning don’t know they’re abandoned, right?”

Hadad’s sword, which had been pointing at the ground all along, slowly rose. His sword pointed not at Set, but at the sky. And at that moment, a red lightning bolt struck down towards Hadad’s sword. It was the moment his platinum hair turned blood-red.

“Then, Set. I hope you remain abandoned from now on.”

The sky above his head turned red. Set didn’t even breathe in the face of the overwhelming energy surging towards him. With the only sword he was holding, he faced not Hadad, but the sky.

Simultaneously, a massive lightning-like sword energy struck down from the sky. It was a lightning bolt that could only be described as a curse sent by God.

It was the moment Set urgently tried to block the lightning. His sword cut through one lightning bolt, and as it moved to cut through the next one.

Set slowly lowered his head at the familiar sensation he felt in his stomach.

“You probably won’t know anyway.”

It wasn’t a sword made of sword energy. It was Arondight, the sword of the Asterra royal family, which Hadad had been carrying instead because he couldn’t make a sword with sword energy, that was now stuck in Set’s stomach.

Blood flowed from the corner of Set’s mouth as he looked down at it. Hadad, who had been looking at Set with an unsmiling face, didn’t hesitate to pull the handle towards himself.

“So just stay stuck in that trash can.”