Chapter 63: The Witch’s Forest (6)

[3. The anomaly to beware of is clear. It is the attention of the Witch, the master of this ghost story. Making use of it is not recommended; as far as possible, avoid her attention and move quietly.]

Kang Han-su opened his eyes in front of an unfamiliar candy house, deep within an enormous forest.

SHAAAA.

Instead of the hard wooden floor beneath his feet, there was soft earth covered in sparse grass.

Instead of the muffled silence peculiar to an indoor space, the rustling of leaves in the wind surrounded him from every direction.

Right after Ju-hee had disappeared as well.

The instant Han-su realized that another anomaly had occurred, he recalled the safety rules Su-myeon had left behind.

'The Witch's attention.'

Whether it had been Ju-hee's attempt to enter or Su-myeon's presence itself, something seemed to have drawn the Witch's attention.

'Even so, the Witch shouldn't be able to alter the rules themselves.'

'Ask, seek, knock.'

Han-su recalled Su-myeon's words, followed by those of the owner of Room 404.

Even if this wasn't the exact place the others had entered through, there were still many ways to find an entrance.

A heart that sought someone.

And a knock meant to save the person who had entered The Witch's Forest.

After that, Han-su had knocked and searched everywhere he could, trying to find some point of connection that would lead him inside.

How long and grueling that repetition had been was evident from his fists alone, both smeared with blood.

"......."

Standing in front of Han-su was not the man he had hoped to find, but an unfamiliar man standing there alone, utterly out of his senses.

He had succeeded in entering.

This man was probably one of the missing people.

If Su-myeon had already been here, he wouldn't have left a missing person behind in this condition.

Which meant Su-myeon was nowhere nearby.

"...Are you all right?"

After grasping the situation, Han-su spoke half a beat late.

Only then did the man recoil in terror and stagger backward.

"Aaaagh! G-get away!"

Covered from head to toe in dirt, the man looked completely deranged.

He was filthy to a degree an ordinary person would have found unbearable, a sight bad enough to make someone grimace without meaning to.

Smeared with jam and other substances Han-su couldn't identify, the man shrieked wildly.

If anything was stranger than his mental state, though, it was the condition of his body.

His entire body was swollen.

Not merely overweight.

Literally swollen, like a balloon being inflated.

And judging by the way his clothes strained against him, nearly ready to split—

'He ate the food here.'

Just as Su-myeon had warned, Han-su could feel hunger surging through him as well.

The man before him rolled on the ground and screamed, swollen taut and covered in filth.

Looking at him, Han-su took half a step back.

"I am a police officer."

The magic words any desperate, uninformed missing person would cling to.

Unlike the owner of Room 404, the man immediately brightened and tried to spring to his feet.

More precisely, he tried to stand and collapsed again, but his expression made it abundantly clear that Han-su's presence was welcome.

"P-police? Really? You've—you've come to find me, haven't you?!"

The delighted man shuffled toward Han-su on his knees, half crawling.

"I'm... I'm so hungry. I want to get out of here...."

He babbled frantically, yet moved with agonizing slowness as he grabbed hold of Han-su's trousers.

Hunger.

Craving.

Desire.

And the police officer standing in front of him.

As though all those ideas had become hopelessly tangled together in his mind, he kept rambling without pause.

"Let me out! I want to go home! Quickly! If we don't get out soon, we're all going to starve to death!"

Reeking and utterly wrecked, the man clung desperately to Han-su.

His hygiene was so appalling that no one could have blamed Han-su for gagging instinctively, but Han-su still took hold of the man.

If nothing else, the sight ensured that although Han-su could feel the hunger, looking at the candy house in front of him stirred not the slightest appetite.

His hands and clothes became filthy as he hauled the man upright, but Han-su calmly examined his condition.

"What were your original height and weight?"

"...Excuse me? Sorry? One hundred seventy-seven centimeters, eighty kilograms...."

His height appeared unchanged.

His weight, however, had increased so dramatically in proportion that he looked nearly twice his original size.

That meant he had already eaten a considerable amount of the food here.

And yet the candy house beside them was quite literally an entire house made of confectionery.

Less than five percent of it appeared to have been eaten.

'If he ate all of this....'

He would become something that could scarcely be called human.

He would literally turn into livestock raised for slaughter.

It was fortunate Han-su had found him before things went any further.

"......."

Looking at the man, already halfway removed from human form, Han-su felt a surge of pity.

His hand almost moved to his pocket on reflex.

But he stopped himself.

<Prince's Tongue Tip>

Inside his pocket was a bright red candy.

A special item capable of temporarily restoring the mind and body to a normal state, one that displayed its effects only within ghost stories.

Han-su's first instinct was that it should naturally be given to the person he was rescuing.

And yet he held back.

If one were to ask who the candy truly belonged to, the answer was Su-myeon.

Without Su-myeon, Han-su wouldn't even have known that an item like this existed.

He couldn't simply use it however he pleased.

Of course, Su-myeon probably wouldn't reproach him no matter how he used it.

But at the very least, Han-su wanted to use it in a way Su-myeon himself wouldn't consider wasteful.

"......I know a way out. Stay close to me."

Han-su spoke firmly to the confused, unstable man he was trying to rescue.

Even Han-su was already being tormented by an intense, unnatural hunger.

The urge to shove the man aside, tear a fistful from the candy house behind him, and stuff it into his mouth kept forcing its way to the forefront of his mind.

Suppressing that desire, Han-su focused on only two things.

He had to save this man.

And he had to find Su-myeon.

"Of course! Yes, yes! We have to get out! We have to get...."

Even while saying that, the missing man kept glancing back at the candy house.

After a moment of deliberation, Han-su finally placed the candy in his own mouth.

A faint strawberry fragrance spread across his tongue, and the unnatural hunger receded somewhat.

The more efficient choice was for the person who knew how to escape to remain clear-headed.

Acting on pity and stubbornness alone was not Su-myeon's way.

Han-su, who had always been rigid to a fault, was changing through Su-myeon.

"First, we need to get away from here."

Han-su spoke firmly and began pulling his heavy companion along.

The man was bulky enough to make supporting him difficult, but fortunately, he still had enough presence of mind to walk when guided.

***

Meanwhile, at the lakeshore, Ju-hee and Su-myeon finally gave up waiting for Han-su.

"We can't stay here any longer."

Su-myeon already knew what the things slowly raising their heads from beneath the lakeshore were.

They were not white skeletons.

But they were unmistakably what remained after the Witch had eaten.

And those beings had been turned into food while they were still alive.

There was no chance they had retained their sanity.

"......I'm sorry."

Unable even to argue, Ju-hee obeyed Su-myeon's words and left the lakeshore behind, following him back into the forest.

"For now, let's head north."

It was nothing more than a direction determined by the light source hanging overhead like a sun.

Still, having even the vaguest destination made walking a little easier.

Once they entered the dense forest, the rustling of leaves once again surrounded them from every direction.

In contrast, there was no birdsong.

No chirping insects.

Only the sound of leaves brushing together in the wind circled endlessly around their ears like an echo.

Within that alien space, the two walked on in silence.

"......."

A dense forest.

A mild temperature.

Perhaps the absence of the insects that should naturally have been there was, in its own way, a small mercy.

The forest itself was not unpleasant to walk through.

But the hunger steadily growing inside them was becoming harder to ignore.

As though suddenly remembering something, Ju-hee reached into the pocket of her heavy coat.

"I was worried they might be taken from me, or that carrying them myself could cause problems, so Han-su has all the important things."

As though offering an excuse, Ju-hee pulled out a large portable battery.

"But I did keep this one thing."

Without saying anything in particular, Su-myeon accepted the battery and connected it to his phone.

His battery still had about half its charge left, but there was no reason not to top it up while he could.

"I naturally assumed that once we found the entrance, Han-su would come in with me. I'm sorry...."

Ju-hee's voice trailed off, guilt written plainly across her face.

Su-myeon already knew what important item Han-su was carrying.

The thing capable of suppressing the fixation caused by unnatural hunger.

The 'Prince's Tongue Tip.'

It was obvious.

Su-myeon himself had written in the safety rules that such an item would be useful.

"...."

Separate from that, Su-myeon thought for a moment.

The guilt and anxiety Ju-hee currently felt toward him.

He knew that a single sentence of simple reassurance would be enough to ease both.

'I would have made the same judgment.'

That one line would undoubtedly make Ju-hee feel better.

But Su-myeon didn't say it.

'If anything, letting her feel guilty might help distract her from the hunger.'

Without responding to Ju-hee, Su-myeon continued deeper into the forest.

It was more than enough to make him look angry.

Ju-hee followed behind him, visibly uneasy.

'He must be angry that I made such a dangerous choice.'

Thinking that, Ju-hee watched his back and let out a quiet sigh.

The Su-myeon she had come to know possessed a kind of rational altruism, contradictory though the phrase might sound.

Han-su was an emotionally driven, ordinarily kind person who was naturally swept along by altruism.

Su-myeon was different.

He helped people and saved them to the greatest extent he could, but always thoroughly and deliberately.

There were times during that process when it looked as though he was recklessly throwing himself into danger.

But—

'He always acted within the limits of what he knew he could handle.'

Dangerous was merely how she saw it.

Or how other people saw it.

Whenever she heard the details afterward, Su-myeon had only ever acted in situations he himself was capable of managing.

He was not the sort of person who would come chasing after her simply because he'd worried too much.

Even so, Ju-hee felt relieved just knowing he was safe.

From outside a ghost story, there was absolutely no way to know whether someone taken inside was alive or dead.

If she was being truthful with herself, following him in just to confirm that he was all right had been Ju-hee's own selfishness.

'Su-myeon must know that too. That's why he can't say anything and is just swallowing his anger.'

He had every right to ask why she had followed him into danger for no reason when she wasn't even useful to him.

The only reason he couldn't bring himself to say that to someone who had worried about him was because Su-myeon was simply too kind.

Completely unaware that Ju-hee was thinking anything of the sort, Su-myeon continued walking.

Their thoughts could not have been more different, like two people sharing the same bed while dreaming entirely different dreams.

And so they walked for a long time.

Eventually, both of them stopped.

A candy house had appeared in front of them out of nowhere.

"...Damn it."

They had managed to leave the lakeshore behind.

But now what?

Was this the same candy house he had seen before?

Or was it another one?

Should he have marked the first one somehow?

No.

Before that—

What should he do now?

Did he need to escape the forest first?

He wanted to think clearly, but the instant he tried to pursue any thought too deeply, hunger surged through him again.

I'm hungry.

I'm so hungry.

Isn't there anything to eat?

Thoughts like those kept barging in and breaking apart the flow of his reasoning.

"Whoaaa~"

Whether Cheshire understood Su-myeon's condition or not, he immediately leapt from Su-myeon's pocket with a delighted cry and charged toward the candy house.

Watching the cotton doll rip chunks from the wall and cram them into his mouth, Su-myeon felt irritation bordering on rage surge through him.

He was this hungry.

So what right did that doll have to stand there stuffing its face without a care in the world?

At the same time, he felt a kind of disgust at how shallow and animalistic a human being could become.

"Ju-hee. Could you pinch me once?"

At Su-myeon's sudden request and gesture, Ju-hee looked confused, but immediately reached out.

Her hand was surprisingly merciless.

One sharp pinch to his cheek snapped Su-myeon back to his senses.

Wandering around the forest aimlessly like this wasn't accomplishing anything.

"This isn't going to work."

Right now, aimless wandering was the only course of action he could think of.

If he wanted a new plan, he needed something else.

Su-myeon took out his phone again.

After confirming that it was fully charged, he opened Belle's Secret Shop app.

It had been a while since he last checked, but no new products had been added.

Either way, this was no longer a situation where sitting around thinking would produce an answer.

Su-myeon immediately opened the messenger and sent someone a message.

[I need help.]

[I'm in The Witch's Forest.]

The instant Su-myeon sent it, a reply came back almost immediately, as though it had been waiting for him.