"Damn it..." Kiriya muttered, staring at his hands, which still felt cold—as if the blood that had touched them hadn’t truly been washed away. Though the night had begun to calm and the mountain air brought a cool relief, inside, he still felt like he was burning.
He hated what he had done, even though his logic told him it was necessary. That action might have saved lives—or at least ended someone’s suffering—but in the end, it was still killing.
In his mind, the ethics and laws he had learned in his old world constantly clashed with the brutal reality of this new one. Back where he came from, a high school student like him would struggle with choosing a college major, not deciding whether someone should live or die.
To him, killing—even with justifiable reasons—left a moral scar that was hard to put into words. There was no honor in the choice, no badge of bravery or heroic applause... just silence, nausea, and guilt, heavy like stone.
Kiriya realized just how absurd this world they were trapped in really was. Isekai stories always sounded exciting when read in novels or watched in anime—battles, magic powers, a second chance at life. But reality offered a much darker version: suffering, death, and trauma that couldn’t be reset with a black screen and credit roll.
"It wasn’t supposed to be me," he whispered softly. His eyes turned to the star-filled sky, but not a single light above seemed to offer hope.
He was just a regular student—someone who should’ve been worrying about math tests or confessing to a crush behind the school. Not someone forced to decide whether a paralyzed woman deserved to live in agony... or die in peace.
But in this world, hesitation only created more victims. And no one was strong enough to carry all the consequences alone—but that’s exactly what Kiriya tried to do.
His slow steps back to camp were a quiet testimony to the weight that didn’t belong on his shoulders. But still, he walked—step by step—because there was no other choice.
Meanwhile, Haruno had lit a small fire to warm the rescued captives. Hana and Mori continued checking on their conditions, making sure no one was in shock or too severely injured. Silence hung over the group, as if everyone had silently agreed not to speak about what had happened inside the dungeon.
When Kiriya returned and sat down without a word, the tension grew thick. He simply stared into the flames, but everyone could tell his mind was somewhere else entirely. It was then that Mori, his face filled with hesitation, began explaining to the group what had occurred in the dungeon.
Hana, sitting nearby, clutched the hem of her shirt tightly. She looked like she wanted to deny the story, to say Mori had misunderstood—that there was no way Kiriya could’ve done something like that. But her lips trembled, and her mind couldn’t chase away the image of the lifeless woman’s body.
Mizuki, who had been silent the whole time, suddenly stood up and pointed at Kiriya, his voice exploding with fury. His eyes were bloodshot, his chest heaved, and his body tensed as if ready for a fight.
"Hey! What the hell’s wrong with you!?" he shouted, challenging.
Kiriya turned slowly and looked at Mizuki with dull but sharp eyes. "What do you mean?" he asked flatly, as if all of this was meaningless nonsense not worth answering.
"Look at this guy! Acting like he doesn’t get it! You just killed someone! A prisoner! A human being—just like us!" Mizuki yelled, his emotions spiraling out of control.
Kiriya only tilted his head slightly, his lips forming a single word. "And?"
That response hit Mizuki like a slap in the face. He gritted his teeth, fists clenched, and in a fraction of a second, stepped forward, ready to throw a punch.
"Y-You bastard!" he roared in fury. But before the blow could land, a large hand grabbed his shoulder. Goda stepped between them, his tall frame separating the two boys like a wall of steel.
"Stop it, Mizuki!" he barked, his voice deep and heavy—enough to halt anyone in their tracks.
"W-What the hell do you mean, Goda-san!? You’re siding with him!?" Mitsuki shouted, his voice nearly breaking from the rage and confusion boiling inside him. His emotions peaked, chest heaving as if trying to stop his world from collapsing.
Goda stood firm, unmoved between the two opposing forces. "No," he replied—short, but weighted like a hammer striking stone.
"Then what!?" Mitsuki growled through clenched teeth, nearly screaming in frustration. Kiriya’s words, his apathetic expression—everything cut deeper than any physical wound.
Just as the tension reached its breaking point again, Kiriya stood up. The firelight cast long shadows across his face, making him look like someone who had walked too far down the other side of humanity.
"So... what the hell do you all expect from me!?" he shouted, his voice laced with desperation and long-buried anger. "If you were in my place, what would you have done!? Huh!?"
Mitsuki tried to respond, still clinging to the moral ground he believed in. "We could’ve taken her with us... saved her..."
"Bullshit!" Kiriya cut him off sharply, making everyone flinch. His eyes blazed—not with hatred, but with a guilt that had festered and rotted inside him.
"You think someone that broken could ever go back to normal!? You’d just be prolonging her suffering! I saw her! I looked right into her eyes!" His voice trembled, but never wavered in resolve. "What I saw wasn’t a plea to live. It was a plea to end it."
He jabbed a finger at his own chest, his eyes glistening. "And you don’t know what it feels like... to look at someone who can’t even cry anymore. Just silent... like a broken doll that’s forgotten how to hope."
No one spoke. No one dared challenge his words.
"You think this world is fun!? Some fantasy dreamland!?" Kiriya swept his hand around at the rescued victims, still huddled and shaking like shadows. "Wake up, Mitsuki! All of you, wake the hell up!"
"We’re not heroes! We’re not the protagonists of some fairy tale! We’re just regular kids... dragged into hell without a choice!"
He stepped forward, standing face-to-face with Mitsuki, eyes sharp yet hollow.
"You wanna bring her to a church? Think they can erase all that pain? They can’t even guarantee our own survival! In the end, even if she lived... she’d still die. Slowly. From wounds you can’t even see."
Mitsuki lowered his head. Kiriya’s words hurt more than any punch ever could. The reality he’d tried to deny had finally slapped him in the face.
Kiriya took a deep breath, then looked up at the night sky. His voice softened—and because of that, it stung even more. "I know what I did was cruel. But cruel doesn’t always mean wrong. This world doesn’t give us the option to be good."
No one said a word after that. Even the crackling fire seemed quieter, as if it dared not disturb the suffocating silence.
In a corner of the campsite, Haruno gripped her cloak tightly. Tears streamed down her cheeks without a sound—not for Kiriya, but for the truth they could no longer ignore.
Hana, meanwhile, watched Kiriya’s back—the back of a boy forced to grow up far too fast in a world that refused to let him stay human.
And that night, they all realized something they hadn’t before: the line between right and wrong would never be clear again.
Kiriya stepped away once more, gazing up at the starry sky with a long exhale. "I’m sick of this..."
Days passed since the harrowing rescue. While everyone else was still trying to process what had happened in the dungeon, Kiriya made a decision—he left the party.
There was no heartfelt farewell, no hugs, no warm goodbyes. Just a short note left behind, and by the time the sun rose, he was gone. From that moment on, he vanished from the circle of classmates who still clung together.
For Kiriya, it was enough. He didn’t want to keep living among people he saw as hypocrites—those who could preach about morals and ideals only when they weren’t facing the horror head-on. For Kiriya, it was better to face hell alone than to survive in someone else’s illusion.
And yet, his heart never truly froze over. One thing kept him going—Ren Takamura.
Ren wasn’t just a classmate. He was like a brother—not by blood, but by time, trust, and trials. Back on Earth, Ren was always one step ahead, whether in smarts or composure under pressure.
Kiriya knew—if there was one person who could crack the twisted logic of this world and find a way home, it would be Ren. He never said it out loud, but everything Kiriya did now was an act of silent faith in his friend. He knew Ren wouldn’t give up—not like the others.
And that was enough. Enough to survive one more day. Enough to not drown in the guilt and despair gnawing at him every night when the nightmares came.
He remembered their last conversation, just before Ren left the group to adventure alone. Ren had spoken calmly, "If there’s a way home, I’ll find it. Just don’t die before I come get you." It might’ve sounded like a joke to the others—but not to Kiriya.
That sentence became a part of him, a mental anchor that kept his sanity intact. Even when he had to kill. Even when he walked through burnt villages or faced monsters straight out of human nightmares.
Every step he took now, every sword he drew, pointed toward one thing: staying alive until that day came. The day Ren would appear—maybe with that lazy grin still on his face—and tell him everything was going to be okay.