Side effects. A loss of appetite, insomnia, inexplicable mood swings. Endless tears. She’d rather take all of that. 

No one told her or warned her of the side effects, if they could be labeled as such. Actually, she was informed in some ways, courtesy of the pleading Minnie and Soojin, begging her to reconsider at the time. But she knew from the start things would be different, that there might be complications. 

That was it. Complications. Not too big, small enough for her to handle, they wouldn’t involve sending her unconscious at the drop of a hat. 

More accurately, not the drop of a hat, but the swings of a sword. To be even more precise, the sweep of a blade forged from her own physical being, wielded not by her hands. 

Her body was crafted, sculpted with care and anger to defy limitations. She can jump higher, reach farther, run faster. She’s strong, stronger than ten men, she can send them crawling back to their mothers in a heartbeat. 

Almost nothing is unimaginable, she is blessed with a bow, materializing from the bones of her body; her arrows are her flesh, dipped in the fire of her blood. Her weapons are not simple manifestations of her soul. 

No, that is too superficial. The connection to her weapons is more than an effortless, run-of-the-mill projection. 

She is her bow. She is her arrow. 

They are like any limb, any organ. Vital, intimate parts of herself. 

If there are cracks in her bow, if her arrows snap in two, it would be the same as if she loses a leg, if her kidneys fail. 

When she had her first hunt, her pulse raced in tandem with the whistling of her arrows, flying, piercing through, finding the weak spots of her targets. Her heart was singing and chanting for their deaths, like a disease that had to be fed on the daily. 

When the monsters finally laid motionless on the ground, she felt it for the first time. The onset of fatigue, wearing down her aching muscles, the need to rest overcame the rush of adrenaline coursing through her veins. 

The high was worth it. The sensation of extreme euphoria single-handedly compensates for the physical exhaustion that comes with the hunt. 

As exhilaration rejuvenated her mind, the truth was her body was strained. She was on the brink, taxing her strength. 

Through the years, she had held on and learned her limits. She adapted and pushed herself to the brink, on the cusp, never straying too far. 

She has always wondered what would break her. 

Their poor attempts at whispering wake her. Shuhua and… Soojin. Soojin’s voice is impossibly quiet, Miyeon is almost struggling to hear her. As for Shuhua, nothing more needs to be said. 

The girl’s voice is booming, there’s no difference between Shuhua talking beside her ear and Shuhua whispering. 

Miyeon pretends to be asleep, catching her name being mentioned.

“She’s like this because of you. Lucky for her, Yuqi and Minnie were on patrol nearby when you guys ran into trouble.”

“What did I do?”

“The better question is what did Miyeon do.” Fault. Accountability. There’s no more uncertainty surrounding why she’s currently strapped to a bed.

“Where did you get it?” says Soojin. The telltale unsheathing of a sword. 

It all goes back to Shuhua's katana. A weapon the girl shouldn’t have been gifted. Miyeon isn’t ignorant, it’s not like she’s clueless.

Everything is plain obvious and out in the open now. 

She hears Soojin hiss, the muffled tirade following. The disapproval. Maybe the cause of her fainting spell isn’t just because of the sword. 

Nobody likes rejection. No one enjoys being told they’re incapable and weak, that they’re not there yet. Failure hurts. 

The limits of her body are ever present. 

Sure, she has gotten stronger since her birth. She can handle long arduous fights without tiring. The insinuated weakness? Her body is unable to support the simultaneous use of two weapons. The bow and the sword. 

After years and years of trivial musings, she knows what would finally break her. Even divine beings can hit ceilings thought to be out of reach.

Miyeon manages to catch the last of Soojin’s verbal onslaught. It’s loud and clear. 

“One of you will die.” 

The door slams, footsteps moving down the hall. Miyeon waits for a minute. Make it two. She opens her eyes, hoping she’d be alone in the room. 

Once again, it proves she’s terrible at estimating, Shuhua is sitting on a dinky chair, returning her gaze. Miyeon finds her words after an unwarranted staring contest (she loses). 

“I woke up just now. I have no idea what happened earlier. Soojin was not in the room a few minutes ago.” Red creeps up her neck when she immediately realizes, yes, she had exposed herself for listening in. 

The mass of blankets, the lack of windows, she thinks it’s getting hot in here. Shuhua comes even closer, pulling her chair. Miyeon shrinks away when the girl’s face is near. 

“I want answers. Don’t pretend you weren’t awake, you heard everything,” says Shuhua. 

“What more is there to know?” 

“You’ve conveniently left out a few details.” Swallowing doesn’t soothe her dry throat. Miyeon pushes herself up into a sitting position. 

“How about explaining where my sword comes from? Or why we hunt monsters?” The steely edge, the barely concealed anger, Miyeon has screwed up. Giving her space, Shuhua leans back, crossing her arms. 

“Save me the spiel you told me on my first day. I know there’s more to the story. We don’t kill them for the greater good.” Miyeon wants to interject, to say no and deny everything coming out of Shuhua’s mouth. 

Shuhua doesn’t let her get a word in. “It was never about protecting humans.”

Lies had piled upon lies. She only wanted to ease the blow, to tell the partial truth. The moment she saw innocence on the girl’s face, guilt had sunk in. 

So Miyeon went to greater lengths, spinning tales of heroics. Painting themselves as guardians of the human race when they were nothing of the sort. She told her reapers were created by a benevolent deity to defend humans because a higher moral order existed. 

Protecting the weak is what is right. Miyeon wishes she could eat her own words. 

“We aren’t heroes,” says Miyeon. She checks Shuhua’s reaction. “We might as well be the same as the monsters we kill.” 

“Don’t joke around,” warns Shuhua. 

“Look, I mean it, I don’t know how to say this properly, but it’s the truth. You deserve to know.” 

Facing her, Miyeon tells the story of the reapers’ creation from the very beginning. Correcting the white lies. “We are bound in eternal servitude to Order. We kill monsters for our own necessity.” 

She notices Shuhua frowning so she stops. “What is it?”

“You’re still taking the long way around. Get to the point. Make it simple.” Blunt as always. 

“It’s like an addiction. If you don’t hunt monsters and for some reason, decide to stop, you will die,” says Miyeon. 

“How long is that period, between stopping and dying?” None of them have come close to that point, they have never laid down their arms for long. She herself isn’t keen to find out either. 

“I don’t know.” 

“You never know, you only know how to lie,” retorts Shuhua darkly. Spiteful and vindictive, it stings.

The only way to fix this and regain Shuhua’s trust is to continue. She has to lay it all bare.  

“Our weapons are a part of our physical selves.” Miyeon gestures to the sword hanging at the girl’s hip. “Since you don’t have your own, I made one for you. My body has to support both of ours.”

She pauses, thinking of the best way to say it. This is something she has to accept for her own good. For the both of them. 

“I can’t do it.” 

AN: Tldr 1. If you swing your arm many times, you get tired. Same deal with the weapons. 

Tldr 2. Shuhua is holding Miyeon. Literally. (Her sword, duh.)

I hereby announce the theme song for the entire work is Mika Nakashima’s Boku ga Shinou to Omotta no Wa (lyrics by amazarashi). 

Here are some of the translated lyrics that inspired me to write this chapter:

When I dozed off in its dappled sunlight

I wondered if I could join all the dead bugs and return to dust

Source: lyrictranslate

Thank you guys for reading.