Chapter 217
Chapter 217
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Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 217
Chapter Title: Nostalgia's Red Yarn
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A red yarn from the Nostalgia Kitty wraps around my neck.
The first sensation was clarity.
Everything felt sharp and in its proper place.
"……."
I blinked.
I could blink.
Eyelids and eyebrows. The view through my corneas was clear….
I looked down at my hands. There was a human hand, bare skin fully exposed without the black rubber.
I clenched and opened my bare fist.
Yeah.
This was how it originally felt.
This was the sensation.
The shock naturally faded, leaving only traces behind, replaced by familiarity.
Natural emotions and sensations.
And in their place, a familiar feeling I had forgotten settled in.
Yeah. A feeling.
I was definitely this….
Thud.
…….
…….
I lowered my head.
No bare hand.
There, only divine hooves and scales attached to melting amorphous flesh were visible…
I forcibly put on the gloves.
Shoved them on.
Shoved them on.
"…Deer?"
Shoved them on.
Shoved them on.
Done.
Human fingers.
Fingers with a silhouette similar to a human's were visible.
And between them.
The floor.
A single frayed strand lay on the floor, worn out, pilling, dirty, discolored, now utterly worthless.
The yarn had snapped.
"…!"
"Wait…."
It was an illusion.
Using the Nostalgia Kitty was a mistake.
You can't take only the good effects. You can't have only a human form, only a body capable of interaction. What this means is that the emotions I should have rightfully felt as a human…
My fear and despair return too.
And once experienced, they don't vanish even if your brain and body turn to mush in an instant.
They remain.
I can't endure it.
…….
Smoke rises.
It keeps rising, filling this space, covering it completely with no escape… but it's not enough….
…….
The space,
is insufficient.
"Deer, wait…."
I stood up.
The one wearing the Badger mask collapses into the thick smoke. I moved him to the bed. Rest.
I faced the security captain.
He said nothing. Because his shift was over, and he had no duty or authority to control me.
So,
"Hey…."
"Is there… anything I can do for you…."
I opened the isolation room door.
Walked out just like that.
Black smoke billowed out, filling the isolation corridor.
Red and blue lights flashed.
Like the annex basement level 13.
High-Grade Darkness Containment Failure
High-Grade Darkness Containment Failure
High-Grade Darkness Containment Failure…
The alarm blared through the corridor.
And in my head too.
You didn't designate where I should be after work hours. You only assigned a new workstation, didn't specify my space, and didn't notify me orally, in writing, or by implication.
Therefore.
I can choose where to rest after work.
Go anywhere.
……
I stopped.
But the unbearability didn't fade. Why doesn't it fade? Why? Why….
Ah.
Yeah.
I kept moving my feet. The distance closed through the smoke.
The isolation corridor soon ended. The rental warehouse front appeared. The security team was short-staffed, having left to prepare gear and arm themselves for suppressing the escaped containment subject.
I knew.
That their calculations had a flaw.
No unrealistically fast mobility observed in Containment Subject (130666), so it would take at least three times longer to reach the rental warehouse—the misjudgment that led to disaster.
This situation could be described that way.
"No…."
The few remaining security team members sank into the smoke.
I took a key from one of them, unlocked the rental warehouse door, and exited.
Kept walking until I reached the central elevator.
Ding.
The elevator stopped. I boarded.
The floor I needed to go to was decided.
-17… the place where researchers hunting new darknesses were, especially.
17th basement.
A pristine space of glass and marble appeared—the office I'd once visited in a different form.
The smoke filling the elevator poured out, crushing the office space.
High-Grade Darkness Containment Failure
High-Grade Darkness Containment Failure
High-Grade Darkness Containment Failure…
"Aaahhh!"
"Run! Run…."
Those in lab coats ran for the emergency exit. Those who inhaled smoke collapsed. They wailed, burst into laughter, clutched their heads muttering, bowed.
All those melting mosaics.
I stepped into them.
Until what I sought appeared.
Toward the office I already knew.
[Research Team 1 A]
To the clean, spacious room at the very end.
Before they fled.
Before they hid.
I gathered the smoke spreading through the entire corridor, pooled it neatly at my feet, then surged it upward to cover the whole section.
Isolating Research Team 1's office.
With smoke.
…….
Now no one inside could escape.
Darkness and silence pooled before the corridor.
From within it, I opened the door.
"Ah."
Only one person was on night shift there.
High-Grade Darkness Containment Failure
High-Grade Darkness Containment Failure
High-Grade Darkness Containment Failure…
Amid the blaring alarm, he scanned CCTV footage with ecstatic eyes—from the isolation room to the corridor I'd come through.
Gwak Je-gang raised his head toward the open door.
The face of one who realized something.
"You… no, you."
…….
"It was Kim Sol-eum, wasn't it?"
I approached.
"Not a vessel, it was like that from the start. From the very be…!"
I grabbed his throat.
His feet dangled in the air, white lab coat hanging down.
"Gonna kill me? Angry? Haha…."
Fear and dread seemed to fill his eyes, then soon ecstasy and curiosity welled up.
"But… aren't you curious?"
…….
"I just can't figure out what you are. How you harvested Dream Essence, how you go between darkness and human…."
Gwak Je-gang's eyes peered at me through his glasses.
Smiling.
"Truth is… you don't know either, do you? …What kind of existence you are."
…….
"Hate being tied to the company, right? I'll help you! Director Cheongdallae? Who gives a damn. A researcher should act like one! Pursue the root! Truth! Understanding!"
A voice filled with madness shouted. Conviction and zeal burst forth.
"If you're trying to find out why you were called here, why that form, the reason—I'll cooperate fully! No, I earnestly beg you to let me cooperate!"
Ecstatic eyes.
"Dying here like this isn't bad…! But there's something I want to see, so I can't hold back…."
…….
I loosened my grip.
The throat in my hand dropped to the floor.
"Ugh!"
But Gwak Je-gang looked up at me with eyes gleaming in ecstasy, no complaints.
"That's right! Wise choice…."
I bent my legs and knelt before his eyes.
Met his gaze, and spoke with smoke.
"…!!"
"Hey."
The smoke drew letters.
"…! Wait."
His panting grew heavier.
I announced.
Smoke rose from the black gas mask.
Enveloping Gwak Je-gang's head.
"Wait,"
He backed away.
I didn't follow. But the smoke did.
And it wrapped around his facial features….
The researcher slowly suffocating gasped in agony, desperately squeezing out one word.
"…Then!"
His still-free arm fumbled backward, fingers slipping several times before finally grasping his drawer.
Temporary storage for Twilight-Grade darkness.
He groped inside and pulled something out.
"This, how about using this…?"
He barely held it before my eyes.
…Red thread.
Extremely similar in form to what I'd just used.
The smoke writhed.
But recalling it wasn't yarn, just thin and slender, I calmed it….
And realized it had a completely different purpose.
"Make it so they can't betray, have no choice but to be trustworthy!"
There was only one thing matching that description.
"The usage is…."
Gwak Je-gang, lips trembling, made a sound indistinguishable from laughter or sobbing as I tore off its packaging and pulled his pinky.
"You know… the darkness."
I know everything described.
I took the red thread and tied it to Gwak Je-gang's pinky.
Gwak Je-gang sweated coldly and laughed.
"I swear. Um… I won't betray you."
I looked at him.
"…Full cooperation?"
I slowly altered the smoke.
Cold sweat beaded and dripped from Gwak Je-gang's face.
"…Then, will you tell me what to swear? I don't want to improvise something suspicious and die—troublesome in many ways!"
…….
The smoke drew a sentence.
Gwak Je-gang's eyes shook.
Because he grasped the comprehensive, total meaning embedded in the sentence.
But his mouth opened.
No other options.
"I will not go against your will henceforth…."
Snap.
I pulled the red thread.
The tip of the researcher's pinky where the thread was tied severed.
Blood sprayed.
"Ahahaha! Ahahahahaha!!"
Gwak Je-gang laughed, clutching his left hand where blood gushed, watching the pinky tip roll on the floor.
"Thank you… Thank you!"
6 minutes later.
I returned to the isolation room myself.
Commotion outside the door, but it didn't matter.
The two security team members who vanished—it's fine…. Means they returned safely.
I just thought about this new situation.
About what the yarn-wrapping experience had returned to me.
About the fear and unbearability.
…And reached a conclusion.
'I need to find out.'
Why I exist here in this form.
Exactly who called me.
To do that, first uncover this company's secrets.
What's in the main building basement.
What the Jolly Lab was, exactly.
And if even after learning all this, there's no way out….
…….
Then, give up.
It was the moment I decided that.
'……!'
I rose.
…On the bed where I'd been lying alone, something was there.
Fluffy body. Pink, lovable ears, black eyes, and a bow tie around the neck.
And.
A call.
'…Brown?'
The good friend was there.