Chapter 133. A Deeper Meaning?
After the Ox-Headed Monster had entrusted the Tiger-headed Monster to him and departed, Rembrary took his time studying the creature's appearance.
With his fierce, gleaming eyes and bristling whiskers, he was truly a handsome tiger.
The question was whether this Tiger-headed Monster was docile……
"Tiger."
Grrrowl.
"Did the Ox-Head tell you aught of the task you are to perform?"
The Tiger-headed Monster shook his head. Rembrary had expected as much. The Ox-Headed Monster hadn't known what Rembrary intended to use the Tiger-headed Monster for either, so naturally he couldn't have explained it.
In any case, the Tiger-headed Monster seemed docile enough. He had come without the faintest idea why, and yet there he was, being perfectly agreeable about it.
"I intend to give you away as a gift."
A gift? Me?
"When morning comes, I shall take you to the person you are to serve."
Who is it?
Rembrary searched for a photo of Lim Yu-han on his phone and showed it to him. The Tiger-headed Monster blinked his black eyes.
Tucking the phone away again, Rembrary offered a warning.
"I say this merely as a precaution. You must not kill the person in this picture, nor attempt to kill her, nor so much as harbor the thought of killing her. Do you understand?"
The Tiger-headed Monster went on blinking meekly, and Rembrary took that for assent, patted him on the shoulder, and came down from the rooftop.
The Tiger-headed Monster trotted along at his heels, head tilted in confusion. And no wonder. The Tiger-headed Monster had hardly known the Ox-Headed Monster at all before today.
The reason the Tiger-headed Monster had been in this area in the first place was the powerful, dark energy he had sensed the night before. He had come this way to find out what manner of energy it was, and he'd heard that other demon beasts had felt something similar nearby as well.
Asking around, he learned that the human who had emanated that energy was the strange-auraed human standing before him now. The demons had discreetly let slip that this man was the culprit.
The Tiger-headed Monster wanted to learn more about this strange human. So he circled around the man, until the Ox-Headed Monster appeared with a proposal.
Are you docile?
Why do you ask?
A friend of mine is looking for a little one who looks just like you, and who's docile.
Looking for a tiger?
Looking for a head.
That would be me.
Are you docile?
If I say so myself, I am docile enough to be a regular fixture in folk tales.
Then come along with me.
It was thanks to the Tiger-headed Monster softening the description of his own temperament somewhat that he'd been able to meet the human radiating that strange energy.
Up close, the human who was said to carry an aura much like the Great Demon's was, truth be told…… an unpleasantly sparkly man.
But there was something faintly, faintly familiar about him too, so the longer he looked, the stranger it seemed.
And now—a gift? Was he being given away as a gift right now? The Tiger-headed Monster's eyes darted back and forth.
But the Tiger-headed Monster was calm and level-headed by nature, so he kept silent and simply observed the situation.
Rembrary, who knew nothing of all this, was simply in high spirits. The thought that, for the first time, he was about to be of help to Lim Yu-han filled him with quiet pride.
That mood carried with him all the way into the conference room.
"I'm telling you, let's go with zombie power? It feels like an extension of the demon concept from the last album, so the image won't get scattered."
"Exactly. And it's the song that's most different from Long Distance's usual style."
"I feel the same. Long Distance's whole concept is repeating breakups and reunions every album, which just doesn't match the image our kids are going for now."
"Um, excuse me. Zombies and demons are as different as penguins and polar bears?"
"Then why don't we just pick one of Long Distance's songs and arrange it with a demon concept?"
"Oh, that's better. So wouldn't it be smarter to find lyrics and a mood that can carry a demon concept?"
"Bright and bubbly moods are off the table, obviously."
"What are you even saying? The whole charm of an arrangement is taking moods that opposite and flipping them completely."
"……Do you have a problem with me? Why do you keep picking fights?"
While the staff debated passionately over how to arrange the cover song for the Chuseok special program,
Rembrary—who didn't know a single Long Distance song—sat listening to the meeting with a blank look, and belatedly realized something.
Ah, blast. I have yet to procure the leash.
He glanced sideways. Beside him, the Tiger-headed Monster stood stock-still, watching the debaters with something like wonder. As he did, his hand twitched, and claws flickered out and retracted from his fingertips, over and over. Apparently he wanted to play thumb-wrestling.
Just then—
"Woo Yeon-woo."
CEO Im called out to Rembrary.
"What is it?"
Rembrary asked evenly, and CEO Im furrowed his brow.
"You share your opinion too. Everyone else is contributing—why are you the only one sitting there quiet?"
He'd noticed Rembrary wasn't paying attention to the meeting at all.
Every eye in the room turned to Rembrary.
CEO Im had called on him out of irritation at his lack of focus, but Rembrary had once scored well for weeks running on a song-competition variety show with an unusual concept. Remembering that, the staff found themselves genuinely curious what idea he might have.
Rembrary, who knew none of Long Distance's songs, recalled what the staff had been saying back and forth earlier, and offered his opinion.
"Then what if we took a breakup song as the base, and wove the monologue of our old demon concept in and out of it? While the person is grieving over the breakup, a demon keeps cutting in, whispering things like—make a contract with me, and I'll give that person back to you, or I'll avenge you. Something along those lines?"
"……"
"……"
"……"
The room fell so suddenly silent that Rembrary looked around the conference room, bewildered.
"What's the matter?"
The staff all grimaced. The idea was good. It was so good it was annoying. He hadn't even been paying attention to the meeting, and then he'd gone and produced a great idea on the spot—one that even absorbed and built on the ideas they had come up with.
After the meeting concluded with a decision to follow Rembrary's suggestion,
Rembrary slipped out of the conference room ahead of the others and followed CEO Im, who was heading up to his office, to ask him something.
"CEO. Oh, CEO. I have a question for you."
CEO Im turned around, a little nervous.
"A question about what?"
"I wish to procure a leash."
Rembrary confessed honestly.
"A leash?"
CEO Im raised an eyebrow.
"You mean a necklace?"
"No, no. You know, the leash that animals have? The kind used to keep animals under control."
"Are you raising an animal?"
When Rembrary simply smiled without answering, CEO Im went pale and asked:
"You're not planning to put it on a person, are you?"
"Absolutely not. What do you take me for?"
What do I take you for? A lunatic, obviously. CEO Im swallowed the words climbing up his throat and asked again.
"You'll have to tell me what you need the leash for first. If you're actually trying to keep an animal, it's not allowed in the dorm."
"I'm not going to keep it. I'm giving it away as a gift. I intend to fasten the leash around the animal's neck and present it."
"Ah. A gift. But you have to be careful about gifting animals. You can't just give someone something they never asked for and have them toss it aside."
"Of course. I have already informed the recipient as well."
"Then it should be fine, but……"
Why does this feel so off? CEO Im wasn't fooled by Rembrary's placid face. Whatever disaster he might be cooking up, Woo Yeon-woo was always this serenely, eerily calm.
"You're seriously not going to tell me what kind of animal?"
"A tiger."
"……A cat?"
"A tiger."
The color drained from CEO Im's face in an instant.
"A tiger? Where did you pick up a tiger—no, where on earth did you pick up a tiger? Where is the tiger right now?!"
Thanks to CEO Im raising holy hell, Rembrary ultimately failed to get a leash through him.
In the end, the moment his schedule wrapped up, Rembrary decided to go out and buy one himself.
On his way back from buying the leash, he did happen to overhear Cathy on the phone with Yuli O about the upcoming Chuseok special program, which gave him something of a shock—but even so, he succeeded in purchasing the leash without incident.
"Hey, Woo Yeon-woo. Don't tell Jong-woo hyung you heard me on the phone."
"I couldn't make out a single word of what you were saying anyway. It looked like a third of your tongue had shriveled up."
"Hey!"
Leaving Cathy roaring behind him, Rembrary went into the bedroom and returned the card to Jungseo, which he'd borrowed to buy the leash.
The next day.
Rembrary sent Lim Yu-han a text.
There was no Dear God filming that day, so he'd been at a loss over how to arrange a meeting—but fortunately, Lim Yu-han drove over to his agency herself.
Perhaps out of concern for misunderstandings, she'd deliberately brought a few junior actors from the same agency along.
Lim Yu-han, brimming with anticipation over what Woo Yeon-woo might have prepared, kept forcing down a smile that kept threatening to twist out of shape.
Never before had a junior claimed he'd introduce her to a man suited to her taste as a gift, and she burned to know what on earth he'd prepared.
Halfway through, Lim Yu-han's agency juniors went off to a café together, leaving her alone in the car with Woo Yeon-woo.
"So what did you call me here to give me?"
Lim Yu-han asked, eyes gleaming.
He'd said he'd introduce her to a man, so she'd assumed he'd bring the man along from the start. Instead, Woo Yeon-woo had shown up alone, which struck her as all the more puzzling.
"This."
Rembrary beamed proudly and held out a handle to her.
Lim Yu-han accepted it without thinking, then found herself utterly baffled. Where had this handle suddenly come from?
To her eyes, it looked as though the handle had simply materialized out of thin air.
And dangling from the end of it was a leash—the kind you'd use on a large dog. But there was nothing there but the leash and the handle.
Not a trace of the man suited to her taste that Woo Yeon-woo had so confidently promised. Not a man of any kind, for that matter.
"There's nothing inside this, though?"
At last, flustered, she asked point-blank, and Woo Yeon-woo replied with a contented smile.
"Well, you see—watch closely."
Lim Yu-han grew even more flustered, pondered hard over what this could possibly mean, and then asked:
"Could it be…… you're giving me a fishing rod, so I have to catch the fish myself?"
"What?"
"You know, instead of giving me the fish, you're giving me the tools to catch it—is that what this means?"
"What?"
Lim Yu-han blinked at him, dumbfounded.
But she wasn't the only one thrown off balance.
Rembrary was every bit as bewildered, his gaze darting rapidly between Lim Yu-han's wide eyes, the handle in her grip, the leash attached to that handle, and the Tiger-headed Monster sitting meekly with the leash laid across his knees.
Rembrary was starting to think that Lim Yu-han simply could not see the Tiger-headed Monster.
But surely, before……
After much deliberation, Rembrary asked outright.
"Senior."
"Mm?"
"Do you see anyone beside me?"
"Air?"
Could it be that she truly could not see the Tiger-headed Monster? Rembrary's eyes went wide as saucers.
Lim Yu-han, too, grasped his meaning almost simultaneously. Remembering how Rembrary had once saved her from the hands of something 'invisible', she asked slowly:
"Could it be…… that right now, beside you, there's something that I can't see—how should I put it—one of those things?"
When Rembrary nodded, Lim Yu-han asked again.
"So that invisible gentleman of yours is the man you mentioned, the one with the body?"
"Yes. Though his head is a tiger's."
A tiger-faced man? Unable even to imagine that his head might literally be a tiger's, Lim Yu-han accepted it with a dazed nod.
"Ah. I see. So that's how it is."
But soon after, she thanked him sincerely.
She couldn't be sure of the exact mechanics, since he was invisible, but she had already been attacked once by an invisible being—from a brief glimpse on a TV screen, a monster with the head of an ox—and she remembered that incident vividly.
At the very least, the monster Rembrary had given her would never do such a thing, and above all, it was an ally now. If that Ox-Headed Monster ever showed up again, surely it could hold him off well enough?
But while Lim Yu-han was slowly piecing things together, Rembrary's expression grew graver by the moment.
Back when he had encountered that leashed monster before—
Lim Yu-han had clearly seemed to sense the presence standing beside him—not the suit-clad CEO, but the being next to him.
That was why Rembrary had assumed she, too, possessed the 'Eyes'.
But she did not have the 'Eyes'.
Which meant that the leashed monster had been revealing two different forms of itself simultaneously—one to Rembrary, and another to Lim Yu-han.
Rembrary scowled and rolled his phone between his fingers.
Should he contact Woo Sung-woo, or Sa Gam-jae?
The being he had seen then had not been a youkai at all. Making people perceive one's own form differently, all at the same time—that was a demon's specialty.
And demons were more dangerous than demon beasts, evil spirits, and ghosts could ever hope to compare.
End of Chapter 133. A Deeper Meaning?