I Can Copy Curses

Orion looked at their faces. Some had tears in their eyes, some were depressed, and some's eyes were hollow, like they were dead from inside.

But these eyes were still looking at him, expecting an answer from him. They wanted to know the reason why Orion hadn't asked them earlier to get away from the mirror world and why when it was too late.

Lisa was the same too. Even though she was her personal maid and her life was tied to him since the moment she was born, she also felt sorrow for suddenly finding herself as an old woman.

Most importantly, she too had dreams—her family's dreams—but they were now slipping away like sand through her fingers.

Although she didn't blame Orion, tears trailing down her cheeks betrayed the silent grief that had settled in her heart.

As Orion looked at their sorrowful faces, her maid's tears, which he had never seen before, made his heart ache in pain.

Especially for Lisa, they had grown up together with her taking care of him for all he could remember, but seeing how she had turned so old and was constantly crying made him feel a profound sense of guilt and sadness.

"Why don't you reply?" The masked girl came close to him and held his collar. "Why? Why? WHY?" She screamed at the top of her lungs, her voice echoing through the cave, filled with a mixture of rage and despair.

"I-I thought it was temporary and would return to normal if we could only find the correct mirror, so I didn't tell you and asked you guys to hurry the process." Orion finally said something, but his eyes were on the ground as he avoided looking at them. "But-but I never thought it would turn out like this."

"You never thought?" The masked girl tightened her grip on his collar. "You never thought?"

"Do you have any idea what we've lost because of your silence?" Her voice trembled with a mix of fury and anguish.

Orion could feel the intensity of her gaze even through the mask, her eyes boring into him, demanding answers he wasn't sure he could give.

"I was trying to protect you," he murmured, his voice barely above a whisper. "I thought if I could fix it quickly, we wouldn't have to face this nightmare. I didn't want to scare anyone."

"Protect us?" she spat, her voice rising again. "By keeping us in the dark? By letting us age and suffer without knowing why?"

She released his collar and took a step back, her body shaking with emotion.

"We deserved to know, Orion. We deserved a chance to make our own choices. But you took that chance away."

Orion finally lifted his eyes to meet hers, his own filled with regret and sorrow.

"I know," he admitted, his voice cracking. "I was wrong. I'm so sorry. I truly am sorry."

However, Orion knew no amount of his apologizing would ever change their fate or erase the years they had lost.

The masked girl shook her head and didn't look at him anymore. She then walked towards a corner, sat down against the wall, and kept her head lowered.

Orion then turned his head to look at others, but they also avoided eye contact with him.

He clenched his fists as he saw that. He felt that everything was going against him.

However, at that moment, he realized something.

'I don't age in the mirror world, so I can search there all day. Maybe I will find the correct mirror. I'll have to find the correct mirror."

He thought, and his eyes brightened as he looked at the cause of all their problems—the mirror world. He thought that if he could find the right mirror, maybe by entering through that mirror they would all return to normal.

However, a very dreaded thought also came to his mind at this time.

'What if there isn't a correct mirror? What if this trap was really designed so that one couldn't get to the other side?'

It was a possibility, but he refused to accept that, shaking his head. Finding the correct mirror was the only hope he had, and maybe because of that, he ignored that thought very easily.

After he made up his mind, he didn't waste any more of his time and went directly into the mirror world.

He went directly inside one of the mirrors and continued where he left off.

An hour passed, and he didn't find the right mirror.

Three hours passed and still the same result.

Sixe hours later, the doubt of the existence of the correct mirror started to resurface in his mind. But he held on.

Ten hours later, the doubt started to haunt him even more, but he still didn't give in and continued searching.

Twelve hours later, he finally started to realize the bitter truth. He thought maybe there really wasn't a mirror leading outside the mirror world.

A day later, he stood there in the world of mirrors, hopeless. After all that time of searching through the mirror world, he didn't find the one mirror that led him outside.

It was as though he was searching for something that didn't exist.

Turning his head to the others, he saw their eyes become even more lifeless than before.

It was as if they had lost all their last hope, if such a thing had ever existed before.

The guilt in Orion increased even more after he failed, making him afraid to look them in the eyes.

He didn't know what to do at this point. He tried the last thing—the last hope he had—but it ended in failure.

'Should I leave?'

The thought of leaving them came to his mind.

'But will that be alright?'

He didn't know if that was the right thing to do.

'Am I the worst person ever?'

He wondered if anyone had ever done something like that to their friends.

'But it wasn't entirely my fault? It was all these mirrors fault.'

He blamed it on the mirrors for making their situation worse.

'Also, my luck! It was also because of my luck. This damn bad luck, when will it go away?'

He blamed half of this on his luck, thinking that if only his luck weren't the worst, they might have somehow escaped from this situation.

But even after blaming others, he didn't feel the guilt go away. Instead, it deepened even more.

'I should leave here.'

He was starting to feel panic as he thought that the more time he would spend here looking at them, the more guilt he would feel, so he made his decision to leave.

'I am not running away from them. I am just… I am just leaving because it will be too late if I don't leave right now and stop General Dray's team. That's right. That's the reason I'm leaving.'

He tried to delude himself into thinking that so he could leave them without regret.

After that, he quickly made his body tangible with the curse of Dimensional Dissonance and jumped towards the other end of the mirror world, where the path continued.

Soon, his body passed through the mirrors that blocked the path like a wall and emerged on the other side of the mirror world.

Looking back, he saw nothing. He didn't see the mirror world he came from, nor did he see his friends. It was just a section of the cave.

'Let's go. I am late now.'

He thought this as he started walking forward.