Chapter 156: Crimson Gaze
What would it be like if you could control people as you wished?
It would certainly be convenient.
Song A-rin thought so too.
What a wonderful thing it would be. To be able to control everyone according to my will. It truly sounds like a story from a dream.
But humans are fickle creatures.
They are beings who find poverty amidst plenty.
She was no different.
The feeling of satisfaction was fleeting, and what overwhelmed her afterward was an endless sense of powerlessness.
She always found herself doubting.
Is this person really liking me for who I am?
Even if the person genuinely liked her and was fond of her, she had no way to prove it.
On the contrary, she possessed an ability that could even manipulate that very sincerity.
That's why she yearned for it even more.
'Instead of someone who loves me because I control their mind, isn't there someone who would love me sincerely, without me manipulating their thoughts?'
And then, finally, a person qualified to do just that appeared before her.
A person who absolutely would not move according to anyone else's whims, who steadfastly pushed forward with what they believed was right no matter how she pleaded, and who mostly succeeded in doing so.
For her, such a person was a first.
Of course, there had been a few monstrous individuals.
Like the Gangseo Branch Chief, who, when she tried to hypnotize him, just stared intently at her with a terrifying smile on his face.
But for someone like her, it was only natural that she would want to make a good impression on this man.
"...Phew."
A quiet sigh escaped her lips.
Song A-rin opened her eyes.
She was no longer the girl from her childhood who relied solely on luck.
The present her was different.
*
I watch the spectacle of people moving as if tied by strings.
It wasn't an unfamiliar sight.
Where had I seen this before?
I didn't need to ponder; the answer sprang to mind immediately.
The puppet-like beings that attacked us in the dream of a midsummer night.
And the Troupe Master.
"What is that?"
"I'd like to know properly myself."
Yu Daon, now free, approached me and whispered, and I had no choice but to whisper back in reply.
However, I could understand how the mechanism of 'control' worked.
As Song A-rin swung her hand, her mother's body began to move this way and that.
"...Ha."
After repeating the motion of controlling her several times, she let out a sigh that sounded almost like a snort.
"So, it comes to this after all."
Muttering to herself, she flicked her wrist,
and her mother pulled out an old key from somewhere.
"You! Don't!"
"..."
Song A-rin slowly walked towards her mother, who screamed.
"This is the key to A-rin's room! It's not something for you to touch!"
"It's the key to my room, so I'm just taking it back."
Song A-rin slowly took the key.
"Ms. A-rin. Your mother is..."
"I know. That she's not human."
Cutting me off, Song A-rin nodded.
"Still. I can't bring myself to kill her with my own hands."
I hurriedly covered Yu Daon's mouth.
Yu Daon blinked and looked at me.
Her eyes seemed to ask, 'I didn't say anything?'
But given her current nature, I instinctively acted, thinking she might say, 'Shall I kill her for you?'
"That's why... I'm going to let her go."
"...As you wish."
"Thank you."
Song A-rin nodded and swiftly extended her index finger.
Her mother's body straightened up,
"Let me go!"
She shouted and began walking into the distance.
Song A-rin watched her with an expressionless face.
She crossed the entryway, then the corridor... and disappeared.
"...No matter how I think about it, I must have used up all my lifetime's luck when I was young."
"Pardon?"
Song A-rin muttered.
"When I was young, I survived by relying on my wits and luck."
"Here?"
"That's why I said I used it all up."
"..."
"Still, it was quite remarkable, even from a young age, wasn't it?"
Song A-rin chuckled softly as she muttered.
"How else could you explain me surviving otherwise?"
"..."
"Right?"
She looked at me.
"That's right."
I had no choice but to nod.
"So then."
She opened the door.
With a clunk, the key clicked into place, and the room where a child had lived was revealed.
It could only be described as a quaint, cozy room.
Although it was the room where the young her had lived.
"..."
Song A-rin squeezed her eyes shut.
"It's the same."
"..."
"You... tidied it up."
It was just as she said.
While it was a room where no one lived anymore, there were still traces of someone having maintained it.
"...Shall we lie down?"
"...You go first."
Song A-rin looked at me.
Was it really right to leave Song A-rin behind like this? What if she was late or never showed up—
"Don't worry."
She chuckled softly and waggled her index finger.
"Is it because you're worried the connection will break if I go? And it's more comfortable for me to send you ahead anyway."
"Shall I go first?"
"Do as you please."
Sharply cutting off Yu Daon's words, Song A-rin looked at me.
"...Understood. Then—"
"I'll go first."
Yu Daon interrupted me and looked at Song A-rin.
She seemed not to care much about what Song A-rin might say to her.
"If we wake up and that place is dangerous, it's better for me to go first and wait there rather than you, Mr. Jae-heon, right?"
"That's true."
Song A-rin also nodded in agreement and looked at me.
"Alright. Then you go first."
"Yes."
Without hesitation, Yu Daon lay down on the bed.
"But how do we fall asleep he—"
And before her sentence even finished, Yu Daon vanished.
"..."
"...You really must come, Ms. A-rin."
"You think I won't come?"
Song A-rin chuckled and looked at me.
"I have no choice but to go."
She poked me with her index finger.
With a creak, the bed shook.
"You promise?"
"Yeah, you idiot."
She smiled quietly.
I slowly looked at her and then lay down on the bed.
"You really must come."
"Of course."
Song A-rin continued to smile as she looked at me.
Suddenly, an intense drowsiness washed over me.
Was this what Yu Daon meant by—
"I have to go there because you'll be there."
Song A-rin's final words didn't reach me clearly.
*
"Ah, you're here!"
The moment I regained consciousness, I saw Yu Daon, her eyes wide open, staring at me.
"Mr. Jae-heon, you're not hurt, are you? Does anything hurt? Do you feel strange anywhere..."
"I'm fine."
"Ms. A-rin didn't do anything to you, did she?"
"Why would Ms. A-rin do anything to me?"
"Ah, it's nothing."
Yu Daon laughed softly,
and as the door opened, white hair fluttered.
"..Huff... Huff..."
"Ms. Chae-yeon."
"...Sorry."
She muttered.
"I came as soon as I got the call. I'm a bit late."
"...You came as soon as you got the call?"
How much time had passed?
I hurriedly checked the time.
Exactly 20 minutes had passed.
"..."
Yu Daon and I exchanged glances.
It had clearly felt like several hours.
"The time—"
Before I could finish speaking, Song A-rin magically appeared before us.
"..."
With a complicated expression, she was looking at her own painting.
"That painting is dange—!"
Yu Daon opened her mouth to say something, but as Song A-rin wiggled her finger, Yu Daon covered her own mouth with her hand.
"Mmph! Mmphmph! Mmph!"
"...Sorry."
Completely ignoring Yu Daon's muffled protests, Song A-rin bowed her head to me.
"I'll take care of this painting."
"...I'll trust you."
"Good."
"Mmph! Mmphmph!"
Song A-rin nodded, and so the Army-Study-One-System incident came to an end.
Or so I thought.
*
"I hate you now, Kim Jae-heon."
"What kind of talk is that all of a sudden, Branch Chief?"
The Branch Chief stared at me with wide eyes.
"What do you mean, 'what kind of talk'?"
Her red eyes bore into me.
"Do you know what kind of earful I just got from my superior?"
"I don't?"
"She said she didn't know I was a crazy bitch who works her future ace to death!"
"Well... she's not wrong?"
I keep telling you to rest!
With a yell, the Branch Chief grabbed her head.
"I send you off to rest, and you come back trailing a string of incidents! And now, is it right that you two even cause trouble when you go out for drinks together? Should I just set up your office inside the Branch Chief's office?"
"No, thank you."
That would be like setting up an office inside the CEO's office in a company.
"If you don't want that, then please, for heaven's sake, live carefully!"
The Branch Chief shouted, sounding wronged.
I want that too. Really.
"...Phew."
She let out a deep sigh.
"First. Brief me."
"Understood."
I slowly began to brief her.
What happened with Song A-rin and Yu Daon.
The fights, the escapes. And Song A-rin's story.
The Branch Chief, who had been listening quietly, began to look serious starting from the part about Song A-rin.
Her increasingly grave expression, by the time I finished my story, was...
"..."
She was making a devastated expression I had never seen before.
"Branch Chief?"
"...Ms. A-rin said that? That she survived because she was lucky."
The Branch Chief muttered.
"Yes."
"...Kim Jae-heon."
She looked at me.
"When do you think a person's ability awakens?"
"...In times of danger?"
"That can happen too. But usually, it's when the time comes for that ability to be used."
She continued in a calm voice.
"For example. Immortality is realized when you die. Telekinesis is realized when you need to move something."
"..."
"Wait a moment."
She walked somewhere.
Soon, she returned with a terminal covered in dust.
It was a terminal with a small screen.
"This is the record from when the abnormal phenomenon first occurred at the Myeongil Apartment. Using closed-circuit cameras and the Management Bureau's technology at the time, we were able to record the situation inside the building."
"..."
Was it really right for me to see this?
But before I could say anything, she operated the terminal.
CCTV footage began to play.
A young man of college age studying something, a family playing normally, an elderly couple chatting, a man on the phone. Students playing in the playground.
And then, in a single moment, everything changed.
The elderly couple were lying face down on the floor, trembling. The man had also put down his phone and was staring outside. The students in the playground were already dead, their bodies torn apart and scattered.
The screen changed.
A couple ran, holding a purple-haired child in their arms.
The child was trembling with fear in the man's embrace.
The man collapsed to the floor, looked back.
His face contorted with terror, and he hurriedly handed the child to the purple-haired woman.
The woman hesitated for only a moment before, urged by the man's shout, she hurriedly ran down the corridor again.
She ran.
She crossed the second-floor corridor, then tripped at the stair landing.
Her leg shattered, and she let out a scream of agony.
The child fell to the floor. When the child looked back, she shouted something at them.
The child ran.
As the child ran up the stair landing towards the third floor, the man who had been in the corridor threw down his phone and ran towards the child.
As if it were the most natural thing, he picked up the child and ran up the stairs.
Was he being chased by something? Constantly looking back, he climbed the stairs.
He reached the fourth floor.
He ran and knocked on a door.
The two elderly people who had been lying on the floor hurriedly opened the door.
The man handed the child to the elderly couple, said something urgently, and closed the door.
He clenched his fist tightly,
and was immediately torn to pieces.
Holding the crying, purple-haired child, the elderly couple hurried towards the balcony.
The door shattered. The grandfather hurriedly pushed the child and grandmother onto the balcony and closed the door.
Blood splattered everywhere. The grandmother screamed.
A young man who had been studying on the adjacent balcony jumped out and reached out his hand.
The grandmother looked back, hurriedly handed the child to the young man, then put her foot on the railing to cross over to the other balcony, only to be caught by something and dragged away.
The young man's face filled with horror. Holding the crying child, he hurriedly ran into his room.
He hid the crying child under the bed, barricaded the door, and grabbed a kitchen knife.
Again, blood splattered.
A long time passed. A brown-haired woman, her fists clenched, traversed the apartment at an incredible speed, passing by corpses,
and found the child under the bed.
The purple-haired child, who looked exactly like Song A-rin in her youth,
was simply held in her arms.
"...Sometimes, people erase memories they don't want to remember."
"..."
"Because that's the way to save themselves."
The brown-haired woman from the screen, the Branch Chief, spoke to me.
The child on the screen, with emotionless eyes that seemed to feel nothing,
was staring straight at the screen.