Chapter 10 – The Anatomy of a Misunderstanding

The golden light faded.

My companions stood, no longer breathing heavily, but infused with a vigor that was deeply, profoundly irritating. The cuts and scrapes from the battle were gone. Their exhaustion had vanished.

My plan to poison them had resulted in a full-party heal and buff.

It was a catastrophe.

“Ryuuji…”

Kenji took a step toward me. He put a heavy, trembling hand on my shoulder. His face was filled with an awe so pure it was nauseating.

“We’ve completely recovered!”

What.

My brain blue-screened.

“What do you mean?”

“When I saw you leave, I was confused, but I should have known!”

He was shouting now, his voice echoing in the goblin-free clearing.

“I should have trusted you! You weren’t running away! You knew we would be drained after the fight, so you went looking for something to help us!”

Reina was looking at me with those strange, fixed eyes again. That look still scared me more than any monster.

“How did you know about this fruit?”

My mouth opened, but no sound came out.

What?

How the hell was I supposed to know?

This was it. This was the end of my beautiful, edgy, meticulously crafted revenge plot. It was being murdered by relentless, weaponized friendship.

I couldn’t let it end like this. If they wouldn’t see me as a villain through my actions, I would force them to see it with my words. I would confess everything.

I stood up straight and pushed Kenji’s hand off my shoulder. I needed them to see the darkness in my soul.

“You’re all wrong.”

My voice was cold. I hoped it sounded menacing.

“You don’t understand anything.”

Kenji’s earnest face shifted to confusion. “Ryuuji? What do you mean?”

“I wasn’t helping you.”

I let a dark smirk play on my lips. An anti-heroic sneer.

“I ran away. From the fight. From the goblins. From all of you.”

I pointed a finger at my own chest, my expression a mask of what I hoped was pure, selfish cowardice.

“I was scared. I abandoned you.”

I let the words hang in the air, a testimony to my worthlessness. This had to work. There was no way to misinterpret a direct confession.

Silence.

Then, Kenji’s face broke into a radiant, blinding smile of comprehension.

“Of course!”

No. Not ‘of course.’

“That’s what you want us to think!”

He took a step forward, his eyes shining with admiration.

“You’re trying to downplay your own heroism! You don’t want the credit! You executed a dangerous solo flanking maneuver to find a strategic resource while we handled the frontal assault. That wasn’t cowardice, Ryuuji! That was the single bravest thing I have ever seen!”

This moron. This golden-retriever-brained, paragon-of-justice moron. He had somehow twisted my confession of cowardice into an act of supreme, selfless bravery.

My fists clenched. My jaw ached. I had to go further. I had to make them see the poison in my heart.

“And the fruit!”

I practically spat the words.

“That fruit I gave you! I didn’t know it would heal you! I thought it was poison!”

I glared at them, trying to channel every ounce of malice I possessed.

“I was trying to hurt you. To incapacitate you. To get rid of you.”

There. I said it. The ultimate villainous monologue. Now they had to hate me. Now they would finally see me as their enemy.

Reina’s eyes widened. Her hand flew to her lips.

A single, perfect tear rolled down her cheek.

Her voice was a whisper, thick with devastating emotion.

“Ryuuji-kun… you are… just too kind…”

I’m sorry, what?

“To think you would go that far for us…”

She took a shaky step closer.

“You found a fruit you suspected was poison, a cursed fruit that could have killed you… and you were going to test it? You were willing to take the poison into your own body first, to suffer alone, just on the small chance it might help us?”

She was creating a backstory of martyrdom for me on the spot.

“You were inventing a selfish reason—pretending you wanted to hurt us—just to hide your incredible, self-sacrificing nature! Oh, Ryuuji-kun!”

Daisuke let out a loud, choked grunt, and I swear I saw him wipe a tear from his eye.

They didn’t see a poisoner.

They saw a martyr.

They saw a saint so humble he would slander his own name to hide his good deeds.

My plan. My confession. My soul. They were all in ruins. Crumbled to dust by the sheer, unshakeable power of their idiotic belief in my goodness.

A single, hot tear of pure, uncut rage slid down my cheek.

Reina’s face softened at the sight. Her own eyes looked misty.

“Oh, Ryuuji… you don’t have to hold it in anymore.”

Daisuke gave me a clumsy, awkward pat on the shoulder.

Kenji’s voice dripped with that sickeningly earnest sincerity.

“It’s okay, man. We’re here for you. We know the burden you carry is heavy.”

They thought these were tears of gratitude.

The sheer, weapons-grade cringe of the moment was suffocating me.

I had failed. I had failed so completely, so utterly, that I had looped all the way back around to succeeding in the one thing I never wanted.

I was their hero.

There was nothing left to say. There was no explanation that their friendship-addled brains wouldn’t twist into another verse in the Ballad of Saint Ryuuji.

I took a deep, shuddering breath, the air burning my lungs.

I was done.

“Fine.”

The word came out as a dead, hollow whisper.

“Whatever.”

My shoulders slumped in total defeat.

“The mission is over. Let’s head back.”