The Zero

'Me...?' His words left me more bewildered than the pressure weighing on me.

The pale figure stood in front of me without moving. Then he spoke. "Hey. Don't worry. You won't be hurt. Not yet."

'This can't get any worse. I am destined to hear all this....?'

"Stay away from me. Your speaking voice is awful!"

The figure didn't seem bothered by my hatred. A small smile appeared on his lips. "First rule. Don't call me that."

He looked at me. "I'm Zero. Call me Zero."

Zero clapped his hands together. At once, the pressure around me disappeared.

I slowly pushed myself up, pressing my hands against the white space beneath me as I got back on my feet, checking them one after the other.

This name rings a bell, but I have never heard it before in my entire life.

Is he the next trial? It's like some never-ending serial. One thing after another, something keeps happening to me. "What the hell are you?"

Zero tilted his head, as if he was actually thinking about my question.

"A beginning. A mistake. A doorway."

"Some people call us Arcana. But that's not what we are."

Far away in the fog, the unfinished statues suddenly changed their positions.

I kept my eyes on Zero. 'Then the one who wrote those rules on that parchment... was he an Arcana too?'

"You guys really enjoy people's suffering, don't you? Taunting them like this."

"And why do you keep doing something so foolish? Now you've dragged me here!"

Zero blinked once, almost amused. "I dragged you here?"

"Then who did?"

Zero answered right away. "You did. You summoned yourself here."

I narrowed my eyes. "That doesn't make any sense."

A small smile appeared on Zero's face again. "It doesn't need to make sense to you. It just needs to be true."

There was a short pause. "Truth doesn't wait for someone to understand it."

"You're not confused, Zekai. You just don't like the answer. That's all."

The word summoned sounded stupid to me. I had never planned any of this. But there was no doubt that the ritual had forcibly dragged me here. 'If this is true, then I need to be careful with every word I say from now on.'

But Zero's words made it sound like there was some purpose behind all of this. Like it had all been planned.

"This is your mind," Zero said calmly. "Whatever you're fighting right now... you're the one who pulled yourself into it."

"How?" I asked, unable to hide my surprise. The ritual's rules appeared behind my eyelids. Drops of blood. The rules written on the parchment.

'...I'm a fucking disaster in my own life.'

The realization came late. And the more I understood it, the more irritated I became. "But you were the one who used those same rules to try to kill me. And now you're saying I summoned myself here?!"

"I never gave you any rules," Zero replied with a mocking tone.

Every instinct in my body screamed the same thing. Something about this was fundamentally wrong, from the beginning. "No. I didn't believe those damn rules in the first place."

Zero suddenly appeared right in front of my face and stared straight into my eyes. "But you followed them perfectly."

Before I could respond, he disappeared and returned to his old position, floating in the air.

"You're always like that."

"First, you reject the whole premise. Then you act on it anyway."

Zero's smile became even smaller. "It wasn't belief that drove you, Zekai. It was curiosity."

"Pure reckless curiosity."

I couldn't completely deny it. 'Then who wrote those rules?'

He doesn't have to answer this. Grandpa Marcus. He had taken them from his coat. None of this had made sense from the beginning.

Zero studied every small movement on my face. "Is that answer enough for you?"

No.

Everything Zero said was Greek to me. I slowly let out a breath. "There was no big reason."

"I just wanted to poke that Anomaly a little and see what would happen."

Zero clasped his hands behind his back and started walking around me.

I didn't turn my body. Instead, I followed him from the corner of my eye. 'If this bastard wants to walk around me, let him.'

"So..." Zero asked casually, as if he were asking a normal question.

"What's your wish?"

A simple question. But there was a trap hidden inside it. A wish? No one has ever really asked me that in my life.'

Most of my life had been about reacting. Take the hit and learn from it. Whatever shape the day took, just survive it.

Wanting something felt like a luxury I couldn't afford. "I want this to end."

"Get me out of here." There was no hesitation in my answer.

"Oh, what an ugly little wish." Zero chuckled. "There is no way back. Only death can open this contract."

"A contract, huh? Is that what you're telling me? Look at that, I'm still alive." But fear had never really been my problem. My problem was the opposite. I accepted bad outcomes far too easily.

Zero looked at me. "You still don't understand, Zekai." His voice was calm.

"You're already dead."

I'm not going to be scared by something like this. I've already been through worse, and I'm not buying this bullshit. "I'm not interested in listening to your revolting stories."

Zero immediately snapped his fingers.

A screen appeared in front of us.

On it, I saw the exact moment when I offered my blood to The Fool card. A few seconds later, my body exploded into pieces, and blood splattered all over the screen.

My legs moved backward before I even realized it. "No. It never happened!"

Another second-screen appeared. This time, I saw myself from behind.

A black figure stood right behind me. Its hands were pitch black as they covered my eyes.

Then I watched in horror as those hands dug into my face and ripped my eyes out. My body jerked.

The figure grabbed my head and twisted it violently. A sickening crack echoed through the screen.

I couldn’t look away. “No. No. I can’t watch this anymore.”

I recoiled in horror. My legs wouldn’t listen to me. They gave out on their own, and I dropped to my knees. "I don't believe any of these."

But before I could even recover, another screen appeared directly in front of my eyes.

"What's next?"

✦ End of Chapter 7 — The Zero ✦