Miss, stop committing suicide

Chapter 40: Side: The Lunatics

The horses pulling the carriage snorted loudly, steam rising from their nostrils as if they were venting their frustration. They had been worked hard, and their agitation showed.

The carriage arrived not at a cemetery or a crypt, but at a small building adjacent to a clinic rumored to be run by the son of the Emperor’s personal physician.

This was a place not for peaceful repose, but for those who had died gruesome deaths during treatment.

The Crown Prince sat on a shadow-formed chair near the entrance, legs crossed, idly smoking from his pipe as he waited for Evan and Vivian.

When the two approached, bowing to greet him, the Crown Prince waved them off dismissively.

“Just through that door, you’ll find your friend—beautifully prepared. I entrusted her to the finest mortician in the Empire, someone who ensures everything is handled impeccably.”

“Then we can go in now?” Evan asked, his voice flat and determined.

“Not so fast,” the Crown Prince replied. “Explain what you intend to do first. If your plan is to resurrect the dead or create some new lifeform from her body like a necromancer, I’ll have you lying beside her in no time.”

“I just want to examine her head,” Evan said bluntly.

“You mean her memories?”

Evan nodded.

Vivian had suspected this might be Evan’s goal, but hearing it aloud filled her with a mix of sadness and anger.

Digging through the memories of the dead was no different from grave robbing—it was desecration. But looking at Evan, she knew there was no stopping him, and protesting felt futile.

“Even reading the memories of the living is difficult. Do you really think you can retrieve memories from a dead person?” the Crown Prince asked, his voice laced with sarcasm.

As he spoke, the acrid smoke from his pipe caught in his throat, and he coughed harshly before spitting onto the ground and clearing his throat.

“If it’s impossible, I’ll stop,” Evan replied. “But if there’s even a chance, I have to try.”

The Crown Prince chuckled, a cruel grin spreading across his face.

“Fair enough. But don’t worry—if you get any bright ideas about turning her into a familiar, the friend who made this chair for me will make quick work of your head. You won’t be tempted for long!”

He laughed as though this was all some grand joke, like he had seen countless fools try and fail to raise the dead.

Turning to Vivian, the Crown Prince asked, “And you? Why are you here?”

“I’m going in with Evan.”

“You know, it’ll be disgusting. The smell alone will be unbearable, not to mention watching someone poke around in that pink mush.”

“I don’t care.”

“Suit yourself. Just don’t let this turn into some spectacle of disrespect for the dead.”

It was a contradiction. The Crown Prince had orchestrated this meeting, allowing them to manipulate the dead, yet spoke as if concerned about maintaining respect.

What did he consider disrespectful, then? Vivian wondered, but she said nothing.

The answer was obvious—if she objected, he would simply tell her to leave.

The Crown Prince exhaled another puff of smoke, his thoughts momentarily drifting to his own sister, who had once moved as if alive but reeked of decay.

He remembered the moment he had burned her, unsure whether she was living or dead. That memory left a sour taste in his mouth, one that the harsh, unrefined smoke failed to mask.

Erica lay on a cold metal table, dressed in a white gown. The blood-soaked school uniform she had worn was gone.

The hole in her temple, large enough to fit a finger, had been plugged with something soft and covered with gauze.

Evan stepped forward, peeling back the gauze. With a steady hand, he removed the plug without hesitation, exposing the wound.

The metallic tang of blood filled the air as something viscous oozed out.

“Ugh…!” Vivian gagged, covering her mouth.

“If it’s too much, you can leave,” Evan said flatly.

“Evan, do you really think this is the right thing to do?”

“No.”

Before Vivian could say more, Evan pressed his fingers into Erica’s brain and released a small current of magic.

Among the many peculiarities of magicians, there had once been a dark mage obsessed with the brain. 

He had studied which parts held memories, controlled thought, and enabled imagination.

Though that mage had been burned alive, his knowledge had been preserved—it was deemed too valuable to destroy, despite its sinister origins.

Using this knowledge, Evan searched through the sea of information within Erica’s brain, like a fisherman seeking a hippocampus amidst the tide.

He found the area responsible for memory, pressed his fingers against it, and began chanting.

From an outside perspective, it looked like a ritual—a black magic sacrifice, complete with a desecrated corpse.

Vivian watched in growing horror and confusion, recalling the Crown Prince’s words about beheading Evan if he behaved like a necromancer.

If this was considered “normal” to them, what on earth did they consider “abnormal”?

For someone like Vivian, who had spent her life trying to find beauty and positivity in the world, this was an act beyond comprehension.

When Evan finished his incantation, Erica’s body convulsed violently, and an image appeared above her.

[Hah… I hate this.]

The image showed Erica fully clothed, sitting in a steaming bathtub.

She held a blade in her hand, pressing it to her wrist without hesitation.

The clear water in the tub turned crimson in seconds, the blood spreading like ink in water.

[Ugh… shit…]

With trembling hands, Erica tried to slash her wrist again but ultimately flung the blade aside. Instead, she reached for the pistol—the same one she had used to kill Lydia and later turned on herself.

Pulling the trigger, she expected her head to explode like before. But this time, the bullet merely grazed her throat, leaving a bloody streak on the wall.

And so, Erica began to die.

Not quickly, but slowly. Painfully. Alone.

Crying, she struggled to lift herself out of the bathtub, but her strength gave out. Her hand fumbled around the floor, searching for the pistol that had fallen to her left. Seeing it just out of reach, despair overcame her.

The process of one person’s slow, lonely death unfolded in the air like a grim, silent film. It showed her gasping, attempting to speak but failing, her lips moving soundlessly as the screen darkened and the recording ended.

The footage was short, but its emotional impact was immense, far outweighing its length.

For Erica, whose life had been full of harrowing experiences, her first death was undoubtedly the most vivid memory.

Vivian wept.

She couldn’t say anything—her emotions were too complex, too overwhelming, climbing her spine like icy tendrils. Words felt useless in the face of what she had just witnessed.

So she cried.

Loudly, messily, her sobs echoing through the cold room filled with lifeless bodies, as though she could awaken them with the sheer force of her grief.

Evan, watching the projection, felt his knees give way.

The notion he had clung to—the faint hope that Erica might somehow still be alive, that her earlier words might have meant something—had been proven true.

And yet, it was far too late.

He didn’t know whether to blame himself or to believe this was all some inexplicable, otherworldly phenomenon. All he knew was that he had to do something, anything, to make it right.

But Evan wasn’t a genius magician, capable of turning back time or sending messages to his past self. He was just a man who had failed, again and again.

Resolving himself, he conjured water in the air, washing his hands clean of Erica’s blood and the fragments of her brain.

He then carefully sealed the hole in her head before turning to Vivian, still overcome with grief.

Helping her to her feet, he guided her outside.

There was no use for Erica’s brain anymore.

What remained were fragmented shards of memories, containing nothing but pain and suffering.

The Crown Prince was still seated on his shadowy throne, puffing away at his pipe as they emerged.

“Judging by your faces, something happened in there. Not that I’m particularly interested,” he said, his voice casual.

Evan, however, couldn’t let it go. The Crown Prince was not one to concern himself with such “trivialities.”

To most, the deaths of two noblewomen within the academy walls would be a scandal, but to the Crown Prince, they were nothing—just two powerless figures bearing empty titles.

And yet, here he was, involved.

“Why are you so concerned about Erica?” Evan asked, unable to hide his curiosity.

“Call it… mourning, if you will,” the Crown Prince replied. “You understand, don’t you?”

“…Yes.”

At that moment, Evan understood why the Crown Prince had invested any effort into Erica.

Though it had happened far faster and with more finality than expected, the Royal Family had been the ones to obliterate Erica’s already-crumbling house.

Perhaps, deep down, even the Crown Prince felt a faint twinge of guilt for his role in her ruin.

Vivian, meanwhile, was lost.

She didn’t understand the cryptic exchange between the two men. Their words were vague, cloaked in layers of context she wasn’t privy to.

The nobles always spoke this way—leaving those outside their circles in the dark.

It was one of the reasons Vivian disliked aristocrats.

But Erica had been different.

That thought made Vivian’s heart sink further.

Her tears began anew.