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[Translator - Tangrine ]
[Proofreader - Seeker ]
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Chapter - 18: Good and Evil
Despite all of Gigachad’s passionate lecturing, there was no sign of change in Zara.
Zara was still relentlessly kind.
The world was still relentlessly cruel to her.
“Ah! That child!”
Zara threw herself into the street, pushing a small child out of the path of an oncoming carriage.
The child tumbled into the crowd.
Zara was hit by the horse and was thrown to the street.
Clatter, clatter—
The carriage didn’t stop.
It was Gigachad's voice that woke Zara, who was lying on the road blankly.
-“You Fucking Idiot! Zappy, don’t just lie there! Get up and chase down that damn carriage driven by that Fucking Asshole! With those legs of yours, you could easily catch it!”
“Ehehe… It was just an accident. I doubt they meant any harm. They were probably in a terrible rush and couldn’t stop…”
-“You got hurt, Zappy. You have every right to be angry over your injuries.”
Gigachad sounded furious.
At the coachman?
At Zara?
Maybe both.
As Zara shook her head weakly, a different voice rang out in her ears.
-Tear them apart.
-Shove that horse’s entrails down the bastard coachman’s throat.
-He dared to harm you.
-Who does he think he is?
-You’re a coward.
-Idiot. Should’ve just died under the horse’s hooves.
These weren’t just any voices.
They were her darkness.
The malice that had been with her since the day she was born.
Her true voice.
But living by impulse alone makes one no different from a beast.
Zara was… perhaps too human.
She knew how to suppress her instincts.
How to act kindly even when she didn’t feel kind.
“Ehehe…”
She ignored the voices.
As always.
It was a familiar routine for her.
“Today’s a lucky day…”
.
.
.
“You filthy beggar! Were you trying to steal from me?!”
Zara endured misfortune after misfortune.
She was mistaken for a thief and beaten by a store owner. Had a bucket of wastewater dumped over her head.
Worked hard only to be paid nothing. And every time, the voices inside her screamed louder.
-“Zappy, you didn’t do anything wrong. Say it. Out loud. You don’t have to just swallow the bullshit misunderstanding of that Fucking Idiot shopkeeper. Demand an apology. Don’t stay silent like a coward when someone hits you. You have to defend your dignity.”
-Kill him. Just kill him and take what you want.
-Steal it for real this time.
-Coward.
Zara didn’t change.
A voice like that wasn’t enough to change her.
She had lived with those voices for far too long.
-“Fucking Asshole! That Pussy just dumped sewage out the window like it’s nothing! Go teach him a goddamn lesson in public sanitation. Knock on the window and tell him he just made the whole street smell like a rotting rat stew!”
-Kill him.
-Throw the shit back in his stupid face.
-He stinks.
Still, Zara did not change.
-“Zappy. Demand your rightful pay. You scrubbed out the entire sewer system. Nobody else could’ve done that job but you. Tell him to hand over every coin he promised. Don’t let your labor be treated like garbage.”
Zara hadn’t changed.
-Kill him and take your payment.
-Flood the sewer again—let them drown in their own filth.
But the voices she heard… began to change.
-Your labor isn’t worthless.
“……”
Those voices were still part of her.
They were the malice she harbored toward the world.
They were the thoughts that surfaced when she lay awake in the dark.
And that malice—it wasn’t something that could be erased.
Not as long as she resented the world.
Not as long as the world kept hurting her.
-“Don’t be a coward. Fight back. Don’t be silent in the face of a world that keeps hurting you.”
-Fight back.
-Coward.
-Kill them all. Everyone who wronged you.
That’s why Zara never lashed out at others. She never got angry. Never fought back with violence.
She forgave even those who hurt her. That was how she resisted. Because if she gave in to that voice even once, she would never be able to stop.
The road of evil is a steep slope.
Take one step down, and it’s nothing but endless falling from there.
"……I don't want to be a nuisance to others."
But if that ‘malice’ could change? If it hadn't been so 'evil' to begin with.
What if it was something she had needed all along?
“It would’ve been better… if I’d never been born at all.”
If in the end, she had no choice but to live a life of nuisance to others.
Why did she have to live?
Zara simply couldn’t understand.
.
.
.
Perhaps for the first time in her life,
She spoke her true feelings.
Feelings so honest that even she was taken aback.
They weren’t some lofty resolve to become better than ‘the person I was yesterday.'
No, it was something much more childish than that.
“Good people are supposed to be rewarded, and bad people punished… right?”
Zara’s childhood had been a happy one.
She was raised by a cultured mother and a gentle father, in a home that lacked nothing.
Every night her father would read her a fairy tale.
The good were blessed. The wicked were punished. Good triumphs over evil.
It was only natural that such a simple, clear idea would steal her heart.
“But… real life isn’t like that. No matter how good I try to be, I just end up miserable. The
happiest I’ve ever been… was when I wasn’t even trying. When I was just a little kid.”
The truth was…Zara wasn’t ashamed of her childhood self.
She was jealous of her.
“I think my misfortune isn’t really my fault. Maybe… I’ve just been a little unlucky.”
She was jealous of the days when she could enjoy happiness without any reason.
She was jealous of the innocence that allowed her to be forgiven no matter what she did wrong.
“It’s not that I made some mistake and was punished. It’s not that I did something good and earned some reward. It’s just… I was born into happiness, and then one day, misfortune came to take its place.”
So she tried to stay blameless.
Because the only way she could beat her childhood self was to be purer than that girl had ever been.
“But if I ever got angry… if I ever hurt someone else… then my misfortune would start to make sense.”
Good people are rewarded.
Bad people are punished.
That’s the way it’s supposed to be.
So if the world isn’t fair, then the world is what’s wrong.
“But if I became a bad person… If I deserved my punishment… then all the people who mistreated me, all the cruelty I’ve endured—would be my fault.”
Zara knew she was unhappy.
She knew that today was worse than yesterday, and that tomorrow would be worse than today.
And she knew there was no reason for it.
The happiness she was born into…
The misfortune that came to replace it…
All of it had been given without ever asking her permission.
“I don’t want to become a bad person. If all this misfortune isn’t just random, if it’s because of something I did wrong…Then I won’t even be able to make excuses to myself anymore…”
And that’s why Zara always stood tall in front of herself.
If she knows that she is not guilty. There is no reason not to be confident.
“The me from yesterday was more shameful than the me today. And the me today has become a better person than yesterday…”
This misfortune was never really hers to begin with.
She was just holding onto it by coincidence.
A fluke of fate. A mistake the world had made.
That’s right. She had done nothing wrong. She was blameless.
“I just… I don’t want my misfortune to be something I brought on myself…”
But even that small sliver of dignity wasn’t something the world would allow her to keep.
-“Zappy.”
“…"
-“Your happiness, your suffering, all of it’s something you have to decide. At the very least, you’ve got to try. This fucked-up world doesn’t have the right to decide any of it for you.”
“…"
- “Forget those childish fairy tales. What you need isn’t some story about how good people are rewarded and bad people are punished. What you need… is to fight for your fate, here and now. To spit in the face of this fucking asshole of a world that thinks it gets to punish you.”
“But… is that the right thing to do?”
-“I don’t know if it’s ‘right.’ But it’s the kind of thing a damn Alpha would do.”
“…"
“That’s what it means to live with your head held high.”
.
.
.
The next day, Zara finished cleaning a chimney.
Her body was covered head to toe in soot.
She walked up to the door and gave it a polite knock.
A gruff-looking man answered with a scowl.
“Um… I finished the chimney cleaning!”
“Yeah? What took you so damn long?”
The man tossed her a single coin and turned to head back inside.
And then Zara grabbed him by the arm. Held him back. And said something she never would have dared say before.
“Um… the payment for chimney cleaning is twenty coins!”
“What?”
“Ehehe…”
“What makes you think scrubbing a little soot earns you twenty coins? Be grateful you got anything, you little rat.”
“But… that’s what we agreed on! You’re supposed to keep your promises!”
“Get lost! You’re not getting a damn thing from me!”
Of course… nothing changed.
She just got cursed at more.
That’s how it always was for Zara.
The more she wanted something, the less likely she was to ever get it.
-“Good job.
You were way more of a fucking lion than you were yesterday.”
“Heheh…”
Nothing had changed.
And yet something had.
Zara had changed. She had decided to push back. To fight against her fate.
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[Translator - Tangrine ]
[Proofreader - Seeker ]
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