When I pointed my finger at the right-hand door, the Curator's robe rippled gently — it must have stirred.
"I'll take the shortcut."
[...Do you not fear death?]
As if I wouldn't fear it.
It's just that climbing one floor at a time like this, I'd never reach the hundredth in a lifetime.
[Does it trouble you that visitors are sacrificed on every floor?]
[Is that why you chose the shortcut, even at such risk?]
"......."
The Curator had struck home, and I had nothing to say.
If I could keep these merciless quests to a minimum, then at the very least, the number of visitors I'd have to trample would shrink.
[Do not worry. You have a talent for treading on others and climbing over their corpses.]
"I don't need that kind of talent — so from here on, give me team quests instead."
[Quests are the authority of the museum — of the tower. I am merely the Curator.]
[Visitor Kim Ji-san. Then — to the shortcut.]
The Curator, apparently unwilling to prolong the argument, grasped the right door's handle and pulled it open.
Just as well — I had no wish to drag this out either.
=================
[Floor 4 Exhibition: The Passage Room]
=================
[Visitor Kim Ji-san]
[Floor 4 Quest.]
[Success.]
Leaving the leaflet announcing my passage of the fourth floor behind, I walked to the right-hand door.
Opening it and stepping through, a world utterly different from the cramped white room unfolded.
"Whoa...."
'The road is long, long indeed — follow thou the shining star.'
The shining star. Only now did I understand what the Dragon King had meant.
A European village, mountains, a glowing moon and stars, cypress trees.
And that unmistakable sense of motion in the colors, in the brushwork.
I had walked into Vincent van Gogh's 'The Starry Night.'
Fwish-
=================
[Vincent Willem van Gogh]
-Works
┗The Starry Night
Sunflowers
Café Terrace at Night
.......
.......
-Artist Information
┗Born March 30, 1853
.......
-Related Memories
.......
.......
=================
'No, no. Don't open.'
Vincent van Gogh I know well enough without the Docent ability dredging up my memories.
I rolled the self-summoned Docent leaflet back up and put it away.
'If I'd seen this with a clear head, it would have been beautiful enough to knock me out cold.'
As it is, I'm about to be knocked out in a rather different sense.
"Haah, hah...."
With no time to admire the ravishing scenery, I hurried forward.
The village road and the night sky stretched on without end — walk and walk, and no upper floor came into view.
Just in case, I knocked on and tried the doors of houses and shops as I passed, but it was useless.
'Every door is locked tight. So the message is: keep walking forward?'
Fwish-
[Leaflet Ink]
-Current Status: [■■■□□]
'Damn. My health has been carved down badly.'
I steadied my ragged breathing and looked at the paper hovering before me.
Three bars still remained — so at least my life wasn't in danger-
Fwish-
[The leaflet's ink has faded.]
-Current Status: [■■□□□]
"Since when is that fair?!!"
Yelling at a leaflet — my mind really had gone half-crazed, it seemed.
Between the bleeding and the hours of walking these winding roads, the anemia was getting worse too.
"Where the hell is the door to the tenth floor already...!"
Impatient, I called out loud once more — but of course, there's no conversing with a leaflet.
SHRRIP-
SHRRIP-
[The leaflet's ink is fading.]
An ominous signal tone, different from before.
'...That one only plays in emergencies.'
I turned my head and looked back down the road I'd walked.
I'm not exactly Hansel and Gretel, yet I'd marked my entire path in drops of blood.
Time to change the cloth, it seemed.
'If I cut another strip from the T-shirt with the dagger-'
[Tool]
Name: Useless Dagger.
Description: The handle is broken and the blade dulled; it can no longer be used.
"Damn it...!!"
I didn't even have the strength to close the page — I simply walked through it.
Naturally, I had no strength left to tear the shirt by hand in place of the knife.
My ear was drenched in blood, my whole body drenched in sweat.
'No.... I barely won that task — I even erased a person for it. I can't die this pointlessly now.'
The afterimage of the man crumbling into black powder flickered past.
'Still.... having no one precious — how much that....'
The last words the man had spoken.
The mother, all of it — lies. Only the words he spat out as his will would have been the truth.
'He was trying to say — how fortunate he was, to have no one precious to him....'
His dying words, at least, I can agree with.
If someone precious to me were alive at my side, death would be that much more bitter, more agonizing.
And the moments of hesitation before every reckless act would come that much more often.
'For me — only if I struggle hard enough to gamble my life does a precious person come back.'
SHRRIP-!
SHRRIP-!
SHRRIP-!
[The leaflet's ink has faded.]
-Current Status: [■□□□□]
With a sound like paper tearing, my feet stained dark.
"No-"
Watching the ink keep draining away, I clenched my fists.
It can't end here. This is the limit. My lungs are burning, I can't-
"Rather early to lose consciousness — the destination is still far off. My friend."
At last, someone spoke to me as I walked on alone.
I turned my head toward the voice.
A white man with an unruly beard leaned against a wall, sipping at a drink.
"You're...?"
"So. Using my soul — were you noble in the end?"
"?!!"
Reddish-brown hair and beard. A face carved with the lines of a hard life — but the eyes churned with fierce life.
Dynamic — and precarious.
'It's Vincent van Gogh....'
To be given the chance to talk with Vincent van Gogh.
I forgot even the pain and walked toward him.
"Are you data made from a visitor too?"
"If what you mean to ask is whether the core of me is the soul of someone climbing this tower — then no."
Gogh shook his head firmly.
Then he was a native system of the tower.
"Come, walk. There's a café I'm terribly fond of."
Without waiting for my reply, Gogh turned on his heel and strode off.
Trying to match his stride, I nearly tripped.
Gogh, walking his own road with no regard whatsoever for my injuries.
However faithfully they'd rendered the man, it showed plainly that he was an NPC.
'Even so — the memory of talking with Gogh inside The Starry Night.... Fake or not, I'll carry it for life.'
Following him, I arrived at a café I knew on sight.
A painting made familiar by years of books.
Café Terrace at Night. Against the blue night sky, a café glowing dazzling yellow.
"Here. Sit."
I sat down at an outdoor table after Gogh.
The waiter saw us — and glided between the tables without taking our order.
"Here — why not use these? The pain will ease."
What Gogh held out was..., a bandage, and absinthe.
Right. I'd seen it in war films — pouring vodka over a wound to disinfect it.
And yes, I had been praying I wouldn't get infected.
'Even so — in this modern age, can that possibly be the right move?'
Not that debating modernity inside the Museum of Wishes means anything.
But still — pouring absinthe, that vicious liquor, into my ear.... I hesitated.
"I had a doctor's help. You, my friend, are in no position for that, are you?"
"No. But — maybe I could ask that café worker over there for help-"
"You cannot speak with anyone here but me."
As if to prove Gogh's words, the waiter passed me by again to take another customer's order.
On this map, the only one I could communicate with was Gogh.
Which meant the only one who could help me was also Gogh.
'Right. No telling how much farther I have to walk.'
"Hah. Pour it in."
"I shall help you."
In the end, resolute, I accepted Gogh's offer.
And Gogh, without hesitating even a second, upended the absinthe into my ear.
Glug-
"AAAAARGH-!!!"
In the war films, the soldiers always fought so hard to stifle their groans.
Maybe because I'd just come off the whole Byeoljubujeon quest — I could not hold back the scream of pain at all.
Still, to endure it as best I could, I raked my fingernails across the tabletop and held on.
"When the absinthe dries, wrap your face with this bandage."
"Ngh, yes. Aagh — thank you...."
Gogh handed me a bandage identical to the one that would someday wrap his own face.
Grimacing with my whole being, I took it.
It hurt like absolute death. And then.... unbelievably fast, the pain faded.
'It was only disinfectant, and yet the pain suddenly dropped away.'
Fwish-
[Leaflet Ink]
-Current Status: [■□□□□]
My health: still a single bar of ink.
The absinthe hadn't restored my health — but it had, for a while, erased the pain.
This artificial effect-
'Is it steering me to hold out longer on this map — to keep talking with van Gogh?'
Once again, I was being turned like a piece on a board the tower had set.
I've grown used to the museum's toying. That doesn't mean I welcome it.
"Was this map created because I chose your soul for Soul Rental?"
"That, I do not know."
Gogh rummaged fitfully through his pockets, his eyes wandering.
This was Gogh before he cut his ear — but already so mentally frayed that even his movements came out awkward.
"In any case — I wished to give you my thanks."
"...Why? I exploited the moment of your agony."
"True. A freak act, and an agony. And you made me commit that act twice over."
Around that bizarre self-mutilation swarm a hundred theories.
Which is to say: no one can ever fully read Gogh's heart.
Ask this museum's rendering of Gogh for the reason, and he wouldn't teach me. He wouldn't know.
"But I thank you. Entering your body — remarkably, my turmoil was cut by half."
"......."
"The view before my eyes was calm. The oil paints swimming across my vision, the violent light — gone. Remarkably."
Gogh pointed his forefinger at my forehead, marveling.
He seemed to be retracing the sensation of having entered my body through Soul Rental.
So Gogh, so tormented in his mind, had found something like ease only inside my body.
'Wait — that counted as his turmoil halved?'
The soul of Gogh that had thrashed inside me had been nowhere near calm.
Even after the Soul Rental expired, my heart had hammered riotously for a long while....
Just how much turmoil does Gogh live inside, on an ordinary day?
"What are you doing?"
Gogh had pulled paper and pen from his pocket and tossed them onto the table.
I asked the question carefully, watching him scrawl across the page.
Absorbed in his writing, Gogh gave me no answer for a long moment.
'Given that temper of his — better to simply wait in silence.'
"I am writing a letter to my beloved brother, Theo."
Gogh mumbled it, nose practically pressed to the paper.
Theo. Gogh's younger brother, and his devoted supporter.
Reading about van Gogh over the years, I'd naturally come to know about Theo as well.
"Theo is a good brother."
"......."
"He grieves at my suffering, though he cannot understand all of it. And still — still, I paint for Theo. For a beloved brother, one can offer up even one's soul."
Gogh rambled on, entirely one-sided.
Pouring his love for Theo into the letter, the page grew dense with words.
Theo had read Gogh's genius ahead of his era and championed him. A kind brother, one who sorrowed over Gogh's illness too.
"You're doing this to torment me on purpose, aren't you."
"What do you mean?"
"......."
Bristling at this fake Gogh — a mere system — was wasted effort.
If it knew my past and meant to torment me with it, the culprit was this museum from the start.
And screaming into the empty air to knock off this staged conversation would accomplish nothing either.
"Hrm — do you have a younger sibling too?"
There it was. Dragging my family history into it after all.
This tower truly is a twisted bastard, obsessed with tormenting its visitors.