novelraw Chapter 59: Life
Chapter 59: Life
Bella’s wound was still there, but she had enough strength in her that she didn’t feel as much pain as before.
She looked around her at the people that stared at her from a distance as Stanley ran with her in his arms.
She could feel herself getting stronger, and with that the man that was carrying her dying.
"Stop it!" she shouted at Stanley, but he didn’t listen to her.
Stanley was out of his mind, focused on only one thing and one thing alone. Taking the girl to the mayor’s mansion.
He did not hear her voice at all.
He started getting sluggish, each passing moment making the girl he was carrying feel heavier and heavier.
A deep ringing sound played in his ears, as not even the voice of ’Varinox’ registered in his mind. The cries of the crowd were simply not something he could hear at the moment.
He climbed up another incline leading to the main road separating the 1st and the 3rd quadrant. However, perhaps because he stepped on something or because he was just that weak, he stumbled and fell to the ground.
The girl in his arm rolled away before coming to a stop a few steps away.
The pain of hitting his chin on the ground woke up Stanley to some level of consciousness. The pain kept him as vigilant as he could in this scenario where everything in his body simply wanted to give up and die.
He tried to move, but his body was simply too weak to move.
The girl in his vision stood up slowly, her blue dress marred dark red from the blood that poured out of her guts. Still, she stood.
He saw tears in her eyes, tears that were not there because of the physical pain, but a mental one.
She was hurt knowing that she was causing someone else to feel pain. She was hurt knowing that she was stealing the life of someone else away.
She was hurt because she knew that if she were to live, she would become the death of so many other people.
With the tears still flowing, she reached for the scissors that were in her stomach and pulled on them.
Blood gushed out of her wound, far more than it had before. Like a dam unblocked, she bled even faster now.
"No..." Stanley said weakly when he saw what she was doing.
"Don’t come close to me!" the girl shouted when she saw the crowd start to move toward her to help. "You will die if you come too close."
The men and women in the crowd stopped when they heard her.
"Look at him, he’s dying because of me. Please don’t come near me, I don’t want someone else to die because of me too," the girl pleaded to the crowd.
The crowd slowly backed away when they heard her and realized it was dangerous. They started calling for Defenders that were nearby.
Stanley looked at the crowd that was backing away.
’Help her...’ he thought with his barely conscious mind. ’She’s dying.’ However, no one could listen to his thoughts at all.
His body felt stuck, unable to move as if something heavy was pressing down on him. His body was just too weak to move after all.
The girl held her stomach and limped forward a bit to see if he was fine. "Thank god," she spoke. "You’re alive."
"D..." he tried to speak, but words didn’t come out of his mouth at all.
"You’re dying," the girl panicked when she saw his dim eyes. "It’s because of me."
Suddenly, a feeling arose in Stanley’s heart, and a burst of clarity shot through him. He entered a state of panic as his danger warning activated.
He moved his left arm, reaching for the girl in front of him, for he somehow knew that this warning wasn’t for him, but for the girl ahead of him.
"No one should have to die because of me," she said, tears finally stopping from her eyes. Her hands shook while she took the bloody scissors and opened them again. The crowd gasped, but before they could do anything, the girl acted.
She did the only thing she could think of at the moment. She stabbed herself through the neck.
Blood gushed out of her neck as the girl fell on her back. She coughed a bit as she choked on her own blood. She had already lost a lot of blood before, so a stab to the neck turned fatal.
Within 10 seconds, the girl died.
Stanley screamed, but no voice came out of his mouth. He still reached out with his left hand while his body couldn’t move at all.
A memory surfaced, one that he had been working so hard to suppress.
His heavy body felt the same as when he was trapped under those rubbles. His hand stretched the same, reaching for the one that he wanted to save.
The girl’s fallen body juxtaposed with his mother’s in his mind, and she looked at him for help.
But, just like the last time, he had once again failed to save another life.
The pain of losing someone he should have been able to save was not something Stanley could deal with. He tried to cry, he wanted to cry, but his body was too tired to even do that.
In fact, he should have died already given how long he had touched the girl, but somehow he was still living. He still had life, while the girl in front of him did not.
His body calmed down, even though his emotions did not. Even while he felt the pain of death in his heart, he slowly started losing his vision.
His eyes blinked a few times, staying closed for that much longer each time. At some point, the visions darkened to the point that he could barely see anything.
The last thing he heard was the crowd saying something as a few footsteps arrived. By that time, however, Stanley had already fallen unconscious.