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Online/Offline Compatible Roguelike MO Action + Online Versus Action.
Saki's Memory
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The Unyielding Girl - Chapter 1
My power destroyed my father.
A healing ability without pain or cost, capable of closing wounds and reconnecting broken bones. It could heal almost any injury, yet it could never reach deep enough inside another person's body. Disease alone remained beyond my reach. My father called that incomplete power a "miracle" - and little by little, it destroyed him.
* * *
Apparently, I was supposed to be born dead.
Nobody ever told me that directly, but by piecing together relatives' gossip and the drunken things my father occasionally muttered, that seemed to be the truth. The delivery had been difficult. Complications arose midway through, and there was apparently a real possibility neither of us would survive.
That was all I knew.
And yet somehow, both my mother and I lived.
No one could clearly explain why.
Only my father treated the event as something extraordinary.
"You were different from the moment you were born."
That was his favorite phrase.
He never explained what he meant by "different," and I never asked.
As a child, I was constantly getting hurt. I fell often, scraped my knees, and sometimes cut myself deeply. But my injuries healed at abnormal speed. By the next day, the wounds would already be closed, and after a few more days, even the scars disappeared completely.
I had no idea whether that was normal or strange.
More than anything, I barely understood pain itself.
Even when I was injured, I only recognized something serious had happened because other people panicked around me. Inside myself, there was no sensation corresponding to their reactions.
It happened during an art class while we were carving wood.
The girl sitting beside me slipped and cut her finger with her carving knife. The wound was not deep, but blood immediately began flowing, and the classroom erupted into commotion. The teacher was called over. Someone suggested taking her to the nurse's office.
I kept staring at the wound.
The cut itself, and the blood flowing from it, stood out with unnatural clarity.
Before I realized it, I had touched her hand.
I was not consciously trying to stop the bleeding or heal her. It simply felt natural to do so. A faint greenish light, visible only to me, quietly moved along the wound.
After a short while, the bleeding stopped.
The cut, which had been visibly split open moments earlier, became almost impossible to see.
The room gradually fell silent.
The teacher slowly pulled my hand away from the girl's finger.
I do not remember much after that.
By the time I returned home, my father had already heard the story. I do not know how much of it was true and how much had been exaggerated, but from that day onward, the way he looked at me changed.
I stopped being treated like a child.
Instead, I became something to be examined.
Whenever I got hurt after that, my father would carefully check the injury after some time had passed and confirm that nothing remained.
And every single time, he asked the same question.
"How are you doing it?"
I could never answer.
It was not something I consciously controlled.
My mother avoided the subject entirely, and more and more often she would step between us whenever my father brought it up.
Not long afterward, my father began bringing people into the house.
At first, they were acquaintances. Coworkers. Neighbors. People with harmless injuries - scrapes from falling, cuts from kitchen knives, things like that.
Whenever they came, I was brought into the living room.
My father would tell me to touch the injury.
The result was always the same.
The bleeding stopped.
The wound closed.
People gasped in amazement. They thanked me. My father nodded proudly beside them.
"Isn't she incredible?"
"This girl is special."
That was how he explained me.
As time passed, the people he brought changed. Strangers gradually replaced familiar faces, and the conversations became heavier. Fewer people asked what kind of injuries I could heal. More often, they asked what exactly I was capable of.
Even then, my father continued repeating the same thing.
"It's fine."
"Your power is a miracle given to you by God."
Around that time, my mother began avoiding those gatherings entirely. She would find excuses to stay in the kitchen or leave the house altogether. Whenever our eyes met, she looked like she wanted to say something, but in the end she never did.
I mostly stood there in silence.
If someone asked me to heal them, I touched them. Once it was over, I returned to my room.
I did not really understand what I was doing.
But I noticed my father's voice gradually changing.
The way he spoke to other people became identical to the way he spoke to me.
At some point, he also began accepting envelopes after people left.
At first he had refused them, but eventually it became routine.
"It's just gratitude."
"It would be rude not to accept it."
That was what he said.
Around then, he stopped talking about work entirely. The time he left the house each morning became inconsistent, while he grew increasingly concerned with when visitors would arrive instead.
Before long, he had quit his original job altogether.
As all this continued, the limits of my power gradually became clear.
As far as injuries were concerned, I believed I could heal almost anything.
One day, a man arrived after losing his hand in a factory accident. At first I thought even I might not be able to heal something like that.
But when I tried, it worked without issue.
I could even regenerate a completely missing hand.
Yet abnormalities occurring deep inside another person's body remained completely untouchable.
I could not even cure a mild cold.
I could feel my power reaching far deeper within my own body, but somehow I could never apply that same depth to others.
A little after that, my mother began changing.
She tired more easily. She started missing work more often and gradually stopped leaving the house.
At first we thought it was simply age, and my mother herself insisted that was all it was.
But the changes never reversed.
I tried to heal her.
I believed that was the one thing I was supposed to do.
Again and again, I touched her. Again and again, I concentrated.
Nothing changed.
My power could not reach my mother's illness.
I could close wounds on the outside, but anything destroying someone from within remained beyond me.
My father could not accept that reality.
"You healed people before."
"You did it when you were born too, didn't you?"
Little by little, those words changed.
They became demands.
Then prayers.
And eventually, anger.
The day my mother died, my father did not cry.
He only stared at me silently.
As though searching for an answer.
After that, he slowly began falling apart.
The house deteriorated. The garden was abandoned. The structure of our lives collapsed piece by piece. The smell of alcohol grew stronger. His words became harsher. And the way he looked at me began mixing expectation with hatred.
My father believed in my power.
Then that power betrayed him.
And when the thing he believed in shattered, he shattered with it.
That was the end of the family I knew.
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The Unyielding Girl - Chapter 2
My father was holding a metal baseball bat.
I did not know when it had started sitting there. What mattered was that it was clearly a tool meant for striking people.
His eyes appeared fixed on me, but in truth he was looking at something else entirely. He was not looking at my face. He looked like a man desperately searching for an answer.
Nothing I said here would matter.
So instead of moving, I chose to raise my voice.
"I've had enough! Aaaahhh!!"
The sound that left my throat was louder than I intended.
But that was fine.
The scream echoed throughout the house and spilled outside. Mixed together with my father's shouting, it probably sounded like a genuine cry for help.
It needed to sound that way.
My father reacted immediately. As if trying to silence me, he raised the metal bat overhead.
If nobody came, then that would be the end of it.
Being struck by that bat was still one possible outcome.
Thinking that, I remained still.
Then, in the next instant, the window shattered.
Cold night air rushed violently into the room, replacing the atmosphere inside the house. My father's movement froze, and his gaze shifted away from me.
A man stood there.
He looked as though he had dragged the darkness of the night itself into the room with him. Tall and heavily built, with a drunkenly flushed face and the unmistakable presence of violence clinging to him like a physical thing.
Before thought could catch up, my father's body moved.
"Who the hell are you...?!"
At the same moment he shouted, he swung the metal bat downward at the man.
There was no hesitation.
No restraint.
It followed the exact same path that had been aimed at me moments earlier.
- He's going to get hit.
That was what I thought.
Instead, the man casually caught the tip of the descending bat with one hand just before impact.
With a slight twist, he ripped the bat from my father's grasp and immediately slammed the handle sideways into my father's ribs.
A dull impact echoed through the room.
My father's body crashed against the floor. Groaning in pain, he glared up at the man.
"Calm down, old man."
The man spoke in a low voice.
"Is she your daughter? Families are supposed to get along, y'know?"
My father did not answer.
Only his ragged breathing continued.
The man glanced once at the metal bat still in his hand.
Then came a sound.
Crunch. Crack.
A horrible metallic noise rang directly into my ears.
The bat distorted inside his grip.
No - distorted was not the right word.
It was being crushed.
The long metal shape lost form almost instantly, collapsing inward until it became a compact lump no larger than a baseball.
The man casually tossed the finished metal sphere onto the floor. It rolled a short distance before stopping with a heavy clunk.
"See this? If you think about calling the cops on me, you'd better consider the consequences."
Only then did he finally look toward me.
Still crouched against the floor, I stared at the metal ball rolling nearby. To him, I probably looked terrified enough to cry.
But even I could tell how calm my eyes were.
It was not just fear.
- I'm not the only one.
For the first time in my life, I had witnessed someone else's "ability."
That realization slowly sank deep into my chest.
* * *
After the man left, the house suddenly became quiet.
Cold night air drifted in through the shattered window, stirring dust and scraps of paper across the floor. My father remained collapsed there for a long time before finally sitting up.
I stayed where I was, leaning against the wall while watching him.
I felt no need to approach him.
His breathing was rough, and only his eyes moved. The way he looked at me now contained something different from before. Not anger. Not expectation.
Only confusion.
Eventually, my father slowly raised himself upright. He opened his mouth as though trying to say something, then closed it again without producing any words.
"...It's already late today."
My own voice sounded calmer than I expected.
"I'm going back to my room."
My father said nothing.
No shouting.
No attempt to stop me.
He only watched.
"...I'm sorry for causing trouble all this time."
I did not know whether that was truly the correct thing to say.
It simply felt like the safest option.
"Father."
It had been a long time since I last called him that.
Without saying anything else, I returned to my room. I closed the door, but I did not lock it. I could still feel my father's presence lingering in the hallway outside.
That night, he never came to my room.
Not in the morning.
Not in the afternoon either.
The house contained only ordinary living sounds now. No conversation passed between us. Though we remained under the same roof, it felt as though neither of us truly existed to the other anymore.
During that time, I quietly packed my belongings.
There was plenty of time.
I had already sorted what I needed from what I did not.
My light blue knapsack was small. Once I packed spare clothes and the bare essentials, it immediately became full.
On my way toward the front entrance, I glanced into the living room one last time.
My father was not there.
And there was no longer any reason to call out to him.
* * *
By the time I finally left the house, it was completely dark outside.
When I slid the door open, cold night air rushed toward me, far harsher than during the day. Carrying the light blue knapsack on my back, I stepped outside. It was heavier than expected, though not enough to slow my pace.
After only a few steps, I noticed someone approaching from down the road.
My heart skipped once.
- It's the man from yesterday.
The man stopped walking when he noticed me. Judging by his expression, running into me had been pure coincidence. He had not deliberately come looking for me.
For some reason, that made me feel slightly relieved.
"You were the one who helped me yesterday, right?"
I spoke first.
My voice sounded stiffer than I expected.
"Thank you so much! I've decided to run away from home."
Saying the words out loud made the situation feel more real.
The man looked briefly surprised, but he quickly seemed to understand. His eyes shifted toward the knapsack hanging from my back.
Meanwhile, I found myself remembering the previous night.
The sound of metal bending.
The bat collapsing into a sphere.
I still did not understand how his power worked, but one thing was certain.
It was not normal.
"How did you do that yesterday?"
The man shrugged slightly.
"Curious?"
Honestly, I nodded.
After glancing around once, he ripped an aluminum bakery sign loose from nearby.
For a moment, it felt as though the atmosphere around him physically expanded.
Then, in the next instant, the metal twisted like paper and crumpled effortlessly within his hand.
"..."
I frowned.
"Please change it back."
The man blinked in surprise, then reluctantly stretched the crushed sign outward again. It did not fully return to normal and remained covered in deep wrinkles.
Looking at the ruined sign, he let out an awkward laugh.
My eyes shifted toward his arm.
A dark bruise remained clearly visible there. Thinking back to last night, there had been nothing severe enough to leave marks like that. He must have gotten it somewhere else.
"Is that a bruise on your arm? Can I see it?"
The man gave me a suspicious look but still held out his arm.
I gently placed my hand against it.
The familiar sensation gathered at my fingertips the moment I focused. A faint greenish light spread thinly across the bruise before slowly fading away together with the discoloration itself.
I saw the man's eyes widen.
"I've had this ability too."
I pulled my hand away.
"I've used it to heal myself from my father's abuse. But lately... it's only made things worse."
Why am I telling him this?
There was no reason to explain that much to someone like him.
The man did not press further. He simply studied my face quietly.
"I'm going to stay with my aunt for a while."
For some reason, that was the one thing I truly wanted to tell him.
"I hope we meet again."
After a short pause, the man nodded.
"Yeah. Well... maybe if fate gives us the chance."
Even after he turned and walked away, I remained standing there for a while. My heartbeat was still louder than usual.
After adjusting the weight of the light blue knapsack on my shoulders, I began walking in the opposite direction.
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To be continued...
Most Memorable Story
Total Votes 14
Ai
4
Taka
3
Kai
2
Maya
2
Shin
1
Ritsu
1
Saki
1
Ryu
0
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This page is updated irregularly.
Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution of this work’s text or images is prohibited.
Author: Akiyoshi Hanaoka
© Musurunsoft – PSI Masquerade DW Project
Author: Akiyoshi Hanaoka
© Musurunsoft – PSI Masquerade DW Project
The English version uses AI-generated translation.