Quick on the Uptake
The Tiger Head went straight to Daeju. He had only glanced at the map once, but finding his way was no trouble. He had lived in this country for a very long time. He could have found the road with his eyes closed.
So this is the place.
Before long, the Tiger Head located the café Rembrary had told him about and strode into the building without a moment's hesitation. He walked past the café, into a room marked STAFF ONLY, and even found the hidden passage sealed off behind a cascade of security devices with ease.
Past the long corridor lay a spacious room with a desk, where some five or six humans were each busy with their own tasks.
The Tiger Head glanced around nervously, worried that someone might recognize him. Who knew when and where a human with the Eyes might pop out and raise an unnecessary fuss?
But there were no humans with the Eyes here, it seemed. The Tiger Head wandered this way and that, yet not a single person spared him so much as a glance.
And here I was expecting something, hearing this was a place with humans who could grant my wish. It's all rather ordinary.
Disheartened, the Tiger Head made his way into a room set unusually deep within the space.
"The demon beast the High Priest mentioned—would that be you?"
Fortunately, the human inside the room recognized him and spoke first. The Tiger Head confirmed that the man's hair color, eye color, and general appearance matched the description of 'Daeju' he'd heard from Rembrary, then answered.
[That is so. Are you Daeju?]
Daeju gave a nod and gestured toward the sofa.
"Will you sit?"
[I am fine standing.]
Daeju, having offered a seat, remained standing himself and asked his question.
"What exactly brings you here? All I was told was that the High Priest sent you—that I was not to turn you away, and to hear you out."
[I wish to become human.]
"Human, you say..."
[I heard that you possess the power to grant wishes.]
"That is correct. However, my power has not yet grown strong enough to change one's very species."
At Daeju's answer, the Tiger Head could not hide his disappointment. Though he wore a tiger's face, his expressions were vividly alive, and it was plainly clear just how heartbroken he was.
Daeju, who had a soft spot for cats, felt something stir in him at the sight of the Tiger Head's dejection. After all, nothing tugged at the heartstrings of an onlooker quite like a magnificent set of whiskers drooping in sorrow.
"I cannot make you human. But I can give you a human face for one month."
[Is that the truth?]
The Tiger Head's white whiskers shot stiffly upright, every last one of them. Daeju kept his gaze fixed on those whiskers as he nodded.
[Then do it for me! I shall repay you in kind! To speak of myself, I was once a legendary smoker, famed throughout the land—yet I am a tiger of such iron will that I quit even the cigarettes I so loved, cold turkey!]
"Not immediately."
[Would an offering be required?]
"Time is required. My power can only be used once a month. I shall grant your wish next month."
[My thanks!]
The Tiger Head leapt into the air for joy. But he had not forgotten Rembrary's warning, and even as he rejoiced, he studied Daeju from head to toe.
Let's see... a cold countenance. Compared to Miss Lim, tsk. His face is forgettable. Compared to Miss Lim, tsk.
Judging Daeju against Lim Yu-han—the human he found most agreeable among all the humans he knew—the Tiger Head concluded that Daeju had a blank, unremarkable appearance, with not a single distinguishing feature to speak of.
As far as the Tiger Head could tell, the only points in Daeju's favor were that he possessed the Eyes and had one useful ability.
"Why do you stare at me so?"
[It is nothing. I was looking because you have a pleasant face.]
The Tiger Head returned while Rembrary was in the middle of reading the fan letters the company had passed along to him.
Jungseo was sitting across from him, so Rembrary gathered up the fan letters and hurried out to the veranda—but then he remembered the time he'd been chatting with the Tiger Head out there and gotten caught by Oh Jung-shin, and he went back into his room instead.
"Ugh, this is so damn distracting!" Hye-gyeol grumbled, but Rembrary didn't spare it a gram of attention. He shut and locked the door, then asked the Tiger Head what had happened. The Tiger Head relayed Daeju's words exactly as they'd been spoken.
"I see."
[This humble one shall have a human face in but one month's time!]
Even with a human face, Sunbae Lim still won't be able to see him, though. Rembrary couldn't quite bring himself to say it. Instead, he patted the Tiger Head on the back and told him he'd done well.
"Good for you, Roary."
The Tiger Head, in high spirits, rumbled a happy roar-roar or two—then, belatedly remembering he had one more thing to report, his face turned grave.
[I looked into this Daeju as well, as you bade me.]
"And? What was he like?"
[Setting aside the Eyes and his power, he was an ordinary human.]
"Anything suspicious?"
[His face was so forgettable that I could not tell whether he was suspicious or not.]
Just as all tiger faces look the same to humans, do all human faces look the same to tigers? Rembrary recalled Daeju's strikingly handsome face and tilted his head.
[Then I shall take my leave!]
Apparently in an excellent mood, the Tiger Head flung open the window and hurried out—only to return in under a minute.
[Ah, there is one more thing I must say.]
"What is it?"
[The place you directed me to was tightly secured, but its security was the kind only humans need to pass through. Against our kind, it had no defenses whatsoever.]
"I see."
[And yet there was exactly one place, even this humble one could not enter.]
"Was a barrier laid over it? Something deployed by exorcists or the like?"
Rembrary asked offhandedly. If a building with no protections against supernatural phenomena had exactly one protected spot, there was nothing strange about it at all, as far as he was concerned.
After all, Daeju had the Eyes, wielded strange powers, and apparently used artifacts from time to time—it wouldn't be odd for him to fortify a single location.
[No.]
But the Tiger Head answered no.
[That barrier was not laid by human hands.]
Yeon-woo stumbled backward. It wasn't as if the other party were approaching as though they knew him—though it rather seemed like they might—but still, the whole situation was unbearably awkward.
Besides, this person had just hurled an enormous spear and killed a giant mantis in a single throw. The unidentified sticky goo oozing out of that mantis was still dripping, drop by drop, from the spear she held.
For someone who had lived in a world where seven-year-olds were taught to accept the absence of monsters, it was a scene he simply could not process.
"High Priest?"
His behavior must have looked even stranger to her. The spear-wielding woman leapt nimbly down from her enormous horse and approached him.
"Are you all right?"
She extended a hand, but Yeon-woo recoiled in even greater horror. This time it was because of the blood and the unidentified shell smeared all over that hand. That shell was obviously from some monster, and that blood was...
"High Priest!"
As Yeon-woo staggered mid-retreat, the woman, apparently unable to watch any longer, darted forward and seized his forearm in a firm grip. Thanks to her, he didn't fall—but Yeon-woo let out a shriek, his breath catching in his throat.
"I-I'm fine! I'm fine!"
Yeon-woo held out his palm, signaling desperately for the woman to please, please back off. He wanted to be at least five steps away from those blood-covered hands and that terrifying spear.
Fortunately, the woman picked up on the signal and released his arm, stepping back two paces. It wasn't the five steps he'd hoped for, but Yeon-woo breathed a sigh of relief all the same.
"High Priest, your hand is injured!"
He'd barely relaxed before tensing up again.
Before he could even finish exhaling, Yeon-woo's eyes went round as saucers as he stared at her. Unbelievably, the woman who had stayed perfectly calm through an entire horde of giant monsters was looking at his palm with a faint expression of shock.
When the other party reacted like that, he half-wondered if his hand had turned some horrifying color from a curse, and he hastily examined his own palm. But it was just an ordinary human hand. A little roughened, maybe.
Or was she raising such a fuss because the High Priest's hand had gotten hurt? He didn't understand it, but wasn't that how it went with emperors and kings—one little scratch on their bodies and everyone around them lost their minds?
And besides, with this woman calling him High Priest this and High Priest that, it seemed he'd landed in the Sloth's body. Judging by how the Sloth had described things, the High Priest here held some very exalted position.
"I just hurt it a moment ago. I'm fine. It's only a little scraped."
In any case, Yeon-woo signaled for all he was worth that he was fine. All the while, he tried to calmly sort through the situation in his head.
This Daeju person was always going on about 'Lord High Priest' to the Sloth, so I really must be in the Sloth's body, right?
He'd been told to go weaken the Sloth's power, and he'd thought, Weaken what, and how? Who would have guessed the guy would just swap his body outright? Yeon-woo grumbled inwardly as he slowly, warily lowered his injured arm.
But the woman looked even more astonished at his insistence that he was fine.
"The High Priest's hand is injured..."
Her voice trailed off, unable even to finish the sentence, and Yeon-woo found himself at a loss. Guess the Sloth really was raised like some priceless treasure.
Yeon-woo had no way of knowing that the High Priest's wounds healed the instant he sustained them.
"A survivor?"
While he was still floundering, another man dressed much like the woman approached on horseback and asked the question.
"We need to move quickly. Bring him along."
The man wore the same cloak as the woman who'd arrived first. They were evidently from the same organization. And just like the woman, the moment he noticed Yeon-woo standing there all alone, he belatedly cried out in shock.
"The High Priest?"
At this point, anyone who couldn't guess whose body he'd landed in would have to be a fool. Yeon-woo was now certain he was inside the Sloth's body.
And yet even with that certainty, he just stood there dumbly, eyes darting back and forth. What good did it do to know he was in the High Priest's body—the Sloth's body? He had no idea where, how, or in what manner that High Priest and Sloth had lived their lives.
The two cloaked figures exchanged a look of mutual bewilderment. Then the man extended his hand toward Yeon-woo, his voice considerably gentler.
"I don't know what's happened, but this place is dangerous, High Priest. Please."
The woman gestured to her red horse as well, urging him on.
"Ride."
Yeon-woo edged away from both of them and blurted out hastily,
"It's fine. I—I can't ride horses."
At those words, the woman's expression turned doubtful.
"The High Priest... cannot ride?"
Her voice as she repeated it carried an unmistakable note of surely not?
Come to think of it, the Sloth did used to brag about his riding skills. So it was true.
Yeon-woo regretted bringing up horses at all.
But even if he hadn't said anything, the situation had already doomed him—he was supposed to climb onto that enormous red horse, and his beginner horsemanship would have been exposed either way.
That was when it happened. The woman who had been urging him onto the red horse this whole time suddenly twisted her face into something ugly. Nothing had changed but her expression, yet the air around them turned vicious in an instant.
The moment Yeon-woo tensed, wondering what was wrong with her all of a sudden, she drew her spear in the blink of an eye and leveled it at his throat.
"Who are you? Who are you, wearing that man's face?"