Flip the Coin [BL]-Chapter 403, Livid Dog II

Henry’s POV

I didn’t like for Kenny to flip the coin, but I reluctantly accepted that he had to do it.

I hadn’t thought that this disheveled woman would deliver all the answers right away, but I held nevertheless onto Kenny as he touched her.

And then I was in another space, somewhere twenty to thirty years ago; I could somehow just tell.

Maybe because of the old-fashioned haircut the brown-haired woman in front of me had, maybe because of the old furniture inside the locker room.

"Kenny?" I looked around but couldn’t see him.

I had thought that the way he perceived his visions had changed and that he didn’t experience them from inside the person themselves anymore. Given that I was here without him meant that he was inside this woman nevertheless—or I had been sucked into this vision in his stead.

Either way, I couldn’t use my powers and couldn’t leave this place, nor could I move more than a few meters away from that woman.

With no choice left, I followed her to ’Eddie.’

I felt delighted while going to him, feelings that SURELY weren’t mine, as I had no interest in this woman’s life whatsoever.

That changed, however, slowly but surely, as I understood that we had already found the answers we were searching for; this weak woman was the Prophet’s mother.

I knew the moment I was leaning against the sink inside a woman’s bathroom, hearing someone on the phone, hearing the name ’Kenny,’ and hearing the adorable little voice of a young boy scream through the speaker.

Then a woman stepped out of the cabin, and I straightened up instantly upon seeing her.

She was washing her hands while I stared at her involuntarily.

She was beautiful.

Brown eyes and autumn-brown hair that leaned a bit into red.

Not a really tall woman, she looked like an innocent deer, but the way she presented herself had something overly relaxed in it.

As if she wouldn’t be easily provoked.

As if a slight smirk would appear on her lips when she was annoyed.

Most of all, she looked like Kenny.

When she left the bathroom, I tried to follow her but couldn’t leave because the woman this was about had only just opened the door of her stall.

While she washed her hands, I left the bathroom, again stuck because I couldn’t move that far away from her.

Yet soon, she entered the hall, and I instantly spotted Kenny’s mother, looking around boredly while leaning against a blond man with dark green eyes.

I had seen him when I followed Kenny to his family dinner, but he seemed like a different person than back then.

He looked young and good-looking, like a scholar, instead of the thin, broken shadow I had seen.

He didn’t look like Kenny or Mrs. Howard, probably going more after his father... the cheater.

I didn’t like him, just like I didn’t like him when I had first seen him.

And seeing Kenny’s dad speaking with ’Eddie,’ I already knew how this would unfold.

Yet I was instantly thrown into a different setting, into a bedroom at night, and hearing the conversation that followed after ’Eddie’ hung up the phone, I was ready to murder someone.

How dare this deranged man feel elated at the death of Kenny’s mother?

I tried to attack him, but I was unable to.

I tried to throw something, but I couldn’t.

Instead, I had to watch as this continued.

–Watch as he bragged drunkenly about how close he and Mr. Howard had become—something that was surely not entirely true.

As the man injected something looking like blood into his ’anemic’ pregnant wife.

And I heard the phone call.

And I was livid.

They all had to die, each and every one from the Lawrence family.

They all had to die, and that included Kenny’s father.

But it was not all; it did not end just like this.

Instead, I continued firsthand with what Kenny had to feel every time he flipped the coin on me and when his ability let him feel what I felt.

I remembered him crying on the day we had gone to the morgue after he had flipped the coin on me.

It is disgusting, and it is invasive to be forced to feel emotions that aren’t your own.

I hoped he had never felt the disgust I was currently feeling—as I felt the despair of a mother, the love for a kid I didn’t care about besides the fact that he had a connection to Kenny, and the fear of this even weaker man she had married.

Absolutely disgusting.

Then I could see a bit more of the Lawrence family, and they continued to constantly pile up reasons for me to kill them.

Because I felt the deep sorrow that the woman went through while trying to find the child that had ’died.’

As she tried to dig up his grave, and as she was sedated.

And I felt even more livid when thinking of the high chance that Kenny was currently inside her, perceiving what I perceived just with more intensity.

All of this—ALL OF THIS—could have been prevented with ONE person looking after ALL of his children.

I only recognized inside the vision the spot the Lawrence family had moved their residence into because I had teleported here; it never occurred to me that we were inside the city.

But in this setting I recognized it.

The place where the four tragedies of my life happened.

The death of my parents, the death of my ’sister’, the spot I stabbed Kenny as I was dragged away by the Deer Monster, the place where he came back from his fight with the giant, covered in blood.

What had been a field of black ash had become a black forest, reminding one of the Deer Monster world.

I can already guess why they moved here; it surely was connected with the machine they built to cross the worlds on their own—but still with my Henrietta’s help.

For the longest time, here should have been a spot where the layers are especially thin, and they probably wanted to take a closer look at it.

The underground laboratory was, however, a whole other case.

All in white, reminiscent of how the center looked, all these glass cells.

All these specimens they had gathered.

And while I had to look at it, and Kenny had to look at them, the feelings of that woman were violating us.

I clenched my jaw and fists, trying to calm down, trying to be ready for the moment when I would be ejected from these visions.

Because I had to make sure that Kenny’s mind wouldn’t break.

I want all of these people dead, but not by his beautiful hands and at the cost of his psyche.

And then it was there; I was back in my body and pulled him away, we both falling on the ground, and Kenny proving with his behavior that he had indeed witnessed everything inside the visions firsthand.

I tried to cover his mouth and tried to pull him away to not get the attention of about four hundred people inside the garden when everything went south, and that fast.

He bit his wrist so fast and decisively that I could only watch in horror as his blood splattered onto both of the worm bodies.

After fighting all while making sure not to really injure him and not to get myself killed at his hands—which luckily didn’t happen as he didn’t use his full power, his confused state of mind probably at fault—I finally had him restrained, using every bit of energy available.

Chaos broke out in the garden; I ripped part of my shirt off and bandaged him and got rid of the blood on the earth.

All the while, I witnessed what these worms can do.

And I understood how wrong we had been.

The rats didn’t mutate here, not to this extent.

Kenny mentioned that the world he had seen from his counterpart’s memories had no pink rats in it.

The reason should be that the worms didn’t manage to grow into another species because they would be eaten before they could.

By the rats.

And after rats AND worms came here, the rats concentrated on the humans, giving the worms enough time to grow into ’pink’ rats first.

However, seeing the animalistic or human forms these worms could take on, they could apparently turn into whatever they came into contact with.

Squirrels, cats, dogs... humans.

Because of that, only pink rats delivered the ’virus,’ which was essentially small worms that would turn humans into zombies, which I had seen when Kenny got bitten by a pink rat-ferret thing.

They turned into zombies because the humans would be eaten from the inside.

The worms would grow and grow until they merged together.

This should be the last stage: a pinkish finished form without eyes that was immune to bullets.

Luckily, it seemed that the worms needed a long time until they grew into the finished product—if not juiced by Kenny’s blood.

The little Wormkid, as well as the woman’s corpse from which worms had broken forth, had his blood on them, so besides the obvious danger they posed, they had to disappear; but with so many eyes on them, I needed a cover to use my powers.

Luckily, Kenny managed to conjure up the tear gas, although he still tried to get out of my grasp.

Not a chance, Kenny.

When the teargas covered everything sufficiently, I let the shadowy energy wander and got rid of anything that came into contact with his blood, and my power drained so quickly to get rid of the toddler that I was nearly losing consciousness before it finally disappeared.

But that agitated Kenny further, so I took him and ran as fast as I could.

I sped over the big wall surrounding the Lawrence estate, came to the black ash field where I had found Kenny bloody as hell returning from his fight with the giant, and noticed that the Lawrence family had demolished the whole new district that was the cause of my parents’ death and had still been in the making a few years ago when the first portal opened.

I can’t say that I am sad about that; just that the Lawrence family had been the ones doing it made me furious.

And thinking about what had happened, what had happened to Kenny, about his childhood, his STUBBORN mother who wouldn’t listen to her son—another way to prevent every one of Kenny’s traumatic experiences—the neglecting father...the cast that hadn’t been taken off, the blood that had been stolen from a child, I grew more and more livid.

And in the end, when I arrived home, I was nearly losing my mind.

Only when Kenny bit me did I calm down a bit—liking how he would search my proximity.

When I finished delivering the news, though I didn’t go into the details, I went to sit with Kenny in our bedroom, again consumed by regret that I had set foot out of this house.

Yesterday he had a paranoid episode; now this.

I had no idea how the crystalline counterpart inside his mind was faring, though the fact that he wasn’t using the giant’s power, either unconsciously or because he simply couldn’t, was already good.

"What should I do? What should I do?" The regret inside me was so overwhelming, and I remembered how the mother had felt.

How she so deeply regretted not having fled with her kid before what she had believed had turned into what she retrieved out of the laboratory.

"SOMEONE BRING THE KID!" I yelled before letting go of Kenny’s ears and again while holding onto him.

Luckily, I was right.

The moment he saw the kid, he was alright again.

I saw dark spots in my vision but ignored it, simply refusing to lose consciousness right now.

"Everything is alright."