The Lazy Boy Is, In Fact, the Strongest and Most Brutal Assassin. - Chapter 0: The Unbearable Ambiguity (The Story of Dark Green Steel).

The Unbearable Ambiguity (The Story of Dark Green Steel).

“What are you going to do with all that money you’ve saved up, huh?”

Playing with the freshly received coins in her hands, a woman dressed in an alluring outfit asked.

“There’s nothing to do with it… It’s just a boundary line. It has no greater meaning.”

The boy, whose gaze had initially fixated on a small mole near the woman’s mouth, deliberately looked away, turning his eyes to the boxed-in sky above the alley.

“Yeah, that’s right. It has no greater meaning. From here to here is living, and from here to here is dying. That’s all the meaning it holds.”

Like the suspicious prayers recited by the stinking priest in the cathedral, the boy muttered those words, devoid of meaning.

In reality, these “coins” only served to mark the division between life and death. They were money with nowhere to go, money no one needed—like sediment accumulated over the course of life. At most, when the boy died, they might pay for a slightly luxurious grave. That was their only worth.

However, the woman, finding something amusing, laughed heartily at his response. The boy sharply sensed that she wasn’t even trying to grasp the meaning behind his words, and furrowed his brow, squeezing his eyes shut.

“Then… why don’t you take a good look at your own fingers?”

Surprised by the boy’s question, the woman looked puzzled but spread her fingers wide, examining them from the back of her hand.

“And what’s so special about my fingers, then?”

Encapsulating the boy’s entire frame between her spread fingers, the woman replied in a teasing tone, her voice as light as if she were inflating a paper balloon. The boy, already hunched, slouched even further before continuing.

“Tell me, where do your fingers start and end? Don’t say something stupid like ‘from the base.’ The base of the fingers only becomes clear after you’ve already defined where they start and where they end.”

The woman paused for a moment as if considering his words, then twisted her mouth into a frown.

“See? You can’t explain it, can you? Where the fingers end and the palm begins, where the palm ends and the arm starts—it’s all ambiguous. Everyone stacks ambiguity upon ambiguity and lives as if everything’s clear, pretending there’s no confusion at all. You should feel sick from it, but when there’s nothing to vomit, it feels like your insides are being twisted. Even if you wanted a clear boundary somewhere, there’s no helping it… Don’t you think?”

The boy bitterly spat out those words, then looked down at the cold body of a young boy, who had been alive just moments before, now lying dead at his feet, and let out a deep sigh.