Becoming the Terminally-Ill Villain Who Torments His Disciples - Chapter 76.1
Everything around was pitch black.
Cielo, who had been blankly staring at the ground, slowly raised his hand.
His fingers and toes all moved just fine, and yet—strangely—there wasn’t a single sound around him.
It was as if… like that moment when he, as Lee Eunwoo, had died.
“Ah…”
So, this was death.
In the end, had he failed to escape the death foretold in the novel and died just like this?
Just as tears welled in his eyes from the surge of sorrow—
“It’s a bit early to cry. You’re not dead yet.”
At the voice coming from behind, his entire body tensed.
That voice—sounded so very much like his own.
When he slowly turned around, he saw a blue glow shimmering in the darkness.
“Y-you’re…”
“Could you not make such a dazed expression with my face?”
At the lightly amused voice, Cielo’s eyes widened.
That glowing figure was unmistakably the true owner of this body—the real “Cielo.”
“Why, how… are you here…?”
“I’ve been here from the beginning. It’s your consciousness that fell to this place.”
The bluish glow pointed upward briefly, then looked back at him.
When Cielo lifted his gaze, he saw Ryan and Oscar holding his physical body tightly in their arms.
“This is the subconscious. It’s also the place where my awareness lingered.”
At the real Cielo’s words, Cielo swallowed dryly without realizing.
That meant the real Cielo had been here all along, alone, for all these years.
And surely, he had been watching—watching as someone else moved his body as if it were their own.
As Cielo opened and closed his mouth wordlessly, the glow flickered, brightening and dimming softly.
It almost felt… like he was comforting him.
“I suppose I should start by saying thank you. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have been able to fix anything. Just like the ‘Cielo’ in the story you read.”
Cielo’s eyes widened. Could it be… he had even shared his memories?
Too startled to speak, he hesitated, and the glow continued kindly.
When Eli had struck him hard, the real Cielo had expected to fall into a prolonged coma.
When his head hit the wall, he felt a deep pain in his chest—around the heart.
“That pain must have been something only a ‘sacrifice’ would feel.”
And so, he thought it would be better to hide deeper within.
If waking up meant only feeling the world’s contempt and his body’s pain, then he figured it was better to fall into a sleep so deep that he could feel nothing at all.
And at that moment, another soul entered Cielo’s body.
“I was surprised at first, but I saw it as a good opportunity.”
At the time, the real Cielo no longer had the strength to keep living in the “present.”
So whenever the new Cielo met others, he quietly shared bits of his memories.
He didn’t want the other to live like a fool, knowing nothing.
In the process, the real Cielo began to glimpse fragments of Lee Eunwoo’s memories too.
“Sometimes like a dream… other times, as if I were Lee Eunwoo myself.”
And naturally, he came to understand the content of the novel Lee Eunwoo had read.
“At first, I didn’t believe it. No, it was too hard to accept.”
“That this world was inside a novel?”
“No. That I—unable to endure it all—ended up destroying everything.”
Before he lost control of his body, Cielo had already realized how sensitively he absorbed everything in the world.
But he hadn’t known that he had been hurting Oscar all along.
“But thanks to you, I understood. That what was written in the novel really was my future.”
“…”
“Because of you, so much has changed.”
Had he not realized it, the real Cielo would have gone on hurting those around him.
And in the end, he would’ve died alone, in isolation.
At his words, Cielo replied with a bitter smile.
“But… I don’t think the current situation is all that different.”
“…”
“No matter how it happens… in the end, dying is dying.”
If he’d known it would come to this, he wouldn’t have said those things to Ryan.
He regretted asking him to stay by his side in the moment of death.
That would surely wound Ryan deeply.
Back then, he hadn’t expected to become so close with him.
Hadn’t known he would come to love him this much.
And so, he’d spoken the words too easily.
“To Oscar too… I shouldn’t have said those things.”
He shouldn’t have told him he loved him.
Now that he was leaving like this, the fact that he had left behind feelings in their hearts was unbearable.
Making them suffer the grief of those left behind.
Having no choice but to disappear like this—
It was all too painful.
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