[Sekaimo v2] Ⅱ. Baekryeon :: Psychopath - /003b

Love is insanity. To be loved is to be hunted. There is no running away.

Translator: Kalkin

Editor: Diran

Special thanks to Kalkin and Diran for bringing this release together! Kudos to you!

 Please enjoy~

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A Harbinger Princess.

“In the end, all the truths in the world are but a fabricated model constructed to one’s liking.”

《Princess of Darkness》Maria.

“That is why Onii-same must become an adult.”

“Adult…?”

“Do you still believe that a physical relation with your sister is not of ethical conduct?”

Fu-!

Of course. I finally saw something progressing  and there was another curveball thrown.

“Hey, hey! Besides ethics and stuff like that, isn’t incest genetically bad for genes if siblings d, d, do that!?”

“You mean the scientific findings about how inbreeding and incest can increase the chance of congenital birth defects? You need not worry about them."

“Huh!?”

“It’s my safe day today.”

Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

“If that is your only issue, then it seems that all the obstacles barring the connection between me and Onii-sama have been demolished.”

“…”

At this point, it was clear that all this speech she gave out about the truth of the world doing kickflips many times over and back were just a logical leeway she paved for her to say "That’s why it’s okay for us to go beyond sibling love.” to a casual urging.

The world was coming to a close.

It had gotten to the point where she conjured up and wove all these world chapter history level conspiracies into her argument just to make justification for some sister-brother action.

“I do admit I had gotten a bit carried off with my explanation, but I can be sure that I gave no loopholes. Surely you will not reject my advance now?”

“Game over, man. Game over.”

She took Sun Tzu’s Art of War and turned it into a theatrical RTS level joke.

But the important thing was that I had nothing to retort back her ridiculous but somewhat plausible argument with.

“B-but! My heart still isn’t prepared…”

“How much longer will you force this humiliation play on this poor girl before you now, Onii-sama!?”

“T-that’s…!”

It wasn’t like I was devoid of my pride as a man. I wasn’t impotent either; I was just normal, nothing more or nothing less.

Oh, it’s specifically because I was normal that I was hesitant.

I’d heard so much here and there, but whether the truth of the world was correct or not, what I was taught along my youth was thought patterns of the normal world. No matter how she emphasized that it’s an illusion, I couldn’t just ditch the things I was used to all my life and accept her thought pattern like this.

In the end, it was like that, dammit.

“H, hey Maria, but I’m…”

I couldn't manage to avoid Maria’s conjecture, much less wrap up the argument heating between us. It was dull and stupid, and anyone else could see how dead-end I appeared in their eyes.

“If that is so, then your compromise is hereby rejected.”

And then, all in a moment, Maria ceased to tolerate my shaky and indecisive attitude any longer.

Reject my compromise?

Did she really realize the true meaning of what she was getting at?

“Tonight, I’m dyeing you in my color, if nothing else.”

Maria’s arm coiled around my neck, and her wet, unruly breath tickled the nape of my neck.

Maria acted with possessive determination.

Still grasping my neck, Maria instead carried strength into her fingers and started tightening down on my windpipe with all her strength.

Strangling… me.

“Kuh, you, why…!”

“Do not be afraid, Onii-sama.”

Chuckling to herself, Maria was entranced in a maddening satisfaction staring down at my oxygen-deprived body.

Like a hound prowling the hunting ground, a predator sinking into bloodlust.

“I love you, Onii-sama, more than anything in the world. I daresay that there is nobody in the world that loves you more than me?”

“W-What are you getti…”

With pain prying my life loose, I managed to spit out a few words.

“That is so Onii-same belongs to only me. I will not lose you to anyone else; that is why you are my Onii-sama, only for me.”

The Maria that was on top of me was not the Maria I knew. What I could see was but a person of fear and catharsis welled up in the abyss of her twin gaze, shaped to a grotesque singularity.
I could tell.

Maria was like that.

My little sister, Maria Lunalady Blackhazel, is just like that.

“-It’s about Baekryeon, isn’t it?

What I uttered out flew out like a silver bolt, and careened through the wave of madness whirling around us.

Pause.

The fingers constricting my neck shook ever so slightly and ceased to act further.

But even if you did something like this, I knew where you were getting at from the start.

You’re just that kind of a kid, who would lash out and choke me just to project out your uneasiness.

The hands that were strangling me were shaking from the start, like a petrified child’s.

“!”

What I could see now was a wide-eyed Mara, trembling in her place; a tide-turner, so to speak.

“B, but that’s…”

“That means that I knew everything from the beginning, you good-for-nothing sister.”

Why must you always be like this? Whether you were the《Princess of Darkness》or not, this person in front of me now was just a little girl, struggling so hard inside her head, just because she didn’t know what her own brother was thinking.

“I’ll be honest; I’ve been feeling a little chaotic because of her for a while now.”

Just think. You flipped the TV on nonchalantly, and you heard your name mentioned, and a rather noticeable biochemical terrorism takes place right before your eyes; I doubt you could shake the earth upside down and come up with anyone that could cope with that in a sane manner.

“But Maria, I need you to know this one thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Whatever you think of me, I’m your only Onii-sama.”

So what was so hard about pampering your sister a bit?

“Don’t tell me you were thinking that I was going to leave you or something?"

“…”

Hearing that, Maria shook her head down and mumbled something unintelligible.

Wrestling with something silly like that; this girl in misery  before me was none other than the《Princess of Darkness》.

”Fuha, hahahaha!”

I wasn’t sure why I burst into laughter there.

“W, why do you laugh?”

“It’s amusing.”

“It’s, amusing?”

Very much so.

Here I was, tied head to toe, incapable of even a single resistance, pathetic as I was, and I found this amusing.

“Nobody else in the world could possibly see this side of Maria.”

“Why is that…?”

“It feels like I’m harbouring a great secret to myself.

It’s beyond amusing.

Did I really want to say that? To say that I was amused like a kid stashing a rare glass trinket in his room and feeling a sense of superior secrecy?

“A genocidal war criminal in angel’s clothing. Persephone on earth.”

“…!”

“Nobody will ever know. To know that someone of that amazing, enormous caliber, that the harbinger princess responsible for all the hell and strife that exists in this world, is such an impressionable and innocent girl like this.”

“B, but that’s because I’m in front of Onii-sama!”

Maria blushed and reacted so predictably, still encased steadfast inside her pride.

Ahh.

I could see.

I could read her so clearly.

This girl definitely wasn’t some sheet of ancient hieroglyphic papyrus, hiding within it infinite mysteries, like the image everyone took her for.

The difference was that, she was a princess; simple as that.

Darkness or whatever, all these fancy adjectives were muddling the truth within her.

「In the end, all the truths in the world are but a fabricated model constructed to one's liking.

The truth that was there was just much too simple.

What we had here was but a teenage girl who, threatened that she might lose her dear brother again, went to whatever desperation she could allow, just to keep him to herself.

“I’ve got one more thing to ask, silly.”

“…What would that be?”

“You, what would you do if, let’s say, some other guy, who’s like ten times better and good-looking than me, turns out to be your Onii-sama and I turn out to be a third-wheel fake?”

“What do you mean!? On my honor as Maria Lunalady Blackhazel, that sort of thing is just not possible!”

“No no, I’m speaking in a literally hypothetical sense. I don’t ask of this as ‘Maria Lunalady Blackhazel’s Onii-sama’ – but as ‘Siyoung’ like you asked about me before, and what you think of that.”

I knew for sure what she would say.

It wasn’t because I was wrapped in some superiority complex, nor was I being humble in any sense. Departing from all the formalities, I just could know what Maria was going to say.

Maria Lunalady Blackhazel does not desert a boy named Siyoung. Why was that so? Because I was her Onii-sama?

Well, one could think so at the beginning.

No.

Perhaps that was all there was from the start.

But not anymore.

I was sure.

But despite that, she still hadn’t caught on.

That was why I was trying to tell her a tale that was opposite to the uneasiness she was experiencing right now.

“Even so, Maria will never desert me. At least, that was what I was thinking.”

“I do not particularity feel the need to answer to a question with an answer as obvious as that.”

Maria whipped back, her cheeks slightly swollen with annoyance.

“But that’s assuming you truly think like that. Why not try thinking in the opposite sense?”

“What would tha…”

Twitch.

Maria bolted upright in shock, as if she was hit over the head with a hammer.

“Ah, ah.”

I could see the shock digging through her as she heard the answer she could not predict, devoid of any rebuttal and retort.

I had to give a moment of doubt to this world we were in, to be so easily controlled by a girl that was as senseless and defenceless as this.

“That’s why I’m telling you, there’s no need to cram all your worries inside all by yourself.”

I’m your one and only Onii-sama.

Whether you were《Princess of Darkness》or not, that kind of formality was all fine with me.

As a single brother, and as a single pampered sister.

“If I can’t even pamper you even a little like this, then how could I be considered your Onii-sama?”

“Ah, uuu…”

Maria was lost for words, and merely shrugged in silence, like a child being yelled at.

“That’s why there’s no need to worry. I’ll never leave your side. It’s not like there's a place waiting for me besides here.”

I still had some reservations about what that “Baekryeon” girl had said to me, and the implications she suggested.

But that wasn’t important here.

Wouldn’t consoling your little sister in need be your foremost duty as a Onii-sama?

“That’s why there’s no need to worry. There’s nothing to worry about now.”

“Onii-sama…”

“You really should learn to depend on others every once in a while. After all, that’s what the term ‘family’ exists in the world for.

Woah.

I just said something really cool I think, I thought it was beyond me honestly.

So there I was, amazed at my sudden inspiration of quotes, and I felt a warm droplet fall onto my chest.

Wait.

Droplet?

“Au, auuu…”

Surely it belongs to no one but Maria on top of me.

“Eh- T, that’s, I don’t, why tears…”

Perhaps she herself wasn’t sure either. It would be more correct to say that she herself wasn’t sure of the emotion she was experiencing right now. Feigning ignorance, rather.

“I am strange, aren’t I? I must keep up a fitting dignity as Onii-sama’s sister… To be such a weak woman to show tears like this… Haguuu, uu…”

“Did you really just forget again, you silly!”

“W-what are you referring to?”

Struggling to keep her emotions from welling up inside her, Maria was shaking her shoulders and barely containing her cries from leaking out.

“Quote from blessed Onii-sama himself, first clause. Try to depend on others and not keep everything to yourself every once in a while.”

“Uu, auu… uu.”

“Second clause.  It’s the duty of a ‘family’ – as the only Onii-sama of the Blackhazel, me – to be dependable enough to be relied on, and pamper its members at times.”

For a guy like me, high-class dignity just didn’t seem to click with me in any way whatsoever.

I knew that.

The true face of the《Princess of Darkness》that reigned over in overpowering fear and awe; her true self as a mask-wearing, meek and innocent girl.

“Ah, au, auu…”

Her crystal tears, like small droplets of jeweled pearls were dripping endlessly. In other words, she was at her limit.

“So what if you cry your eyes out a little bit? No one’s going to make fun or chastise you for that here.”

“Onii-sama… Ahh, Onii-sama, Onii-sama…!”

Finally reaching her breaking point, Maria sunk her face down straight at my chest and started bawling.

I saw it for the first time.

For Maria to expose herself so open like this, and reveal how she was like this.

But what Maria needed was exactly this.

She didn’t need some souped-up darkness or vice or anything of the sort like that. It may not be fitting, but they always did say kindness beats strength; the situation here was a mere extension of that. Not that I would know though. I was in science major.

“I love you, Onii-sama…! Onii-sama, Onii-sama…!”

Wiping her tears on my chest, Maria really was the proverbial child, with the way she was letting out the misery she had been saving up for so long inside her.

With that, I moved my hand to pet her head, a crucial “Onii-sama certified pin point action” acknowledged all around the world.

Klank.

And there was that familiar metallic clank that ticked down the side of my head.

Oh right.

I had gotten so wrapped up in the situation here that I forgot just how serious of a problem I was engaged in before.

“Er, Maria?”

Maria, while she was busy engaged in ‘Maria’s sister-pamper-play-forever’, looked up from my chest and tilted her head in curiosity.

“Ern, I know that you’re currently immersed in your sentimental bonding and it’s a bad time to ask for something right now.”

“Hau…?”

“But maybe we can get rid of all these shackles that would give a late-night S&M video a run for its money?”

“That will not do.”

What returned was an unexpected rejection.

“Er, what?”

“I shall do my best to the best of my ability to be thoroughly pampered upon Onii-sama’s chest tonight.”

Er, well it wasn’t like I was going to pack up and leave right the instant I was freed or something like that.

Just when I opened my mouth to correct Maria's stance on something so plain like this, Maria cut across my word and sealed the deal.

“It is so. Onii-sama belongs to me now.”

“Er, err? No, hang on! I feel as if we’re straying from the highly reasonable and ethical route we just agreed to progress into!

“If your sister is happy with it, then is all not well?”

Please don’t nod your head like that and look like everything is according to the norm.

I could say that, but she wouldn’t understand anyway.

I could act cool and sophisticated all I want like I was the best brother in the world and I would have another lap to go.

No matter what kind of supernatural Maria was made out to be, no matter how fancy a -darkness adjective slapped before her name, it wouldn’t change a thing as to the truth of how much of a pampered in-your-face little sister Maria was.