Addicted To The Violence

“Pain… I don’t like pain… well, at least not when it’s inflicted on me. But giving it to others is pleasant, especially when it’s you. I don’t want to kill you now, or else it’d be too easy of a release for you,” Hayate said as he punched me in the face.

I wasn’t hurt, far from it, and it seemed Hayate wasn’t aware of my curse, which I found strange. But just to give him what he wanted, I faked the pain. Thanks to Naoto, I knew once again what pain felt like, so it became easier to reproduce the sensations and expressions I needed to make him believe it was real.

My face twisted in agony, a tear slid down my cheek, and I coughed as if the blow had caught me so off guard that I swallowed my saliva the wrong way. He didn’t seem satisfied at all, and his anger only grew as he continued punching me harder and everywhere he could. He wanted blood and wouldn’t stop until he got it.

The more I faked the pain, the angrier he became. Was my acting really that bad? Or was the adrenaline simply driving further into rage? Either way, he put more and more force into his blows, yet I still felt nothing—even my blood refused to come out. His punches probably weren’t strong enough to make me bleed. Maybe that was exactly what frustrated him so much. Not seeing me bleed must have made him feel powerless.

“Why aren’t you bleeding already?! Do I seriously have to use this to make you bleed like a pig?!” He held the screwdriver up right before my eyes, his gaze bloodshot from tiny veins bursting under the pressure of his anger. “I’ll take your silence as a yes then.”

He gripped the screwdriver tightly and drove it straight into my stomach, making blood spurt out and knocking the breath from my lungs.

“Ryota! Please, Hayate, stop this… please… let Ryota go…” Atsuko cried.

“Shut up! I don’t need to hear your crying, Atsuko!”

She struggled harder and harder against the ropes, driven by rage and despair at seeing me like this. Her fingers had begun to bleed from fighting so relentlessly, but adrenaline prevented her from feeling any pain. She only wanted to reach me.

“I… felt that a little…” I whispered while trying to catch my breath. “Well, I’m not lying. I did feel that one a bit, but nothing unbearable.”

“Fuck you, Ryota. What did you do?!”

He yanked the screwdriver back out and prepared to strike again when the wound closed before his eyes, healing rapidly. Terror and fury twisted across his face.

“What… what’s happening?! What kind of power lets you do that?! How can you heal like this? I sent Leo to observe you so I’d know if you had some hidden weapon, so why the hell didn’t he tell me about this? What did you do, Ryota? You knew, didn’t you? That’s it? Fuck you! You hear me?! Fuck you, Ryota!”

He then proceeded to stab me a dozen more times, each wound healing just as quickly as the last. I couldn't help letting out a nervous laugh. It only fueled his rage further, but when he tried to drive the screwdriver in my eye, the doll on his shoulder yanked his hair hard enough to stop him.

“What do you want, doll? If I… if I keep hitting again and again, there’ll come a point where he can’t heal anymore…”

“That won’t happen. You saw what he can do,” it replied.

“But you knew too! So why didn’t you tell me?!”

“It seems I forgot.”

“How can you forget something like that?!”

“I had other things to deal with. Besides, you still got most of what you wanted, so find your own solution and deal with it.”

“So none of you knew about my curse…” I whispered, confused by the confirmation.

“What did you say?” Hayate asked sharply.

“Nothing…” I replied calmly.

Hayate stepped back slightly and slipped the screwdriver back into his pocket before wiping the sweat from his face.

“Doll… call the Vindicator. Ryota must’ve done something, and if I want to kill him quickly, it’s the only thing capable of doing it…”

“You really want me to? You don’t want the pride of finding your own way to kill him?”

“That is my way of killing him! Don’t act like you know everything! Just call it!”

The doll fell silent, and so did Hayate. The room was disturbed only by Atsuko’s sobs. After a few seconds, something passed through the wall—a blue ghost I now knew all too well.

“So Vindicator is its name?” I asked, not expecting an answer.

I locked eyes with the creature, but there was no way for me to defend myself against something like that. The Vindicator was strange, terrifying, but unlike before, it didn’t seem fully alive this time, as it didn’t move. Maybe it was waiting for an order to attack, or perhaps something else held it back.

Hayate clapped his hands together in satisfaction and stepped behind Atsuko’s chair before grabbing her hand. The contact alone made her stop crying as she stared at him with disgust and incomprehension radiating from her eyes.

“Before we move on to the main course, why not do something for you, Ryota? I’ll give you your wife for the afterlife. You should be happy to be together in death!” he said cheerfully.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to do that…”

“Yes, I am. A curse is easy to break for the one who cast it,” he laughed. “I’ll break her curse and kill her once and for all. No more reincarnation. No more changing appearances.”

“Why?! She doesn’t deserve this! You already made me suffer enough through what you did to her! I’m the one you want, so leave her out of this!”

“You know, I chose this specific curse because I wanted you to suffer and experience what those ghosts forced me to endure in my nightmares. But I wanted you to live through the real thing. Oh, the sweet priest who gave it to me understood my pain perfectly and handed it over willingly…” He sighed with satisfaction. “But enough of that. I don’t need to force myself to keep her alive anymore, not when she could someday find a way to bring you back to life or kill me. Ending it now is simply better.”

“Don’t do this… please, Hayate,” I begged, my voice breaking in despair.

Atsuko was paralyzed with fear, her lips trembling and tears running down her cheeks, but all desire to escape had vanished. It was as if the instinct itself had been ripped out of her body.

I didn’t know what to do anymore. Curse this world, curse this healing, and curse the powers I didn’t have to save her. I was weak, and my spirit was just as broken.

Desperate, I looked at the Vindicator, like a final attempt to find something I didn’t know. But I had no idea what I triggered in that ghost, because the moment my eyes met its single eye, it moved closer to me.

It placed one massive hand on my shoulder, and as I closed my eyes waiting for death, swallowing hard as if it might be my last breath, the Vindicator didn’t attack.

Slowly, I opened my eyes again and stared into its giant eye. A mouth formed beneath it, opening and closing as though it were trying to speak. At first nothing came out, but I focused harder, I could finally distinguish words.

“Wife… pain… understand… hit… revenge… go…” it growled in a gravelly voice.

“You’re… compassionate…?” I whispered, confused.

It didn’t answer. Instead, with both of its massive and muscular arms, it tore apart the ropes binding me to the wall. I fell to the ground, frozen by incomprehension for a second before jolting back up and charging toward Hayate.

He stood there confused and stunned, incapable of doing anything except watching me run at him. His arms dropped to his sides, releasing Atsuko’s hand. But the moment he tried to step back, I lunged forward, closed the remaining distance, and slammed a powerful right hook into his face.

“Your plans are all going to fall apart, Hayate.”