[Right! Participants in the waiting seats, please come to the center and draw a ball!]
We came out to the center, where a square box marked with a question mark sat, and lined up in turn. It seemed the people who drew balls of the same color from that box would become partners.
At last it was my turn, and I put my hand in the box and picked out a ball.
'Damn it....'
I had thought it was a ball, but it wasn't. What I had drawn was a red eyeball.
My stomach turned, and I quickly handed the ball to the manager before it could show. Then, when I looked at the screen to find the person who had drawn the same color eyeball as me, my number was printed right next to No. 2011.
"Nice to meet you. I'm counting on you."
For someone who had been in the market so long, she was remarkably human. And more beautiful than I had imagined.
"...Likewise. I'm counting on you too."
"Have you done this before?"
She looked at me as if sizing me up, a puzzled look on her face, but even that didn't bother me much. Maybe it was because she carried herself so gently.
"I know the rules."
"Ah. I see. Then you can handle your own defense."
She turned her head away coolly, as if she wouldn't be paying me any more mind, and an ice-queen presence came off her in waves. Still, I was lucky to be paired with someone who had played plenty of games. At least she didn't seem likely to get in my way.
[Then let the game begin!]
A thin line linked my arm to the arm of No. 2011. Then the box opened out on all sides, and the man who had lost his eyes last time came out of it and floated up into the air.
[This investor could not pay his points, so his body has been taken as collateral. From now on, we will cut his body into pieces and scatter them.]
Ah. So this was how it had ended up.
It was a shame, but part of it was his fault for taking the Ghost Story Market too lightly. This was not a place that would grant endless wishes just for paying with emotions or body parts. You always had to keep in mind that the things we traded with were ghosts that lived off human hell.
[Right! Everyone knows the rules, yes? Start!!]
In a flash, the man's body was cut to pieces and fell all over the Colosseum. A grotesque sight spread out before us: only the man's head, dangling in midair. Even in that state, it seemed he didn't die; tears flowed endlessly from his sewn-shut eyes.
SHIVER—
Goosebumps rose all over my body. But I had no time to stand around in a daze. I ran toward where the pieces had fallen.
"No. 2011, let's split up instead of going to the same spot."
"Fine. And my name is Min-seo."
"I'm Min-jae. Kim Min-jae."
I wondered whether we should really be introducing ourselves so leisurely while running like this, but then, it was strange to even mention the word "normal" in this place to begin with.
"I'll take that diagonal. The odds are better there."
Min-seo cut off down the middle as she ran. Once the distance between us grew, I checked with my hand for the notebook tucked into my breast pocket. Confirming it was safe inside my jacket, I called up in my head the rules of 'Body Hunt' that I had memorized before the game. They weren't complicated, so what I had memorized came back easily.
C-Difficulty Body Hunt
1. If no victim has been designated, one is chosen at random.
2. The designated victim's body parts must be collected.
3. Afterward, the team that has collected the body part written on the slip held by the manager wins.
(Therefore, it is advantageous to collect as many parts as possible.)
4. Interfering with other teams is permitted.
5. The pain score earned by attacking other teams belongs to the individual.
(The pain score can be exchanged for points after the game ends.)
In this game, even if you didn't win, you could be exempted from the penalty afterward with your pain score. So teams that didn't think they could find a part would attack other teams at random to do damage.
Nothing said you couldn't kill, either. Avoiding contact with the other teams as much as possible, I picked up a right hand that had fallen.
"Got it!"
The moment the right hand was sucked into the key, an attack came from behind. The man who had gotten behind me aimed a kitchen knife right at my heart, and I barely managed to block it by raising my arm.
CLANG—
'Insane! He brought a kitchen knife in here.'
Then again, nothing said weapons weren't allowed either, so everything was permitted here. After avoiding the attack with what was wrapped around my arm, I glanced around for the next body part.
About 500m. A body part had fallen not far away. This time it looked like an organ, not something clean like a hand or a foot. My stomach was already turning at the thought of picking that up, but I didn't know what was written on the slip, so it was better to grab it for now.
"What? Why isn't it working?"
The man who had gone for my heart got no pain score, and when he saw I was fine, his face flushed with confusion.
It was a good thing I had brought a few of the old woman's things in with me.
"Over here! I've never seen this jerk before. He definitely hasn't been here long!"
The man was still baffled that I had just shrugged off his attack, but when he shouted, the participants near me started converging on me. I was a beginner, all right, but how had that man figured it out? Was he keeping tabs on everyone in the market? Unlike the others, who had mistaken me for a veteran, the man attacking me seemed sure I was a beginner. Going a step further, he was trying to use the nature of a team game to gain the upper hand over me.
As more and more people closed in, the man with the kitchen knife grinned with unfocused eyes.
Then came the next attack. This time the kitchen knife struck my arm dead-on.
CLANG!
But the tip of the blade snapped off a little as the knife bounced away.
"Huh? What? How did you get that?"
He must have been in this market a little while after all, because he had figured out what I had wrapped around my arm.
Human-Skin Armor.
If not for the notebook's explanation at the start, I would have thought it was just old parchment leather too. Even after deciding to take part, I had hesitated, reluctant to wear human skin, but now I was glad I had.
"What?! He blocked the attack!"
"We were going after another team, but we came over because you said he was a beginner, so what happened?!"
Before the man even had time to rein in his flustered expression, his own team showered him with complaints. At that, the man shut his gaping mouth and glared fiercely in my direction. His furious stare nearly bored a hole in my face.
"Goddamn con-artist bastard! This jerk had human-skin gear the whole time and acted like a beginner!"
I had done no such thing. But at the man's words, a man and woman who had been charging toward me faltered and hesitated to keep coming. Their eyes said they were sure I had deliberately faked them out.
'This range should do it.'
I took the spray-type defensive item I had brought out of my pocket and sprayed it all around.
PSSHHT—
"Agh! Aw, fuck!"
As the spray cut off their vision and smoke rose, curses and coughing broke out everywhere. The spray lasted 5 minutes. It was an invincible defensive item that could cut off all of a person's senses. In the gap, I ran to where the unidentified organ had fallen and picked it up.
My fingertips tingled and shuddered at the squishy feel of it, but I barely managed to hold back from throwing up. If the organ had gone into the key even a little later, I wouldn't have been able to stop myself from gagging.
After finding two body parts, I looked back and saw that the defensive spray lasted surprisingly long; people still hadn't made it out. Naturally, I turned my head toward where Min-seo was.
WHAM!
"Keugh!"
One eye of the man who had been attacking Min-seo was being crushed. Something sharp showed on the sole of her shoe. When the man fell to the ground, his partner, a woman, lunged at her, but Min-seo quickly grabbed her by the hair, and a hole was punched in her belly.
"Kyaaah! Mommyyy... Waaah!"
So you could carry a weapon that way, too.
That was definitely no ordinary weapon; it had to be a market item too. It was a stroke of heavenly luck that we had ended up on the same side today.
[Right! Time's up!]
Falsehood's announcement snapped me back to my senses. And then I realized. If none of the body parts we had collected was the answer, we would have to take the penalty, and I hadn't collected any pain score....
[Today's distributed body parts are 2 hands, 2 feet, 2 kidneys, a liver, a heart, a duodenum, a bladder, and the genitals.]
Urk! When I heard that the genitals were included, the queasiness I had felt at not knowing what I had collected earlier came surging up all at once.
[Of the 11 body parts in total, all have been collected except the genitals!]
My stomach settled a little. At least it meant what I had touched was not that man's genitals.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes, I'm sorry. I only collected two."
"It's fine. I only have two too. By the way, was one of yours an organ?"
When I quietly nodded at Min-seo's words, her expression brightened considerably.
"It's an organ's turn to come up this time, so having four in total puts us in a decent position."
The rules were more systematic than I had thought. In that case, if I took part in Body Hunt again, collecting parts other than organs would be to my advantage.
[Now then, from the collection results of all four teams, we will reveal which team found the right body part.]
At Falsehood's gesture, the Colosseum shifted through color after color. And a mysterious drumbeat was sounding from who knew where.
[Today's body part is! None other than the liver!]
Not knowing which body part I had gotten, I looked at Min-seo. But she shook her head.
"Mine were the bladder and the duodenum."
"I see... I was too frantic to even look at what mine was...."
"It's fine. You can avoid the penalty if you have just 2 points."
The thought that she had grabbed a bladder with those delicate hands turned my stomach for a moment, and I failed to keep my expression in check. But she seemed to think I had grimaced because I was worried about the penalty.
'By the way, 2 points?'
All I had right now was the 1 point I had gotten from a trade, so if I had to take the penalty, I could end up in a tight spot.
[We will now reveal the winning team!]
At the mounting excitement, I swallowed hard. I was clenching my fists so tight they were turning white. It would be nice if the penalty were something simple, but for a C-difficulty penalty, that wasn't going to happen.
With a heavy heart, I squeezed my eyes shut.
[Red team! Congratulations on your win!]
When I opened my eyes at the applause and cheers, Min-seo was looking at me with a thumbs-up.
Had we actually won? I couldn't believe it, so I looked at the screen, and a whole 80 points had been awarded to Min-seo and me, side by side. And one more thing: next to it, with a + mark, 3 additional points had been awarded.
'How did this happen?'
Even granting that what I had picked up was the liver, I had no way of knowing why I had been given extra points.
"Let's work well together if we meet again."
"Ah. Sure."
Min-seo, who had tapped my shoulder casually as she walked past, looked back as if she had forgotten something.
"Oh, right! That spray attack was good."
Ah. Her words told me where the 3 points had come from. Points weren't awarded only for inflicting injury; they were awarded when your opponent suffered. Hence "pain score."
Thanks to Min-seo, my first Colosseum game ended in success.