The Escort Knight Who Is Obsessed by the Villainess Wants to Escape - Chapter 157

“It’s amazing…”

Eliza watched Kang Jaewon grow up.

Although she had skipped through time a few times, she was able to fully observe the boy gradually maturing.

His small frame quickly grew.

Part of it was due to puberty, but originally, he had been skinny and small, not because his bones were thin.

He was born with a broad and sturdy frame.

As he exercised, his body quickly gained flesh and muscle.

He took on tasks like cleaning the gym and washing uniforms to earn a little money, which he then invested in his diet.

“So this is how Judas grew up…”

Eliza had grown up with Judas.

She naturally remembered that too.

But seeing Judas grow up in a place where she wasn’t present felt incredibly mysterious.

Watching him grow vigorously had its own charm.

“He’s… kind of cute too.”

At the same time, Eliza felt a sense of kinship.

“He’s a lot like me.”

Kang Jaewon had always been alone.

It felt like he had built walls around himself.

His dedication to judo, a martial art, was also a defense mechanism to keep his heart closed off from the outside world.

Eliza, who had thrown himself into studying relentlessly after learning of his mother’s death.

Kang Jaewon, who immersed himself obsessively in sports after being unfairly judged by everyone, even though he had done nothing wrong.

There were so many other similarities too.

Their lives were like reflections in a mirror.

There were differences, of course.

Unlike Eliza, who had memories of his mother, Kang Jaewon knew nothing about his parents.

He had been abandoned in a subway station locker as a newborn.

“A train that runs underground… So it doesn’t affect the roads above? But how does such a large space not collapse? Is it the same principle as when I dug through mountains?”

Someone had heard his cries from the locker, and he was later moved to an orphanage, where he grew up.

The fact that he had no parents spread through the school without him knowing, and before long, he was even burdened with the baseless stigma of having killed his parents.

After enduring such hardships, he eventually became an adult and enrolled in a university.

Yongho University.

It was the top sports university in South Korea for producing athletes.

“The Olympics? So this place also has a large-scale sports festival. It’s similar to the ones held in Judeca. Then Judas’s goal must be something like a gladiator…”

Freshman welcome party.

Despite its name, the atmosphere was anything but welcoming.

The freshmen stood in a line.

All of them stiff and tense.

Except for Kang Jaewon.

The expressions of the seniors standing in front of them fell into two categories.

Either fiercely stern.

Or excited at the thought of tormenting others.

The seniors in the first category stood with their arms crossed, glaring straight at the freshmen, creating an intimidating atmosphere.

Those in the latter category were pouring various liquors into a large basket.

Watching the scene, Kang Jaewon felt conflicted.

“Should I flip it over or not?”

Violence disguised as discipline.

It was especially severe in sports universities.

He had known about it before coming.

He didn’t really want to deal with it.

In fact, it hadn’t felt real until he was directly faced with the situation.

He had vaguely wondered if something like this would happen to him.

And now, that challenge was right in front of him.

If it were just him, it wouldn’t matter.

But there were others who had enrolled with him.

They might suffer together.

“Endure it.”

This was also one of the challenges he had to overcome.

It was his first time drinking, but he could just tough it out for today.

Even if it was liquor that had someone else’s spit in it or had been stepped on.

“You there, starting from the left, take off your clothes.”

“Wh-what?”

“Did you just say ‘what’?”

“If I tell you to take it off, just take it off. If you listen the first time, things will be easier for you later.”

Kang Jaewon changed his mind.

“I won’t endure it.”

The moment he made the decision, he acted.

“…What’s he doing?”

“Hey, hey! You there!”

Kang Jaewon simply walked away from the spot.

He trudged step by step toward the pension’s front door.

Of course, they didn’t just let him go.

Someone approached and roughly grabbed the back of his neck.

“Are you out of your mind? Who do you think you are? Why the hell are you trying to run away?”

Kang Jaewon looked up at him with indifferent eyes.

The guy was taller than him.

And he had the same dumpling-shaped ears as Jaewon.

Suddenly, Jaewon wondered.

Had this senior always been like this from the beginning?

Jaewon removed the senior’s hand.

The senior tried to resist but couldn’t.

The grip strength in Jaewon’s seemingly gentle hand was inhuman.

Feeling suffocated, Jaewon let out a sigh and said,

“I came to this university to play sports, not to play along with your seniority games.”

At that moment, everyone’s eyes were on him.

He spoke calmly, but the atmosphere wasn’t one where his words would be understood.

Instead, it grew even more hostile.

He could feel the senior who had grabbed him preparing to use a technique.

His face was twisted, perhaps out of frustration.

Jaewon’s body was being pulled.

He sneered.

This was reality.

Their beatings and pressure served no real purpose.

In fact, if word got out, they’d be the ones criticized.

Yet, they willingly carried it out.

Because they could.

Because they were allowed to.

Humans act that way in such moments.

Even if it’s irrational and unreasonable.

Eliza once added a comment to that interpretation.

‘Self-esteem. Pride.’

As the words suggest.

They are the emotions that make an individual feel and confirm their own existence.

Most of humanity’s actions, which are pointless and irrational, are carried out for the sake of that trivial self-esteem and pride.

There might be more complex reasons, but for now, he decided to focus on the memory.

Jaewon quickly recognized the technique his opponent was using.

‘Outer leg sweep. Quick and simple. A classic for ambushes.’

Because it was simple, it was also easy to counter.

Above all, his opponent was agitated.

He wasn’t maintaining the basic judo principle of “kuzushi” (breaking balance) and was recklessly attempting the technique.

Kuzushi refers to tilting the opponent’s center of gravity in the desired direction.

Without achieving that “kuzushi,” it’s difficult to execute a technique using just force.

Jaewon grabbed the opponent’s collar and slightly shifted his center of gravity forward.

The moment the opponent tried to sweep his outer leg,

Jaewon swept the opponent’s leg with even greater force and pushed.

‘Counter outer leg sweep.’

He returned the same technique.

It was the larger senior who fell.

-Thud!

A dull noise.

The man sprawled on the ground, groaning.

And the others who had witnessed it all.

One of the seniors spoke up.

“Grab that bastard.”

Jaewon made a decision.

‘No choice.’

He grabbed the fallen senior’s wrist, twisting it as if to threaten.

“If anyone comes closer, I’ll break this.”

“You crazy…!”

And so, the back-and-forth struggle continued for a while.

The commotion only died down after a report was filed from the neighboring pension.

It was the first time something like this had happened.

The “tradition” of welcoming freshmen had been broken.

***

The incident created significant waves.

A violent initiation disguised as a tradition at a prestigious sports university.

The lingering bad habits under the name of tradition were placed under the media’s scrutiny.

There was even a freshman who had secretly filmed the scene that day, and he released the footage.

Thanks to that, not only was Kang Jaewon spared punishment, but he also became an overnight celebrity.

The righteous sports student.

Though he himself had no interest in lofty concepts like justice.

He was just tired of a reality where everyone knew what was wrong but turned a blind eye, and he simply wanted to play sports fairly.

Contrary to concerns, even his fellow freshmen supported him.

Some even thanked him.

If he hadn’t stepped in, everyone would have been helplessly caught.

It wasn’t too bad.

At least until then.

The public’s interest quickly faded.

They just needed a temporary target to tear apart, not genuinely wanting to break down the injustice.

As the attention waned, internal efforts for self-regulation also diminished.

The long-established traditions and their power were not something that could be overturned overnight.

Yongho University, renowned in the sports world, remained intact.

The incident that occurred during the initiation was dismissed as a personal and minor issue of that particular class.

All the professors who knew about it but turned a blind eye remained unscathed.

Even the classmates who initially defended Kang Jaewon and sought help gradually distanced themselves from him.

As his life as an athlete began to suffer, they shirked responsibility and shifted the blame.

If you wanted to continue in this field, you had no choice.

And so, gradually, Kang Jaewon became isolated until one day.

He exposed other corrupt practices in the sports world to the media.

He revealed the favoritism and bullying by seniors and coaches during the selection trials for entering the athlete’s village.

The right to participate in national team selection trials through connections and regional ties.

And the sexual assaults committed under the guise of authority against young athletes.

The sports world was turned upside down again, and Kang Jaewon was expelled from the Central Judo Association.

Permanent disqualification as an athlete.

He could no longer represent the national team.

Anticipating this, he voluntarily withdrew from the selection trials and dropped out of university.

The aftermath was much greater than before.

The faculty was replaced, and the collusion with the association that had backed them was exposed, leading to a massive overhaul of the association’s personnel.

For a gamble he staked his life on, the result wasn’t too bad.

And so, he quit his life as an athlete.

Before he started working as an instructor at a gym.

A brief period of rest, holed up in his room due to the constant surveillance when he went outside.

During this time, Kang Jaewon came across a game.

“What the hell… What is this? What am I supposed to do with this?”

There, he encountered a character named Eliza.

And Eliza, watching all of this, blankly stared at the same screen as Kang Jaewon.

On that screen…

[Eliza Di Bevel]

‘…Me?’

Eliza, realizing she was the one controlling Kang Jaewon’s character, killing it.

‘No matter how I look at it, it’s me…’

Computers, games, graphics.

After quickly grasping these difficult concepts, she accepted the reality Kang Jaewon was seeing.

A virtually constructed world.

A fictional character within it.

Eliza.

She realized that she was such a person.