What was your first disillusionment?
A school test?
When you lost in gym class?
When you saw a girl you liked with another boy?
At the very least, for Minoru Honda, these were nothing compared to what he experienced.
Minoru Honda’s world was first broken in the third grade.
An outbreak of a disease meant school was finished early, but when he got home, he saw his mother with a man he did not know.
At the time, he did not know what they were doing in the bedroom, just that it was not something they should be doing.
If he told his father, it would be big trouble. He had to stop his mother.
He waited until the man left to show himself, and his mother panicked when she saw him.
She tried to make up excuses out of desperation, but he ignored them, and pleaded for her to stop and not see that man anymore.
His mother responded not with words, but with violence.
At first, he did not know what happened. But the throbbing pain on his cheek told him something was done to him.
Still, his brain rejected it. There was no way his kind mother would hit him.
He looked on in a daze, as his crying mother kept saying she was sorry and caressing his face. Then she gently smiled and said if he kept quiet, nothing had to change.
Was that his mother? He asked himself that question, but she did look like her.
He silently nodded, and his mother went back to being the person he knew.
But as he looked on, he felt as though there were two of his mother.
◇ ◇ ◇
After that, he kept quiet about the man.
He felt he had to tell his father, but thinking back to how frightening his mother was made him shake and stay quiet.
For a while, it seemed everything was the same.
If he held it inside him, his parents would stay together, he thought.
That was his only way to protect his family, but it did not materialize.
During dinner, his mother announced she was pregnant, but that was the start of this first disillusionment.
His father took him out of the room, and told him in a strong tone to go to his bedroom.
He curled up on the second floor, as he heard the yells from downstairs.
He curled up and blocked his ears, but he still heard things he did not want to, so he put a pillow over his head.
After a while, there was a knock on the door.
When he opened it, his father told him his mother had gone back to her parent’s house.
It felt to him like the ground had crumbled beneath his feet.
Children are smarter than most would think. They understand things adults assume they would not.
Minoru was no exception. In fact, he was smarter than most.
He started thinking.
Was he keeping quiet for his own good? Why did he hold back?
He felt sick, and vomited.
His father was concerned, but that did not matter. Seeing what he wanted to protect so easily come to dust plunged him into despair.
That was his first disillusionment in this world.
This was what started to distort Minoru.
He had good grades in school, and played the part of an honor student on the surface. But behind that, he made vulgar people follow him, and began to bully and extort.
Once in university he became related to a small-time criminal group, and got himself ties to the underworld. His past experiences meant he was not good with violence, but he put his hands on everything else.
When he was almost graduating, his worried father contacted him, and he went back to his hometown.
At this time, his spirit was mostly stable, and he was trying to wash his hands of his bad deeds and not do them anymore.
But the world would not allow one person to go back from underground alone.
As Minoru tried to work for the company earnestly, an old friend visited.
He looked like a regular salaryman, but Minoru knew he was a bad guy.
It was the moment Minoru’s past designated him as bait.
◇ ◇ ◇
From that point forward, Minoru’s life was hell.
He betrayed the father who loved him, and embezzled from the company.
He could have spoken about it to someone, but he did not want his father to know of his past transgressions and hate him for it.
This bad daily life ate away at his spirit, and he considered ending his life.
But then, his cousin Ai invited him to the dungeon. She did so as a way for him to relax, but this dungeon exploration changed Minoru’s life.
He disliked violence, and struggled to defeat the boss of the tenth floor. But that was where he got the skill orb with the Curse skill.
He told his cousin that it was a magic skill, and went straight to a certain place after leaving the dungeon.
It was the mansion that the criminal organization that threatened him called home.
He went upstairs after proclaiming he was there to offer his payment for the month, and immediately grabbed the man’s head to start chanting a curse.
It could have gone poorly, but somehow, Minoru knew it was a success.
After he was done chanting the curse, he pointed at the window, and left.
Soon after, he heard a scream coming from the mansion, and ambulance sirens. He left the scene with this BGM playing in the background.
◇ ◇ ◇
Five days later, Minoru was arrested.
Not for murder, because the death of that man from the criminal organization was treated as a suicide. He was charged with embezzlement.
The accounting section had declared before that there was suspicious money flow happening in the company. It was determined that Minoru was the culprit, and the suicide of the person from the criminal organization settled it.
He was being let free while they investigated where the money went, but searching the house of that criminal provided them with a ledger of who gave him money and how much.
This ledger led to the arrest of Minoru, but the large-scale embezzlement of multiple companies also caused an uproar.
Naturally, his name and the ones of everyone else involved were made public, meaning he could not stay above ground.
But what hit Minoru the hardest was his father’s rejection.
This case led to all his past misdeeds coming to light, causing his father to abandon him completely.
You could say it was his fault, but that did not stop him from crying endlessly.
His mother left, his father abandoned him, and Minoru suffered his second disillusionment.
◇ ◇ ◇
Minoru served three years in jail, but after seeing no one to welcome him back, he was convinced he was truly abandoned.
But it was too late to feel sad, he brought it upon himself. It was only natural that he be abandoned.
He started looking for work, but his criminal record meant no one would hire him.
And without the means to start his own business, there was nothing he could do.
One day, as he walked around in a park, he saw a face he recognized. It was someone who looked homeless, or maybe was homeless, but Minoru knew him as someone who was also arrested.
Despite the terrible reasons why he knew him, he felt nostalgic, and talked to him.
He seemed to not remember him, but did after he explained.
Despite him being ten years older than Minoru, they spoke pretty amiably.
They had nothing to do anyway, so they decided to risk their lives.
“Hey, do you want to team up with me and go to the dungeon?”
“Dungeon? A middle aged guy like me can’t become a seeker.”
“Your life is lost anyway, why not struggle for it?”
“…I don’t have anything, are you sure about this?”
“I don’t have anything either. I’m just living. Let’s do it.”
They had nothing to lose, so they teamed up to rise up.
They could have led an honest life from this point forward, but the fact that it did not go well was just par for the course for Minoru Honda.
◇ ◇ ◇
He spent three years as a seeker, and in the meantime, his team kept growing.
Minoru Honda had a knack for drawing people to him.
Perhaps it was passed down through generations of business owners, but although Minoru did not quite understand it himself, he did have charisma.
But this did not mean he only drew in good people. Some were evil, so he needed to be able to select them.
That was where the Curse skill came in handy.
Curse did not tell him what people’s true intentions were, but he gained another ability as a side-effect of Curse.
He could tell the depth of people’s sins, like a karma value. He went along with this feeling and selected people to join him.
He once accepted a person this feeling told him to reject, because of a recommendation from another team member, and in the end, this person would not stop fighting with the other members and ran away after stealing money.
Ever since then, he only accepted people after meeting them directly, regardless of who recommended them.
The dungeon exploration was going smoothly, and he was almost at the boss of the thirtieth floor.
The dungeon became much more profitable after the thirtieth floor. One could make a living up to the twentieth, but after the thirtieth, it was a whole other level.
It was not impossible to make enough for a whole year with one single dive.
The probability of finding treasure chests greatly went up, and it was easier to get powerful equipment.
It was not impossible for them to suddenly become rich, and a stable life was promised to them.
Most members of this team had a weight on their conscience, so the promise of a stable life without worries was very attractive.
◇ ◇ ◇
Minoru’s role in the dungeon was debuffing. This was because of his Curse skill, and his distaste for violence.
Others could deal the killing blow to monsters while he immobilized them.
In more dangerous scenarios, he would use a technique that worked for a limited time but could slow down monsters.
Curse was a powerful skill, and having just one user in a party made exploration much easier.
Minoru continued to become stronger throughout these three years, and got the Sonata skill after beating the boss of the twentieth floor.
Had he not gotten this skill, Minoru would still be a seeker to this day.
◇ ◇ ◇
His party was plenty strong, so once they got their equipment in order, they could start thinking about the boss of the thirtieth floor.
They were supposed to save up and pool their money to buy equipment, but they all went to a bar to restore their strength.
Most of them liked alcohol and partying. And one among them said Minoru’s Curse skill was incredible.
It was simple praise, but it was heard by someone with bad intentions.
“Excuse me, do you have the Curse skill?”
Asked a mysterious person in a black suit.
Minoru was about to chase this suspicious person away, but someone else responded more quickly.
“Yep! Minoru’s Curse is the greatest!”
“Hey!”
“Ooh, wonderful. Can I join? Of course, it will be my treat.”
He said while extending his hand, and Minoru took it.
It seemed like a friendly handshake. There was no karma value, or anything unpleasant.
At the very least, it seemed unlikely he would try anything there, but that was definitely where they got their attention.
Despite him not feeling anything wrong when this man joined in, he should have thought it was odd.
He never thought this man could have a Curse class skill. Minoru had looked into Curse, but learned nothing about other Curse skills. Even if he knew, it would have changed nothing.
That night, this man learned everything about Minoru and everyone’s skills.
It was a week later that they met again.
◇ ◇ ◇
“Hey Minoru. We need to talk about work.”
“Work? What are you talking about?”
“Come on, didn’t you tell me to bring you jobs only a Curse skill can do?”
“Did I… A job? Okay, let me get ready.”
Minoru told his party members that he had another job to do, so he could not go to the dungeon, and got changed.
Others wanted to stop him, but for some reason, did not feel like moving.
◇ ◇ ◇
After meeting with the man and hearing what the job was about, Minoru refused.
The document he was handed was about taking the life of a person.
But the man sweetened the deal. The reward was thirty million yen, and the target was an enemy of society. Someone who caused a lot of misfortune, and Minoru’s power could save a lot of people. Still, he was not up to it.
“…Not enough uh…”
Minoru heard his whisper, but could not understand what it was about.
“Then how about this?”
It seemed Minoru would not back down, so the man proposed something simpler, making a person sleep for a day.
The reward was eight million yen, but he accepted it because despite the lower reward, the job was better than killing.
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