Staring at the clump of black ink in his hand, Ian seemed to see blood spilling everywhere throughout Azure City, coagulating and turning black.
Those ordinary people who had died for no reason at all.
Those things that vanished so easily because lofty figures, for their plans, their schemes, their strategies, their hatred...
—What was the difference between this place and hell?
Unwillingness, regret, remorse, despair, and pain overflowed within it. Here, the desire to destroy everything had gathered.
This was the question that surfaced in Ian's heart.
But then, he sighed.
—There had never been any difference.
"Humans are creatures destined to die."
Gazing at the clump of ink, Ian's hair trembled slightly, gathering into the shape of a pen tip as it wrote a report on phantoms upon a sheet of paper beside him. "Many people do not even live a hundred years. They die in every conceivable way—perhaps because they trip and fall, perhaps because the back of their head hits a cabinet when they sneeze, or perhaps for no reason at all, suddenly dying."
"I know all that. I have even seen it myself. Uncle Isara, who used to live diagonally across from my home, drowned in his washbasin after I clearly warned him not to drink, yet he insisted on drinking."
"A fisherman from Harrison Port, a man who could swim to the fishing grounds and back with his eyes closed, drowned in his own washbasin... He should not have died like that."
At this point, the youth suddenly paused.
Then Ian rose to his feet.
He looked out at the streets of Azure City, at the corpses and wreckage, and said from the bottom of his heart, "Yes. People are just like that. This world is just like that."
He lowered his gaze to