A breakdown, a confession, a desperate plan

Awayuki, you got something outside? This one is also empty.

Cheep. The outside is also clear, Awayuki replied telepathically. A second later, however, his voice resounded in Tamashi’s head again, sounding urgent.

I’ve located our possible target. She is standing atop the edge on the roof of a nearby building, possibly intending to jump off. Should I immobilize her?

Yes! Tamashi responded quickly, then followed up with some clarifications. I don’t care if she’s hurt, just keep her alive.

Roger, Awayuki affirmed, and immediately followed up with, Target immobilized. Please proceed to move to the target as I guide you.

Right, Tamashi said briefly, then went to the roof of the building he was currently in. After spotting Awayuki about a hundred meters away, he proceeded to jump from building to building, before finally landing on a rooftop beside Awayuki, where a human girl was helplessly lying on the ground, her legs pale and slightly bluish from Awayuki’s extreme cold.

Her overall appearance was rather petite, and with her smooth, straight light-brown hair, she almost resembled a doll. What was rather strange was the sleep mask she had covering her eyes, preventing her from seeing anything.

Walking up to her, Tamashi spoke with a cold and slightly hateful voice, causing the girl’s body to tremble—this time not from the cold.

“Is your name Uyumi Amane?”

“W-who are you?” she replied, dodging Tamashi’s question. “What have you done to my legs?”

Likewise, Tamashi also ignored her question, only repeating himself, his voice a bit louder.

“I asked you if your name is Uyumi Amane!”

The girl gulped, then answered cautiously: “Why do you want to know?”

“Because,” Tamashi spoke, quite irritated, “if you’re not, I’m just wasting my time with you. And if you don’t answer quickly, I might just throw you off of this building myself. You’ll die quickly if you’re lucky, but since this building is not that tall, you’ll suffer for at least half an hour before that if you don't die right away.”

“...I’m Uyumi Amane,” she admitted after a long silence, her voice meek and defeated.

“Great,” Tamashi sighed, “Awayuki, unfreeze her legs.”

Awayuki did as he was told without a word, and the girl could once again move her legs, albeit with difficulty.

As Tamashi watched her struggle to her feet, he instructed: “Remove that stupid thing on your face. I need you to actually see something if I want to help you.”

Uyumi just smirked, and replied sarcastically: “Ha! Today is not your lucky day.”

She then proceeded to remove her blindfold, showing her closed and slightly sunken eyelids. When she opened them, Tamashi stared at her in shock and disbelief.

“Ah, it's such a shame I can't see the expression you’re making right now. Guess we’re both unlucky today, huh?”

What was normally supposed to be protected by eyelids—that being eyes—was missing. Instead, there were gaping holes in her eye sockets, appearing quite disturbing to someone who hadn’t seen anything similar before—which Tamashi had. He was still shaken up, though, since his entire plan had—once again—gone down the drain.

Before Tamashi could even ask, Uyumi explained: “I got eye cancer when I was five years old. In order to keep me alive, both my eyes had to be removed, which, of course, made me as blind as a bat.”

They both went silent after that for a couple of seconds, before Tamashi suddenly burst out in mad laughter.

“HAHAHAHA, this is just so great. Hilarious, even. Let me tell you how lucky I’ve been in the past couple of weeks. Since you so kindly told me your life’s sob story.”

Tamashi dropped to the ground and leaned on the roof’s overhang. His right arm was once again grotesquely bulging, but this time, Tamashi completely ignored it.

“First, before the System even became available to everyone, the prison where a certain piece of shit was serving his sentence blew up, and he escaped. Therefore, I couldn’t even kill the bastard, and now I have no idea where he is. Then, during my first dungeon raid with my family, we actually get stuck there. Can you believe that? During my whole year of beta testing this stupid System, nothing remotely close to that had happened. After spending more than two weeks in that damn place, I went back to Tokyo to rescue you and your sister on Kengo’s request, but what do you know, multiple dungeon breaks occurred, even though that wasn’t supposed to happen until a dungeon remained uncleared for at least a year. That caused Tokyo, and probably the rest of Japan, to get run over by monsters before the humans even had a chance to level up.”

Pausing for a moment, Tamashi pulled a water bottle from his System inventory and took a big sip, then continued.

“And then today... First, I had to save Kengo from a damn Blind Hatred, which is a dungeon level three monster, by the way, so it shouldn’t even be here. But why am I even surprised at this point, right? Anyway, I end up getting infected, which causes a whole bunch of other problems. But you know, it should be fine, since I rolled the Sacred Surgeon spell. I can just get Kengo to cut the arm off, so I can grow a new one. All I would’ve had to do was find a fresh corpse to take the arm from.”

At the mention of intentionally cutting your own arm, then stealing one from a corpse to grow a new one made Uyumi shiver in horror, but Tamashi didn’t even notice.

“And then, when I thought that everything was finally over, you decide to escape to kill yourself. Just ridiculous. If it were up to me, I would have just left you here to rot, but that would make a mess of everything, so I sent Kengo and your sister away, deciding to look for you by myself. And when I do eventually find you, you turn out to be blind. Not only can you not chop my arm off, you probably can’t even use the fast travel spell. So, now, I guess we’re both screwed, since there’s no way I can get back to Kengo before the infection spreads too far into my body. What a great day.”

After Tamashi finally finished, it seemed as if a painful and heavy silence descended upon the entire city, maybe even the world.

What eventually broke that silence was Uyumi, who spoke carefully with a calm tone, trying not to further irritate Tamashi.

“Why can’t your friend Awayuki cut off your arm? Or why not do it yourself?”

“Because,” Tamashi started explaining, his voice more defeated than sarcastic now. “Despite being an angel, Awayuki’s physique stat is permanently stuck at one, as a way to balance how powerful he is. As for why I can’t do it myself, that’s simple. In order to remove this kind of infection, a person that bears no strong and justified emotions of hate toward the infected has to remove it with one clean and purposeful cut, using a weapon of a certain level and attributes. And since those are super expensive, I could only afford one—the one I have currently stashed in my inventory.”

“Oh...” Uyumi murmured.

The silence returned once again. Then, Awayuki’s worried voice resounded in Tamashi’s mind.

“Huh...” Tamashi thought, “that’s not a bad idea.”

He then turned his gaze toward Uyumi and asked: “When did you say you lost your eyesight?”

“When I was five...” Uyumi answered truthfully, a bit confused, and Tamashi continued questioning.

“Do you still somewhat remember what the world looks like?”

“A bit,” she replied, “Although it was a long time ago, some things are hard to forget.”

“Heh,” Tamashi scoffed, “good enough, I guess.”

He stood up and slowly walked over to Uyumi, then crouched down in front of her.

“Listen carefully,” Tamashi warned, “what I am about to do is probably not going to be pleasant. The only consolation I can give you is that it’ll be much, much worse for me.”