UTBTR 10

Chapter 10 SIDE OUT: Reilly Kraha

If someone had grabbed Reilly Kraha about ten years ago and told him, “One day, you will throw everything away and leave for another world to chase after the woman you love,” Reilly Kraha would have scoffed and called it bullshit before cleanly separating that person’s head from their body.

He was sure that everyone who knew Reilly Kraha would have thought the same.

In fact, when Reilly Kraha actually said that he would follow her and leave for a place he did not even know, his colleague Garahan Abriham, who had known him for thirty years, spat out the black tea he had been drinking and coughed like a madman.

Reilly Kraha generously understood his reaction.

Even he had to admit that it was unexpected.

Reilly Kraha was the kind of person who had nothing to do with love. Even before that, he did not acknowledge that such an emotion existed.

He had been born at the very bottom of that world, in a filthy, horrible, and lowly place. In a region without laws or rules, he himself had become the law and the rules through nothing but his own strength.

Reilly Kraha in love?

Anyone would have told him not to say such a frightening thing.

But what if there was someone who could make him settle down on a warm terrace by the window?

Someone who could make him open his mouth without any caution and accept sweet desserts?

Someone who could put a little foam on the tip of his nose while they were bathing as a joke, then grin foolishly at him?

Someone who could expose her back, stomach, and even the back of her neck—places where the slightest wrong touch could take her life—to him?

He did not believe that love existed.

But if he had to call it love just to persuade her that it did…

In other words, if Reilly Kraha fell in love—

Reilly Kraha was a man who never hesitated or wavered.

His decision had been made in exactly the same way.

He knew that his world had been created by someone.

He knew that his own life had been designed by someone else.

And yet, he decided to choose one human being.

He would abandon his own world and follow her.

There was nothing in his world anyway.

So he wanted to tell her:

Become my world.

Then he was certain that he would be able to keep her by his side, even if only through duty.

Four years was much longer than he had expected.

Strictly speaking, it was even longer than the amount of time they had actually spent together.

He had met her when he was around twenty-nine years old, when she suddenly became the contents of his employer.

Four years later, Reilly Kraha parted from her in that world.

There had been times when they stayed together and times when they were apart.

Even adding all of it together, they had barely known each other for four years.

The body she had been using at the time, Yuri Yelechenika, was thirty years old.

He had never heard the original age of his Master, so he assumed there was not much difference between her real age and Yuri Yelechenika’s body.

By the standards of the world Reilly Kraha lived in, if someone remained unmarried until that age, they could practically be considered destined to stay single for life.

He had calculated everything quite thoroughly.

Crossing into another world did not mean he would immediately find his Master.

He would have to create an identity.

He would need money.

He would need information and connections to locate her.

There was no way of knowing how many years that process might take.

Still, he thought it would be fine.

If she did not already have someone in her heart, then any insignificant man she might come to like during that time could be pushed aside by him whenever he wished.

He believed that his Master would eventually fall into his hands anyway.

Even if that was not the case, he could simply take her by force.

Her words and actions might cause some trouble, but she was not the kind of person who could ignore someone who had thrown away his own world just to find her.

He completed everything much faster than expected.

He found her after only a year and a half, wondering whether everyone living in his Master’s world was really that incompetent.

He had spent half a year in his own world and one year in his Master’s world.

When they finally reunited, she was only twenty-seven years old.

Seeing her small and delicate body, he wondered how little she had cared for her health to end up like that.

He asked how many years had passed since they had separated.

Perhaps one year?

He came to that conclusion by himself.

She answered.

It had been four years since she entered and returned from that novel.

Four years?

No matter how he thought about it, four years was too long.

It was not four years from age thirty to thirty-four.

It was four years from age twenty-three to twenty-seven.

Four years during the prime of her youth.

Four years during the period when a person changes the fastest.

Four years had passed.

Reilly Kraha must no longer occupy such a large place in her life.

She must have begun to think differently after four years.

His calculations had been far off.

Fortunately, it seemed she did not have a lover at the moment, and she accepted Reilly Kraha almost immediately.

Now that things had come this far, there was nothing he could do about it.

After their long-awaited reunion, they ate together.

Then he carried Kim Ajin, who had fallen asleep in his arms, to his room and put her to sleep.

Afterward, he prepared some baking.

There was no choice but to lure her with food.

He had to raise her well and make her gain weight.

Kim Ajin was smaller than he had expected, and she was young.

For someone who was 160 centimeters tall, she was far too thin, weighing only around 36 to 38 kilograms.

She was seriously underweight.

Right now, it looked as though her bones might break if he applied even a little force.

So before doing anything else, he needed to make her gain weight.

It was killing two birds with one stone.

If it were the Reilly Kraha from the previous world—the man who had once declared that there was no way he would ever cross worlds just to follow a woman loved by an entire continent—then, of course, he would have wanted to possess her regardless of her condition.

Simply because he wanted her.

He would have grabbed her thin wrist so tightly that he would not have cared if it bent or broke, dragged her to his side, and kept her there.

He would have held her so tightly that her body might break.

Perhaps he would have felt even more satisfaction from knowing that, with her current pathetic weakness, she could never escape from him by force.

In his mind, love was not very different from greed.

But the difficult woman, born in a completely different world and shaped by the habits of that world, would not show him that foolish smile if he treated her that way.

If he oppressed her with force, she would clench her tiny fist or whatever else she could use and fight back, shouting things like:

“Fuck! If you don’t like it, then kill me!”

She was the kind of person who would swing that clumsy fist at him even if she broke her own wrist in the process.

His time in that world had taught him this fact.

He had learned that he would never receive that precious, foolish smile in return for threatening or suppressing her.

Therefore, he would not do anything that could make her feel threatened.

Because what his greed wanted was not just one small part of her.

It wanted everything.

He would treat her painfully thin wrists and fragile-looking shoulders like sugar decorations.

He had realized that having her force herself to possess him would be more satisfying than forcibly possessing her himself.

But even so, there was no reason to give up on strengthening her from something as fragile as a sugar decoration into at least something like candy.

He absolutely could not let her get hurt.

So making her gain weight first was still the best choice.

Besides, she was quite weak to food, and he was very confident in his own cooking skills.

She might have forgotten how useful and convenient he was during those four years.

So he planned to win her over again with delicious food.

If he continued doing that, eventually she would become unable to live without Reilly Kraha.

If he made her unable to put tasteless food into her mouth ever again, she naturally would not be able to leave his side.

There was no need to push her too hard yet.

No, things were already very late.

He needed to slowly take control of her life.

Even if she wanted to run away, by the time she realized what was happening, she would already be unable to escape.

He scoffed.

Reilly Kraha had been the kind of person who used any means necessary from a very young age.

He had countless dark and wicked schemes for getting her into his hands.

And he would not hesitate to scheme against her.

I feel like I’m being raised as livestock for food.

Kim Ajin, who had a small appetite, thought this while slowly eating the thirty-three-course dessert spread Reilly Kraha had prepared in elaborate finger-food sizes.

Since their reunion, they had not even shared one ordinary kiss.

There had been almost no physical affection at all.

They only ate together.

Even when she fell asleep in the middle of it, he simply put her quietly into her own bed without moving a single finger beyond that.

They had gone on dates, but they had not done anything that felt like a real couple.

He had always teased her by calling her “Kitty,” “Kitty,” as if it were his favorite nickname.

But had his romantic feelings really disappeared, leaving behind only the desire to raise a pet?

It had only been a week since they reunited, but something had already felt suspicious.

Did that bastard lose interest in me?

The moment she thought that, the fingers gripping her fork made a cracking sound.

This fucking bastard.

He had once acted like he was the greatest lover in history, saying that he did not care what she looked like.

Then why was he suddenly acting like this?

Had he finally seen her in person and realized that Kim Ajin was too pathetic compared to Yuri Yelechenika?

You fucking bastard.

Kim Ajin gritted her teeth and stuffed another dessert into her mouth.

That was the moment things began to go in a completely different direction from what Reilly Kraha had intended.

Reilly Kraha looked down at Kim Ajin with a cold expression.

They were beside the river.

Kim Ajin had been cornered against the riverside railing, leaning backward with the river behind her.

A large pair of horn-rimmed glasses, which had absolutely no sense of style, had slipped down the bridge of her nose.

Behind the round lenses that covered half her face, Kim Ajin cautiously moved her eyes around.

She looked nervous.

She awkwardly glanced around, then looked up at Reilly Kraha.

She frowned and placed a hand on his shoulder, trying to push him away.

Reilly Kraha had no intention of moving.

Kim Ajin had just said that he was no longer her butler or anything else to her.

Then what exactly was Reilly Kraha to Kim Ajin?

He had asked her coldly, but she had avoided answering.

Should I just force a kiss on her?

He considered it without changing his expression.

He slowly leaned his head toward Kim Ajin.

His neck bent deeply downward.

The body Kim Ajin had used before had been tall, somewhere around 170 centimeters, so even though she was thin, she had not looked especially small.

But Kim Ajin now was extremely small.

When Reilly Kraha trapped her in his arms and looked down at her, he had to bend his head quite far.

Her body, consisting of little more than bones, looked unbearably fragile.

If he kissed her like this, it would look as if he were eating Kim Ajin alive.

Actually, he did not mind eating her alive…

The moment Reilly Kraha had that thought, Kim Ajin slowly stepped backward and tightly closed both eyes.

Her small shoulders became tense as if preparing for something.

Her bony hand gripping the railing turned white from the force.

“……”

Reilly Kraha had no ordinary human understanding of romance.

He did not care about manners such as closing one’s eyes when a kiss seemed likely.

Instead, when Kim Ajin tightly closed both eyes, his thoughts went in a completely different direction.

Why did she close her eyes? Did she realize what I was thinking? Does she think she is being threatened?

He silently lowered his purple eyes.

Should I just force it?

He wanted to roughly remove her glasses, kiss her as if he were about to swallow her whole, and bite her like a crow from that uncivilized world, making it clear that she belonged to him.

And at that moment, Kim Ajin, still keeping both eyes tightly shut, hunched her shoulders and scrunched up her nose several times.

She looked extremely tense.

“……”

Did she realize what I was thinking again?

Reilly Kraha became like a thief caught red-handed simply because he had been thinking bad thoughts.

He stared silently at her before quietly changing his mind.

She was someone who had repeatedly become angry and demanded that he respect her life and her choices.

If he acted like this, it would obviously have the opposite effect.

Hmm.

Thinking about it again, it was still the same.

It was obvious that it would backfire.

“Let’s go back.”

He calmly said this and took one step backward.

As expected, only then did Kim Ajin open her eyes wide.

She stared at Reilly Kraha before hunching her shoulders and slipping out of his arms.

Reilly Kraha turned around to take her back to the car.

As he walked, he irritably ran a hand through his hair.

I can’t help it for now.

But eventually, I will make her gain weight and eat her up.

He clicked his tongue.

The difference in their body sizes already made him look threatening.

The problem was figuring out how to persuade her without making her feel threatened.

After safely putting Kim Ajin inside his car, Reilly Kraha went out onto the main road in Sinchon to investigate the situation.

Following the smell of blood, he soon reached a group of strange monsters.

First, to identify the monsters, he disabled the surrounding surveillance camera network.

He would have trouble if even a satellite caught him.

So he entered a building and lured one of the monsters inside.

Then he dealt with it inside the building and examined its identity.

It was a monster he had never seen even in his own world.

If something like this had appeared on that continent, it would have immediately been called a monster.

Because creatures like these did not exist there, the people who had been called “monsters” were people like Reilly Kraha—beast-like humanoids.

He remembered the history of indiscriminate persecution and violence.

Out of habit, he paid attention to his left eye.

He remembered the restraint and tracking device that had once been forcibly implanted behind his eyeball.

Not anymore.

He quickly regained his composure.

He tried to examine the internal structure of the monster he had crushed in one blow, but its body was nothing but a black mass, making it difficult to examine with the naked eye.

Did I crush it too hard?

He thought about it without much concern while using the toe of his shoe to turn over the monster’s corpse one last time.

He would need more specimens.

Since he had forcibly left Kim Ajin behind despite her trying to stop him, he planned to call her first.

Then he suddenly remembered the conversation they had had just before separating.

The ending had been somewhat blurred, but what she had tried to say was perfectly clear.

“Don’t call me Master! That’s what you used to call me in that world, and you’re not my butler anymore!”

The monster’s head in his hand was crushed in an instant.

He had lost control of his strength for a moment.

Irritably brushing the monster’s remains away, Reilly Kraha took out his phone and pressed the button.

He walked toward the window.

Monsters were wandering through the streets, but none were dangerous enough to make him nervous.

Whether a few more people died in the meantime was none of his concern.

Reilly Kraha had survived by using the deaths of others as his food in the first place.

He was only thinking over Kim Ajin’s words again and again.

Does she intend to deny the old title too?

And does she intend to deny the existence of her butler?

Right now, Reilly Kraha could not even say that he had completely gotten Kim Ajin into his hands.

If even his position as her butler was denied, then what was he supposed to be to remain by her side?

He had not yet completely tied Kim Ajin’s life to his own.

He lowered his cold purple eyes and laughed mockingly.

Does she really think she can become free just by saying that?

In any case, that was impossible.

Whether Kim Ajin accepted it or not, Reilly Kraha had absolutely no intention of letting her go.

In that world, Kim Ajin had repeatedly ordered Reilly Kraha things like:

“Don’t try to force me with your strength.”

“Consider me and respect me.”

They were called orders, but they were really only words that Reilly Kraha could ignore if he wanted to.

Still, he had tried to obey her as much as possible.

He thought that pretending to follow her words might allow him to completely capture her heart as well.

He did not know what consideration or respect meant, so it had not gone particularly well.

But he had tried.

He had spent his entire life surrounded by ruthlessness, selfishness, cruelty, and vice.

He did not know how to consider others.

He did not know how to respect others.

He did not know any way to obtain something except by forcibly taking it with his strength.

But when he pretended to be considerate and told her he would adjust everything according to her wishes, there were certain reactions he had been able to receive from her.

Those reactions had been extremely satisfying.

So, if possible, he wanted to continue acting that way.

If he forcibly grabbed the painfully thin Kim Ajin, kissed her, or poured out his emotions roughly, it would only backfire.

That was why he had endured until now.

Honestly, he was not even confident that he could avoid being rough.

He was not sure he could guarantee that he would not break something.

If I accidentally broke even one of her bones, wouldn’t she run away?

If that happened, he would become extremely angry.

And then the only choice left would be to physically restrain her so completely that she could not move and keep her trapped beside him.

He did not want to do that if possible.

He had roughly realized that she would hardly smile at him after that.

So that was his final resort.