Becoming the Villain’s Family - Chapter 291
Chapter 291
‘I couldn’t even protect a single blade of grass of my own.’
Is there even one reason the world shouldn’t end?
Is there even one reason for him to live in this world?
‘Reason.’
He found no reason.
He lived his life separated by a wall from the world, it made it difficult to have a reason.
Lloyd had never attached himself to anything, knowing he’d likely die before reaching adulthood.
He never took an interest.
He never remembered anything.
When he thought about it, he never really had anything that was ‘his’.
“Don’t give up on anything.”
“Your dreams, your life, your future, your talents, your potential, anything.”
“It’s yours. It’s up to you. Don’t give up. If someone tries to make you give up, or tries to take it from you, fight back, even if it means killing them.”
Lloyd recalled his mother’s words who left the world when he was a child.
Words that still didn’t resonate with him at all.
But…
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to try following her advice, just once.
‘Five years.’
Just endure for five years. Somehow raise the family, sow the damned Valentine seed, and find a reason to pass the curse and the mission onto the next generation.
But if he can’t find it…
‘Well.’
What will happen then?
Lloyd blinked his eyes that were sunk in the abyss, and then let out a laugh tinged with madness.
* * *
“Did my song lead you to fall, too?” asked the wing-broken Siren.
Lloyd found the question amusing.
How could someone that was pushed to the brink, avoid corruption?
How could someone who gnaws on oneself also corrupt others?
Despite spending her life among monsters, her eyes still knew nothing of corruption.
Lloyd found her fascinating.
“No, I corrupted you.”
“….”
“Let’s fall to hell together.”
Lloyd twisted his lips, exhaling smoke over her face. The smoke, laced with hallucinogens, would grant her a painless end.
“That’s too bad. Had you not summoned me, you could have gone to heaven.”
Aria was destined to die, branded a monster by ignorant people for bearing the sins of monsters.
A death akin to that of a saint.
A noble death that wouldn’t have been out of place by God’s side in heaven.
And Lloyd had interrupted that.
‘She’ll resent me.’
He thought so.
Humans nearing death often believe in the afterlife more fervently. Like how the elderly frequent temples and make offerings for no reason.
“I want to sing a song.”
Yet, the siren said something utterly unexpected.
Lloyd stared at her with his faded ash-gray eyes before slowly bending down to listen.
“Let me hear it.”
The siren’s last song was offered to the devil before her death. It was not a song of resentment, hate, or curse.
“O moon, the sole light that illuminates the dark night.”
The aria from the opera ‘Gertrude’.
[‘Goodbye, Night.’]
Gertrude was always unfortunate, harboring vain hopes, engaging in futile loves, dreaming impossible futures, only to fall into despair. Yet, it was only upon seeing the moon gently lighting the night sky that she realized hope lay there.
“The world that forms me was always engulfed in darkness, and you were the hope that allowed me to breathe.”
However, she eventually dies, blinded by the sun’s brilliant light, and the moon god, taking pity on her, claims her life.
“…”
Aria could not finish her song before she drew her last breath. She looked like she was granted salvation with a faint smile on her lips.
Lloyd exhaled slowly after having held his breath for a moment.
“Siren.”
There was no response.
Her eternal rest had been granted.
He could not bring himself to lay down the dead siren’s body and instead took a drag from his cigarette.
“Huu…”
As he slowly exhaled the smoke, the world seemed to warp and shake like a kaleidoscope.
Oddly, a weight settled in his chest. Each breath in and out brought a tremble that clutched his throat, heart, and clouded his mind.
Salvation, salvation they say.
“Who… said that…”
Lloyd was merely a bystander.
“I knew this would happen to you.”
From the moment he first saw the siren, he could easily predict her end.
The nobles and imperial family, obsessed with possessing her completely. Count Cortez, who only thought to elevate her prince by stirring their competitive spirit. The Emperor, pouring the country’s wealth into her lap, neglecting state affairs.
Sycophants whispering to prepare a cage for her. Garcia’s ominous movements. The foolish humans, drunk on desire and greed, would inevitably snap that fragile neck.
“And yet, you call me your salvation.”
Proposing revenge to the siren was a mere impulse. Her perseverance through all injustices made it seem like she had never harbored a single malevolent thought.
If she was already branded a monster, he wanted to drive her to true corruption.
To drag her down to where he was.
“You were the one who saved me.”
Aria’s song was the only light cast upon him who was trapped in a darkness where not even moonlight reached.
It was a twinkling light that flickered faintly as if it would soon extinguish.
The impulse he felt upon seeing that light was just that. To completely crush that fragile light, extinguish it, and hold onto its falling remnants forever by his side.
Truly, there’s no devil quite like it.
“Why?”
Why did he have such an impulse?
There was no answer to his question.
“Siren.”
Lloyd was accustomed to this kind of silence. The stillness surrounded by corpses. No matter how strong a stimulus, it eventually dulls with time.
He could no longer feel anything from the stimulus of death.
Yet…
“Siren.”
Lloyd hugged Aria, who lay peacefully with her eyes closed as if asleep.
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