Chapter 176

I was frozen like an electrocuted bird, then wiped my nose with the back of my hand.

It was an unconscious action, but something came away on the back of my hand.

Blood.

I was having a nosebleed.

“…….”

As I stood there catching the pattering blood with my hand, Kwon Mu-seop hurriedly held out tissues from the table.

“What is wrong? Are you all right?”

“My memories…….”

My eyes stung.

At the pain that felt as if the inside of my head was burning, I squeezed my eyes shut, then continued speaking.

“……My memories came back. Back then, I saw the ‘three creatures.’”

“What?”

Back then.

At the moment when I escaped from 「Sports Complex」.

I had not been dragged to several different Special Zones.

Because beings from different domains had come to see me, the spaces had overlapped.

“Several spaces were overlapping. And they were in front of them.”

A skinless four-legged beast bearing Type 1 Special Zones.

“「Big Cat」.”

A black silhouette with huge horns, riding atop a dazzling world like something inside a game.

“A horned monster.”

And a man with his feet set upon a supreme dimension I did not dare even look upon.

“And some man was looking down at me.”

The memories of that moment came alive before my eyes like a vision.

In the cracks of the space divided into pieces, 「Big Cat」 snarled at me.

GRRKKKK—!

A bizarre cry mixed with irritation.

That sound overlapped with the words Ryu Dan-a had interpreted for me once before.

-I will tear you to death! Seo Do-un, I will tear you to shreds! You demonic bastard!

「Big Cat」 was filled with hatred.

Why?

At that time, I had not done anything yet.

I had only been dragged into a Special Zone and had been struggling simply to survive.

I had never attacked 「Big Cat」, nor had I touched the core of a Type 1 Special Zone.

Yet 「Big Cat」 had already shown fierce hostility toward me.

-Wait. Do not touch him right now.

The man stopped it.

I could not see his face.

But the delicacy of his attitude was engraved in my mind.

-I should go back. I am hungry.

And the huge horn, watching from a distance, murmured indifferently.

-I will kill him. I will kill him! Die, die, die die die die!

-Not yet.

Despite the man’s restraint, 「Big Cat」 insisted on putting me in its mouth and chewing.

CRUNCH—!

Sitting in the chair, I stamped my foot without realizing it.

CLATTER—!

Kwon Mu-seop said something to me, but I could barely hear it.

Blood poured uncontrollably from my nose.

And what happened next?

Ah, I remembered.

I died.

I died in pain and fell.

Into a white space colder than death.

There, I met her.

-Author Na……?

A woman who smiled strangely as she looked at me.

A certain being with Author Na Bit’s face.

At that time, I did not doubt that the woman was Na Bit.

So after groaning at the sight of that face, I realized again.

That meeting you was not my first time.

That even when I died for the very first time, you had come to me like this.

-What is going on here……? Why until now…… could I not remember…….

In distant despair, I asked.

How could I forget that?

No, am I even remembering all of it now?

I do not know.

I do not know.

It was a promise, a deal, and a contract.

But I could not remember.

I had forgotten even the fact that I had forgotten.

Amid the helplessness tangling up the inside of my head, I asked desperately.

-What exactly are you?

-Would it not be God to you? Since I made you and revived you again and again.

How had I reacted to the woman’s playful reply?

“Urgh……!”

I hurriedly covered my mouth.

The me inside the memory had acted the same way.

Because the woman’s words had made me recall more.

My deaths.

Those miserable deaths.

The worst memories a living creature could possess.

Some deaths are repose, but some deaths are not.

The deaths I experienced were not.

They were acts of splitting a seed to force out a sprout, of cracking an egg and letting the undergrown bird spill out.

I died that way, came back to life, and so died again.

At the pain I had remembered too late, I groaned.

-Why me, of all people……?

At my question, mixed with resentment, the woman looked at me with warm eyes.

Then she smiled radiantly and answered.

-Because I made you.

I scratched my arm with my nails.

Do not forget. Remember.

Saying that to myself, I wounded my arm.

-You do not have to struggle like that.

Na Bit smiled as if pitying me.

After looking at my bloodied arm, she whispered gently by my ear.

-You will know everything anyway. When it is time for you to know.

With those words as the last, I ended up losing consciousness.

Inside the memory.

And in reality.

---

When I opened my eyes again, I was lying on a bed.

Beside the white ceiling, I could see an IV bag.

I wondered why the back of my hand felt uncomfortable, and there was an IV needle inserted there.

“Do-un, are you awake?”

The person who asked that was Kim U-in.

Behind him, I could see Cha Si-eon and Kwon Mu-seop too.

“How long was I lying down?”

“Not long. It has only been 10 minutes since you came here, and your nosebleed has stopped.”

Then it was about the same as closing my eyes briefly and opening them again.

Relieved, I said to Cha Si-eon, who was standing by the wall,

“Team Leader, that recording file from earlier. Please let me hear it one more time.”

“Do-un, right now, you should rest a little…….”

“It will only take a moment. There is something I need to check.”

Kim U-in tried to stop me, but he sighed and stepped back.

Cha Si-eon took his tablet and approached my side.

Lying on the sickbed, I listened again to the sound from that tablet.

“All of you cannot hear the woman’s voice, correct?”

At my question, the others nodded.

“I do not know why, but I can hear it. This sound was something I originally could not hear either.”

That was why I had asked a contaminated person named Ryu Dan-a to interpret this sound.

Then had I become a contaminated person like Ryu Dan-a too?

But they had said not all contaminated people could read the broken letters of Special Zones or hear the voices of entities.

Moreover.

“But I still cannot understand the sounds of the others.”

I dragged the playback bar of the recording file forward.

SCREEEE—

TSSSSS—

HSSSS—

Grotesque noises rang out.

They were the sounds made by the things that had looked down at me.

I now remembered those moments precisely, but that was all.

The sounds they made were still noise.

“Apparently, I have become able to understand only the woman’s voice.”

---

The materials related to Agent Lee Seop had not yet been released.

The IT Team was individually finding and unlocking everything that had been blinded, so they said it would take some time.

So after returning with an IV, I sat blankly in my room for a while, then opened the report file I had written again.

-Everyone is watching you.

-Golden Rule

-Crow

-Chosen one

-Face the shadow.

-They

-January 23, 20XX.

-The secret exposed

-They

-Great Angel

-Golden Calf

-Weeping Lion

-Bird That Guides Souls

-They

-They

-They

-They too

The messages left by Lee Seop, who had appeared in the nascent-phase 「Hotel」.

What on earth had he wanted to say that made him repeat the word “they” like that?

Whether we would be able to know what came after that once the blinding was lifted was currently the Bureau’s greatest point of interest.

Looking at it now, there were a few other sentences that stood out.

“Everyone is watching you.”

If the “you” in this sentence truly referred to me, then this “everyone” might refer to those lights that had sparkled behind 「Big Cat」’s older sister.

The “Golden Calf” was the horned thing I had seen.

The “Weeping Lion” was 「Big Cat」.

Then what were the “Great Angel” and the “Bird That Guides Souls”?

It seemed possible to insert the man who restrained 「Big Cat」 and the woman who was 「Big Cat」’s older sister there, but which one was which remained unknown.

More than that, the fact that it was specifically “Angel” bothered me.

After looking over those difficult messages, I closed the tablet and swallowed a sigh.

I wanted to empty my head a little, but it was not easy.

Why had I become able to understand only the woman’s voice?

Because of the “breath” that woman mentioned?

It made me feel as if I belonged to that woman in some way, and my stomach turned.

-So I know. I know enough about you, and there are some parts I know better than you do.

-I know how much you fear death, even though you do not know it yourself.

The woman’s words came to mind again.

Looking back now, there had been no lie in those words.

And so I began to grow confused.

-I am the same. I too want to give you a peaceful death.

The thought crossed my mind that the woman’s unilateral and ferocious mercy might truly have been for my sake.

……No, that is madness.

To begin with, the one who pushed me into that living hell was that woman.

She dropped a person who had been living perfectly fine into the abyss, and when he broke, she said she would euthanize him. To call that mercy.

I took in a deep breath, trying to shake off these unpleasant thoughts.

That was when it happened.

Knock, knock.

Along with the sound of knocking, Kwak Jae-gyeom’s voice came through.

“Hyung, may I come in?”

“Yeah, it’s fine.”

I sat up on the bed as I answered.

Meanwhile, Kwak Jae-gyeom opened the door and came in, and for some reason, he said to me with a beaming face,

“Let’s go on leave.”

“Suddenly?”

“Manager told me to ask you. He said if you need leave, you should go out with me.”

Such a kind Manager.

Because the kid suddenly poured blood from his nose, he immediately threw leave at me.

Come to think of it, it had been a long time since I had gone home.

Moreover, I did need to stop by home once.

My cell phone, which I had left at home.

There had been an incident where a message was sent from that phone to Oh Tae-o.

Because of that, agents had gone to my home and recovered the cell phone.

Since other people had come and gone from my home while I was absent, I did need to go and look around once.

“There will be nothing fun about my leave even if you follow me.”

I warned Jae-gyeom in advance, since he already looked expectant.

But Jae-gyeom did not care at all and grinned broadly.

“Anywhere is fine if I can get out of duty.”

As someone who had once been an office worker, I could not bring myself to deny those words.