Track 2 - The Reverse Scale

Classes had just ended, and I was preparing to leave the classroom.

One of the people near me asked another, “By the way, did you get an invitation to the Nishizono garden party too?”

The one who was asked glanced at me and shushed them. “Knock it off.”

Then, they looked at me, trying to gauge whether I was offended.

A week had passed since school started. By now, even the dullest student had learned never to lump me and Renga Nishizono together.

……With the sole exception of Renga Nishizono himself.

“...Tch.”

I clicked my tongue unconsciously.

A faintly glossy Western-style envelope had been slipped inside my shoe locker

The rose wax seal belonged to the Nishizono family.

The face of Reika-sama, my mother's trusted confidante, flashed through my mind, and I suddenly couldn't bring myself to throw it out.

Just as I reluctantly stuffed it into my bag…

“Y-You took it…! That’s an invite to my partie!”

Renga Nishizono’s boisterous voice drifted over.

“You did it, Renga-sama!” someone said, flattering him.

It seemed he'd been keeping an eye on me along with an entourage of dim-witted lackeys who were blinded by his family’s status.

He cleared his throat with an “ahem,” and puffed out his chest.

“I-I wouldn’t mind if you wanted to come as my best friend...!”

Irritation stirred in my chest. Catching a glimpse below his face from the corner of my eye, I saw the fake Kiba trembling with pointlessly clenched fists, nails digging so hard into his palms that they had turned white.

His forced acting gave me goosebumps, and I immediately looked away.

What are you playing at? What did Kiba tell you to do that’s making you act like this towards me?

I stifled the urge to press him for an answer.

A nauseating sense of revulsion. From the corner of my mind, the dream I’d seen only yesterday resurfaced.

Where I had killed Kiba with my own two hands...

I put a stop to that train of thought, quickly put on my shoes, and left the school building.

“Hey, wait!”

The impostor was panicking behind me, but I ignored him and left.

But he was fast, just like Kiba. Before I knew it, he'd caught up to me.

“We’re best friends, aren’t we!? Why’re you ignoring me? I-If... If I did something to make you mad... Um, right! If we’re fighting or something right now...I apologize, okay?!”

“Yeah, that should be good...” the fake Kiba muttered.

What a grand performance.

As I left the main gate and was about to head home, the impostor clung to my arm.

“Hey, w-wait up!”

The moment I instinctively turned around, I saw that his hands were still trembling/trembling the same as before.

Seeing that blatantly fake display of his made a muddy unease rise up in my chest.

Just then, a black schoolbag flashed from the corner of my vision.

“Wah...!”

Renga Nishizono cried out pathetically as he landed on his backside.

Standing between us was a small elementary school student, who had pushed the impostor away with a light palm strike.

“You’re a nuisance.”

The boy said it so plainly that the impostor, still slumped on the ground, couldn’t even respond at first.

“W-Who are you? A kid...? I was just... Um, I just wanted to walk home with Liguang...”

As he tried to get back on his feet, the child closed the distance and easily swept his legs out from under him.

Renga Nishizono was sent tumbling down again with a cry.

I spoke up as the child moved to straddle him.

“Sojun. That’s enough.”

At the sound of his name, the child looked up and obeyed my order.

“We’re going home.”

Sojun replied expressionlessly, “Yes.”

My family had recently taken in and begun raising this child. He had a natural talent for martial arts.

The moment I first met him at the training hall, I had an epiphany and decided to make him my right-hand man in this lifetime.

I told my family that he was like a companion to me, and thus I’ve taken to bringing him along everywhere.

As we walked toward the corner where the car was waiting to pick us up, Sojun stayed exactly one step behind me, matching my pace perfectly.

Behind us, the stunned impostor was being told something by his entourage, but I naturally ignored them.

“Is it alright not to finish chasing the mutt away?”

“That was enough. Don’t cause any injuries. I don’t want to start a feud with the Nishizono family.”

When I told him there was no need for my family to know we were on bad terms, Sojun nodded.

He was quick on the uptake.

Next time he’d likely use a more discreet method of “chasing the mutt away.”

I patted the top of Sojun’s head, who was small for his age.

“But you did well today.”

If Sojun hadn’t stepped in, I would have likely...

Resorted to violence myself.

Sojun squinted his eyes as I patted him, as if he were ticklish.

He had the air of a wild animal who wasn’t quite used to interacting with humans.

“I’ll grow taller so I can stand by your side, Liguang-sama.”

I smiled lightly at his quiet words.

I knew Sojun was self-conscious about being shorter than other children his age, and that he often drank milk and hung from the pull-up bars.

“No need to rush.”

Take your time.

...After all, I’ve already chosen you.

I’ve decided to entangle you in my fate in this lifetime.

Therefore, I will ensure you live a long, full life.

For that is the duty imposed upon me.

“How are you holding up, Liguang-kun? You’ve been taking care of him through the night, haven’t you?”

I was greeted by those words by a female staff member I was familiar with at the animal shelter I visited over the weekend.

She was older than my mother, and I owed her a debt of gratitude for teaching me many things since I started rescuing rabbits.

“I’m fine.”

As I replied, I continued filling out the paperwork to rent an oxygen capsule cage.

While I listened to the instructions and took notes on how to use it, my little sister who was standing beside me, Linxing, clung onto my waist.

“Onii-chan, after we borrow this house, will Shacha get all better?”

I patted her head and replied, “Yeah.”

For a few seconds, the staff member looked at me with a hint of pity in her eyes.

...It’s alright. I’m used to death.

Would she have felt relieved if I had said that?

Linxing carefully held the cage for Shacha as if it was the most precious thing in the world.

After my little sister found out that the cage would help the sickly rabbit, her heart filled with hope, and she insisted on carrying it herself.

“Shacha’s gonna get better!” she said in a still-lisping voice.

On the way home, bathed in the spring sunlight, Linxing’s hair shimmered softly.

Her toddler’s steps were unsteady, yet her eyes harbored so much hope, as if they were overflowing with life...

I remember countless lifetimes where I’ve watched time and time again as lives smaller than my own have grown up beside me.

And time and time again, I’ve watched as those lives were reaped from the world...

CW: Graphic descriptions of violence

“I’m gonna go show Shacha his new house!”

As soon as we stepped through the entrance, Linxing shouted those words and raced off toward my room where the rabbit was.

“Linxing, wash your hands and gargle,” I called out to her, but she paid me no attention.

I sighed as my sister skipped away. I followed after washing my hands and gargling myself.

On the way, I grabbed a pack of wet wipes to clean her hands.

Up until that point, everything had been completely normal.

It wasn’t until I saw the door to my room that I felt something unsettling in the air.

The door was slightly ajar, and voices were leaking out from inside.

One of them was high-pitched and cheerful—Linxing’s.

The other was...

I pushed the door open.

For a moment, I was paralyzed by the sight that met my eyes.

“Renga Nishizono” was crouching in front of Shacha’s cage, talking to him.

“That’s good, I heard getting a new house to stay in will make you feel a lot better.”

Shacha was curled up silently in front of him.

Linxing stood beside him without a hint of caution and said with a smile, “It’s been a long time, Renga-oniichan!”

I felt the presence of someone behind me, before hearing the voice of my older sister, Xingbing.

“Oh, Liguang. I let Renga into your room. He said there’s a party or something tomorrow and he came all this way to bring us something too...”

At that moment, Renga Nishizono looked at me.

“Hey, Liguang—”

Kiba. He’d disappeared into the storm the last time I saw him.

For a split second, his cruel smirk from back then overlapped with the impostor’s face.

Renga Nishizono stood up.

A horrific vision flashed in my mind.

With the very foot he was standing on, he was going to stomp Shacha to death.

Without any effort, he would stab a knife into Linxing’s heart as she smiled beside him.

He would strike my unsuspecting older sister in the stomach, break her neck, and kill her—

It happened in an instant.

The second that chilling vision swept through my mind, I lunged at him, pinning him against the wall and wrenching his arms behind his back.

“It hurts!” I heard a voice cry out.

I saw my sisters’ faces frozen in shock.

The painful cries gradually grew hoarse, turning into desperate pleas for forgiveness...

But I could hardly hear them.

A roaring storm was raging inside my head.

You killed them, didn’t you? You killed the ones I love. Over and over and over again.

And you’ll do it again this time. I know you will.

“I’m sorry, Liguang... Sorry, I-I’m sorry...”

A voice trying to hold back its tears.

My older sister threw her arms around my shoulders, grabbing my arms and shaking me.

“Liguang! Let go of him, you idiot!”

I couldn’t hear him, I couldn’t hear her, I couldn’t hear anything at all.

All I could think was that I needed to kill him.

I had to kill him.

Before he killed everything I held dear.

I should kill him right here, right now. I tightened my grip on his arms, pouring every ounce of my strength in.

I was going to shatter his—Renga Nishizono’s—bones once more.