"I gave you a chance just in case...."
"I wasn't trying to hide it! I just thought it had nothing to do with this......."
"Do you think I'm an idiot?"
"Huh?"
"You think I don't know what kind of bastards people like you are?"
'What kind of bastards are people like me?!'
"You seem to be confused because I've been treating you nicely, but if I restrained you right now and threw you to the bastards outside, I'd still be innocent."
"What exactly did I do wrong?!"
"The manual says a 'Crow' is to be restrained and observed the moment it's found. I'm letting you off out of genuine generosity."
"Like I said, I'm......."
"Not a Crow? That's what you want to say?"
I barely kept myself from nodding.
"I'll let it go this once. Next time it won't end with a warning."
"......."
The man called Dae-ho, and now this Ryu Do-ha in front of me; acting on the presumption of guilt must be a trait of Formless Special Division people.
'Damn it, just what kind of organization is this.......?'
"So take out what's in there. Now."
Resisting for nothing would only make this bigger.
Besides, when I think about it, there's no reason to hide the pen.
What I'm hoping from the pen, no, the compass, is exactly that it gets me out of here.
With the Pond Snail out of contact, showing it to her, someone who knows this world well, and asking for advice might actually be better.
When I took the pen out from inside my swimsuit, Ryu Do-ha spoke in a low voice.
"Put that on the ground, get against that wall, and turn around."
I obediently set the pen on the floor as she said.
And backed away with both hands raised.
As I retreated, Ryu Do-ha moved the opposite way, toward the pen.
"Turn around."
I slowly turned.
The moment I was facing the wall.
BANG—!
An explosion behind me!
I whipped around reflexively and saw Ryu Do-ha being flung through the air.
She slammed into the wall and tumbled across the floor.
Her eyes are closed; she must have lost consciousness.......
"What did you do?!"
The middle-aged woman shouts at me.
"Me?"
What did I do?
"You did something to that pen!"
The pen?
I looked down at it, and faint smoke was rising from it.
Like a gun barrel after a shot.
So she ended up like that trying to pick up the pen?
"She's breathing!"
Jang Seo-yun had already gone to her and was checking her.
"Breathing or whatever, what do we do now?! The mosquito coil is nearly burned out!"
"Miss Do-ha! Miss Do-ha!"
Jang Seo-yun pats her cheek and calls her name, but there's no movement.
"She said she'd get us out of here! What do we do now?!"
The woman's shout brought me back.
I looked at the mosquito coil; most of it had turned to gray ash.
Think.
About what to do.
One thing is certain.
The pen, no, the compass, definitely has some function.
And a power strong enough to knock out in one stroke a Formless Special Division agent who hadn't lost her composure even inside a Ghost Story.
I carefully picked the pen up and felt a faint heat.
But that's all; shaking it, staring at the compass, nothing happens.
When I pulled off the cap, I saw a metal nib of unusual shape, at odds with the cheap exterior.
The nib is heavy with blue ink.......
'Couldn't I do something with this nib?'
This place I'm in isn't reality.
It's a place where an absurd object like a mosquito coil can stop a timer.
Think more flexibly, expand further.
A pen's purpose is to write something.
What can the act of writing do?
Right, the flyer!
I took out the flyer I'd tucked into my swimsuit.
The flyer is this game's rulebook.
What if I could write over those rules with this pen and correct them?
Then it's game, set, and match.
I skimmed the flyer quickly.
Where should I change first?
The line that catches my eye first is
'Cops must find the Robbers and take them to jail.'
Change that line and the threat about to fall on us disappears.
Right, change this one first.
In a direction more favorable to us.
With my heart pounding I tried to correct the line with the pen, but.......
Nothing writes.
The nib is clearly loaded with blue ink, but it only slides like oil meeting water, leaving not the slightest trace on the flyer.
"F*ck...."
The curse comes out on its own.
What the hell am I supposed to do with this pen?
"That pen is a secret gadget too, right?"
"What?"
Jang Seo-yun had come up beside me.
She asked me again.
"The gadgets Dorae*on used to pull out for No*ita. It's a secret gadget like that mosquito coil, right?"
"Ah......."
Dorae*on, in this situation?
Contrary to appearances, this woman isn't normal either.
"But from what I can see, you don't seem to know how to use it."
When I nodded, she stepped closer.
"Somehow I feel like I know how."
What?
How?
How would she know how to use it?
She must have read my thoughts from my face; she came closer.
"This is a bit embarrassing, but......."
She suddenly holds out both her arms to me.
The small, vivid tattoos inked on them.
"I'm a tattoo artist."
......?
Why bring up her job all of a sudden?
"When you took the cap off earlier, Mr. Do-yul, I saw it from beside you, and the nib looked a bit like the tip of a tattoo machine."
"The tip of a tattoo machine?"
"I thought maybe that's why it doesn't react to paper."
At her words I looked at the pen's tip again.
Certainly, as I'd felt the first time I saw it, the shape is a little unusual for a ballpoint.
For a ballpoint it looks closer to a fountain pen nib, and for a fountain pen nib it's specialized for piercing, I suppose?
If, as she says, this nib is meant for writing on human skin.......
"Could I possibly touch that pen?"
"Didn't you see what happened when someone touched it just now?!"
The middle-aged woman, quiet until now, cut in.
"I saw, but somehow I feel like I can do it."
"What is this girl saying?"
A feeling that she can do it.
I'm not sure whether I'm overreacting.
But the look in her eyes as she watches me is a little different from before.
Not a trace of the cowed air she had until now.
If anything, the way she keeps advancing feels almost headlong.
And her face.
That look as she stares at the pen.
The look of someone bewitched by something....
Is it right to hand this pen to a woman like that?
[Five minutes remain until the game begins.]
What?
The smoke pouring from the mosquito coil has stopped.
The time on the display is counting down!
In less than five minutes, those bastards outside will come after us.
And then we're all fated to be caught and made sacrifices anyway.
In that case, whatever happens, wouldn't it be all right to try handing over the pen?
Before my deliberating was over, Jang Seo-yun stepped closer.
"Mr. Do-yul."
Her pupils on me, out of focus.
"There's no time."
Keeping her eyes fixed on me, she reaches out.
Precisely toward the pen in my hand.
I glanced at the display; the time kept falling.
Right, this is no time to be picking between cold rice and hot.
I handed her the pen.
The moment she grasped it, the black of her pupils, which had been on me, rapidly lost its color.
She looks at me with clouded eyes.
She suddenly pulled my left hand toward her.
And with a face bearing not a trace of emotion, she asks me.
"Deflection, Submergence, Reverberation. Which do you want?"
Her voice echoes as though spoken in a cave.
I tried to pull my arm free, but it wouldn't budge, as if fixed in place.
"Deflection, Submergence, Reverberation. Which do you want?"
She repeats the same words like a machine.
But...
Deflection, Submergence, Reverberation?
What is she talking about all of a sudden...?
"Miss Seo-yun...... what's come over you?"
"......."
She looks at me with her mouth shut tight.
Right, she wants me to pick one of the three words?
I get the general nuance, but the exact meanings don't quite land.
And in the middle of all this, pick one of three?
What happens if I pick?
"Could you explain a bit more? Why I have to choose, and......."
"Deflection, Submergence, Reverberation. Which do you want?"
As expected, not a word of it gets through.
Those clouded pupils on me, repeating the same words.
Looking at them, one thing becomes clear.
That I have to choose the right one.
Her clouded pupils, that voice she's putting out, make me acutely aware that what's happening right now is no joke.
So which of 'Deflection,' 'Submergence,' and 'Reverberation' do I pick?
'Deflection'? I am a bit deflective, sure.
Since I've lived however I pleased.
Deflection has a nuance a bit like defiance, doesn't it?
The sound is similar too.
But then again, I don't think living defiantly has ever done me any good.
The next option is 'Submergence.'
'Submergence' has the feeling of something sinking somewhere deep.
That doesn't feel like a good thing...
But then again, doesn't sinking also carry a bit of a hiding feel to it?
Which seems like exactly what I need right now.
And last, 'Reverberation.'
I roughly grasp the meaning, but I can't predict in the slightest what would happen if I chose it.
The one I feel least drawn to of the three, I suppose?
In that case, the one that feels least bad of the three is 'Submergence'.......
But then again, 'Reverberation' seems like the most harmless one.......
F*ck... I don't know.
No matter how I agonize, I have no idea.
"Just pick something, fast! There's no time!!"
The middle-aged woman's shout from behind.
The time on the display has indeed dropped into the two-minute range.
There's no more time to deliberate.
At times like this you just go with your first instinct, no question.
"Submergence. I'll take Submergence."
The moment I answered, Jang Seo-yun's hand holding the pen began to move.
The instant the nib touched the back of my hand.
'Did I see that wrong?'
The sails of the ship drawn on the pen's body slowly begin to flutter.
As if wind had begun to blow in the world inside the picture.
And at the same time the painted sea swells.
As Jang Seo-yun starts drawing something on the back of my hand, the ship in the picture starts to move forward!
I don't know where it's headed, but the ship in the picture is definitely moving!
But the ship's advance doesn't continue.
From the darkness beneath the sea painted on the pen's body, something rises.
Tentacles.
Enormous tentacles, like looking at a kraken in a film.
They encircle the ship, coil around it, and begin to squeeze.
The ship is slowly crushed within them.
Until only wreckage is left, bobbing on the sea...
The problem is that the tentacles weren't satisfied even after destroying the ship.
They cast about, looking for other prey.
And they all look at me at once.
No, they seem to!
Because tentacles don't have eyes!
"W...... wait!"
They pour straight out of the pen and toward me!
The tentacles start coiling around my face!
Through all of it, Jang Seo-yun keeps diligently carving something into the back of my hand!
With my left eye wrapped in tentacle, I'm watching it all with only my right!
"Help me!!"
I shouted at the middle-aged woman, but she backed away instead.
Jang Seo-yun's hand carving into the back of my hand moves faster, and in step with it the tentacles coil tighter around my face!
It's getting harder to breathe!
The vision remaining in my right eye went too, and finally my whole head was wrapped in tentacle.
All I can see is darkness.
Just then.
[●●●●●●●●●●●●]
An unfamiliar sound rings in my head.
Language carrying someone's will, certainly, but I can't grasp the meaning.
A sound like a resonance rising from the deep abyss.
A vast will dwelled within it.
A will so enormous I could scarcely dare to measure it.
The feeling of that will splitting my skull and lodging in my brain.
EEEEE—————.
A ringing in my ears.
My head tightens as if my eyeballs will pop out.
I clamped my mouth shut desperately.
If I opened it even slightly I'd vomit up everything inside my body.
A voice sounds in my head again.
This time in a language I can understand.
[You sought me first, so you are mine now.]
The air around me grows heavy.
A strong pressure begins to crush my whole body.
My legs bend on their own, and my head bows by itself.
[I am a benevolent king, so I shall grant you aid.]
With those words, only darkness remains.
Cold darkness.
The deep abyss.
I'm in the sea.
In a deep sea that feels like endless darkness.
The darkness that seemed eternal begins to part, and within it an enormous yellow eye reveals itself.
The yellow eye speaks to me.
No, deigns to speak to me! The great one!
For this insignificant...... worm-like me......!
An unstoppable, fatal, enormous rapture.
Just as I was about to indulge in that rapture, everything filling my head and my body vanishes in an instant, as if it had all been a dream.
And my surroundings brighten.
I'm back in the original room.
The room beyond the white door.
My head is fogged.
My body is as heavy as water-soaked cotton.
"It's finished."
Jang Seo-yun, still holding my hand.
Her eyes have returned to their original color.
I barely managed to lower my head and look at my left hand, and a compass-shaped tattoo was carved into the back of it.
"What on earth.......?"
"Pull yourself together, please!!"
The middle-aged woman shouts beside me like a scream.
Reflexively I looked at the display.
The time remaining is
[ 00 : 00 : 03 ]
[ 00 : 00 : 02 ]
[ 00 : 00 : 01 ]
And then
[The game begins.]
The hollow voice ringing from the ceiling.
The time given to us is completely over.
Cops and Robbers has begun.