I’m Sick of the Kind Protagonist, so I Might as Well Just Die - Chapter 75

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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#75
Perenustus blinked, his gaze sweeping across the surroundings. There were no walls. No ceiling. Yet it wasn’t the outside either. Merely a soft, luminous mist enveloped all directions.
‘The temperature is quite pleasant and moderate.’
Standing in a space neither too warm nor too cool, I began my habitual assessment. The moment I found the silence slightly grating, the natural chirping of birds drifted through. At last, the artificially crafted yet flawlessly ideal comfortable space was complete.
‘To think I would find myself sitting in the Counseling Center I created.’
Perenustus furrowed his brow. The distant memory surfaced of designing this space to minimize stimuli and maximize the psychological stability of the students. Back then, I had considered it a rather meticulous design, but now that I was actually inside, its perfection felt deeply unpleasant.
‘Have the students truly harbored no complaints about the Counseling Room all this time? Surely a complaint or two should have surfaced.’
While I entertained a thought that would have made Bilateia Fernichiosa Venisike shake her head and roll her eyes, a sentence materialized in the empty air.
STEP 1. Be honest about the greatest loss you have experienced recently.
After reading that sentence roughly three times over, I closed my eyes briefly before opening them and answering.
“Silpi.”
It was a reasonably honest answer, yet the space offered no response. As I attempted to discern the cause, I simply appended a more detailed explanation.
“The sacred Silverdragoon—my alter ego and the symbol of the world’s transformation. Watching that existence gradually consumed by buggy data and crumble was quite a shock.”
Be honest.
Be honest.
Be honest.
The same phrase glimmered three times within the sentence. Perenustus forgot to manage his expression, his mouth drooping downward.
‘What was I thinking, installing even this function?’
A lie-detection mechanism that would re-emphasize the directive whenever dishonesty was detected. A rational function designed to prevent students from evading their emotions during counseling. But now that the same function applied to me, it felt extraordinarily awkward, embarrassing, and unpleasant. After an unnecessary clearing of my throat and a glance around the empty surroundings, I spoke with greater honesty.
“Witnessing an excessively large number of deaths in the Palace Square seems to have imposed a certain psychological burden. It was my first time directly entering the Worlds, after all….”
Be honest.
Be honest.
Be honest.
Perenustus glared at the glimmering sentence and clicked his tongue.
“My own death. Being directly murdered by an angry mob was quite a novel experience. And to be singled out by a child before dying—”
Beeeeeep—!
A sharp warning tone flooded the space.
Perenustus narrowed his eyes and waited for the alarm to subside. I had designed this warning tone as well—to activate whenever manifest avoidance was detected during counseling. At the time, I had deemed it a necessary stimulus mechanism, but in this moment, it was unbearably irritating.
As the warning ceased, the space fell silent once more. The words “Be honest” had doubled in size and now gleamed brightly.
‘Should I just destroy it all?’
A flash of irritation seized me as I gazed down at my own hands and considered the matter seriously. The only way to escape this space was to complete the counseling stages. Abandoning it midway was impossible. The design reflected research findings that counseling’s efficacy was maximized only when completed from beginning to end.
‘But that applies only to the students.’
Though the space forbade it, I was the creator of this world. I could delete and modify whatever irritated me—a creator with such authority.
‘Yet here I am, unable to even manage the thing that bothers me most, and I call myself a creator.’
The surge of frustration was brief; my resolve shifted in an instant. At the end of a long, protracted sigh, I confessed.
“My words and actions contributed to Aurelia’s death. Facing the corpse of a woman who died because of me, right before my eyes… it was a shock.”
Only then did the glimmer of “Be honest” cease. And the sentence changed.
STEP 2. Confront the moment of that loss.
Close your eyes for a moment and return to that instant. When you first became aware of that loss, what did you feel?
Perenustus, who had been staring at the sentence without realizing it, reluctantly closed his eyes.
“I didn’t witness it directly. It was my first time experiencing what it means for your eyes to squeeze shut.”
He had not committed Aurelia’s final moments to memory through sight alone—only through sound. The thin whisper of a severed neck, the spray of liquid bursting forth, the voices of people swallowing tears, groaning, and crying out in anguish.
“When you first became aware of loss, what did you feel?”
Perenustus chose his words with deliberate care, seeking to articulate his emotions with precision.
“At first, I couldn’t comprehend it. Aurelia’s death was something that had repeated countless times. Both she and I understood that dying in the Worlds doesn’t equate to death in reality. When you die, you return to the Office. That’s the rule. There was no reason I shouldn’t have understood the situation.”
The space waited patiently for his next words.
“What meaning could this death possibly have? That was my first thought. It was the image Leonas Hagpethar Yuletanis desired, something Bilateia Fernichiosa Venisike supported, and something Aurelia carried out. A death necessary in the context of bringing about transformation in the Worlds… But.”
He paused, his throat bobbing heavily.
“I think perhaps I simply didn’t want to accept it. Regardless of how valuable that decision was…”
I wished she hadn’t died.
He couldn’t bring himself to voice those words, only biting his lips instead. After drawing Aurelia into his own rebellion, it was something he had no right to speak aloud.
“What infuriated me was how casually Aurelia chose death. The moment she grasped what role she needed to play, she decided to die without hesitation. As naturally as eating when hungry, the instant she thought her own death was the best option, she simply… died.”
Perenustus gazed at his fingertips.
“That enraged me.”
He had been staring at the sentence that gleamed as if finally relieved, but now he shook his head.
“No. It’s not so much rage as… regret.”
The space brightened ever so slightly, as if congratulating him for reaching the correct answer.
Perenustus noticed the change and furrowed his brow. This function too was something he had designed—a mechanism where the space’s temperature and brightness shifted subtly as one approached the core emotion, allowing the subject to feel slightly more reassured. Now even that delicate refinement grated on him.
“The word ‘regret’ doesn’t actually seem like a very accurate expression. How should I put it… I disliked that Aurelia perceived herself as worthless, as someone who could simply vanish without consequence. That might be a more precise way to phrase it. From the very beginning.”
Perenustus mulled over his own increasingly hesitant words.
‘From the very beginning.’
He belatedly recognized that those words had come from his own mouth. From the very beginning—meaning from the moment he first saw Aurelia, from when he witnessed that nameless dummy data dying in the Worlds, he had felt regret.
‘Why did I.’
He couldn’t pinpoint exactly what to call this sensation. It was no longer possible to disguise it as researcher’s curiosity, interest in errors, or fascination with variables that could transform this world.
He gazed at ‘being honest’ faintly receding in the distance within the sentence, and finally voiced the emotion he had been struggling to deny.
“In conclusion, I think I became afraid.”
The space brightened again, ever so slightly.
“That in the next world, and the world after that, Aurelia will die the same way again. That whenever she judges something to be the best option, she’ll make the same choice. That I have no way to prevent it. And that she’s someone who would unhesitatingly throw away her own life even in reality—all of that terrifies me.”
A creator afraid of losing a bug—it was the sort of thing that would make anyone else die of shame. As Perenustus clicked his tongue bitterly, the sentence changed.
STEP 3. Moving Forward.
The fear you feel is a natural emotion. Now that you’ve recognized it, shall we find a way to live alongside that fear?
“Living alongside it, you say…”
He mulled over the word ‘alongside’ seriously before saying something unexpected.
“Every time Aurelia dies, she returns to the Office. I wait there watching, and then I look down upon Aurelia when she returns to reality. But this time, when I held Aurelia’s corpse directly…”
Perenustus raised his own hand. Despite wearing gloves on hands so immaculate not a speck of dust clung to them, he could still feel the sensation of Aurelia’s blood staining them.
“I grew to hate waiting.”
While Aurelia did something in the Worlds, he would remain in the Office, watching through projection screens and waiting. Even knowing Aurelia would return when she died, watching that moment of death on a screen felt unbearably unjust.
The space brightened the most yet, as if praising his newfound honesty. Perenustus squinted upward at the space, now as bright as midday sunlight.
STEP 4. Summarizing.
Please summarize what you discovered in today’s counseling session in a single sentence.
“You discovered something…?”
I had created the counseling system without much thought, yet I had crafted it quite well. Oscillating uncertainly between these two truths, I let out a soft chuckle and confessed.
“That I’m remarkably dishonest with myself.”
Today’s counseling session has concluded. Thank you for your time.
Your next appointment will be scheduled separately.
The light faded, and the familiar scent of my office returned. I savored the warmth of the teacup, the inky aroma of documents, the ticking of the clock—all those intimate sensations—before slowly lifting my eyelids. For someone twisted strangely by an absurd glitch, my mood was surprisingly pleasant.
Irritatingly so.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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