Became a Failed Experimental Subject Novel - Chapter 43

“Though I said you could eat until you’re full, you have to follow the rules.”

The moment my dream of unlimited refills came true, Yoo Hye-na set a few conditions in exchange for providing me meals.

First, do not take food too quickly so that others can eat.
Second, if a villain appears while you’re eating, protect the citizens first and fight.
Lastly, do not encourage people to cheer with strange words like Yarikkiri.

As long as I followed those, I could eat as much as I wanted, whenever I wanted.

“You can keep to that, right?”
“Hmm.”

I accepted the conditions, ate my fill, and then yawned contentedly. I never thought the lost ideal would return… This place was a sacred ground blessed with unlimited refills, and Yoo Hye-na was the leader protecting this land. As promised, I didn’t leave the park after finishing my meal and looked for a place to nap as drowsiness overwhelmed me. The weather was good, so I lay down in the sandpit of the playground in a corner of the park and closed my eyes. The warmly heated sand was nature’s electric blanket.

“Ahahaha! Ahahahaha!”
“Wooah! Ahahaha!”

As I slept, children gathered around me and played, covering my body with sand. I listened to the murmurs of the residents as the children’s small hands patted me.

“It’s a big problem with villains running wild these days.”
“They say that the villain boss, Goo Seoryong or whatever, still hasn’t been caught? Hasn’t she already escaped to another city?”
“Doesn’t that Black Cat guy catch villains?”
“I really don’t like that guy, he’s a monster after all, isn’t he? If we leave him alone, who knows when he’ll destroy our homes.”
“Still, he eats a lot of monsters, right? Like the spiders that appear on windowsills in the summer, I guess.”

Talk about me, monsters and villains, feelings about living in the present. The voices of the residents, heard while lying in the sandpit, tickled my ears like news broadcasts heard in a restaurant.
Clang, clang, clang, clang… The sound of spoons tapping against dishes echoed widely.

“Starlight has a lot of troubles, taking care of the poor, catching monsters, looking after public sentiment.”
“She seems to work more than the mayor, though, the government is providing welfare and such.”
“At least in this Sector 4, what Starlight provides is better than the government. This food also comes from Starlight’s pocket, doesn’t it?”
“That Starlight is also a government Esper. And, has Starlight ever been here? She just sends her younger sister, the foundation director.”
“Hey, don’t eat, you! Do you think sending a younger sister is easy?”

Hmm, is that so… this free meal is provided with Starlight’s money, and the foundation director sent here is Starlight’s younger sister. I nodded blankly, then opened my eyes and glanced towards Yoo Hye-na. That woman, was she Starlight’s younger sister? Now that I heard it, their faces were quite similar. The scent… Starlight always smells like baked eggs, but that woman is full of the smell of boiled beef and savory beef fat. Both smell delicious, so in that regard, they’re the same. I see, I see… Starlight’s younger sister….

Thinking that, I yawned and warned,

“Take your hands off.”
“Oh, you knew?”

As the sound waves spread unnaturally wide, I felt the presence of Goo Seoryong’s ability. Just before her finger touched my neck, Goo Seoryong stopped her hand and raised both hands in a gesture of surrender. Next to her, the children blinked, looking at Goo Seoryong.

“It’s a pretty unnie!”
“Unnie, where are you from?”
“When did you come? Have you eaten? If you’re hungry, eat! It’s delicious!”
“Oh? These babies have better eyes than some cats, don’t they?”

I glanced over and saw Goo Seoryong snorting in annoyance and stroking the children’s heads. I had already felt that the children were excluded when the confusion ability spread, so I looked around at the residents who couldn’t perceive Goo Seoryong and said,

“You didn’t use your ability on the children.”
“Of course not? If little kids like these get hit with a confusion ability, it’s bad for their brains.”
“That’s true.”

The sensory confusion ability doesn’t create illusions in reality, but rather affects the brains of living beings exposed to the ability. If children, whose brains are still soft, were exposed, it could cause various side effects, big or small.

“And, if I touched a child, it’s obvious what our darling would do, so would I touch them? Our darling isn’t as soft as Starlight, you know?”
“Is that the only reason?”
“Hehehe, only that? They’re test subjects, you know?”

Goo Seoryong chuckled at the shared understanding of being fellow test subjects. All test subjects were orphans who had been sent to orphanages and then sold to research facilities. Therefore, they didn’t touch children. It wasn’t a promise or anything; it was just an intuition they had after realizing they had become monsters, based on the subtle vibrations they felt from each other.

“I really hate this. The monster that ruined four years of my life is just leisurely napping in the sandpit. And in that short time, she’s become the Cerberus guarding my last card.”
“Are you talking about Yoo Hye-na?”
“Oh, you were lying down but listening to everything people were saying.”

Yoo Hye-na was Starlight’s younger sister. Goo Seoryong appeared here to take Yoo Hye-na hostage. Crouching, Goo Seoryong rested her chin on her hand as the laughing children pulled her hair.

“If I just had one more year, W City would be in my hands. I’d already started working on the mayor, and if the plan went accordingly, Starlight had a good chance… but some cat ruined everything~”
“You were unlucky.”
“Ha, if only that b*tch was in my hands, Starlight wouldn’t dare to recklessly attack… This time I have experience, and in just one year I could restore my nest to its original state. I came here with great determination, knowing that she was Starlight’s Achilles’ heel… but that cat is truly useless, ah~ ah, so annoying.”
“Give up.”
“Right, give up, give up. I’m a smart woman, I don’t fight battles I can’t win.”
“Wow! So high!”
“Unnie’s boobies are big!”
“Oh, look at you, kid? You’ll be a villain when you grow up, won’t you?”

Above Goo Seoryong’s shrugging shoulders, a child, who had climbed up using Goo Seoryong’s head as a rope, shouted. Goo Seoryong grabbed the child’s waist and put her down, but another child immediately climbed onto Goo Seoryong’s back. Among them, Goo Seoryong detached a boy who was clinging and climbing, grabbing her chest with his small hands, then looked down at me and said,

“So? Have you become completely Starlight’s dog, no, cat?”
“I am not a cat.”
“Whatever, why are you taking Starlight’s side so much? Espers are like our natural enemies, aren’t they? What, are you planning to be friendly with Espers and become a monster Esper?”
“I don’t do things like being an Esper.”
“Darling, you know that what you do is no different from what Espers do, right?”
“Is that so?”

My situation seems different from that of an Esper who gets criticized despite working hard every day, yet still has to keep going. I just eat what I want and do what I want.

“It’s not exactly like that, is it? But why do you help humans? Help Espers?”
“Because I want to.”
“That’s a truly monstrous and excellent reason…”
“Why are you like that?”

Why are you a monster, yet living among humans, imitating humans, and trying to rise above them? To my question, which held many meanings, Goo Seoryong returned a monstrous answer.

“Because this way is much more efficient. They say women aren’t hunted, but gathered, right? If you build a proper nest, you don’t even have to go hunting; there’ll be plenty of food.”
“Is that all?”

As I pressed her, sensing a subtle scent of lies, Goo Seoryong chuckled and continued.

“There are other things too. I want to do well, I want to be beautiful, I want to succeed, I want a good man to beg me to have his children—isn’t that every woman’s dream? All of these things can be achieved if I make my nest splendid.”
“I see.”

This time, she was sincere. Goo Seoryong sighed with regret.

“So, in the end, you’re going to keep taking Starlight’s side, right? Because you want to?”
“Hmm.”
“Then you and I are enemies, aren’t we? I want to kill that b*tch.”
“Do you have a grudge?”
“No? I just want to eat her, she looks delicious, doesn’t she? Such a strong Esper… If I eat her, then I’ll be stronger than you, won’t I?”
“If you wanted to eat so badly, why didn’t you go full monster?”

Goo Seoryong is a monster. Transforming completely into a monster, not just into a modified human form that ambiguously binds the body and extracts only what is needed, is stronger. However, Goo Seoryong never fully transformed into a monster.

“I said I didn’t like monster form because it’s ugly.”
“At least if you went full monster, you’d have a minimal chance of winning, wouldn’t you?”
“I knew that even in monster form, I wouldn’t be able to do much damage to that monstrous btch, so I only planned operations involving mental attacks. Because when humans are mentally pushed, cracks appear.”
“Did cracks appear?”
“No? Ha, that btch… She just wouldn’t kill some people, then her personality would obviously be shaken from that point.”
“If Starlight’s mental state is shaken, will the situation change?”
“Hmph, it won’t change immediately, but… a crack will appear to exploit, won’t it? To manipulate minds, you have to chip away at them little by little like that.”

Phew. Goo Seoryong sharpened her fingertips, collecting venomous liquid on them, and then licked it with the tip of her tongue.

“My ability, Venom Alchemist, creates medicine within the body, not liquid containing the ability I want, so it’s tricky, you know? I have to research which compounds are effective, and to brainwash using mind-control drugs, I first have to get them addicted to the drug, which also takes a long time… Espers don’t even know that and just get scared, saying ‘we must catch her~ no time~ she’ll be manipulated~’ and run around with their eyes blazing, so it’s hard to even move….”
“I’ve noticed this before, but you talk a lot.”
“Oh? And, you don’t like it?”
“I want to sleep, but I can’t.”
“Hehehe, but do you know something? You’re talking quite a lot right now too.”
“…I see.”

Now that she mentioned it, I realized I was speaking more comfortably because I thought of her as a fellow test subject. When I admitted that I was talking more than usual, Goo Seoryong chuckled and said,

“Well, so… given the situation, I’m going for plan C.”
“Are you referring to the foresight ability?”
“Not that, the third strategy… pretending to escape to another city and hiding in plain sight. But, darling? Sometimes you seem a bit dumb, don’t you? You’d be perfect to have a baby with me, wouldn’t you? Don’t you think a child who is smart like me and strong like you would be born?”
“No.”
“Really? I’ll find a place for myself somewhere in Sector 4, so come find me whenever you change your mind. The location… if you court me, I’ll tell you anytime.”

Hum, hum, hum. I frowned at Goo Seoryong, who was quietly vibrating her monster core as if whispering, and then blurted out a sudden question.

“Why are you telling me so much? Weaknesses, whereabouts… aren’t these things you wouldn’t want known?”
“Huh…? Well, I’m courting you, right? Like, ‘I’m harmless, I don’t intend to hurt you, so please make babies with me’? Isn’t that especially important for monsters like us? You never know when someone might bite your neck or aim for your core.”
“Didn’t you tell me to ‘just wait and see’?”
“A woman’s revenge is to make the man who dumped her regret it, like ‘I should’ve had a baby sooner~ this one is so much better than that b*tch~ have a baby~ have more~’—seeing you begging me like that is the ultimate revenge, isn’t it?”
“Is that so…? I don’t know much about that.”
“You seem to know absolutely nothing about women. You probably don’t even know why I went to the trouble of showing up here and talking to you, do you?”
“Why did you talk to me?”
“Hehe, what female just passes by a male she likes?”

Among the children who were once again playing by covering my body with sand, Goo Seoryong, squatting on the sand, pursed her lips and phlegm-thwack, spit a long string of sticky saliva, then began to smear the muddy sand onto my body.

“What kind of poison is this?”
“Would I be so crazy as to spit poison on the sand where children are playing? It’s just my pure saliva, I’m putting my saliva on you.”
“Unnie spits so much!”
“Does unnie have a water purifier in her mouth?”
“Bleeeh~”
“Ahaha! Dirty!”

Munch, munch. Goo Seoryong filled her mouth with saliva again and spit it onto the sand, and the children played by sticking the mud onto my body. Goo Seoryong left the children and whoosh, leapt up from her spot, gracefully stopping on the park wall.

“Well then, see you next time, Deun-deun-ah. Don’t go wagging your tail at other girls.”
“Unnie, bye~!”
“Unnie, goodbye~!”
“Oh… bye-bye~♥”

The children waved their hands as Goo Seoryong announced her departure, and Goo Seoryong slithered, like a snake over a wall, gliding down and moving away from the park. After Goo Seoryong left, the children continued to wave towards the wall. Yoo Hye-na, seeing this, approached them and asked with a puzzled voice,

“Was someone on the wall?”
“A snake.”
“A, a snake? Oh my, what do we do. Kids? Can you come here for a moment?”
“It’s already gone.”

Yoo Hye-na, startled that the children might be bitten by a snake, pulled them closer, then stopped when she saw my condition.

“Is it okay for you to keep lying there and sleeping? You have to protect the citizens if a villain comes to rampage.”
“It doesn’t matter. And they won’t come.”
“No… how can you be so sure?”

I vibrated my core, spreading a faint wave. Far away, I could feel Goo Seoryong, who had not yet left Sector 4, hunting a villain who was causing unnecessary trouble. Before settling down, cleaning the area around the nest is a monster’s instinct.

“They can’t come.”
Corpses can’t cause a commotion.