Chapter 90: Golden Rose (3)

INHALE—

EXHALE—

Feeling the air fill his lungs, Cheshire breathed.

Breathing.

Right, this was what breathing was called.

He could not collect himself because of all the sensations coming at him from every direction.

The flower scent was so thick it was almost acrid, mixed with the smell of soil.

The soft sensation of grass crushed beneath the body lying on the ground.

The dull pains that came with Su-myeon’s rough handling.

“Hey! Cheshire! Are you really Cheshire?”

Hearing Su-myeon’s words, Cheshire wanted to laugh.

Yeah. Yeah! I’m the Cheshire who was with you!

But astonishingly, he could not remember how to speak.

So, how did you make your vocal cords vibrate and produce sound again?

He saw Su-myeon approach with a startled expression.

Su-myeon pressed an ear against his chest.

Even Cheshire could feel the sound of his heart pounding at a steady rhythm.

Su-myeon’s head rose and fell along with Cheshire’s chest, which seemed to be breathing properly.

“Damn it, what the hell....”

Han Su-myeon.

This interesting human looked pitifully shocked.

He moved Cheshire’s arms and legs, which would not obey him properly, and laid him down in a more comfortable position.

Over Su-myeon’s shoulder, he could also see Bell looking flustered.

Both of them seemed to think something had gone wrong.

But Cheshire could feel it.

Everything was far too perfect.

All the sensations he had lost had returned at once, and he simply had not adjusted to them yet.

“What the hell happened!”

Bell had been the one getting angry until just moments ago, but now Su-myeon was the one shouting.

Cheshire cackled inwardly at the absurd sight.

Bell, apparently mistaking his condition for something having gone wrong with her rose, was dismantling the weapon she had gone to all the trouble of creating.

Stupid Bell. Naive Bell. Selfish Bell.

Cheshire was simply delighted to see the woman who had deceived him suffer for it.

“Weren’t you the one who knew Cheshire longer than I did in the first place?”

Su-myeon kept saying nothing but reasonable things, arguing that none of this would have happened if Bell had not deceived him from the beginning.

Cheshire wanted to nod vigorously in agreement.

But his hands and feet, even his head and eyelids, still would not move the way he wanted them to.

A body made not of cotton and cloth, but of bones and flesh, blood and muscle... was this how you used it...?

“And weren’t you the one who said you’d stay with him, Bell? What the hell happened!”

While Su-myeon shouted at Bell, Bell, her face full of confusion, rushed over and lifted Cheshire’s upper body.

Ah, seriously.

He had never expected to see her like this.

This was... way too funny.

“That can’t be.... That can’t be....”

A startled Bell examined Cheshire’s body all over.

His pupils reacted, and the muscles in his arms and legs responded.

After touching him here and there and confirming that nothing seemed wrong, Bell looked back into Cheshire’s eyes in confusion.

HEH—

Cheshire, who was finally beginning to adjust to his body little by little, let out a small scoff.

Only then did Bell fully understand the situation, and her face twisted viciously once again as she slapped Cheshire across the cheek.

Along with the sharp pain, he began properly recognizing the muscles of his face.

Once he could move his cheeks and lips, he finally figured out how to produce his voice.

“......Idiots.”

Those were Cheshire’s first words after regaining a human body.

***

Bell’s ruined flower garden.

With the glass case finally placed back over the spot where the Golden Rose grew.

Su-myeon and Bell sat collapsed on the ground.

Both had gone through such intense emotions that they were now full of embarrassment and irritation.

“That crazy....”

As Bell ground out a curse, Cheshire, who had barely managed to sit upright, snickered shamelessly.

Seeing him laugh without the slightest sense of seriousness, Su-myeon took off his glasses and muttered this time.

“This crazy.......”

Mu-yeon seemed to agree, whining as he pressed close to Su-myeon’s side.

One startled human, one being of a story, and one monster.

Having regained his form after screwing over such a diverse collection of beings, Cheshire spoke calmly.

“I’m more surprised you didn’t expect me to do this. Bell, sometimes you’re way too naive.”

“Shut up. Before I tear your limbs off again right now.”

Bell snapped sharply at Cheshire and kicked him, but Cheshire only burst out laughing again.

Even Su-myeon found him irritating enough to want to hit him.

“You should be grateful. I graciously volunteered to become the first test subject for the Golden Rose.”

“Do you seriously want to die?”

Su-myeon asked Cheshire, who kept fooling around, a question containing genuine sincerity.

He could not understand what the hell Cheshire was thinking.

“No. Bell can’t do that.”

Cheshire continued as though Su-myeon should already understand.

“Su-myeon, she’s basically a scientist.”

How perfectly this human body would remain intact, and whether it could continue without problems over a long period of time.

This was a perfect opportunity to find out.

The Golden Rose was simply so precious that Bell had intended to use the first one on her husband immediately.

If she had been given the opportunity, Bell would have wanted to experiment on someone first.

“As long as we keep our promise to continue making roses bloom here. In the end, Bell can’t kill us.”

Right?

Cheshire’s sly tone was exactly the same as when he had been a doll.

The only difference was that his pronunciation was clearer and his pace more natural.

That subtle difference instead gave the whole thing an oddly vivid sense of reality.

'That man really is Cheshire....'

In any case, just as he said, the most important thing was that the Golden Rose was not unique.

Even now, a new golden sprout was already growing where the previous flower had been plucked.

Bell looked deeply displeased, but silently stroked the glass case covering the sprout.

“...It wasn’t something I intended, but for now, I’m sorry, Bell.”

“Ha....”

Bell gave a hollow laugh at Su-myeon’s apology, looking utterly dumbfounded.

But.

“But, just as Cheshire said. I can make another one bloom, can’t I?”

A flower Bell had barely managed to create in a false form over several decades.

Su-myeon had made one bloom fully in only a few months.

And through Cheshire, who had consumed it, they had even proven that its effect was real.

“This time, I’ll be able to bloom a Golden Rose grown entirely from causality I gathered myself from the beginning. In a way, it might even be better in quality.”

Ha. Hahaha....

Bell let out a dry laugh, still looking utterly speechless.

Even so, nothing he had said was wrong, so Bell had nothing more to add.

Without them, she could not do anything.

“This rose was taken outside the terms of our agreement, so I’m going to charge you properly for it.”

“......Understood.”

Su-myeon, too, had no other way to obtain something like this except through Bell.

Both sides knew very well that they were indispensable to each other, so there was no helping it.

Su-myeon sighed as he watched Cheshire wobble like a newborn giraffe while trying and failing to rise from the floor.

It was right to see this as a hopeful sign... wasn’t it?

“Now, get the hell out. Both of you.”

Bell, who had been watching the same sight, spoke as though she were sick of them.

Su-myeon did not hesitate to accept her words and immediately got to his feet.

For now, he had obtained everything he had set out to get.

***

“Your name is Choi Si-woo. You were born in 1941... is that... correct......?”

Half a day later.

Su-myeon had returned to Seoul and was inside the Governance headquarters.

He was exhausted after staying up all night, but the moment he took the documents Mi-ae had found, all traces of sleep vanished.

“Oh.... I don’t remember.”

Cheshire answered vaguely to Mi-ae’s words.

But since the information had been identified through fingerprint records, it had to be almost certainly correct.

Cheshire was a person who had disappeared more than fifty years ago.

His parents, who had only one child, had both already passed away, and there were no close relatives left for him to contact.

And despite the fact that he should have been over eighty years old.

“Do you remember how old you were when you disappeared?”

“Mmm, I don’t think I do...?”

He looked somewhere between his late twenties and early thirties.

He had shaggy curly hair and handsome features, but.

“For some reason, you’re kind of obnoxious.”

“Really~?”

Even at Mi-ae’s blunt comment, Cheshire merely grinned.

Investigating his background was not particularly difficult.

An ordinary office worker who had graduated from a national university and gone on to work for a company.

That monotonous result of the investigation did not bring back any of Cheshire’s memories.

“I think Cheshire is just more comfortable as a name.”

He had even regained his real name, Choi Si-woo, but apparently had not adjusted to it yet.

All of his memories were of the time he had spent inside ghost stories.

It could not exactly be called an entirely hopeful situation, but to one person, it looked different.

“Then, does that mean Mu-yeon is next... and he can regain a human body like that too?”

Hwi-yeon looked greatly relieved as she stared at Cheshire, who had returned completely to the form of an ordinary human being.

Beside her, Mu-yeon was still sprawled out asleep.

As she stroked the enormous black wolf and held onto the hope that it would not be much longer.

“And this too.”

Su-myeon carefully placed the tag he had purchased from Bell around Mu-yeon’s neck.

It felt somewhat like putting a dog collar on him, which made Su-myeon feel as though he were slightly violating Mu-yeon’s dignity.

“.......”

In reality, Mu-yeon slowly opened his eyes.

It was the effect of forcibly granting causality to a human who had lost his form after having his causality stolen by a ghost [N O V E L I G H T] story.

He would not be completely free, and perhaps the most he could manage was enough strength to follow Hwi-yeon around on his own.

Even so, Hwi-yeon looked deeply moved simply by the fact that they could now share everyday life together.

While Mu-yeon wagged his tail gently and Hwi-yeon tearfully reunited with him.

BUZZ—

Su-myeon pulled out his phone as it suddenly vibrated.

He did not really have any friends to speak of, so there was nowhere he expected a call from....

[Director Jang Bok-eum]

“.......”

Ah, there was one place.

Su-myeon answered the call with a sigh.

“Yes. Director.”

A very brief notice came from the other end.

‘I’ll be there in five minutes.’

CLICK—

The call ended just like that.

Su-myeon stared blankly at his phone, then grabbed the shoulder of Hwi-yeon, who was hugging Mu-yeon and wiping away her tears.

“Director Jang Bok-eum says he’s coming.”

“......What?”

Her younger brother clearly recognized her, wagged his tail, and nestled into her arms.

Hwi-yeon, who had been crying because she could confirm the solidity of his sense of self, looked at Su-myeon.

It felt as though her tears dried up instantly.

'How much of this... are we supposed to report?'

Everyone thought the same thing.

Cheshire, who had returned to being human, was easy.

If anything, they needed intervention from higher up simply to restore or reconstruct his legal identity.

But Mu-yeon?

Would it be better to tell them the truth about him while he had to remain in the form of a monster for the time being?

If they imagined the stereotypical response of a government organization....

'Wouldn’t they take him away, isolate him, or try to experiment on him?'

The first monster from inside a ghost story to cross over into reality.

A strange wolf with three eyes that could understand human language and act accordingly.

Even if he had originally been human, how would the government react to him?

Even imagining him as an alien would probably lead most people to picture the same outcome.

“F-First. Should we hide him? For now....”

Ju-hee was the first to step forward and look around.

However, Mu-yeon was not some tiny puppy they could simply hide anywhere.

“I have an idea!”

Mi-ae, who had been quietly watching the situation, suddenly raised her hand.

“The laundry room!”