Chapter 89: Golden Rose (2)

At that moment, Cheshire, who had remained in the hall, was confused.

Fragrant flowers, soft leaves, fluffy soil.

He was sitting beside Bell in the flowerbed together with Mu-yeon, but his head was still foggy.

In truth, as nothing more than a stuffed doll, he could not feel any of those sensations at all.

He could only vaguely imagine them through sensations from memories he had almost completely forgotten.

Through those hazy memories that told him he had once felt such sensations from things like these.

“I didn’t know.”

But even among those vague memories, there was nothing about the fact that he had once been human.

How could he have completely forgotten only that?

When the still-dazed Cheshire murmured, Bell stroked his head.

“Once you go back later, it’ll feel real.”

Even Bell’s words, which sounded almost comforting, did not make it feel particularly real.

For an extremely long time, he had merely passed the time in darkness, until meeting Su-myeon made him feel ‘interest.’

More than anyone else, Su-myeon was a deeply human man.

When he was afraid, his feet sometimes ran away before anything else, but whenever circumstances allowed it, he struggled desperately to save even one more person.

He could not easily turn his back on people, yet he possessed no abnormal sense of chivalry either.

He was an ordinary yet special human being, someone who showed kindness only within the limits of what he himself could do.

That was why Cheshire had followed him around, watching him and occasionally offering unexpected help.

That was....

'Maybe it wasn’t simple interest.......'

The humanity that a human being ought to possess.

An appreciation of it, or perhaps an obsession with it.

He had wandered around Su-myeon, captivated by an emotion he could not understand.

'What kind of human was I?'

How many long years had he lived after losing himself?

Suddenly, Cheshire felt something like horror.

Bell had known all of this and still tried to use him?

He could not understand it at all.

And then.

“......It’s done.”

Bell, who had been brushing Mu-yeon’s fur, abruptly sprang to her feet.

The golden rose beneath the glass case was shining especially brightly.

To Cheshire, Bell looked more despicable than ever as she lifted the glass case with an expression of overwhelming emotion.

After hiding behind all those lies, she had the nerve to say that she had intended to help him someday too.

“...!”

At that moment, the golden light before his eyes made Cheshire unable to suppress the impulses and emotions surging up inside him.

A lump of cotton.

Or a body connected to some grotesque space.

Driven by self-loathing toward that disgusting identity, Cheshire reached out almost instinctively.

His ability was to move freely through the spaces of ghost stories.

When he reached into the void where he had spent so many years, the distant stem of the rose touched the tips of his rag-covered fingers.

“No!”

Leaving Bell’s scream-like voice behind him, Cheshire seized the golden petals in his hand.

And without the slightest hesitation, Cheshire swallowed a fistful of golden petals whole.

***

[Coins Held : 0]

Having finally finished shopping, Su-myeon looked at his completely emptied pockets and his packed inventory with satisfaction.

With this much, he was confident he would not easily die or get lost inside most ghost stories.

Now he could only hope that the golden rose had been completed with all of this.

BOOM!

“......?”

Su-myeon flinched at the tremendous crash, powerful enough to make the floor beneath his feet shake.

His steps stopped just as he had been about to return to the hall where the golden rose was.

RRRRUMBLE—

The ominous noise continued, coming from somewhere difficult to pinpoint.

The entire building shook from the sudden noise and vibrations.

Powdered stone and dust rose like smoke from every direction.

GRRRR—

It was not merely the sound of vibrations.

The lights lining the generally dim corridor flickered.

From far away in the darkness came the echoes of something growling.

“Damn it.”

What the hell was happening all of a sudden?

Flicker.

As the lighting alternated between darkness and brightness.

Something slowly began revealing its shape.

Flicker.

One, then two.

Things that had broken out through the picture frames hanging on the walls twisted their joints.

Flicker.

The things that had begun loosening their bodies slowly turned toward Su-myeon.

There was no reason to think about it.

Su-myeon immediately started running.

He took the dizzying spiral staircase three steps at a time.

Behind him came the chaotic pounding footsteps of the monsters chasing him.

Sharp objects struck the tiled floor with piercing, clattering sounds.

“What the hell is going on!”

Su-myeon practically jumped from the final stair.

Trusting in the Nemean Hide, he landed shoulder-first and rolled into the main hall as he shouted.

But what he heard was a furious shout unlike anything he had ever heard before.

“How dare you!”

Bell’s scream-like roar.

The shrill voice made it difficult for Su-myeon to understand what was happening.

The atmosphere had definitely been fairly good when he left....

“.......”

Then Su-myeon saw Mu-yeon crouched low and growling, and a man.

In front of Bell.

An unfamiliar man sprawled on the floor.

***

Inside the room they had rented at the resort, Hwi-yeon was going through documents when she suddenly dropped the papers from her hand.

Something felt strange.

The hair at the back of her neck stood on end, and every wound she had suffered inside ghost stories began throbbing at once.

“If you’re tired, you should get some sleep.”

Ju-hee spoke in a worried voice.

But for Su-myeon’s sake as well, Hwi-yeon shook her head.

Trying to shake off the strange feeling, she rubbed her arm.

“Only the Chief and I have the authority to report directly to the Director.”

That was why Hwi-yeon could not rest.

At the very least, for Mu-yeon and for Su-myeon, who was inside a ghost story even now, she had to do whatever she could in his place.

With the documents spread out before her, Hwi-yeon resumed writing the report.

Watching her, Ju-hee sighed and rubbed at her eyes as sleep continued to weigh them down.

They were still dealing with the aftermath of the last incident.

The entrances to The Mountain of the Red Cloak that had ultimately been discovered on three separate mountains.

Because all of them had been sealed off, they now had to properly report sufficient justification for doing so.

“The ones on government-owned land are at least easier, but the private land is the problem, right?”

“More or less... yes.”

Mimi Lodge had once belonged to someone as a lodge as well. It had merely been abandoned.

It was still privately owned land with a legal owner.

It was an extremely unnatural situation requiring powerful restrictions.

Director Jang Bok-eum had somehow taken preliminary measures in advance, so they needed materials to support what he had done.

“...But seriously, what kind of person is that Director?”

Even if some of the funding had been helped along by donations from Shinsung Group.

There was no way money alone could allow him to wield this much authority.

Ju-hee’s question left even Hwi-yeon momentarily speechless.

“I don’t really know either.”

What had he done before, and what did he do now?

Why had he supported Hwi-yeon when she had previously been treated as an eccentric?

How had he managed to create an entirely new government agency in an instant and mobilize National Intelligence Service personnel from all kinds of departments for its work?

“......For now, I think... maybe his goal is the same as ours.”

Had he lost someone to a ghost story too?

Hwi-yeon and Ju-hee looked through the large window of the resort room at the faint sun beginning to rise.

The sky was gray, as though it might rain.

At that moment, Han-su, who had gone to sleep as soon as they sent Su-myeon off, suddenly sat upright.

Thinking they might have been too loud while he was sleeping, Hwi-yeon and Ju-hee lowered their voices.

But Han-su silently began preparing to leave again.

“I’ll go ahead and wait for Su-myeon to come back.”

Dawn was only just beginning to break.

They were all equally worried about Su-myeon, so no one could bring themselves to stop him.

Hwi-yeon merely handed him an umbrella in silence.

***

Su-myeon struggled to understand the situation.

Who the hell was that man?

Cheshire was....

'......Damn it.'

Su-myeon cursed inwardly when he realized that both Cheshire and the golden rose were gone.

No way.

No way.

Had Cheshire taken the golden rose on his own?

And could that man possibly be....

“You repay the trust I showed you with betrayal!”

Along with Bell’s thunderous roar, Su-myeon felt the footsteps behind him drawing closer.

Mu-yeon, who had been lying flat against the floor while keeping wary eyes on Bell, ran over and grabbed Su-myeon’s shirt in his teeth, pulling him back as though trying to protect him.

The monsters that had noisily descended from the upper floor began pouring down onto the hall floor.

Chunks of flesh and spikes landed in a wet tangle.

Growing larger and larger, they writhed their way toward Bell.

“How dare you... how dare you...!”

The angrier Bell became, the more veins bulged along her neck and cheeks.

“Ugh....”

Around then, Su-myeon felt pain in his left eye, where her invention was attached, and dropped into a crouch.

His eyeball felt as though it were burning.

If he had not barely managed to keep his head clear and clench his fist, the pain was so intense that he would have wanted to spread his fingers and gouge his own eye out on reflex.

Bell looked down at the suffering Su-myeon with an intimidating expression.

Mu-yeon whined helplessly, still trying to remain in front of Su-myeon and protect him.

SMACK!

With the hand he had clenched into a fist, Su-myeon struck himself hard across the cheek.

The sharp pain of the inside of his mouth splitting open snapped his mind back into focus instead.

The wound inside his mouth became clearer than the phantom pain in his left eye.

Barely managing to take a deep breath, Su-myeon shouted.

“First, calm... calm down!”

“You cunning bastard planned this from the very beginning!”

Would she even listen if he told her that was not true?

But he could not simply let himself be caught up in Bell’s sudden rage, nor could he leave without clearing up the misunderstanding.

There were clearly things he still needed from her.

“I’m telling you, I don’t even know what the hell is going on!”

But monsters were already clinging tightly together around Bell’s hand, gathering as though fusing into one mass.

Twisted together around one of her arms like machinery, they took on the appearance of a chainsaw.

Then they began spinning with a WHIRRRR, as though an engine had started.

Hundreds of spikes made a harsh grinding noise, as though ready to shred everything apart.

“Gasp!”

As though startled by the sound, the man who had been lying collapsed to one side suddenly sucked in a huge breath and shot upright.

“This is....”

The man stared at both of his hands as though he could not believe what he was seeing.

Clutched plainly in his hands was the golden stem of the golden rose.

A miserable sight with every petal torn away.

There was far too much evidence for Su-myeon not to understand.

The doll he had carried around in his pocket.

The man who had been Cheshire was almost as large as Han-su.

His deep-set eyes, filled with a mixture of elation and bewilderment as though he could not believe it himself, gave him an exceptionally intense appearance.

“You damn traitor!”

Breathing heavily, Bell swung the hand that had transformed into an enormous saw.

As though proving Su-myeon’s guess correct, the hand was aimed not at Su-myeon, but at Cheshire.

Cheshire, who had only just regained a human body, did not look remotely capable of dodging it.

He was still staring blankly at his own hands when Su-myeon lunged at him.

Grabbing the man he assumed was Cheshire by the collar, Su-myeon tumbled across the floor with him.

Bell’s arm slammed into the flower garden where Cheshire had been only moments earlier, tearing up petals and clumps of soil in every direction.

“You! You’re the one who did this?”

Still gripping Cheshire by the collar, Su-myeon shouted at him.

The rich scent of flowers and grass ripped apart all around them spread thickly through the air.

“What the hell were you thinking! I told you your turn would come!”

Cheshire’s eyes still looked as though he had not properly come to his senses.

Seeing that his gaze would not even focus, Su-myeon deliberately shook him roughly by the collar.

“Say something!”

He shouted loudly as though furious, but Su-myeon was not actually particularly angry with Cheshire.

This was an action with two purposes for Su-myeon.

Either Cheshire would properly regain his senses, or Bell would be startled enough for her anger to subside.

“Are you really Cheshire or not!”

Still looking at Su-myeon through dazed eyes, Cheshire was roughly thrown down onto the flower garden floor.

The man crashed to the ground like an abandoned mannequin, his fingertips twitching.

Bell, who had looked ready to cut everything apart with the saw made from monsters, suddenly hesitated.

“It... didn’t work properly...?”

Was it because of her identity as an inventor?

The moment Bell developed a question, her curiosity pushed past her anger and burst to the surface.

Bell reacted to the sight of Cheshire, who had regained a human form but could not properly come to his senses.

Only then did Su-myeon realize it as well.

This was the very first golden rose they had ever made bloom.

No one knew whether it had side effects or whether there was some specific proper method for taking it.

No way.

Did something go wrong?