Chapter 22
The first mission was accomplished.
Back in my private office, I turned on the lights and let out a long sigh. My stiff shoulders felt like they were screaming.
Until I left, my mind had been filled with worries about Marie, and now that things had worked out, I was glad.
Only I had a new reason to worry.
Ryu Won.
He left without showing his face and never came back. Ryu Won didn’t blame me before he left, but I found myself thinking about my behavior.
“It is no fun for me to just tell you. Keep wondering about me, keep thinking about me. Make you love me.”
Irritation flared at the realization that I was becoming what he said. I sat back in my chair and rearranged the papers I’d stacked haphazardly on my desk.
I wanted to put Ryu Won out of my mind, if only for a moment.
“Let’s take the day off.” Sigh—There was a tickling sound, like leaves brushing against the window. I touched my ears at the sound and opened my closed eyes.
But I didn’t see anything around me that could have made the sound. The sound stopped for a moment. I shook my head, trying to ignore it.
Mmhmm—The sound was longer and louder than before. It sounded farther away than I thought and I looked at the window.
The window was covered with black smoke and I couldn’t see outside.
Suddenly, a black hand appeared out of the smoke and rubbed against the window.
“Who are you?”Someone was playing a trick on me.
My voice trembled with fear. I sat up and stared at the window, slowly closing the distance between us.
My survival instinct told me not to get too close to the window. The tapping on the window grew louder until it was impossible to ignore.
I had barely moved away from the desk when the window shattered with a loud bang.
***
Whaaaaaaat?
It was the shape of black smoke crashing through the glass and entering the room.
It glided through the room like a light feather, but the aura it emitted was anything but light.
Just looking at it made my chest tighten and my breath catch in my throat. I didn’t dare to take another step.
I had seen it before in the forest.
Snarl, a being filled with evil.
“Why is a Snarl here?”I couldn’t get a handle on the situation. As Snarl entered the office, the lights in the ceiling turned reddish-silver and flickered. Sirens echoed through the building.
Looking out the window, the smoke looked like a small amount of smoke gathered together, like a fragmented cloud. But as it entered the office, it grew and quickly covered the ceiling.
The smoke seemed to be seeping down from above.
I calmly measured the distance between me and the office door, but soon realized that it was impossible.
It seemed like the snarl was coming at me faster than I could run to the door.
“Hmph.”It was odorless, but the closer it got, the more painful it felt, like a hard punch to the nose. Through my blurred vision, I caught a glimpse of a human face.
Once the face was visible, a torso formed, followed by hands and feet. Snarl took on the form of a human like any other phantom.
The smoke, now in the same form as me, choked me. My skin felt like it was burning where it touched.
“Let go!”I tried to pull the snarl away, but I was helpless. My consciousness faded and my body went limp.
Snarl’s face came into my eyes. Even though it was only a glimpse, many expressions flashed across Snarl’s face.
The sight was so bizarre that I shuddered and closed my eyes.
“She’s mine.”She scowled at the shadow that crossed the window like the Snarl.
She was relieved to hear a familiar voice, one she recognized from somewhere, that this place wasn’t going to be a dump.
Ice cold water poured over her head and the Snarl that had wrapped itself around her neck wriggled free.
I dropped to the ground like a dog and took a sharp breath. A pale shadow fell before me.
I moved my eyes to see the shadow’s identity.
A cool breeze blew in through the broken window. A white dress fluttered in the breeze. Wavy blue-black hair peeking through the robe. It was Jung Jaeho.
“Jung Jaeho.” ***I couldn’t believe that Jaeho would come to save a living being. He concentrated on the snarl in front of him.
“You’re the first being to get past my security. I’m honored.”Jaeho’s unexpected appearance stunned not only me but also the Snarl. The snarl took a step back, recoiling from his madness.
Jaeho’s body briefly flashed with blue light, creating countless water bubbles. In unison, the bubbles sucked in the smoke and swallowed it whole.
The snarl stumbled backwards, trying to burst and destroy the bubbles, but it was impossible. For every bubble that burst, five more would form and engulf the Snarl.
The bubbles were constantly forming and moving, but Jaeho didn’t seem to have any problems.
“Eat quickly, our precious experimental material.”Soon, the entire body of the snarl was sucked into Jaeho’s bubbles.
The bubbles stuck together and slowly shrank. Of course, the Snarl’s inside the bubbles became as small as pills.
Jaeho took a collecting bucket from his pocket and put the snarl into it. With his arrival, the situation was quickly resolved.
Wee-woo-wee-woo!Only then did I realize that the siren had been sounding all the time.
Jaeho fiddled with the pale mint-colored piercing in his right earlobe and soon the sirens stopped, replaced by an indescribable silence.
“Ha…”A heavy sigh escaped me. I was like a mouse in water from head to toe. I continued to feel the strangulation of the snarl. The feeling of death was not pleasant.
Jaeho smiled with satisfaction as he glanced back and forth between the clear collection bins of snarls. He gave me a wistful look.
“Hey, you didn’t get any more snarls?” “Maybe…” “Well, they don’t usually just fall out of the sky, but today’s a real catch.”The only soul who would call a snarl a catch would be Jaeho.
He tucked the collection bucket into the pocket of his lab coat.
Jaeho approached the window and stuck his head out. His hair fluttered lightly, like plankton floating in the ocean.
He put his head back down and put his feet on the windowsill. He looked like he was about to jump out of the window.
“Jung Jaeho.”The voice was small and delicate, like a dandelion seed floating in the air. Hearing his name, Jaeho took his foot off the windowsill and turned around. It was the face that said how dare you call me.
“Thank you. For saving me.” “Ah.”Jaeho fiddled with his mint-colored piercing for a moment, then the corner of his mouth twitched. It was a mischievous, frog-like grin.
He walked toward me, his feet kicking at the objects scattered on the floor. I stared into his inhumanly clear, sea-like eyes.
“What?” “Thank you.” “No, I think you’re wrong. This is ridiculous. Who’s saving who?” “I’m just here to save my experimental material, and I don’t care if you live or die.”In other words, he had come for the materials for his experiment, and I had been saved by luck.
Jaeho sarcastically sneered at me. I didn’t react any differently.
***
When I didn’t show any emotion, Jaeho made a disappointed face.
“But…”Jaeho stopped walking towards the window again. I shivered slightly, still not completely relaxed, but I made my point.
“Whether it’s voluntary or not, I’m grateful for the result, so I say thank you.”It was refreshing. It wasn’t in my character to live in debt anyway.
Jaeho stared out of the window and didn’t look back.
He just shrugged, stepped on the windowsill and slid down.
When Jaeho disappeared, I realized something.
I realized that my private office was on the sixth floor. Suddenly, I stopped paying attention.
I thought that anyone who left the door unlocked on the sixth or seventh floor had already come and gone. I wasn’t surprised.
The shards of window glass that the snarl had broken and the water that Jaeho had splashed liberally around were a mess, but I ignored them and lay down on the floor.
“Oh, my papers…”My heart sank even more when I realized that I couldn’t even use the papers I had spent all day organizing.
I looked up at the ceiling in despair. The image of the snarl from earlier kept coming back to me, and I curled up on my side.
Just then, there was a knock at the office door.
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