When we got through the skeleton maze, a statue shaped like an armored knight holding a sword appeared in a round plaza. I could see a path behind it leading into a new maze, so I moved ahead in that direction, but Min-seo blocked my way with her arm.
"What's wrong?"
Instead of answering, Min-seo pointed at the knight statue with her chin, and when I raised my head, the knight was glaring at me, its eyes wide.
"You have to pay a price to go on to the next maze."
"Ah. Fuck. A statue's shaking us down too?"
Pointedly showing Ocheonsa, Min-seo set a heart down in front of the statue. Then Daniel followed suit, setting down beside it something that looked like some unidentifiable organ.
"We have to pay the Dark Sovereign a toll. Hurry."
While I dithered, Ocheonsa also took out a pile of fingernails, set them in front of the statue, and clicked her tongue. It seemed everyone but me had collected quite a few body parts on their way through the maze.
'If I'd known, I would have brought that liver.'
I never expected that not a single other body part would turn up along the whole way here. My box held nothing but items, and handing over the Ghost's Eye from the trust didn't make sense, cost-wise.
"Does it have to be a body part?"
"Hmm. In Canada anything was fine, but how about here?"
When Daniel looked at Min-seo, she couldn't avoid answering this question, and she smiled.
"It doesn't matter here either."
Her expression was soft and gentle, but she seemed to have no intention of saying more; she kindly told Ocheonsa that she could leave just one fingernail and put the rest back, and turned her back on Daniel.
Min-seo was excessively wary of Daniel. He was Experienced like me, but unlike with me, I could feel her drawing a line in how she treated him. Either way, neither of them seemed inclined to explain why in detail, so I opened my box and took something out.
"Then I'll pay with this."
[Dead Man's Watch]
An item of little value. Utterly useless apart from keeping as a souvenir.
Useless. Useless. Useless. Useless.
Words that hadn't appeared when the others set down a heart, an organ, and fingernails floated in the air when I set down the watch. It emphasized the uselessness so pointedly that I even had the illusion that the Sovereign statue's gaze looked unkind.
'That's a Rolex, you know.'
What had value to humans was worthless trash to ghosts. Instead of grabbing the liver of the man lying there, I had taken the Rolex from his wrist, and the words scolding it as useless made handing it over gall me terribly. A limited edition, no less.
"Then let's go through one at a time. Don't meet the statue's eyes anymore."
Min-seo checked the time and took the lead with hurried steps, and I followed behind her like a duckling.
"Two stages left. If we get held up here, it'll eat up too much time getting to the next stage."
"What's in here?"
She didn't look very interested, but Ocheonsa didn't want any trouble either.
"Even if I explained, you'd never have seen it before, so it wouldn't make much sense to you. Just remember one thing."
"What's that?"
"Never show any emotion in here."
There had to be a reason she stressed it. There was probably something in this maze that reacted sensitively to emotion. What I had learned going in and out of the Ghost Story Market was that those things tended to prefer emotions and memories over body parts.
GLANCE—
I looked over at Ocheonsa and Daniel. I was wearing the Emotion Control Bracelet and protective gear, so I would be fine, but then there was the 15-year-old high school problem child. I was seriously worried about Ocheonsa, who never hid her feelings.
"Don't worry. Oppa will look after you."
At the sight of Daniel smiling with such a straight face, having switched to calling himself oppa at some point, my stomach turned.
He looked old enough to be her uncle, but if he would look after the problem child, I could only be grateful that I didn't have to deal with her.
"If someone fails to control their emotions and those things come for us, is there a way to deal with it?"
"Just run so they don't catch you."
"This maze must be short, then."
"No. This is the longest path."
In short, if they spotted you early on, there was no guarantee you would live. Breaking through the longest maze without an escape route was impossible by any common sense.
When I went over to Min-seo, who was checking the time on her watch, Daniel stuck to her left side in exactly the same way.
I was a little flustered, but when I hid my expression and looked at him, he narrowed his long, thin eyes like a snake's and smiled at me.
"For now, Min-seo's the only one who knows the way, so let's all move together."
"Yes, let's."
"We think quite alike."
That wasn't why I had gone to Min-seo's side, but Daniel gave me no opening.
I knew, but pretended not to, and walked on, and unlike at the start, a dank aura and black fog spread hazily before us. Even with the candle in use, I could only see the path right in front of my nose.
"Aren't there a lot of footsteps?"
I looked at Ocheonsa, sucking her candy. I hadn't heard anything, but she seemed to have heard a sound; her eyes darted around as she went on.
"It must be pretty big? The sound's pretty heavy, isn't it?"
"You can tell that just from the footsteps?"
"Yeah. You can hear it."
Ocheonsa, sucking her candy as if it were nothing special, looked different to me now.
A maze more complicated than I had thought. Fog blocking our view, and the sound of wind. Conditions for locating anything were poor, yet she had caught it. That was probably a wish's doing too. I hadn't used any wishes that touched my body directly, but I felt the need to strengthen my body from now on.
"Huh? It's right in front of us."
The moment Ocheonsa spoke, Min-seo and Daniel pressed themselves against the outer side of the maze. Seeing what they did, I pressed myself against the bushes the same way, held my breath, and watched what was happening.
CREAK—
CRUNCH, CRUNCH.
Several huge, sharp pillars, each the size of an elephant, were stepping on the ground at once and coming this way.
Gulp.
When I looked up, 12 red eyes were rolling this way and that, moving quickly as if searching for something. With an ominous feeling, I tried as hard as I could not to look at it. If I kept looking and the emotion of fear burst out of me, I would be in trouble.
"Found you."
The voice that came out of the monster's mouth was a woman's high-pitched voice. It truly didn't suit it, but the moment it said "found you," an old man's scream came from the next maze path over.
"Aaaagh!"
"Dear customer. You must pay the toll."
SKITTER-SKITTER!
The sound of bushes being torn through wildly mixed with the sound of the spider monster running fast, and soon the man seemed to have been caught, because another scream rang out.
"Dear customer. You must pay the toll."
"I-I'll give you items. Please...."
"It has been more than 48 hours since you arrived, so what you have now is not enough. I shall tear off one leg."
"Keuaaaagh!"
The sound of the man's leg being taken apart came through graphically, followed by screams as if he were writhing in pain.
"With that pain, 48 hours of toll have been paid. I shall see you again in an hour, then."
It was so dark I didn't see how the thing carried off the leg, but the moment it tore off the leg, the screams of the man trembling in fear stopped. It seemed to have taken the emotion of fear along with one more leg.
"It'll be hard to get out of the maze without a leg."
"If he's lucky, he might find it nearby. Let's move on now."
Min-seo answered my muttering as she moved forward again.
Her words raised a question, and I stood there blankly, then started walking a beat late.
"You're saying it rips the leg off and then throws it away?"
"It takes nothing but the emotions."
In other words, it wanted the emotions born of the pain when the leg was torn off, not the body itself. Ripping it off like that and then just throwing it away, not using it, not eating it: that was the worst. The leg that had just been torn off might well be lying on the path ahead of us.
"Then if we find that leg, can I pick it up?"
At Ocheonsa's words, Daniel and Min-seo looked at each other and nodded at the same time.
I was sick of it. It was foolish of me to think, even for a moment, that Ocheonsa, who merely had a problem-child streak, would show ordinary emotions in here.
'The sound of her eating is really getting on my nerves. Whew.'
When she finally started crunching the candy she had been sucking, crunch, crunch, I quietly went over to her.
I wondered what on earth that candy was, that she never stopped eating it, from the Colosseum match all the way into the labyrinth.
"Why on earth do you keep eating that candy? Are you diabetic or something?"
"Hm? I got it from the shop. It's an item that makes you stronger. And it tastes good?"
I had practically swept the shop clean for a month, but no item that useful had ever turned up. In a way, she was a kid with truly incredible luck.
With that, there was no more small talk until we got through the spider maze in the middle stretch. Of the items that turned up here and there along the way, I handed over every one Ocheonsa wanted without a word of complaint. I knew all too well what set Ocheonsa off, and that if she threw another tantrum, everyone would be in danger.
We found about two more souls. Daniel found one, and I found one.
Min-seo looked frustrated, but she kept the rule we had promised, that whoever found it took it, and thanks to that I was able to collect the two soul fragments I needed.
"Min-seo, I think that person over there is about to die."
When we got out of the spider maze, Daniel pointed to a person lying shriveled up in a dark corner, and all eyes turned there. Min-seo, after thinking it over, seemed to decide to accept Daniel's kindness; she gave a small nod of thanks and walked over to the man.
'What is she going to do?'
It was 100% not to help him. The way he was shriveled up like a tree looked familiar somehow, but I hadn't heard any explanation about the latter part of the labyrinth yet, so I kept my mouth shut and watched what happened.
"I'll make it quick."
Surely not?
Min-seo went up to him and drove something sharp right into the man's skull, and with a crack, I heard his head shatter.
And then.
[Soul extraction is possible.]
The alert floated up.
I knew this wasn't the first time Min-seo had killed. She was an Expert, so she wouldn't have done only legal things, but knowing it in your head and actually seeing it are different.
In shock, I stopped on the spot and couldn't move.
"Ugh, damn. I've got to bring a Soul Extractor next time too."
At Ocheonsa's grumbling, my head started to clear. I had done the Colosseum with Min-seo too, so I thought it strange of myself to feel that killing people in a game was different from this, because even at the sight of Min-seo killing someone, Ocheonsa and Daniel stood there as if it were nothing.
'Right. In here, this is normal.'
When you thought about it, Human Hammering earlier had been killing people too. There was nothing strange about it at all. In that state, the man wouldn't have lived long anyway, so recovering his soul now seemed right.
This was the Ghost Story Market.
I couldn't think by human standards anymore. That would be the biggest thing holding back my growth.