Chapter 185

"—Fuck!!"

"—Catch it!!"

The fish in question—Kwon Do-heon was chasing it with everything he had.

"The thing has no legs or wings, so why is it so fast?!"

"Hurry up and catch it!!"

"I'm running right now! If you've got a problem, fly over and catch it yourself, sunbae-nim!"

"Hurry!!"

"All you do is peck at me without giving anything!"

It was a fish resembling a betta. A pure-white body tinged with a halo-like gold—it looked as though it were made of light itself, and yet at the same time it was eerily vivid, as if it possessed bones and flesh and breath like a living creature.

But only the form was vivid. It was not a real "living thing."

"No, fuck, how am I supposed to—!"

Kwon Do-heon panted as he chased the fish gliding serenely through the dark.

"How in the world did that man Cha Do-hyeon manage to catch this thing?!"

"Just catch it already!!"

Seome chided him—"Is that really what matters right now?"—but to Kwon Do-heon, it was an important question. He had to know that much to even attempt it.

All the while, that fish was swimming through the darkness as smoothly as a nighttime laser show or a drone display.

'Bullets obviously wouldn't even touch it…!'

A single proposition dominated his frantic mind.

'The happy ending condition.'

Cha Do-hyeon's arrogant face flashed through his mind—lounging on the sofa with that smug grin. Only by getting that fish in hand would the escape route for everyone to survive this godforsaken hotel labyrinth be complete.

Obsession and fixation running wild like a car with broken brakes crushed his reason mercilessly. Kwon Do-heon spat out the ragged breath rising to his chin and charged forward blindly.

"Catch it, now!!"

FLUTTER—!

"Hurry!!"

"Aaagh!!"

On his shoulder, Seome desperately beat her wings and pecked at Kwon Do-heon's head.

"Come on, if you can't help, at least hold still! I'm almost there…!"

"Almost where?"

"……."

He faltered.

His footsteps stopped dead.

"……."

"Hoot."

Come to think of it—since when had Seome's "words" sounded like human speech?

"Sigh— hoo-…."

"Uh…."

The instant the question formed, the air around him began to settle, viscous and heavy.

A chill that clung to the skin—disagreeably dank and damp. The star clusters of the Milky Way bridge, which had been glowing transparently just moments ago, seemed in an instant to turn into a thick swamp, tightening heavily around his ankles.

"Huh?"

With every breath he drew, his lungs prickled as if he were breathing underwater in frigid water, and his brain cells numbed with a dull ache, blurring his reason. Only then did Kwon Do-heon sense the wrongness.

'Where was I going just now?'

Why are my legs so—

"Hoot!"

GRIND—!!

"Ugh…!"

"Hoo, hoot!"

At the instant his consciousness was turning distant, as if being sucked into a black hole, Kwon Do-heon clamped down hard on his tongue out of instinctive alarm and seized hold of his mind. The fog clouding his brain lifted as if by magic, and his vision cleared wide open.

Only after gulping down a gasp of unfamiliar air did the surrounding scenery register properly.

"Fuck."

Kwon Do-heon pressed the back of his hand over his mouth, where a faint tang of blood was seeping out.

Cold sweat dripped to the floor. But where those drops of sweat landed was not the beautiful Milky Way bridge he'd been walking on just moments before.

It was a cold marble floor, where unidentifiable water lapped gently up to his ankles.

"Hoot."

"Where is this?"

So that was why a Milky Way bridge heading toward Room 444 had appeared out of nowhere before his eyes.

"What on earth."

It was a place where the very common sense of space had been grotesquely distorted.

At first glance, it resembled the form of the Aqua Park he'd seen when talking with the water ghost before. The marble floor's distinctive pattern and the silhouette of the massive main pool were taking vague shape within the darkness.

But it had already far exceeded the category of a resort that human reason could accept.

"It looks like the Aqua Park, but."

"Hoot."

"It doesn't seem like the one we knew—the atmosphere is completely different."

The very structural concepts of walls and ceiling had ceased to exist. What filled their place was nothing but an enormous, pitch-black abyss with no end in sight.

As if even the laws of physics had been broken, the staggering volume of water—easily tens of thousands of tons—did not pool on the floor but drifted through the air in bizarre shapes of great spheres and pillars.

"This is insane…."

It felt as though he'd been dropped alone into the lightless deep sea, or the heart of a universe where gravity did not apply.

Even looking down, the floor was nowhere to be seen. He was standing on marble—he was definitely, certainly standing on marble. Where am I standing right now? The question rolled into the abyss before he could.

From the bottom of an unfathomably deep trench, darkness writhed upward like tens of thousands of black tentacles, thrashing to swallow him whole.

'Or is this a hallucination too?'

A grotesque and chilling underwater hell. Kwon Do-heon stood alone at its center.

PECK-PECK-PECK—!!

"Hoot!!"

"Ow—I'm awake, I'm awake! I said I'm awake!"

Of course, Seome, who was mercilessly pecking at his crown, was with him too.

* * *

"When I think about it, there were more than a few strange things."

Kwon Do-heon crouched in the most seemingly safe corner and muttered.

"My number-one goal was to get out of here in one piece, and then suddenly I'm going berserk over 'happy endings' and whatever else. If the fish disappeared, I should've called the adults first instead of running off on my own."

"Sigh."

"It wasn't like I'd die on the spot just because that one fish was gone."

All it meant was that the "gift" for the water ghost would be slightly delayed.

Even without that, Kwon Do-heon himself, Kwon Seung-jae, and Hyeon Si-gyeong could escape at any time. Insisting on staying longer had been entirely his own choice.

'It's true that a big part of it was wanting to see with my own eyes that the other adults got out safely, but….'

They were all people with far more experience and ability than Kwon Do-heon. Would those formidable figures really have failed to achieve a single "happy ending" just because one fish was lost?

'No—I don't even know what that happy ending is in the first place.'

His head throbbed so badly that a groan escaped of its own accord.

'For starters, everyone getting out alive? I find my memories, the General Manager goes back to being Lee Yeon-woo, and the monster called the White Crow gets… gets….'

Dealt with? Killed? Or sealed away forever?

'Every option sounds wrong.'

Why should it have to go that far?

'If we just wrap up that banquet business properly, maybe we can all leave together.'

Why am I supposed to be the protagonist of this episode? What is that policeman even thinking? And Cha Do-hyeon—he wasn't sure exactly why, but there were times when dealing with the man gave him a twisting feeling in his gut.

"……."

What am I even doing here?

'What did I stay for?'

What good is all this struggling?

'I—'

"Hoot."

"AAAAGH, FUCK!!"

"……."

"N-no, I wasn't trying to swear, I was just startled…."

Even Seome, who had been perched on his head, fluttered up and vanished into the darkness.

"…! You're leaving me here and going off on your—"

"What's the problem?"

"Oh."

The darkness that had swallowed Seome offered up "human speech."

"You're not thinking about getting out of here right now, and instead you're sitting around agonizing—I wanted to know what about."

"……."

The tension that had sprung into his shoulders as he reflexively rose to his feet drained away at once.

"…So you've completely given up on pretending to be an owl?"

"Why bother, when we both know everything there is to know?"

"Then why do you only ever speak in human words when it's so dark I can't see you at all?"

"I'm an owl."

Seome, her body hidden in the dark, replied in her soft, measured voice.

"Sometimes an owl's cry sounds like a human voice. A shadow stirring behind a curtain might make you think for a moment it's a person. But that doesn't change the fact that it's an owl at its core."

"That sounds really eerie."

"The common sense of the Gaps has always been that way."

A tone that sounded drained, yet composed.

"Everything is eerie. Sometimes the reality of the living feels more dreadful than the lives of the dead. You think, 'If I just endure this one time, it'll be over,' but a new door opens, and the moment you think you've reached your goal, you find nothing left in your hands."

Seome's voice sank low.

"But I'll promise you this. When all of this is over."

"…Yes."

"Something will remain for you. Without question."

"Yes."

"You've done more than enough, Rawi."

It was calm advice offered as a senior, and heartfelt encouragement.

"The most important thing in the Gaps is protecting yourself."

"Of course—I'm confident about that. It's what I do best."

"So just don't give up."

In the darkness, the owl cried.

"You're only losing your way for a moment because the road you've walked is too long and too tangled."

"And if I really do take a wrong turn?"

"As long as you keep running, the adults at your side will correct your course. And when you come to your senses, you'll find you've already finished something you could never have done alone."

"Does that… have any meaning?"

"What name you write in that blank space is."

FLUTTER—

A sound of wingbeats rang out crisp, as if shaking off the deep dark.

"Entirely your own."

The white owl presently alighted atop Kwon Do-heon's head once more, soft and light.

"Hoot."

"……."

Kwon Do-heon's expression was hard to read.

"…You only ever act like a real senior at times like this."

"Hoo."

"AAAGH!!"

Struck squarely on the crown by Seome's beak, Kwon Do-heon screamed.

"Is this how a senior is supposed to treat a junior?!"

"Hoo-hoot."

"I'm asking you to be a little gentler. I'm practically an untouched, pure civilian here—eighteen years old!"

"Hoo?"

"I can tell the gist is you're giving me attitude, so save it up and say it in human words later, please."

Because it was still hard to interpret.

'…If I think of this as a second foreign language of sorts….'

Not yet.

* * *

"……."

The General Manager, a smile on his face, said nothing. After opening and closing his mouth three or four times, he finally rolled his eyes to the side and asked in a low voice.

"Hmm, so…."

His gaze curved gently.

"These are all job applicants?"

"I went to the trouble of compiling the list into a document so you wouldn't exhaust yourself meeting them in person. Have a look."

"There are more than fifty blood mages who've come this far, so what do you propose we do with the rest?"

The "employment contracts" the General Manager could negotiate were not an item in surplus.

"I'd assumed it would be five at most."

"Must a god have so small a purse? Dear me—you only thought of a tenth."

"Unless my visual apparatus has broken down, there are a total of fifty-three gathered here."

"And that's after I selected and re-selected from among my most cherished children…."

The vampire smiled evenly.

"I could return about three of them to the bosom of nature this very moment."

"That is not an especially tempting offer."

Killing three blood mages for the sake of a single witticism about "one-tenth."

"Be grateful that I am in 'General Manager Mode.'"

"If you return to your original state, I'll be the first to go back to the earth, won't I."

"I think it's more likely you and I will have a lengthy interview over the position of Executive Chef."

"That sounds even more dreadful."

"Haha…."

The General Manager laughed smoothly and traced a finger along the corner of his mouth.

"Shall I be honest with you?"

"By all means."

"I am quite displeased."

"In what regard?"

"Every situation is flowing beyond the range of my predictions."

"Oh, how you exaggerate."

The vampire, having drawn close before anyone noticed, lightly plucked the list from the General Manager's hand. A small flame devoured the document in an instant, and the paper scattered into a handful of ash.

"You are always moving in the direction you want. Are you not?"

"That may be so."

It was simply,

"I just don't like the process."

The feeling of being denied as the General Manager was less pleasant than expected.

"I exist, always, for this hotel."

He added with a face devoid of mirth. At the sight, the vampire's lips drew an arc.

"Who could fail to know that devotion of yours?"

"You do know, then?"

"Knowing it is precisely what makes things difficult so often."

"How regrettable."

Presently the General Manager, as if nothing had happened, folded his eyes into a smile again.

"I am…."

He was clearly aware of it himself.

"……."

That his patience was slowly reaching its end.

"…Let us confirm the list once more, to start."

"I am well aware you've memorized it all."

"Even so, I am an administrator by title—shouldn't I at least keep up appearances?"

"Has it finally occurred to you to reign as a god?"

"That claim of having experienced the working world is all a lie, is it not, Executive Chef?"

"My apologies for the indiscretion."

Pleased with the title of "Executive Chef," the vampire good-naturedly handed over a fresh stack of documents.

"Look them over and hire whichever suits your fancy."

"A question has just occurred to me—does even a single person on this list happen to not be a criminal?"

At that, the vampire made a show of stroking his chin and feigning deliberation.

"The result would depend on how one defines 'criminal.'"

"Expunging a record under the aegis of money, power, and influence does not make one innocent."

"Strict, I see. Then the perfect criminals who laughed at the investigation net should be excluded as well, should they not. How far would you like to adjust the permissible range?"

"In plain terms, you're saying there is not a single person among these fifty-three without a record."

"They are, every last one, seasoned high-ranking blood mages. Expecting virtuous morals from such people is difficult."

The vampire leaned forward, slid the documents over, and smiled.

"Even someone as pure and young as yourself has already committed countless 'crimes,' have you not? Had the rules humans made for their world been applied straightforwardly, beings like us could never have set foot on this earth to begin with."

"……."

"And yet we exist with full confidence and coexist with the human world. By virtue of the 'crimes' you committed in deceiving humans, those frail humans will escape this predicament without dying or being harmed. Where could there be a finer symbiosis?"

Within this grand playground you have created.

"So set your worries aside and select just one. No matter how bizarre the castle, you will need at least one subordinate who can communicate properly."

"I do hope they will get along with the existing staff without trouble."

"When the god commands that all shall come together under one rule, how many would dare defy that command?"

"When you put it that way, you make me sound like some sort of tyrant."

"Is it not a bit late to be playing the merciful ruler?"

"Have you ever seen a tyrant who works overtime every single day, as I do?"

Though the General Manager had already imprinted the entire text of the list into his mind, he made a show of flipping through roughly fifteen pages of documents before at last selecting a single sheet.

"I will hire this one."

"Is there a particular reason she caught your eye?"

"Hmm, let me see."

The General Manager murmured calmly, studying the portrait of a woman attached to the document.

[Special Notes: Gumiho]

"Because she's Korean?"

In terms of era, "Joseon" would have been more accurate than "Korean," but when one encountered a shared bloodline amid a list full of foreigners, it felt instinctively close and warm.

At that, the vampire said.

"Shall we deploy her immediately, then?"

"Are you serious?"

"I understand a place in need of labor has just opened up."

"That's not wrong."

No Black Company could out-black this one.

"I'll leave guest guidance at the Aqua Park to her, then."

It was true that a staff member who could speak was needed, after all.