When I went out into the Colosseum, there were more people than usual. I couldn't help but be surprised at the people standing packed together. Private rooms in the waiting area were given out from Experienced Investor up, so I hadn't expected this many people to flock here.
"There are more people than usual today."
A man who had been standing beside me since who knew when spoke to me. But I didn't answer. The fat man wore a checkered button-down and glasses, had a headband tied around his head for no apparent reason, and even had a camera hanging around his neck.
"Hmm. Could it be because today's game is F-Grade?"
"Did you say F-Grade?"
Inwardly startled by the man's words, I asked back without thinking. I really didn't want to keep the conversation going, but it was now clear that the game's grade had been leaked wrong through the market's trickery.
"Oh dear! You must be a newbie! Not knowing that!"
I had no idea what kind of pose that was.
Putting a hand on his head and hiking his shoulders up as high as they would go, the man grabbed my shoulder as if we were close.
"I'm Ahn Kyung-jin, 2 years in the market and president of the Seoul Strange Phenomena Club!"
"Ah. I see."
"If there's anything you don't know, just follow me!"
Looking at Kyung-jin confidently giving me a thumbs-up, I went past pity to the verge of tears. I doubted he could still smile like that if he knew today's game was a legend-tier A-Grade.
"By the way, what's your name?"
"......."
"You're quite shy! If you're not in a chat room, shall I send you a link?"
"That's... all right."
He was someone I would see once today and never again. If he died, I would never see him again, so I didn't want to bother leaving any connection behind.
'Please, just disappear before you rattle me any more....'
Kyung-jin didn't seem to have any intention of leaving my side. By his own account, he had been knocking around the market for 2 whole years, yet he was still trying to look after others; if he wasn't dim, that bastard clearly wasn't in his right mind either.
[Let's begin today's Colosseum game!]
With Falsehood's opening announcement, the roulette rose up out of the ground, and only then did Kyung-jin fall quiet. As he pushed up the glasses on his plump nose and watched the roulette with a serious face, I moved two steps away from him.
[Spin~ spin~ the wheel! Today's match is Alternating Drop the Handkerchief!]
BA-BAM—
With a sound straight out of a '90s variety show, words announcing an A-Grade game appeared, big as a billboard. At the sight, a few people sank to the Colosseum floor as if they had fainted, and some fell into a panic.
"F-forfeit!!"
One of the men who had collapsed on the floor quickly grasped the situation and ran fast for the waiting room to get out of the Colosseum. However.
CRUNCH!
He was stomped under Falsehood's giant foot, and his head burst, sending blood spraying up. As Falsehood slowly lifted his foot, part of the man's brain, crushed to mush, came up with it.
"L-let me out!"
"Save me! I forfeit the game!!"
The people, already panicking over the A-Grade game, turned the place into bedlam at the sight and ran desperately for the doors, and this time Falsehood didn't kill them but captured them alive.
[Everyone. Choose. Death and Game.]
The snake heads posed the question, and the people froze, unable to say a word. Either way, nothing awaited them but death, yet they couldn't even choose their own right to die.
'If they don't have the guts to play the game, they'd be better off dying cleanly at Falsehood's hands.'
Having to play this game with people like that made me sigh before it had even started. Still, I looked around to find anyone who seemed willing to keep playing.
'Forget the game, there isn't a single person even standing up properly....'
...That was what I was about to think, when Kyung-jin caught my eye, standing firm and holding the same pose as at first. He stood so straight and neat that I wondered if he had fainted on his feet, but when our eyes met, Kyung-jin came trudging toward me.
"This is the first I've heard of this game. Do you know when they'll explain the rules?"
"...I'd think they'll do it soon."
He was a kind of human I had never dealt with before. Even knowing this game was A-Grade, Kyung-jin acted as if he had traded away the emotion of fear and erased it from his brain entirely. And all the while, he fiddled with his camera.
"Haa... I need to know which ghosts come out so I can take pictures...."
"Pardon?"
He was a different breed from Daniel and Ocheonsa, but he was definitely a human I didn't want to get close to. I had no experience dealing with someone whose brain was broken in this way.
[I'll explain the rules of today's match!]
In the end, the people who didn't even have the will to die came back to the game board reluctantly, and Falsehood began explaining the rules of the game as if nothing had happened.
"Oh! I don't have a single photo of those ghouls, so this is great!"
"Are you a good runner?"
I asked out of courtesy, since Kyung-jin seemed even happier than before after hearing the rules. For all I knew, despite how he looked, he had some amazing items from the ghost shops, or he was incredibly quick on his feet.
"No! But I've got lots of fat!"
"...I see."
Seeing Kyung-jin strike another strange pose and grin confidently, I was sure. He was just an idiot. I didn't know how he had survived in the market until now, but he was more hell-bent on taking pictures of ghosts than on surviving.
[Investors, please go to your designated seats!]
Yellow lights came on in the round designated seats. Between the seats, spaces were left empty here and there for the ghouls. Humans versus ghouls; no matter how I ran the numbers in my head, there seemed to be no chance of winning.
'Ah! The calculator. Shall I just check?'
As I moved to my seat, I turned on the All-Purpose Calculator function and secretly checked Ahn Kyung-jin's numbers. It was because I just couldn't make sense of it. Unless he was hiding some special ability, his confidence was incomprehensible.
'Strange.'
There was nothing special about his numbers. What it showed, converted into points, was similar to the numbers I had seen on Sang-min, an ordinary human. As Kyung-jin had said, the number for fat was a bit abnormally high, but when I ran my eyes over Kyung-jin's figure, I naturally thought that made sense.
"So it's just a case of fools being brave."
When I sat in the nearest seat, of all people, Kyung-jin was sitting right across from me. Not wanting to keep facing him, I lowered my head and sent a signal to the shadow without anyone knowing.
[Now, the ghouls!! ...One moment, everyone.]
Falsehood stopped short in the middle of his announcement. He paused and checked inside the ghouls' waiting room, and something seemed to have gone wrong. There was a commotion for a while, and then Falsehood took the microphone again.
[Ta-da! The ghouls and a Hungry Ghost will now make their entrance!]
At the name of the newly added ghost, a question mark floated over my head. Nowhere in the information on Drop the Handkerchief, which I had gotten by using even Darkness's Spare Key, had it said a Hungry Ghost would take part.
[Some of the ghouls disappeared due to a difference of opinion, so we hastily brought in a Hungry Ghost as a guest.]
The words "difference of opinion" made me laugh. Judging by the situation, it seemed they had already been playing a game of eat-or-be-eaten among themselves in there.
Ghouls and a Hungry Ghost.
To compare them side by side: the ghouls, small-bodied and nimble-looking, had sharp-looking teeth, so if one caught you, the damage would be tremendous even if it only tore off one part of your body. The Hungry Ghost, on the other hand, had teeth attached to its head and was big enough to look a little slow, so if I played it right, it could be the hole in this game.
'Worth aiming for.'
To get out alive while limiting my use of abilities as much as possible, if I got caught, I absolutely had to go after the Hungry Ghost.
[Drop the handkerchief~ drop the handkerchief~♪ round and round it goes~ it goes~]
When the ghouls and the Hungry Ghost squeezed in to sit between the seated investors, the song started playing without giving us a moment to catch our breath.
[Drop the handkerchief~♪ drop the handkerchief~ who will catch it? who will catch it?]
It was the first time a song sung in a child's voice had ever sounded this creepy. But there was still no word from the shadow, so the handkerchief wasn't behind me.
For a while, the handkerchief's owner went unfound, and the song finished one round and came back for a second. Checking around in case the handkerchief had fallen behind one of the ghouls, I saw a face I knew. The man, No. 5002 or 5005 or whatever, who had talked to me not long after I first came to the market, was curled up small and trembling.
'Could it be? He isn't too scared to check behind him, is he?'
It made sense. If the handkerchief had fallen on the ghouls' side, they couldn't fail to know, so it had to have fallen on the human side, behind one of the investors.
'You idiot! Check behind you!'
The song entered its third round, and its melody changed subtly. This was probably the last chance being given to the investors. As the song flowed toward its end, a maddening, stifling anger rose in me.
[There was no owner of the handkerchief~♪ there was none~]
When the song ended, the trembling man floated up into the air.
"Aaaaaagh!!"
The floating man's body twisted and swirled like a wrung-out towel, and starting with his eyeballs bursting, it turned into a dried-up body like a wrung-out towel.
PITTER-PATTER—
Blood poured like rain from the man's wrung-out body, and red droplets sprayed in every direction. When I wiped the blood off my face and looked to the side, the ghouls had run out and were licking up the blood that had fallen on the floor. At the sight of them flicking their long tongues and smacking their lips, the frightened investors went rigid.
[Right! Everyone, back to your places!]
[Drop the handkerchief~ drop the handkerchief~♪ round and round it goes. It goes.]
The pressure was tremendous. The game moved fast, at the ghouls' pace alone, not the humans', and I couldn't get my bearings.
In the game that started without giving even 1 second of breathing room, a ghoul sprang up and started running.
'As expected, the second time, they don't give humans a chance.'
TAP-TAP-TAP.
The ghoul that had started running, kicking up dust, made a strange laughing sound, 'Kyahaha,' and its eyes began darting rapidly. It was terrifying speed. Watching the ghoul run, I prayed briefly that, please, the handkerchief wouldn't fall behind me.
"The handkerchief's gone!"
Just as the ghoul started its second lap, one of the investors noticed the handkerchief was gone from the ghoul's hand and shouted. I flinched and sent the shadow a signal, but there was no answer.
The owner of the handkerchief wasn't me.
"Kyahahaha! Something tasty!"
A female investor spotted the ghoul charging at her, its eyes glinting eerily, but it was already too late. She had picked up the handkerchief, but she was trembling so hard her legs didn't seem to work properly, and as she stood there on the spot, the ghoul tore off her leg and ate it while she was still alive.
"Kyaaaah! It hurts! Mommyyy~!"
SLURP! CHOMP CHOMP!
The ghoul, which had bared its teeth and eaten the leg with filthy sounds, came back to its seat when Falsehood reined it in. The woman fainted on the spot, and the ghoul looked perfectly at ease.
'Those bastards have intelligence.'
To them, the gourmet parts weren't legs or hands or feet, but things like ears, fingernails, eyeballs, and tongues. I had thought they were simple bastards that would eat the tastiest parts first, but passing up all of those and eating the leg was proof that they had a considerable level of intelligence.