Kryptonians: Man of Steel

Chapter 1548 Collapse
A fire of shame and anger burned wildly within her, licking at her insides and scorching her reason. The fire was so intense that she felt a strong dizziness, and the scene before her eyes began to distort and sway.

The familiar outlines of the office—neat bookshelves, silent computers, and timetables on the wall—are blurred and dissolved like reflections in water.

In the center of my vision, there was only that bunch of intensely red roses, dripping with blood, and that white card lying quietly on the notebook. They emanated an eerie light, cold yet scorching, like markers of the entrance to hell, filled with naked mockery and malice.

Her cheeks were burning hot, as if a branding iron was pressed against her skin. She could clearly feel the blood surging and swelling in her capillaries, bringing waves of stinging, burning sensations.

Her ears were burning hot, blood was rushing to them, and she could almost "hear" the heavy throbbing of the blood hitting her eardrums. Each heartbeat was like a heavy hammer hitting her chest, making her ribs ache and feel like they were about to shatter.

With each heartbeat, what was pumped out was no longer the life-sustaining blood, but scalding, viscous, and shame-laden poison.

A strong feeling of nausea, accompanied by an uncontrollable spasm in my throat, suddenly surged up. It wasn't physical nausea, but an instinctive rejection from the depths of my soul of this filthy gaze.

She instinctively pressed the back of her hand hard against her burning forehead.

The stark contrast between the icy coldness of the back of my hand and the burning heat of my forehead was striking. This temperature difference did not bring any relief; instead, it intensified the tearing sensation of being torn apart by the extremes of ice and fire within my body.

"Huh...huh..."

She opened her mouth wide, breathing heavily, her chest heaving violently, like a fish thrown ashore.

She tried to inhale the cold, dusty, and disinfectant-smelling air of the office to extinguish the burning fire of shame within her and to calm the rage and panic that threatened to tear her chest apart.

However, with each inhalation, it felt like inhaling scalding sand, rubbing against the trachea, burning the lungs, and bringing a deeper sense of suffocation; with each exhalation, it felt like expelling toxic fumes accumulated in the body, but it did nothing to alleviate the heavy pressure.

The dizziness is getting stronger.

The floor beneath her feet seemed to be tilting, and the whole world seemed to be spinning around her. The desk, the chair, and the shadows of the trees outside the window all became blurry, rotating backdrops.

She felt as if she had become a severely overloaded, dilapidated steam engine on the verge of exploding. Scalding steam surged and thrashed within her, frantically searching for an outlet.

Her temples throbbed, her carotid artery pulsed violently beneath her skin, and she could even feel fine beads of sweat seeping from every pore, hissing and evaporating in the cold air, carrying with them the burning heat and fear within her. It felt as if smoke was truly rising from the top of her head—a signal that her reason had been utterly consumed.

Her body began to sway uncontrollably. She gripped the edge of the table tightly, the cold wooden touch seeping through her fingertips—the only "reality" she could hold onto at that moment.

His knuckles were pale and bloodless from excessive force, and his fingernails scraped unconsciously on the smooth tabletop, making a grating "squeak-squeak" noise, like the wail of a dying animal.

This voice was the only proof of her fighting the storm within her body, trying to steady her crumbling body and her collapsing spirit.

However, the words on that card, like a leech, like the most vicious curse, repeatedly flashed, magnified, and distorted in her confused vision and consciousness.

Every word, every stroke, carried a scorching heat, deeply imprinted on her retina, forming a stubborn visual afterimage. Even with her eyes closed, the elegant yet cold printed text continued to burn in the darkness.
A sleeping face completely unguarded...so pure it's breathtaking...a serene peace stripped of all pretense...

Every sunrise... flawless tranquility... the highest happiness in the world... unimaginable loss...

These words, in Hiratsuka Shizuka's eyes at this moment, were no longer descriptive language.

They were instantly deconstructed and reassembled, turning into poisoned, barbed daggers, or countless tiny needles, precisely and repeatedly scraping and piercing the most sensitive, private, and untouchable corners of her soul.

That vulnerability she thought she had hidden deep inside, that softness carefully protected beneath her hard shell, that unguarded "true self" that she only dared to reveal in absolute safety and solitude, was unknowingly seen by that person—the one she had painstakingly tried to "capture"!
"asshole!"

The silent roar exploded in her mind, like the sharp whistling of steam bursting through a valve. Shame surged like lava, instantly engulfing the volcano of anger.

Her teeth were clenched tightly together, and the muscles in her jaw were sore from tension.

"You saw it...you saw it but didn't dare wake me up, you coward!"

This thought was dripping with scalding venom.

The utter failure of waiting for the enemy to come to the tree stump, the meticulous defenses that were silently infiltrated and calmly observed, and even the most vulnerable sleeping postures were recorded... This was not just a tactical mistake, but a complete strategic defeat!

She felt that the teacher's authority she had carefully constructed, the ease of an adult, and even the basic dignity of a woman, had all been stripped bare and exposed to the cold morning air in front of that cold card.

In this chase where she was at an informational disadvantage from the very beginning, she not only lost the initiative, but also destroyed her own defenses right from the start!

My body began to sway uncontrollably.

The hard floor beneath her feet felt like a deck on a stormy sea, violently heaving and rocking. Dizziness, like a black tide, crashed against her faltering consciousness wave after wave.

She has to grab onto something!
Anything that can anchor her in the dimension of "reality"!
With a dying person's survival instinct, her hands suddenly reached forward and gripped the smooth, cold wooden edge of the table in front of her.

That hard, cold "reality," with its distinct wood grain texture, was faintly transmitted through the burning nerves in my fingertips, becoming the only beacon in this chaotic purgatory.

This was her only means of fighting the overpressure storm within her body that was about to tear her apart and vaporize her completely.

The knuckles were pale from excessive force, the bone outlines beneath the skin were clearly visible, and all the color of blood had been squeezed away, giving them a deathly plaster color.

The fingernails of the ten fingers, having lost all elegance and restraint, like the last claws of a dying beast, unconsciously and frantically scratch and claw at the smooth, mirror-like tabletop.

(End of this chapter)