Failed Possession Chapter-83

## Ch-83.

—

As the elevator slowly descended, I stood side by side with Elena.

“First period is PE today, right?”

Elena suddenly spoke. She idly smoothed the hem of her reasonably short school skirt with her fingertips and grumbled.

“I seriously hate days when PE is first period. Mr. Bakered doesn’t cut girls any slack. Why does he always make us run laps first?”

Mr. Bakered, the PE teacher, was infamous among students for being uncannily good at catching fake illnesses.

But I—
I like PE. I even like Mr. Bakered.

Did I always like PE? I don’t know. I… can’t quite remember.

But the “me” right now likes it. Probably because PE is the subject I’m best at.

“You’re coming together again today?”

Haryeong sunbae was waiting on the first floor. She was a year above us but always spoke politely to everyone around her—an odd person. I couldn’t clearly remember why exactly, but… Elena, Haryeong sunbae, and I always moved together.

We went to and from school together, met during breaks, ate lunch together, visited the convenience store together…

“Yuri, why is your expression like that?”

“See? It’s not just me. Yuri, you’re weird today.”

Under their steady gazes, I forced a smile.

“Maybe I’m just tired.”

“You’re not sick, are you?”

“It’s the perfect excuse to rest at home. Are you really going to school?”

Despite their concern, I nodded.

I wanted to go. At least once… I wanted to see the school.

—

—

“Hi, Elena.”

When we boarded the bus at the stop near our apartment, someone greeted her. It was Lacy sunbae, who was in the same science research club as Elena.

“There’s a seat here. Want to sit?”

“No, it’s okay.”

After politely declining, Elena quickly took another empty seat and motioned to me.

“Are you telling me to stand?”

“There are other seats.”

Her cheeks flushed faintly as she answered, hugging her bag and hurriedly pulling out her phone—clearly unwilling to endure more teasing from Haryeong sunbae.

I pulled out my phone too. It had been vibrating for a while. As expected, it was Estor.

“Estor?”

“Uh… he says he’s already in the classroom.”

“He looks carefree, but he’s actually really diligent. Has he ever been late?”

I couldn’t answer.

The word “ever” felt unbearably foreign. My head throbbed again. My chest was still burning. I ignored the heat.

I tapped back to the home screen. A photo appeared—Elena, Haryeong sunbae, Estor, and me together.

“You’re still using that as your wallpaper?”

“You shouldn’t look at other people’s phones without permission.”

“I—I wasn’t trying to look! I just saw it!”

Elena hurriedly defended herself, but I barely heard her.

I was staring at the photo.

When was it taken?

Except for Haryeong sunbae, we were all smiling brightly. The background was a famous amusement park. We wore ridiculous headbands. Even Haryeong, expressionless as usual, held a giant balloon. She wasn’t smiling, but she was clearly enjoying herself.

“Summer’s coming.”

Elena murmured.

“Next time, let’s go to the beach together.”

“Are you planning to wear a bikini?”

“W-what are you talking about?”

“If Elena wears a bikini, I shall also wear one.”

“I’m not wearing one! No way! I’ll just wear a T-shirt over it!”

Trying to keep her voice down on the bus, Elena glanced around, embarrassed.

“I may not see a bikini, but I would still like to go to the sea,” Haryeong sunbae said.

I barely managed to nod.

Looking at the photo hurt. I locked the screen. A family photo appeared.

Bzzz.

My phone vibrated. Not Estor—just a game notification.

> [Behold how thin the hide of the beast that has filled its belly with others’ lives truly is.]
> [Lightning descending from the heavens rends the world.]
> [★★★ Magic Dealer, Heavenly Thunder Orca Dercia descends in Seronis.]

“Are you going to pull?”

Elena asked excitedly.

“They’ve been advertising her like crazy. She sounds broken.”

“You play that game too?”

“You were playing it so seriously, I tried it a little.”

“I don’t like pay-to-win games. If you don’t spend money, you’re bound to be weaker.”

“Still, they say control and strategy matter.”

“How much strategy can really matter in a mobile gacha game?”

Throb.

My head hurt. My chest burned. And something else—my throat felt tight. As if something invisible were strangling me.

> [Next stop: Lutran.]

“Let’s get off.”

Many students got off here; there was no need to press the bell. More than half the bus wore the same uniform as us.

After walking a bit, the school gates came into view.

“See you later.”

“Yes.”

“You’re awfully quiet today, Yuri. Should you go home instead?”

“I’m… fine.”

My throat was tight, but I forced the words out.

Haryeong sunbae tilted her head but went upstairs toward the second-year classrooms.

“Are you really okay?”

“Yeah.”

I’m not.

But I said I was.

I had come this far. I didn’t want to turn back.

—

—

 

“Still coming together today?”

“If that’s the case, just date already!”

Students in the hallway teased us. Not all of them—some smiled and waved at me.

“Don’t they ever get tired? Why do they keep saying the same thing?”

Elena grumbled, cheeks slightly red. She adjusted her hairpin and hurried into the classroom.

I—

didn’t know where my classroom was.

So I followed her.

The door slid open.

“You’re here?”

From the back row, Estor—wearing just uniform pants and a short-sleeved shirt—looked up from his phone and grinned.

“Why aren’t you coming in?”

He raised his phone screen. Even from afar, I could see it—Seronis was open.

“What? Are you going to ask Yuri for help again?”

“I’ve been playing since dawn and can’t clear this region. Do you know how many times I refilled stamina?”

Elena shook her head.

“What’s wrong?”

She turned back toward me. Estor blinked and stood up.

“Yuri, your face looks weird. Did something happen?”

It wasn’t just them. Other classmates looked at me with concern.

“Should we call a teacher?”

“Let’s take him to the infirmary.”

Listening to them—

“Ha.”

A laugh slipped out.

I knew already.

This was a dream.

My parents died in an accident long ago. I have no family.

There is no father watching TV in the morning. No mother placing fresh stew on the table. No warm conversation. No one washing dishes for me.

A dog? A tiny Pomeranian? I’ve never raised one.

The “home” I know is a small studio apartment where I live alone. My bed is a cheap mattress. My computer is a low-spec machine worth nothing secondhand.

—Childhood friend?

“Ha.”

Ridiculous.

I’ve never had one.

No pretty girl who waits for me every morning. No one who blushes at my reactions. No one who treasures a hairpin I once gave her and wears it every day.

Everyone here is fake.

No close female senior. No friend asking when I’ll arrive. No trip to an amusement park with friends. No promise to go to the sea someday.

I’ve never been good at PE. Never liked a PE teacher. No one greeted me first in hallways. No one worried when I looked sick.

This world is fake. A sweet dream.

A happy life I’ve never had.

In this dream, I’m not myself.

My name isn’t Lee Yuri.

I am—

“Yuri?”

“Why are you like that?”

I didn’t answer.

I clutched my burning chest.

“Elena.”

She spoke.

“Come in. I told you earlier—let’s go to the sea next time.”

Her expression slowly changed.

It became the face I knew too well. The one I wished I could forget.

“If you don’t come in, we won’t get to go to the sea. Do you… want that?”

She looked like she might cry.

“This is…”

A fucked-up dream.

It presses on my emotions openly, holding hostage the happiness I wanted.

“It’s a dream.”

I know why my chest burns.

“That bastard made it.”

The man with the torn-mouth mask.

This is his trick.

“Why?”

A voice.

The one I know best.

The classroom froze.

Elena, my “childhood friend.” Estor, the perfect friend. Classmates frozen in worry.

In an indistinct seat—not front, not back, not by the window—

Someone slowly lifted his head.

“Why won’t you come in?”

The distant relatives who let me live with them weren’t family—more like housemates.

I lost my parents at eleven. I lived with them. Independence after high school was the condition.

They weren’t saints who embraced me warmly. They made it clear: grow up fast and leave.

So I did housework. Laundry. Cleaning. Dishes. No praise. No abuse either. They didn’t steal my insurance money.

Now I’m grateful—but they weren’t family.

After they conceived a child, their gazes grew colder.

I never asked for anything.

Never for cram school. Never for favorite food. Never for a family trip.

My uniform was bought secondhand and oversized from the start.

I was growing. It might not fit later. I didn’t want to ask.

I was afraid.

“A happy world, isn’t it?”

Faded white uniform. Frayed hems. Buttons sewn clumsily.

The only crisp part was the name tag.

[Lee Su-hyeok]

Messy-haired Lee Su-hyeok glared at me.

“Here, you have a real family.”

I know.

The parents I saw this morning looked just like the family photo I kept from when I was ten.

“Elena who left you after your lie was exposed is now your real childhood friend. Haryeong, who burdened you with heavy motives and revenge, now treats you kindly for no reason.”

Lee Su-hyeok spoke.

“You confessed you were a possessor because you didn’t want to repeat your mistake with Elena. But it wasn’t entirely your will. If Haryeong hadn’t pushed you, you would’ve hidden it from Estor.”

His lips twisted.

“You’re still afraid of Estor’s true thoughts. What if his words were lies? What if he despises you for being a possessor? Your talent isn’t yours. It’s because you possessed.”

All true.

Yesterday, I didn’t push further because of fear.

“In this world, you have nothing to fear.”

Lee Su-hyeok’s voice trembled.

“I’ve never gone to an amusement park with friends. Never to school together. Never promised to go to the sea.”

I was invisible in class.

“Oh, that kid who always sleeps in the back?”

That was me.

“I even went to Jeju alone at twenty. Took photos no one would see. Just to fill empty memories.”

“Here, everyone loves you. Everything you wanted is here. Why won’t you come in?”

“…Because.”

I barely spoke.

“It’s fake.”

“Fake?”

Lee Su-hyeok’s eyes twisted.

“What’s so great about my real self? Reality? I was nothing. Weak to the strong, strong to the weak. A coward who only flamed online.”

“Different now? You’re still fake! You took someone else’s body!”

He grabbed my shoulders.

“Is that your ‘real’?”

This dream mixes all my happiness.

“Maybe it’s fake.”

I smiled.

“But this is pathetic as hell.”

This is the life I never had.

Lee Su-hyeok’s life was lonely.

There were no joyful memories.

“I don’t want to wake up from this dream.”

Lee Su-hyeok muttered.

“I don’t want to go back to reality. That reality is no different from something fake to me anyway. I’m not Yuri. No matter how many times I say my name is ‘Yuri,’ I’m still, fuck, just a possessor.”

Letting go of my shoulders, Lee Su-hyeok staggered back.

“Yeah, so—so… let’s do this instead. I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to die. So let’s just… not.”

The first day I became Yuri.

I killed someone.

I had no choice. If I hadn’t, I would have died. Ever since I began living as Yuri, the strongest thing I had yearned for was simple—

*I don’t want to die.*

“With my abilities now, I’d be welcomed anywhere. Do I really have to do dangerous things? Do I have to fight cultists and kill an evil god? If I go to some quiet city, couldn’t I just live comfortably and happily without trying so hard?”

Now, I could go anywhere. To the Namgung Clan. To the Orsia family. Anywhere that wanted me.

“Or better yet—how about this? I become a cultist too. Join the Chaos Cult. Tell that masked bastard who made this dream who I am. They call me the evil god’s apostle, don’t they? Since those guys already follow me, if I say I’m joining, they’d welcome me.”

Was the Lee Su-hyeok speaking now the evil god’s manipulation shaking my mind?

Or were these the things buried in my subconscious, the truths I had always turned away from?

This dream itself was the evil god’s trick, so perhaps calling forth Lee Su-hyeok was his doing as well—

But I know Lee Su-hyeok.

That is something inside me.

My anxiety. My fear. My pettiness.

I am petty. Pathetic. A coward.

“You’re right.”

That’s the kind of person Lee Su-hyeok is. No matter how much I deny it, that past doesn’t change. If I hadn’t possessed into Yuri’s body, Lee Su-hyeok would have lived like that forever.

Struggling desperately because he didn’t want to die, and once he gained enough strength to say *this is enough*—he might have settled down just as he said moments ago.

Maybe… maybe he would have become a cultist.

But that isn’t who I am now.

“If I never had something before, I can have it from now on. If I’ve been a coward, pathetic, and spineless until now, then I can change.”

A guy rotten to the core, who never even asked for possession, ended up possessing someone else’s body.

Even if the talent isn’t mine by birth, I gained something I’m good at. I gained people I can call friends. I gained people who expect something of me. I gained things I want to do.

There are things I must take responsibility for.

The decision—I made it long ago.

When I realized that living as Yuri was happier than living as the empty, solitary Lee Su-hyeok.

When my identity as a possessor was first exposed.

When a bond I desperately wanted to protect ended in ruin.

I decided I would kill the evil god.

There is a flame inside me.

Because I don’t want to run. Because I don’t want to look away. I must shove that cowardly, pathetic Lee Su-hyeok into that flame.

He won’t burn cleanly. He’ll leave remnants. But I will keep burning those remnants from now on.

So I am fire.

I have to be fire.

“I hate myself.”

Lee Su-hyeok said, voice trembling.

“Me too.”

I agreed.

—Fwoosh.

Scarlet flames poured out from within me, growing larger and larger.

“Do we really have to do this?”

Lee Su-hyeok asked from within the spreading blaze.

“I’m not confident I can do it. Responsibility? Resolve? I just want something easy. I don’t want to go back to reality. I don’t want to return to that empty studio apartment. I don’t want to fight. I’m scared of dying.”

“Of course you are. But I also don’t want to die while dreaming some pathetic fantasy.”

I answered.

“So stop being pathetic and get the hell out.”

Lee Su-hyeok vanished into the flames.

Fire spread across the world I had longed for. I stood alone in the blazing hallway, watching the world turn to ash.

From the words he left behind, one remained, pressing heavily against my chest:

*I don’t want to go back to reality.*

“For me too.”

For Lee Su-hyeok, reality would be that studio apartment on Earth.

Because I don’t want to return there—

I pulled the phone from my pocket.

Photos I would never see again filled the screen. I swiped past the lock screen bearing a family photo I had never taken and looked at a group photo from an amusement park I had never visited.

“Sloppy.”

I thought it was a well-made happy dream. But there weren’t that many photos in the gallery.

Was the so-called evil god really that lacking in imagination?

I let out a dry laugh and opened the camera app.

Reflected on the screen was Lee Su-hyeok wearing Yuri’s skin.

When I had looked in the mirror earlier, the face had felt alien.

Now, it wasn’t quite as unfamiliar.

—

“….”

When I opened my eyes, my body wouldn’t move properly.

Yuri lay still for a moment before muttering blankly,

“I get everything else, but why was Namgung Jin a Pomeranian?”

If it had truly been a nightmare, wouldn’t he have appeared as a hellhound instead?

“What is this?”

Tree-vine-like tendrils were binding my body. Creak, crack. I forced my inner energy and managed to tear them apart.

“My neck…”

As I rose, I felt something strange around my neck and hurriedly felt it with my hand.

The Veil of Deception that had been embedded there since Aldor. It had never caused discomfort before, but now it protruded enough to be felt.

“So that’s why my throat felt tight in the dream.”

It had been constricting my neck. Had it automatically resisted that vile mental attack?

“That function didn’t exist in the game…”

After touching it a few times, the bulging veil slid back into place.

“First…”

I looked around.

The scenery was different. I had lost consciousness inside the exhibition hall, but now—

Everything was jumbled together.

Debris floated in midair. Walls fused together grotesquely.

It looked like the aftermath of a failed spatial spell.

The ground was stretched unnaturally, dark vines spread like spiderwebs, and gaps hung awkwardly between shattered walls. Stretched, fused, broken—the scenery tangled like a labyrinth.

At the end of one vine, someone was bound.

I approached in alarm.

It was Haryeong.

Her face was pale, eyes tightly shut—wearing a faint smile.

Like me, she must be dreaming a happiness she had never known.

After a brief hesitation, I grabbed her shoulder.

“Haryeong.”

I tried shaking her awake. But no matter how many times I shook her, she wouldn’t wake.

“Fire…”

I channeled the inner energy of the Evil-Quelling Heavenly Principle Technique into the vines.

—Fwoosh!

Red aura flared like flames, reducing the vines to ash.

“…Mm.”

Her eyelids fluttered open.

“Ah…”

Her unfocused gaze trembled, growing moist.

“Ugh.”

As awareness returned, she flinched and looked at me. Her eyes were bloodshot, tears welling—but before they could fall, she quickly turned away and sat up.

“Wh-what is this?”

I hadn’t expected that reaction. Instead of answering, I offered her my hand. After roughly wiping her eyes, she coughed lightly and took it.

“I had… a strange dream.”

“Me too.”

I was curious what kind of dream had made her cry, but I wasn’t tactless enough to ask.

“This is… um…”

Still shaken, she hesitated before continuing.

“A mental… attack.”

“Yes.”

“Yuri… when did you wake up?”

“Just now.”

“Did someone wake you?”

“I woke up on my own.”

She stared at me in surprise.

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

Even I couldn’t explain it clearly.

Kicking aside the vine remnants, I looked up.

“We should probably find a way out first.”

Looking up revealed only floating debris. The cultist responsible was nowhere in sight. I picked up a fragment and threw it upward, but it struck something invisible and fell back down.

“Doesn’t look like we can go up…”

Even extending my senses revealed nothing.

“Wait.”

I focused again.

Mana was *solidified*. A completely different force clung to it.

“What is this?”

I tried casting magic, but the hardened mana wouldn’t move under my soul power.

The meaning was simple.

Most mages wouldn’t be able to use magic properly in this environment.

“Was that the intention?”

I’d never heard of such magic. A unique spell? No—it must be a miracle fueled by divine power.

Biting my lip, I moved forward. Haryeong followed.

“Yuri.”

After navigating the twisted walls for a while, she spoke.

“Look.”

I had already seen it.

“…Ha.”

Below a wall, half-buried in vines, lay Lacy.

Fabian, who had been with her, was nowhere to be seen.

“What will you do?” Haryeong asked.

“We can’t just leave her.”

Ordinary mages couldn’t function here, but Lacy wasn’t ordinary. And we weren’t complete strangers.

“Indeed, Yuri. Are you planning to put Lacy Yuzuha in your debt by saving her?”

“I hadn’t thought that far.”

“Then consider it a valuable piece of advice and be grateful.”

Moments ago she’d been teary-eyed and flustered, but now she was back to her usual self.