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chapter 33
“Ugh… it hurts so much…”
I kept slipping in and out of consciousness.
Had I ignored the sudden cold I felt during pheromone practice, I wondered?
I had no sense of how many times I had fainted. My body felt icy cold.
It was as if frost had settled over my entire body.
I wanted to go outside and get help, but I couldn’t move.
My body had long lost sensation; I couldn’t even lift a foot.
My stiff, frozen body felt like a corpse.
The alien energy described in the library book—the freezing cold that seemed to engulf the body.
“Pheromones… they hurt this much…?”
The book had clearly said that pheromones were innate from birth to protect a beastkin.
Why were my pheromones attacking me instead?
The sharp, intangible sensation constricted my chest, making it hard even to breathe.
Every breath was a struggle.
It hurt every single day.
“What could you possibly do?”
A voice flickered through my mind.
“Why… because I’m a cat, I can’t do anything…”
Tears began to drop onto the cushion, one by one.
Drip.
Drip.
Helplessness brought them streaming down.
This useless body. I couldn’t even humanize.
“All beastkin will hate you.”
“No, not just hate—you’ll be despised and loathed. No matter who it is.”
“You’ll live a life of abandonment, that’s all you’ll get.”
“Because that’s why you were born.”
The voices I’d heard in the past echoed in my memory.
A wave of dark emotions consumed me.
“What… if Ian abandons me…?”
What if he got tired of me and threw me out right now?
What should I do?
The future was invisible, and my breath hitched.
I couldn’t think rationally.
Those harrowing, agonizing memories swallowed me again.
They slowly squeezed the air from my lungs.
Fear nearly drowned me.
I curled up in the cat house, barely managing shallow breaths.
As if the liquid from that syringe were flowing inside me.
As it had been injected into my body over and over.
The pain was all too familiar.
“Shall I administer the liquid?”
“Do it.”
“Tch, this is going to kill you.”
“Still, you’re holding on, aren’t you?”
“Of course. There’s much more to do.”
Those memories floated back, echoing in my ears.
“No, this is just inside the book.”
It’s only the book. Everything you’re feeling is fake.
I instinctively brainwashed myself, as I had done before.
Anxiety wrapped itself around my body.
My body was not normal.
Barely holding on was my limit.
“If only I hadn’t used the stamina I built in training for this.”
Had I not trained, I wouldn’t even be able to withstand this.
I would have collapsed, unable to wake.
I might have died.
I didn’t want to imagine what would happen if my body, this painfully fragile body, let go of consciousness.
A piercing, stabbing pain swept over me.
The cold tears, briefly halted, dripped onto the cushion.
Drip by drip, they soaked the pink cushion, turning it a deep pink.
I couldn’t even think to wipe them away, staring blankly while suppressing the pain inside.
It felt as if my whole body were turning to ice.
Someone was hammering the frozen body with a massive mallet.
The agony permeated my entire being.
Thump. Thump.
The sound of the hammer striking ice echoed like my heart pounding against my body.
It felt as if my head would split apart with every beat.
I instinctively knew my body was on the verge of shattering completely.
The air seemed heavier, pressing down as if invisible bricks were crushing me.
Was I really going to break and disappear like this?
The fear of death approached vividly and swiftly.
“Someone… please… save me…”
I curled up as tightly as possible, suppressing the pain.
“You’ll die the moment the master has no use for you.”
“Please….”
I didn’t want to die like this.
I felt my mood plunging endlessly.
Only now did I want to live.
Only now did life feel joyful.
I had people who were important to me.
I didn’t want to die without leaving any mark, unnoticed like an extra in the original story.
Then there would be no reason to try living at all.
All the suffering I endured would be wasted.
This wasn’t the future I had imagined.
“If I had known, I wouldn’t have held on this long.”
Even if I were just a minor character in the original story, in my life I wanted to shine as the protagonist.
I refused such a meaningless death.
My story wouldn’t end like this.
It had to continue.
Yet my suffering body screamed that my story was almost over.
A shadow of a cozy death loomed over me.
I clutched my mind desperately, trying not to fall into the abyss.
If I lost consciousness, my racing heart might stop at any moment.
I was terrified.
Even in this state, the pain combined with the absence of anyone coming to help pierced my loneliness.
It was almost laughable.
Even in such pain, I could feel loneliness.
Alone, and disappointed no one came—normally that would make sense.
“Ariel!”
Someone opened the door and shouted.
Ah. Someone had come.
Even in this state, having someone search for me brought a faint relief.
A faint smile appeared on the kitten’s face.
“Maybe… I can survive.”
Hope dared to peek through.
Thud.
But as if that hope were crushed, consciousness cut off like a power outage.
My mind was sucked into an ominously dark void.
Had I subconsciously wished for death?
A darkness deeper than anything I could escape opened its mouth, smiling brightly.
And it looked at me clearly, sharply.
Ian gazed at the unconscious Ariel.
The room was filled with a chilling cold, reflecting her condition.
The sensitive chill of her pheromones surrounded him as he entered.
A pheromone overload.
A condition where pheromones overflow and attack their own owner.
Ariel was currently experiencing it.
Seeing her collapse, her body limp and cold like a corpse, Ian’s heart sank.
Even knowing she wasn’t dead, he felt as if she had died.
His own pheromones, still unsteady, swirled inside him, threatening to act on their own with just a slight movement.
Even knowing Ariel wasn’t dead.
Thump.
His heart felt like it had fallen off a cliff.
A wave of emotion chilled his head like a bucket of cold water.
Despite the icy calm in his head, his body’s blood surged, wild and ready to erupt.
Instinct and reason balanced precariously.
Dangerous emotions churned within him.
Like stormy waves in the night sea, the emotions raged.
He kept his composure, carefully observing Ariel.
“As I suspected, this is a special case. The internal damage occurs before external wounds.”
This would be difficult to treat.
He instinctively knew: failure was not an option.
He gave himself a mental command: “If I fail, I’ll save her no matter what.”
Whatever it takes.
Ian slowly began transferring his pheromones to Ariel.
Her cold pheromones entered him, moving through his body. His foggy head cleared, and the faint hallucinations quieted.
Ariel became unimaginably important to him, a source of stability amid the torment.
Once he tasted the calm that came with her cold, it was addictive.
He could never go back to life without Ariel.
“If Ariel is fated to die…”
If fate demanded it, he would defy it, even kill the gods to change it.
He would willingly sacrifice himself if needed.
Her body accepted his pheromones, and in response, her pheromones drew his in.
The freezing chill warmed slightly, as the golden light of his pheromones enveloped the black fur ball.
Warmth returned to her body amidst the icy cold.
I opened my eyes.
A familiar ceiling greeted me.
The room looked exactly as it always had.
“Is this… heaven…?”
Had I really died?
Heaven shows the place you care for most, right?
I looked around slowly.
The cat tower, the cat house, the cushion, the bed—everything was the same.
Wait.
“…This isn’t heaven. This is really the Cadellion estate.”
The room was an exact replica of reality.
I pinched my cheek and felt the soft fur, pain confirming I was alive.
My eyes widened.
“I’m alive?”
Yes, I was. Really alive.
I had truly thought I would die this time.
Relief and joy surged from deep inside me.
Only now did I grasp that I was alive.
This wasn’t heaven. This was reality.
The room was exactly as it had been yesterday.
The room that held the most memories.
Finally, I realized I was alive.
I carefully surveyed the room, imprinting every detail in my mind.
“…Insane.”
And then I saw it.
A white tiger lying nearby, bleeding profusely, yet miraculously still alive.
