Chương 124: S.05 Time to Fly 09(03)

Scene 03_01. After answering in a flat yet courteous voice, Yu-seok lifted the hand that had been stroking Yeon-jin's cheek. Folding his two hands together, he bowed deeply to Ji-young as she stepped out. Once outside, Ji-young shut the door firmly. Within, only the ragged breaths of Hong-sin and his group and Yeon-jin's fear-laden breathing remained. Over it all settled Yu-seok's flat, composed smile. Yu-seok: You should have known your place. Yu-seok's calm taunt was the last voice Yeon-jin heard.

Yeon-jin's eyes flew wide as if in terror. Scene 03_02_Falsehood. Eyes wide, Yeon-jin looked around with a vacant expression. As if she'd finished every task, she lowered her gaze with difficulty over her sweat-soaked hall dress. The form she looked down on, like a creaking wooden puppet, sat there as the past self Yeon-jin remembered. Turning her head, she gazed at the window of some brothel grown a touch shabby. The bright morning, looking unusually bleak today, was suspicious.

She took up the 죽장검(Juk-jang-geom_Bamboo Cane Sword). She moved her high heels and headed outside. Pushing the shabby door open and gazing at the narrow hallway, Yeon-jin looked over the empty corridor, without a single presence in it, with frightened eyes. To drive off the bleak air that filled the deserted, empty corridor, she began carefully moving her high heels.

Re-gripping the Bamboo Cane Sword in her hand, she scanned her surroundings as if on guard and walked out little by little down the shabby, old-fashioned corridor. On the cane-shaped Bamboo Cane Sword was carved the emblem signifying Yeon-jin's house. Since it was a blade that could cut down petty ghosts with ease, she reckoned the bleakness she felt now was nothing to worry about. Turning the sword as if drawing it close, she gripped the hilt and eased out a sliver of the steel-blue blade.

A strange heat drew steadily nearer. She was certain. It was clear. The deepest dread was felt right at hand. Yeon-jin swept the sword around just so and cut across the deep terror she'd felt behind her. A waterway shaped like a black curtain split apart and gaped open like the maw of a great beast. The opened maw swallowed Yeon-jin whole on the spot. With Yeon-jin's limbs seized in the grasping of 아귀(A-gwi_Hungry Ghost), the brimming waterway sent up agonized droplets.

The veins standing out on her arms dyed steadily black. Never letting go of the sword to the last, Yeon-jin struggled to cut off the arms of the Hungry Ghosts that gripped her body, but their number was not one Yeon-jin could handle. Deep into the thrashing Yeon-jin's mind, a grim will began to carry through. You should have known your place before you came at me. Isn't that right? You whore? Scene 03_03_Falsehood.

Toward the brow of Yeon-jin, laid out on the desk, Yu-seok swung the blade hard, about to drive it in fiercely. It was a fleeting instant, yet a long-drawn sight. She was certain a horrific pain would surely follow. Scene 03_04_Falsehood. The 죽장검(Juk-jang-geom_Bamboo Cane Sword) passed clean through Yu-seok's head. She believed she'd succeeded in killing Yu-seok, who lay on the bed. Yeon-jin's smirking laugh met Yu-seok's eyes, which had taken on a look of shock.

Yu-seok's startled eyes, before very long, turned to a sickly smile. Yu-seok's smile was spread so wide his teeth showed. Unlike Yu-seok's spreading smile, the smile that had sat on Yeon-jin's face began to lose even its smirk until it could hold no smile at all. Yu-seok raised the body that had lain on the bed. From Yu-seok's grotesquely contorted head, blood was clearly bursting out. Yet Yu-seok, undead, raised himself stiffly and slowly all the same, ignoring Yeon-jin's shrieking.

The warm blood running down the Bamboo Cane Sword was unmistakably Yu-seok's own. It was no fake molded from sand. She couldn't understand it. Yeon-jin, growing steadily more terrified, faced Yu-seok head-on, her face turning ashen. Having finally lost her grip on the Bamboo Cane Sword, Yeon-jin faltered, trying to back away from Yu-seok, who advanced strangely with the blade lodged in his brow. Yu-seok slowly drew out the blade lodged in his head.

From Yu-seok's hand, gripping the sharp blade bare, blood burst too. As he pulled the whole blade free, Yu-seok's brain matter mixed with blood and soaked down his face. Yet Yu-seok was smiling wide. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Yu-seok: Where do you keep running off to. This is barely the threshold of Klesha. Yeon-jin: What?

Yu-seok: Truth be told, this is my first time wielding Klesha as a 'Branch' rather than the 'shadow of the Original.' I'm curious. How the final 108 steps will be. In time with his shambling steps, Yu-seok's sneers came drifting out here and there. For Yeon-jin, struck through with fear, there was nowhere left to retreat. Scene 03_05_Falsehood. Through young Yeon-jin's eyes, the figure of a debauched adult sat there. She felt the figure of the adult, wrapped in lust, was sickening.

Unable to shake off the shock, she dropped the bag slung over her shoulder with a blank expression. No sound registered at all. The adult, a blade lodged in their brow, rose slowly and came toward young Yeon-jin.??: What're you looking at. If you're home, go do your homework. Your sister even brought back a scholarship — what are you, some beggar wretch who only drains money? What are you doing? Go study, now?? Behind the solemn face, unfamiliar presences mingled and conveyed sickening gestures.

It was not the figure of a dignified adult. The adult, who'd come near bleeding from the brow, took up the 죽장검(Juk-jang-geom_Bamboo Cane Sword) set by the door and stared into the mirror beside them at the wound left on their own brow. It was an adult whose face she couldn't even remember. Young Yeon-jin, with a blank face holding a stunned terror, did not step back. She only looked up at the adult who'd come so close, staring.

The adult, without even drawing the Bamboo Cane Sword gripped in hand, lightly rapped young Yeon-jin's head. A dread of not knowing when the blade might be pulled free hung in the air. Even from the light rapping of the sheath, a bruise began to form on young Yeon-jin's brow. Big-eyed Yeon-jin, able to do nothing against the suffocating swell of terror, let her tears fall. Scene 03_06. FLASHBACK Si-yeon, in a high school uniform, was wailing in Hong-sin's grip.

Beyond wailing Si-yeon's blurred sight, Yeon-jin came into view, lightly shoving aside with her foot the body of someone already fallen and moving her high heels closer. Approaching Si-yeon, who tried to break free from Hong-sin holding her, Yeon-jin tilted her neck this way and that and cracked the joints of her neck bones as if they were stiff. Si-yeon, gazing at the cold corpse of some man fallen before her, was wailing at the top of her lungs.

Sliding the 죽장검(Juk-jang-geom_Bamboo Cane Sword) into its sheath, Yeon-jin lifted it sheath and all and lightly rapped Si-yeon's brow. Yeon-jin: Quit your damn bawling, would you. You motherless piece of shit. Si-yeon: Ajeossi. Ajeossi!! Open your eyes. Please! Picking at her ear with an irritated air, Yeon-jin glared straight at Hong-sin, who stood holding Si-yeon. Hong-sin slammed Si-yeon to the floor, then stamped his foot down on the fallen Si-yeon's small head.

With consciousness she hadn't yet lost, Si-yeon reached out a hand and crawled feebly toward the fallen ajeossi. Before her, a thick envelope dropped. Yeon-jin: This sis here, my payouts are guaranteed. Quit dragging yourself through school and scraping by hand-to-mouth — just come along nicely. I'll teach you the good stuff. Si-yeon stared blankly at the envelope that had dropped before her as she tried to crawl. She stared blankly at the wad of cash, a few notes sticking up over the envelope.

A sum she couldn't earn in six months sat tucked in that small envelope. But what she saw beyond the envelope was the figure of someone gone cold and still. Si-yeon flung the money aside and didn't even steady her swimming gaze. Just as she was, blood running from her head and her hazed, faded eyes hanging vacant, she crawled again, past the blood of someone gone cold, and stroked the cooled body of someone who couldn't answer no matter how she shook them. She clutched it tight with both hands and sobbed.

Tears and snot leaked out without pause. With a listless look, Yeon-jin swung the sheath of the Bamboo Cane Sword and struck Si-yeon's head hard again. Scene 03_07. FLASHBACK Only the fact that she'd done harm stayed lodged deep in her mind. Gazing at the figure of her sister Song-hyeon, fallen and bleeding, Yeon-jin stroked the 검은 모래(Geomeun-morae_Black Sand) scattered about with trembling hands.

Yu-seok, having straightened the collar of his 두루마기(Durumagi_Traditional outer coat), looked with a vacant gaze at Song-hyeon's broken leg and then at Yeon-jin, brimming full with fear. Yu-seok: What are you doing? Not taking her? Yu-seok's figure was nowhere to be seen. The 본청(Bon-cheong_Headquarters)'s 주술(Jusul_Sorcery) was on a level worlds apart from what they'd imagined. The terror of the Black Sand was far greater than the reality Yeon-jin had pictured.

With a vacant gaze, she slowly traced the Black Sand resting on her fingers. Yeon-jin: Y-you. What — Yu-seok glanced at the blood running from Yeon-jin's shoulder, then carried on the way he'd been heading. The blood and Black Sand running from Yeon-jin's one shoulder surged up massively in an instant and tore away all of Yeon-jin's skin and sinew. There wasn't even time to writhe in pain.

She clutched the wound hastily with her remaining hand, but the bursting Black Sand broke through Yeon-jin's hand and ground away every scrap of flesh. Against the pain flooding in, too great even to scream, her consciousness was the first thing to fade. Scene 03_08_Falsehood. She jerked her lying body upright in a hurry. Cold sweat ran everywhere, but she could tell what was real. The facts seared into Yeon-jin's distant memory, at least, she couldn't forget. They sat there whole. It was a relief.

Tracing her brow again, Yeon-jin lowered herself to the floor and stood. She felt the gritty sand, but thought little of it. Without even sparing it a glance, Yeon-jin, draped in a robe, opened the door and headed outside. Yeon-jin stared with a vacant gaze at the scene spread before her eyes. Her own corpses, dead countless times over, lay collapsed in rows.

From her body that had wailed and died with its shoulder torn off, to her young self that had died with its brow burst open, Yeon-jin's corpses sat lined up across the living room. She couldn't even remember which part had been a dream. A purple sky sat beyond the living room. Looking at the mountain of corpses set beneath the pitch-dark purple sky, Yeon-jin sank to her knees on the floor. Yeon-jin: SSi... bal.

From the room Yeon-jin had come out of, a familiar presence made itself felt, but she couldn't even turn to look. A blade thrust abruptly up out of Yeon-jin's brow. Beyond Yeon-jin's brow, where no blood even ran, Yu-seok's voice carried up along the blade. Yu-seok: You've still a long way to go.