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Everything felt numb.
Aimlessly, he wandered. For having been deserted by his final remaining compatriot, his last connection to those brilliant days—this time, he truly had nowhere left to go.
The neverending barrage of raindrops roared, as if mocking him.
‘Doesn’t that serve you right? For clinging onto your foolish hopes and dreams, for daring to reach behind the mirror to what should be left untouched, the only thing left now is-’
“Nothing,” Yi Sang murmured in response. “Nothing remains.”
The rain only continued to laugh, further accumulating into an ocean-like mass around his ankles.
Ah, walking had never felt so tiring.
Maybe he shouldn’t resist anymore.
Maybe, if he just stopped walking, he could let the endless water pooling around his knees drag him under. Let it flood his lungs, stop his heartbeat, and finally silence all the dreary thoughts flowing into his head.
At this point, wouldn’t it be better to just let it all sweep him away?
Before he even realized it, the water had already risen far past his head. His surroundings had long vanished to the flow of the waves, and now, only he was left.
… It was quiet underneath the surface. Far above him, the rain still poured, yet down here, he could hear nothing, not even his own breathing.
It really wouldn’t be so bad for a life to end here, huh?
Lulled by the calm yet deadly tide, he allowed his eyes to shut and his body to curl. The cold feeling of the water slowly faded, as he felt himself drift off into the abyss.
Until…
He felt something… someone … tap his shoulder. Bewildered, he opened his eyes.
In front of him stood an unfamiliar woman holding an umbrella over her head. Her beautiful white hair flowed behind her as she kneeled down to face him. Despite their proximity, he couldn’t quite discern her face.
Then she uttered some words that he could barely make out.
“Yi Sang... First... Been waiting…”
Waiting? Waiting for what? For him to sink beneath the water? For his hopes and dreams to crumble out of his own grasp? For everything he had ever known to become destroyed, leaving him an empty shell of a person?
“... Promise… Recover… Torn and broken wings.”
He wanted to laugh. What wings? The wings that he never even had? How could one recover something that he never could have in the first place?
How delirious he must be, to be imagining someone offering him his most desperate wish right as he was about to sink into the depths. Something so utterly unbelievable that it could never be reality.
The woman stood up and reached out towards Yi Sang, offering her hand.
Was there even a point to grasping that hand? Surely, this was yet another phantom of his imagination, the last fragments of his now shattered dream manifesting into one final, futile show of resistance. But that dream was certainly long gone, for his compatriots were no longer by his side.
So what was this, then? A trick of the mind that would drag him even deeper? Something to fully, thoroughly destroy his last semblance of hope, and push him to finally sink?
He knew that was the likely answer, and yet something within him told him to reach out, to accept the offer. And before he even realized it, he had taken that outstretched hand.
With that, the woman grasped onto his hand and pulled, dragging him upwards. Within a second, the overwhelming sea surrounding him shrank back down into a small puddle beneath his feet, returning him to the familiar, dreary City landscape he had grown far too accustomed to.
As he coughed and tried to clear the imaginary water from his lungs, he felt the rain over his head stop. The woman, now standing in front of him, was holding her umbrella over him.
Her piercing blue eyes stared back into his, and her face donned a smile that did not quite reach her eyes as the rainwater poured down on her.
“Faust welcomes you to Limbus Company, Yi Sang. As of right now, you have officially become Sinner #1 of the LCB.”