Possession

Everyone carries their own private book of dirty little secrets tucked inside their chest.

Some people are into legs in stockings.

Some feel a certain stirring toward anthropomorphized animals.

Some get excited watching a dragon go at it with a car…?

There are tastes that others simply cannot understand.

But as long as no crime was involved, none of that was truly wrong.

And I, too, had a taste I could never speak aloud.

"Ahh, I just love watching people suffer."

That was it. I loved watching others in anguish.

Especially the grief-stricken weeping of someone drowning in regret — just hearing it sent a tingle straight through my gut.

*Oh, please, let me record it and use it as ASMR. I'd fall asleep to it every night.*

Of course, letting that show in real life would have been a tremendous nuisance.

Grinning beside someone who was crying and in pain —

That's the kind of behavior that invites fists and kicks, and rightfully so.

I'd actually learned that the hard way a few times when I was young.

By the time I became an adult, I'd naturally taught myself to hold it in.

*A preference is just a preference. I can't go around making other people's lives miserable.*

Besides, I was nothing more than an ordinary person who happened to have an unusual taste.

Whenever I caught myself feeling pleased beside someone in pain, the guilt was genuinely overwhelming.

In the end, I started keeping people at arm's length because of it. The stress outweighed the pleasure. There was nothing else to do.

Fortunately, it hadn't caused any serious problems in my life so far.

Whenever the urge crept up, reading a dark, harrowing manga or an NTR doujin was enough to take the edge off.

I'd say I managed to socialize like a reasonably functional human being.

*Still… just once, I'd love to see it in person. Isn't there anyone out there I could torment without any real consequences?*

The commute home after finishing overtime.

I was walking through the dark streets, eyes on my phone.

I could vaguely make out someone coming from the opposite direction.

But they'd just pass by anyway. I didn't pay much attention.

Then, just as they drew close enough to reach out and touch me —

I suddenly heard the sound of feet pushing off the ground.

"Why… why do you keep pretending not to see me…?"

"Ugh—?!"

*Thud.*

A cold sensation bloomed from somewhere deep inside my stomach.

A crawling, horrible feeling that something had gone very wrong. My breath stopped on its own.

I looked down, and someone was stabbing me in the stomach with a knife.

*What…*

On reflex, I shoved the person away with everything I had.

But my legs gave out beneath me and I crumpled to the ground.

It hurt. It hurt so badly that I couldn't even scream.

Why had I been stabbed out of nowhere?

I lifted my head, and only then did I realize my attacker was a woman.

The streetlight behind her was too bright — I couldn't make out her face clearly.

She looked down at me where I'd fallen and spoke in a cold, hollow voice.

"Why… why won't you look at me? Do you know how much I love you…?"

"What… are you…"

"At least in your final moment… you'll look at me, won't you…?"

*Gush.*

Blood was flowing out at an alarming rate.

But I wasn't thinking about the blood.

Because she'd taken one step closer, and I could finally see her face.

*Who even are you…*

As it happened, she was a complete stranger.

I'd always made a point of not getting entangled with people. There was no chance I'd simply forgotten her.

Which left only one possible conclusion.

*Don't tell me… she got the wrong person?*

She'd mixed up her target and stabbed the wrong person with a knife.

It was utterly absurd. Was she out of her mind?

…Well. A woman who'd stab someone probably wasn't in her right mind to begin with.

Then at least notice after you've done it. Why doesn't she realize?

I stared at the hand still pressed against my stomach.

My palm was soaked in blood — burning hot and deeply red.

*This is bad… I'm probably not making it out of this.*

Had she hit something vital?

My eyelids were growing unbearably heavy.

Right. Even if an ambulance came now, it'd be too late.

Half-resigned already, I looked up at the woman and thought.

*What a waste. There's a limit to how badly you can mix someone up.*

This wasn't like dialing the wrong number.

Even someone as easygoing as me was a little angry about this.

But what could I possibly do, stabbed and bleeding out on the ground?

I turned it over in my mind — and then a rather good idea surfaced.

Right. She thinks I'm someone else, doesn't she?

I cleared my throat softly, and through the pain, I arranged my expression into a performance.

What I put on my face: affection. I forced my body upright.

"I'm sorry… I couldn't be honest with you…"

"…What?"

"I must have… *cough*… made you misunderstand…"

"Wh— what are you trying to say?!"

It was important to pause here.

Despite how I might look, I'd been in the drama club.

Before a crucial line, you need to let the emotion build.

I swayed toward her, and wrapped my arms around her weakly.

Then I whispered into her ear with all the longing I could muster.

"I love you."

"Huh? What did you just…"

"I don't… blame you… for any of this…"

"What… you're lying… after all this time… saying something like that…"

*Clatter.*

The knife slipped from her hand and hit the ground.

Her complexion, already pale, drained to something ghostly.

She'd realized what she'd done.

She'd stabbed someone thinking she could never be loved —

And then discovered she'd been loved all along. Of course she'd want to cry.

Though honestly, she should also realize she stabbed the wrong person. Idiot.

"No… don't die… I'm sorry… I made a mistake…"

"…"

"What have I… what have I done… no… without you… I can't…"

*Crash.*

Something inside her collapsed.

*Thump.* She fell to her knees, her face a portrait of despair.

I looked at that face, and quietly smiled to myself.

*The face of a woman who believes she's destroyed everything — absolutely perfect.*

Thoroughly satisfied, I let my eyes slide shut.

Pushing through on sheer willpower wasn't going to work anymore. I was spent.

"I'm… sorry…"

As my consciousness scattered like falling asleep —

I heard the sound of something sharp piercing flesh.

And then something slumped heavily to the ground.

*Ah. So that's the choice she made.*

Well… I suppose I could count it as saving one person from dying by a knife wound.

At least I got to see the face I love before the end.

With that final thought, my consciousness sank into darkness.

*Dying is cold.* That was the last thing I ever thought.

*

And so my brief twenty-five years of life drew to a close.

…Or so I thought. When I came to, I was staring at an unfamiliar ceiling.

"An unfamiliar ceiling… wait, where am I?"

I sat bolt upright.

I hadn't expected to survive at all. Rather than happy, I just felt dazed.

Maybe someone had found me collapsed on the street and called for help.

But no — with that much blood loss, survival should have been impossible…

I looked down to check my stomach, and froze.

Because what filled my field of vision was a chest that hadn't been there before.

*Is this… silicone? No, it feels like real flesh…*

Surely the hospital hadn't gone ahead and performed gender reassignment surgery without my consent—!

Right. That's not even remotely plausible.

I prodded at my chest with both hands and looked around the room.

"This doesn't… look like a hospital."

The place I'd woken up in was a bare, utilitarian room.

There was a bed, a wardrobe, a desk…

No matter how I looked at it, this wasn't a hospital. What on earth was this place?

When in doubt, walk around and find out.

I climbed off the surprisingly comfortable bed.

"Wait, hold on… I'm wearing something like a negligee. That's unsettling… where's a mirror?"

Who put me in this flimsy women's nightgown?

Covered in goosebumps, I stepped in front of the nearest mirror.

And what greeted me on the other side was a rather shocking sight.

"There's a beautiful girl in a negligee enthusiastically groping her own chest…"

Navy-blue hair. Golden eyes.

A figure that was far too alluring for such a youthful face.

The overall impression was somehow composed and delicately pure.

My personal preference would have been a bit more up top, but what filled my hands right now wasn't bad at all.

*She looks familiar somehow…?*

Still, something about that face nagged at me.

The color combination, the shape of the features — I'd seen them somewhere before.

But I couldn't quite place it. Like standing in front of a search bar and forgetting what you were going to type.

I needed more clues. I decided to look around.

*For now, I'll assume this is a possession situation.*

The kind where the previous occupant's memories don't surface.

In these scenarios, there's usually a maid who explains everything, or a suspiciously detailed diary lying around somewhere.

As luck would have it, no such convenient items were anywhere to be found. Damn — all those possession stories I'd read, and none of it was any use.

Instead, I found something like an ID card and a smartphone on the desk.

Let's see. I picked up the ID first and checked the name.

[ Name: Leila ]

[ Rank: B-rank Valkyrie ]

[ Affiliation: Squad 733 ]

"…Oh!"

In that instant, something flashed through my mind.

Leila. I knew this name.

And with navy-blue hair and golden eyes, there was no mistaking it!

I ran back to the mirror.

And I lifted the negligee to peer closely at my pale stomach.

There, just below the navel, was a striking crimson tattoo.

"There's a Stigma… then could it really be…?"

Valkyries — artificial humans created to fight the Erosion Species, humanity's greatest enemy.

Somewhere on each of their bodies, a certain mark was always inscribed: a Stigma.

If my guess was right… then this was unmistakably the world of a game I knew.

And the moment that realization hit me, the color drained from my face.

Because Leila was a character who died in that game.

*She's the first one to go — and in the prologue, no less!*

As I recalled it, the prologue went roughly like this:

The player is a rookie Commander who leads Valkyries.

Under his command is Leila, diligent and dependable.

But during a mission, an unexpected accident occurs.

To protect the Commander, Leila stands alone against a massive swarm of Erosion Species.

The Commander returns with reinforcements before long, but —

All that remains at the scene is Leila's body, in a horrific state.

*The community was furious about it. Why go to the trouble of designing such a great character just to kill her off that brutally…*

And the timing of her death was the mandatory prologue — no skipping it.

There was no version of events where she survived. No matter what you did.

She wasn't even a playable character. A tragic figure in every sense of the word.

"Wait. Hold on."

In that moment, I noticed something.

In the original game, the Commander's reaction was never shown.

He was the player's stand-in, after all. The developers probably figured it wasn't necessary.

So Leila's death had never been a scene I had any particular reason to enjoy.

I love watching others suffer — but I hate suffering myself. I'm selfish like that.

But if, in this world, the Commander existed as a separate, living person with his own inner life…

"That means I could watch the Commander fall apart in despair over my mangled corpse…?"

*Thud.*

I sank to the floor right where I stood.

Just imagining it for a moment made my stomach tremble so badly I couldn't stay upright.

I'd never been particularly fond of hurting myself just to torment someone else.

But if Leila's death was already a fixed destiny — then making use of it just a little… wasn't really wrong, was it?

"Hehe… heh… well, I suppose I have no choice…"

I gazed into the mirror, savoring the pleasant fantasy.

And in the mirror, Leila was wearing the most shameless expression.

I simply couldn't contain how much I was looking forward to what came next.