“……”
Satoshi, who had collapsed onto the floor, felt his pants wet.
Miyako looked down at him with a puzzled expression and asked,
“……Why are you making that face?
Aren’t I pretty?”
She sounded genuinely curious, as if she truly couldn’t understand.
Though the previous events had been shocking enough, the fact that she showed no doubt about her actions was enough to shatter Satoshi’s sanity.
“Aaaaahhhh!”
“……Why, Satoshi?”
“Please. Get away from me! Get out of my sight! Get lost!”
“You said you liked girls with big mouths… I did exactly what you wanted, and you still don’t like me?”
“You think anyone would like a girl like you!?”
Satoshi, barely holding on to his sanity, tried to get up, but his body wouldn’t cooperate.
“Then what should I do to make you like me?”
“……Nothing! There’s nothing you can do! I will NEVER like you! So just get the hell away from me!”
“…….”
Miyako stood frozen, as if shocked.
“Really?”
“…….”
“Is there really nothing that can make you like me?”
To Satoshi, who was already panicking, her words sounded like meaningless static from a broken radio.
His only thought was to escape this place.
“So, I really can’t be with you…? Why? I love you so much… Why won’t you love me back?”
“It’s strange. I’m sure you looked at me with love in your eyes… Why are you lying? You said you liked girls with big mouths, so I changed my appearance to match your taste….”
“Why is Sakura okay, but I’m not…?”
Miyako murmured to herself ceaselessly, as if possessed by something.
‘I have to get out of here.’
Taking advantage of her distraction, Satoshi managed to stand up and take a step forward.
Thud!
Miyako reached out and stopped him.
“Take this.”
In her hand was none other than the doll she had made in his likeness.
Seeing the bloodstained doll sent chills down Satoshi’s spine.
A wave of intense disgust and fury surged within him.
Rip!
Without hesitation, he tore the doll apart.
“……Crazy bitch. Something’s seriously wrong with you. I shouldn’t have agreed to this stupid bet in the first place.”
The real reason Satoshi had come to this place. It was all because of a bet with his friends. When he first found the letter, he didn’t even remember who Miyako was, so he asked around. To his surprise, Miyako was quite infamous at school—for all the wrong reasons.
Curiosity got the better of Satoshi and his friends, and they made a bet. And this was the result.
“I never knew who you were, and I never had the slightest interest in you. So never—”
Shunk!
“……Huh?”
Shunk! Shunk! Shunk!
Satoshi’s throat was pierced repeatedly. Like a deflating balloon, he collapsed onto the ground. From his neck, crimson blood gushed out like a fountain.
“……S-save…”
His mouth opened and closed like a dying goldfish, but no words came out. Miyako, gazing down at him with a bloodied pair of scissors in hand, muttered sadly,
“I don’t like it when Satoshi says mean things…”
Then, without hesitation, she turned around and walked back toward the classroom.
Step. Step.
With each blood-soaked step, the students around her parted like the Red Sea.
“Satoshi… I guess I won’t get to see you anymore. I really liked how handsome you were….”
Before she knew it, she had reached the classroom door.
Creak.
Opening it, she glanced around.
“Where is she…?”
Sakura, who had been chatting with her friends, sensed the presence and turned to look at her.
Their eyes met.
Sakura’s face contorted in horror, while Miyako beamed with a smile.
“Found you.”
It all happened in the blink of an eye. Miyako rushed forward, shoving Sakura to the ground.
“……!”
Sakura’s friends stood frozen, too stunned to react.
“Hmm… I just don’t get it. What’s so great about an ugly girl like this?”
“W-What is this…?”
Before Sakura could say another word, Miyako’s hand moved.
Stab!
“Aaaaaah!”
“Sh-shouldn’t we stop her!? Someone do something!”
Screams erupted from the surrounding students. But Miyako paid them no mind. She silently carried on with her work.
Click. Click.
In her hand was a stapler. Like a sewing machine, she rapidly stapled Sakura’s lips shut.
“Ah, it’s not working as well as I thought. Stop struggling and stay still.”
Each press of the stapler tore through flesh, causing blood to seep out. A horrifying sight.
Even those who had initially shouted for someone to intervene now stood frozen in fear.
They lacked the courage to step forward.
Miyako wiped away the mixture of sweat and blood from her hands and admired her work with a satisfied smile.
“Yeah. Now this looks better.”
Sakura’s half-conscious lips, now crudely stitched shut, resembled a child’s clumsy sewing on a rag doll.
“……I really don’t get what Satoshi saw in someone this gross. Well, not that it matters anymore.”
“After this incident, she was found hanging from a tree behind the school.”
“So after she died, she became an entity that killed people? And the innkeeper couple covered it up because she was their daughter?”
“Yes, that seems to be the case.”
Yu Gi-jun explained calmly, and Oh Haeyoung looked disgusted.
“……That’s so horrifying. I mean, what did Satoshi and Sakura even do to deserve that…?”
“It seems she had severe insecurities about her appearance. She had no real friends throughout her school years because of it.”
“That’s unfortunate, but… I still can’t understand it.”
“It’s not something that can be understood rationally. It’s the result of a twisted sense of values and love.”
Just then, Lee Eunha returned from making a call.
Taeseong summarized the story Yu Gi-jun had told him.
“……So that’s how it happened. That’s horrible.”
“What did the team leader say?”
“For now, they want us to wait for the Japanese authorities to arrive.”
“……Then what should we do about the entity?”
“We were told to avoid direct contact as much as possible. It’s an unclassified entity, so we should be cautious. But…”
Eunha trailed off and looked at Taeseong.
“They said, if necessary, to make full use of Administrator ‘Lee Taeseong’.”
“……”
“It seems the team leader has high expectations of you.”
“As expected of our captain!”
Taeseong nodded silently.
“What should we do now?”
Just as Eunha was about to speak—
Thud.
Thud. Thud.
Taeseong covered her mouth.
“!?”
“Wait.”
He crouched down and pressed his ear to the floor.
‘I hear something… From below.’
Tae-sung stood up and asked Gi-jun,
“Yu Gi-jun, did you get any information about a basement from the couple?”
“No, nothing like that. Why?”
“It seems like someone is down there. I can sense movement.”
Hearing those words, the team members focused on the sound, but all they could hear was the wind seeping through the windows.
“Mr. Taeseong, I don’t hear anything.”
“……Are you sure you heard it correctly?”
Nodding, Taeseong was already moving toward the source of the sound.
Following behind him naturally, Gi-jun spoke with a voice full of confidence.
“You’ve seen it many times before, haven’t you? The captain’s abilities. Even back when he had no special abilities, he was considered a ‘legend’ within the unit. Let’s just trust him this time.”
Lee Eunha is someone with strong opinions. No matter what others say, she never acknowledges anything unless she sees and judges it for herself.
Because of that, she could at least trust in the abilities that Lee Taeseong possessed.
After all, the most helpful person in this situation wasn’t herself, but him.
After walking down the hallway, Taeseong suddenly stopped in front of a room and opened the door.
It was an ordinary room, no different from the ones they had seen before.
“Mr. Taeseong, that’s just a wall.”
Ignoring Haeyoung’s voice filled with doubt, Taeseong swung his sword.
Slash!
With an astonishingly precise motion, the wall was sliced cleanly like tofu, revealing a hidden staircase leading underground.
“Let’s go.”
Descending the stairs, they encountered a thick iron door.
There was a large padlock, but it wasn’t much of an obstacle.
“I’ll handle this.”
Clenching his fist, Gi-jun crushed the padlock into dust with a crunching sound.
As Taeseong, leading the way, opened the door, the team members behind him froze in place.
“T-This is……”
“Aren’t those… corpses?”
“There must be at least twenty of them……”
“Ugh! What’s with those giant rats!?”
The basement was filled with corpses in various states—some looked freshly dead, while others had decomposed into skeletons.
Most of them had one thing in common—their mouths were torn open.
Large rats, about the size of cats, scurried around, occasionally banging their heads against the walls, making it easy to guess the source of the sounds.
Checking the clothing of the corpses, Taeseong soon concluded they were either travellers or residents of the village.
‘So the reason they ran an inn in such a secluded place was for this all along.’
They must have started with the villagers first.
Gradually increasing the numbers, they eventually targeted the guests staying at the inn.
‘This whole village was already rotten to the core.’
From the lunatics worshipping that snake called Orochi to the mysterious giant woman, the red mask, and now this inn.
It was truly like a bottomless pit.
“It seems these bodies belong to the village residents or travelers who stayed at the inn.”
“So, if we had kept sleeping without knowing anything, we could have ended up like this?”
“That’s right.”
Eunha frowned, her face growing paler with discomfort.
“The traits of entities called evil spirits……”
Looking at the corpses around her, a realization struck her.
“The more they consume negative emotions like hatred or resentment, the stronger they grow. Corpses are the best catalysts for that. With the number of bodies here, not to mention the Japanese administrators…… and……”
She stopped muttering and turned to Taeseong with urgency.
“Mr. Taeseong, you said the red mask escaped earlier, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you suspected it was because it knew it couldn’t handle you.”
“Yes. That’s just my assumption, though.”
Biting her lip anxiously, Eunha cursed under her breath.
“……Damn it.”
“What’s wrong?”
“That altar we saw in the forest when we first arrived. Remember how many bodies were stacked there?”
“There were at least over 150. Not just on the altar, but bodies scattered all around the area.”
Hearing that, Eunha muttered in despair.
“……Shit. We might really be screwed.”
Seeing Eunha curse for the first time, Haeyoung asked worriedly.
“W-What’s wrong?”
“……Everyone, listen carefully. We initially estimated the unidentified entity, ‘Red Mask,’ to be around Delta-level upper rank. Haeyoung, you’re Epsilon-level, but in terms of combat power, you can match a Delta-level administrator.”
“……Hehe.”
“That alone wouldn’t have been an issue. We could have handled it with our current team. But……”
Understanding the situation, Taeseong interjected.
“But things have changed now.”
Eunha nodded gravely.
“Yes. There’s a very high chance that the Red Mask has now reached the ‘Gamma’ level. Perhaps even mid-to-upper tier within that level.”
Gi-jun and Haeyoung shouted in shock.
“G-G-Gamma? Mid-upper level!?”
“G-Gamma level!?”
They wanted to deny it, to say it was just speculation, but they couldn’t.
The more they thought about it, the more the weight of the situation tilted in that direction.
“……I’ll say this now—my ability to teleport is currently unavailable.”
Complete isolation.
“B-But there’s still a chance that your assumption is wrong, right?”
“……Maybe. But……”
Bad premonitions usually turn out to be true.
She left the last part unsaid.
Because saying it out loud would only make it more real……
.
.
.
Thud!
Thud! Thud!
The clear sound of footsteps echoed.
Someone was coming down the stairs.
