#035. The Unquenched Spark (5)
Aaaaah──!!
The eerie scream originating from the infirmary grew closer at a rapid pace, accompanied by furious footsteps.
“What, what’s going on?”
“Oh my god!”
The children scrambled back, clearing the line of sight. Cedric came running, his face twisted in rage.
“H-he must’ve woken up in the infirmary!”
“In his hand! A-a scalpel!”
Raaaaay───!!
The venomous shout sent shivers down everyone’s spines.
In Cedric’s hand was a scalpel, likely taken from the infirmary. The children backed away further, leaving no one between Cedric and Ray.
“R-Ray-nim. We’ll stop him─.”
“It’s fine. Stay back.”
Ray motioned for the approaching Cedric to step back.
Thud thud thud thud thud!
In the suffocating silence, Cedric’s hysterical footsteps drew closer. Everyone anxiously alternated their gazes between Ray and Cedric.
It was clear to everyone that Cedric was about to charge and swing the blade. But Ray stood there defenselessly.
“I-is something else happening?”
“He’s not unarmed—he has a knife! It’s too dangerous! We should all stop him…”
“No. Ray-nim told us to stay back.”
Now Cedric was right in front of them. The children fidgeted nervously, but Ray remained motionless.
“Diiieee──!!”
Cedric swung the scalpel toward Ray’s face as soon as he reached him.
Screaaam──!
Cedric’s gang rushed out in panic.
‘Damn it… It’s too late to stop him.’
‘Why… Why is he just standing there?’
From the gang’s perspective, Cedric was unpredictable. But so was Ray.
“Huh…?”
The gang stopped in their tracks. The threatening scalpel halted right in front of Ray’s face, unable to move any further.
“You… I’ll kill you… I’ll kill you…”
No one had stopped him. Ray hadn’t used any magic either. Cedric stopped himself.
His hand holding the scalpel trembled violently as he spat out fragmented sentences.
“Weren’t you going to slash my face with this? Go ahead and do it.”
Ray grabbed Cedric’s wrist and pulled it toward himself. Startled, Cedric shook off Ray’s hand and stumbled backward.
“You…! You…!”
Cedric glared at Ray, his lips trembling for a moment, but no words came out. Then, in an instant, he flipped the scalpel and tried to stab his own throat.
Swiish──!
But he didn’t succeed.
Thud!
Ray moved much faster, closing the distance and snatching his wrist.
“Ugh…!”
As Ray tightened his grip, Cedric let out a groan and dropped the scalpel.
Clang!
Ray immediately kicked the scalpel far away. Meanwhile, Cedric clutched his wrist and stepped back with a fearful expression. Ray followed him.
Crash!
Cedric tripped and fell backward onto his buttocks. Ray looked down at him.
The king of Sector 49, who once ruled with overwhelming violence and terrorized the streets, was no longer here. All that remained was a small-framed boy who had shed all his venom and returned to his fragile self.
“…….”
Ray had known from the start that Cedric wouldn’t be able to swing the scalpel all the way through.
“Get up.”
From the moment he had charged from afar, there hadn’t been a single drop of red mana in Cedric's vessel.
“We have a lot to talk about.”
Ray extended his hand toward Cedric, who sat slumped on the ground.
Philip’s office.
A table surrounded by three boys.
“Sorry. My bad. I should have cleared all sharp objects from the infirmary.”
Ray shook his head at Philip’s self-reproach.
“It’s fine. No one got hurt. I didn’t get hurt either. The hotel kids didn’t get hurt. Cedric didn’t get hurt either,” said Ray, glancing briefly at Cedric sitting in the middle seat.
Cedric had a dazed expression, as if his soul had left his body.
“……”
“……”
“……”
A brief silence.
Nevertheless, the stage for conversation had been set.
As Philip hesitated over what to say next, he carefully spoke to Cedric.
“I heard about the situation. You tried to end your life. Was it really serious? Right?”
A moment of silence.
Cedric parted his lips.
“No. It was real.”
“Why…?”
“Because I lost the duel. Now everyone will think I’m weak. They’ll despise and mock me.”
Without a hint of hesitation, Cedric spat the words out, leaving Philip visibly shocked. He gathered himself quickly and spoke up.
“No. That’s not true. You can’t win every time. Sometimes you lose too. If anything, it’s not that you’re weak but that Ray is too strong—”
“What do you know?!”
Bang!
Cedric slammed the table and stood up, breathing heavily.
Mana of all colors surged violently into his vessel before spilling out again and again—a sign of emotional instability.
But the problem wasn’t just that.
‘...The speed at which the mana is leaking is abnormally fast.’
Mana addiction came to mind first. Could it be a side effect of prolonged exposure to red mana?
Ray recalled the conversation he’d had with Veronica about the red gemstone.
“What’s this gem? Hmm... This is like a charging stone. A magical tool that automatically refines and stores ambient mana,” Veronica had added.
Depending on the quality of the charging stone, high-quality mana could be stored, but there was a fundamental limit.
Eventually, it couldn’t achieve the perfect refinement like the Ring’s mana, so there was still a risk of mana addiction.
Ray felt a strong curiosity. Looking at Cedric now, it seemed that even the Ring’s mana, with its high efficiency, was still an imperfect refinement with noticeable side effects.
...Then just how pure was the Ring’s mana?
He thought that asking about the method of creating the Ring should be the first priority the next time he visited the bookstore.
Thud.
Cedric slumped down into his seat, and a low, listless voice escaped from his bowed head.
“I’m done... It’s over now. Why did you save me? Why did you save me? Why didn’t you let me burn to death?”
It was another sudden emotional change.
Philip reached out toward Cedric but hesitated in the air, unable to offer any comfort. Instead, he pulled his hand back and said, “You’re my friend.”
Cedric jerked his head up. This time, he spoke in an angry voice.
“Friend? Are you mocking me? I tried to kill you. Not only that, but I also beat up the hotel kids one by one and kicked them out of the streets. You know that, don’t you? And you call me a friend?”
Cedric’s voice was heated. He looked like he wanted to rush at Philip and throw a punch right then. But there was no red mana in his vessel.
‘Is he pretending to be angry?’
Ray watched without intervening. Even Philip hesitated for a moment but did not back down.
“I think there must have been a reason. You wouldn’t do something like that without a reason.”
“Philip. Don’t talk nonsense.”
They argued back and forth. In Cedric’s vessel, every emotion except anger raged violently before spilling out again and again.
“Even if the same situation happens again, my choice won’t change. We’ve been friends for almost our entire lives.”
“Don’t talk nonsense!”
Cedric looked suffering. Every time Philip spoke, he grabbed his head and recoiled. The emotions in his vessel also ran away from Philip to the farthest corner possible.
“I think there must be a reason why you hated us. Tell me that first.”
“Nonsense...”
The storm of emotions seemed fierce at first, but it was clearly losing momentum.
“Cedric. Please. We’re friends.”
“......”
Finally, the storm subsided. There were only a few colors of mana left in his vessel, making it clear to see what emotions were still present: guilt, self-loathing, regret, and sorrow.
At some point, the conversation stopped. Cedric stared blankly into space, as if he’d forgotten how to speak. Both Philip and Ray silently waited.
How much time passed?
The mana of various colors slowly merged into one emotion.
“I’m sorry.”
Finally, Cedric opened his mouth. The completed emotion was sadness.
A single hot tear streamed down the boy’s cheek.
Cedric cried for a long time. Like a broken faucet with its lock shattered, he cried uncontrollably in Philip’s arms, tears streaming endlessly.
“I’m sorry, Philip. I-I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Don’t cry. Don’t cry,” said Philip, his eyes reddening before he could no longer hold back his tears.
The main emotion reflected in the two boys’ vessels was a pale pink sadness.
“…….”
Ray knew this feeling too. It was impossible not to know. Sadness, along with anger, left the deepest scars on one’s heart.
When confronting the deaths of Niles and the bridge children, the youth had faced the greatest loss and sorrow in his life so far.
‘I can understand.’
Why Philip and Cedric were crying. He himself had once been unable to control his sorrow and shed tears.
Because of the shock at that time, the youth’s heart bore traces of various emotions besides sadness and anger. At other times, he might have touched the traces of emotions before him and reminisced about those memories and feelings.
But this time, the youth did not do so.
‘Sadness won’t help.’
Sadness was an emotion that made people collapse into depression and despair. He felt that if he recalled the feeling of sadness, his will would weaken.
It was something that should never happen to him, who had to complete the goal of revenge. The youth thought so. Until he reached his goal, he did not have the right to feel sadness.
That is why, while Ray understood Philip and Cedric’s sorrow in his mind, he did not empathize with it in his heart.
How much time passed?
Philip and Cedric separated from each other’s embrace. Philip’s eyes were swollen, while Cedric looked somewhat dazed but relieved.
Cedric began to slowly tell his story in a tired voice.
“I didn’t like myself. I was too weak. Why am I so small? Why am I so weak? Why was I born like this? There wasn’t a single day I didn’t think about it.”
He could not bear being a complete weakling on the streets. After the hotel was established, life improved significantly, but the seething resentment in his heart did not lessen at all.
“Just because I’m part of the hotel, I can do jobs freely on other gangs’ streets, right? In the end, I felt like I was crawling to hand my money over to the strong ones.”
Even still, he could not completely escape exposure to violence. In the relationships with other gangs, the hotel was in a completely subordinate position. Since the system had not yet been fully established in the early days of the contract, disputes arose much more frequently than now.
In the end, the dissatisfaction Cedric felt could only be resolved by becoming stronger himself.
“I trained every day. I gained muscles. My strength increased too. I countlessly imagined myself fighting other gangs in my head.”
Finally, he felt ready.
“Pretty comfortable, right? Since we can do jobs in our area. How about we talk over here for a bit?”
On the way back to the hotel after a job, he was caught by Jaffer’s gang. Normally, he would have run away right then, but this time, he could not contain his excitement. It was an opportunity to test the results of all his sweat-drenched training.
“Sure, let’s talk,” he said confidently, following them into the alleyway.
But he was so completely beaten up that all the money he made that day was taken away from him.
“You made quite a bit! Thanks! We’ll ask again next time!”
All those muscles he’d built. All those countless image trainings. In front of weight class differences and numbers, they were completely meaningless. Cedric collapsed on the floor, covered in blood, sobbing until late at night when everyone was asleep, returning quietly back home alone.
The hotel was quiet. Moonlight seeped through the broken windows, and soft snores drifted from between the endless rows of beds. Cedric clenched his fists. He gritted his teeth until they felt like they’d shatter.
How could they sleep with such peaceful faces? How could they not resent a life of having their money stolen and being beaten? He couldn’t suppress his disgust.
The children gathered at the hotel were all weaklings from the streets, sharing similar traits: at best average builds for their age, weak strength, scrawny bodies, timid personalities. Cedric knew he couldn’t escape this classification either.
Mirrors reflecting his own weakness surrounded him everywhere. He wanted to shatter those mirrors.
“Ah.”
Cedric, who had been glaring at the children with venomous eyes, suddenly realized something.
“I…”
His lips parted as if to speak.
Ray leaned in, listening. The thought occurred to him that understanding others’ emotions might be the key to expanding his own emotional range.
