The Sky Beneath Our Feet
We'd been caught.
The moment that thought hit her, Yoo Jinchae's mind spat out two options. Risky, but taking on the two men below by herself. Or grabbing the other two men and fleeing upward at full strength.
But once again, before she could decide, Na Hwiyeon acted first. He took hold of Ahn Param's shoulder — the boy was turning a ghostly white — and edged slowly toward the railing, jerking his chin to point down below.
Yoo Jinchae started to stop them, then curled her lips in and bit down, choosing silence instead.
……He seemed to have some kind of plan.
Na Hwiyeon began moving his lips, his gaze darting between Ahn Param's eyes and mouth. One syllable at a time, slow and deliberate — as if praying the boy could read him even without a sound.
Yoo Jinchae picked up the words without much trouble.
And so did Ahn Param.
'Stay calm.'
'You don't know anything.'
'Just focus on getting out of here.'
"…!"
A flash of something close to hope cut across Ahn Param's terrified face. He clenched both fists, wavered a few times, and then — apparently resolved — shouted.
"H-hey, mister! It's me! Param…!"
Thankfully, despite a slight tremor, it came out fairly convincingly.
"…The hell? When'd you get up there?"
"That kid awakener you mentioned?"
The men below kept muttering to each other, trying to pin down Ahn Param's identity. In that gap, Na Hwiyeon glanced back at us and jerked his chin upward.
'He wants us to go back up?'
At the signal, Yoo Jinchae killed her footsteps and started up the stairs.
All they had to do was not get caught. Keep widening the gap like this, and…
"Hey!"
Stop. Everyone froze at the sharp voice again. Ahn Param answered with the expression of a man walking to his execution.
"Y-yes, sir!"
"Then what are you doing up here? I'm pretty damn sure I told you not to go above the fourth floor."
"Uh, I'm — I'm sorry! I just wanted to listen to music somewhere quiet…. I'll head right down!"
'That's a pretty solid lie.'
For the first time, Yoo Jinchae gazed at the back of Ahn Param's head with genuine satisfaction. Up until now she'd been planning to suplex him the second they got out of here, but given this display of quick thinking, she revised the plan to a simple headlock finisher.
He did look a little pitiful, working that hard at it.
"Is that so? Fine, I guess you could listen to music up there."
"Haha, yes, yes, exactly!"
She felt the tension slacken, if only for an instant — and just as Yoo Jinchae set her foot on the upward stairs, she saw it. Something heavy and massive surging vertically, from below to above.
—Whump.
On pure reflex she shot her arms out, seized the clothes of the two men standing on the step ahead of her, and hauled them backward behind her with all her strength.
"AAAACK!"
"UGH!"
The slope of the stairs sent both men tumbling down onto the landing one level below.
—CRASH!
Behind her, Na Hwiyeon and Ahn Param burst out screaming, but that wasn't what mattered. Her brain kicked into high gear and her thighs coiled tight. She could feel the blood racing through every vein in her body.
'Here it comes.'
—Whump.
Before she could even steady her breath, a vicious blow drove into the right side of her face. Heavy. Carrying real weight behind it.
Yoo Jinchae slipped past it easily. And dodging it told her one thing for certain.
'One of them launched himself up here.'
The thing that had just risen vertically, like a man in flight, had to be one of the men from the stairs below.
—Whump.
Evasion of the second fist — this one aimed at her left cheek — flowed into a grab, and Yoo Jinchae locked her hand around his arm.
"Hey. Turns out you weren't listening to music alone after all."
The man whose arm she'd caught muttered it low, his face inches from hers.
'Hearing it up close, there's no mistaking it — that's right! These are the kidnapper bastards!'
As the man curled his mouth into a crooked sneer, Yoo Jinchae drove her right leg up and kicked him hard in the stomach.
—BANG!
The blow landed dead center, slamming the man into the wall with his midsection folded in half. The old wall couldn't take the impact and split open with a jagged crack.
Yoo Jinchae watched him in silence for a moment, then tilted her head and asked the man as he groaned, clutching his belly.
"How did you use your ability?"
The way he'd shot up moments ago, like a man in flight, was unmistakably the work of a skill.
'But for an ability that's supposed to be suppressed, that was a pretty stable, fast launch.'
…Don't tell me he's an awakener of high enough rank to shrug off an ability-suppression skill.
The chilling hypothesis surfaced for an instant, but—
"Ahh~ this is an item, an item. We're under a restriction on ability use today. Something about precious sacrifices, y'know."
The man lifted a foot, flashing her the sole of his shoe. A special fluorescent compound had been slathered all over the bottom of it.
"Aha."
Yoo Jinchae, who never leaned on items, let out an involuntary sound of admiration at the belated realization.
Didn't even think of items.
"…Though I don't think that's really the important thing here?"
The man, still too battered to stand, grinned up at her from the floor.
By now her eyes had fully adapted to the darkness, and they read the face of the man pinned against the wall. More precisely — the direction his eyes were pointed.
"…!"
The moment the crawling thought struck her, she whipped her head around, and what met her eyes was—
"Teacher—!"
Na Hwiyeon and Ahn Param, trussed up in rope.
Ahn Param's face had gone blue; Na Hwiyeon's was perfectly grave. Kneeling on the floor, staring down at the rope coiled around their torsos, the two of them raised their heads and looked at her.
"Damn it."
She'd seen that rope once before. Wasn't that the suppression rope — the kind that could hold even an A-Rank awakener?
To completely forget about the other one, all because she'd been focused on the one charging at her.
One of the men, still panting as he gripped the rope, smiled up at Yoo Jinchae.
Two hostages.
'Worst case scenario.'
What came next was easy to predict. The one behind her would creep up quietly and press a weapon — or something like it — against her.
"Don't move. This one's a mighty expensive item too."
Exactly that.
As a sharp point touched her back, Yoo Jinchae raised both hands where they could be seen and said:
"I surrender!"
Surrender first. Questions later.
"—What the? Now that I look, aren't these the sacrifices? Huh? If we'd missed them, we'd have been so thoroughly screwed."
"—Works out better anyway. It's almost time. Let's take them down now."
And with that… here we were, strung up in rope in a neat little line like beads on a thread, being dragged along.
Two menacing men flanking the front and back, with the three of us standing single-file in the middle.
I whispered softly toward Yoo Jinchae behind me.
"I'm sorry. I couldn't be any help…."
"Don't be. I'm the one who should have kept better watch."
Though I'd honestly thought we were doing fine.
I hadn't fully registered what was happening until the yank backward sent me slamming into the landing. Then, feeling pain sharp enough to make me wonder 'did my tailbone just snap?', I pried my eyes open — and there was Yoo Jinchae, still up on the stairs.
Bare-handed, she was taking on a man who looked to be more than twice her size.
Only then did Na Hwiyeon grasp the situation.
…Perceptive as ever, Yoo Jinchae had tried to fight them off alone rather than let me and Ahn Param get involved.
Granted, she looked terrifyingly good at it. There was no doubt her close-quarters combat training hadn't been a lie.
Still, out of basic human decency, I'd gotten up to offer even a single grain of help.
'And of all moments, that's when the rope came flying.'
Before I could do a single thing, I was trussed up and slammed back onto the floor.
……Although, to be fair, help had arrived just before the rope touched my body.
Nabi asked it as he charged at the throat of the man throwing the rope. And the one who snatched him back in horror was me.
'No matter what, killing people is off the table.'
This kid already had enough trouble keeping her dopamine threshold in check as it was — an accidental murder on top of that? That wasn't just "asking someone to open a door" anymore….
At least until I'd confirmed there was absolutely no way out of this place, I had zero intention of accepting help in the form of murder or assault.
Plus, there were minors here, after all.
'We should avoid a bloodbath as long as possible.'
With my hands bound, I kept pressing Nabi's body back down inside the doll as it tried again and again to wriggle free.
That white puppy doll, with its torn-open back, looked about one second away from wailing for its life.
Like hell I do!
No! Not even a little!
No — this is not train play.
Too frustrated for words, I just shook my head furiously.
The men kept escorting us downward. The floor numbers kept shrinking.
Around the time we reached the fourth floor, Yoo Jinchae — silent until now — spoke up.
"You might think it's a little strange to ask this in a situation like this, but I honestly can't stand not knowing."
"…Ask away. It'll help take the edge off, anyway."
Edge off, nothing — the truth was, I felt so guilty I wanted to do something for her.
'She took that guy down single-handedly, and then got captured because of us.'
Right now, if Yoo Jinchae asked for my bank PIN, I'd have handed it over gladly.
"So… you told the boy you'd show him a demon, and took him with you. What on earth did you show that boy to make him this docile?"
Thankfully, she wasn't asking for my account number.
But how on earth was I supposed to answer this….
When my answer didn't come right away, Yoo Jinchae hurriedly added an explanation.
"I mean, what, five minutes? You talked with him for about that long, and suddenly he's all polite."
"……."
"Anyway… I was wondering if you had some foolproof education method for teenagers. Just a short conversation with that kid nearly had my fist flying."
"It really wasn't much…."
Just showing him the demon briefly and the problem solved itself.
"Oh, come on, I know the demon thing was just for my benefit, to cheer me up. And honestly, I'm more curious about why you're so much harsher with that boy in particular. I figured someone like you, Teacher, would have soothed him the way you handle the kindergarteners."
No, the demon is very much real.
But… it was true I'd been especially harsh with Ahn Param.
Then again, this was Yoo Jinchae simply not understanding kids these days.
I looked at Ahn Param's sniffling, flat-shaved head up ahead of us and cracked a smile.
"I just scared him a little. And kids these days don't respond to being handled gently. It's different now. Different."
"I'm sorry, what?"
"Ah… just, here, look at that for a second."
Rather than explain in detail, I simply pointed at the sniveling kid in front of me.
Just then, completely unaware that we were watching him from behind, Ahn Param started clinging to the man leading the line.
"Mister — no, hey, brothers! I keep telling you, I've got nothing to do with this lady or this guy here?!"
"……."
"Please, save me! These people threatened me and were keeping me against my will! Right? I really just got caught up in this by pure accident! Right? Right??"
"You, quiet down a—"
"You're not actually going to kill me, right? These bad people sweet-talked me into trying to leave this place! And looking at you guys — awakened mercenaries? Or… security guys, maybe? Either way, how about showing hearts as fine as your fine careers, and sparing just little old me?"
Quite the silver-tongued charmer we had here.
Yoo Jinchae, watching Ahn Param wail at the man like he was begging for his life…
Nodded slowly, with an expression of pure pity.
She understands completely.
"As you can see, kids these days. The moment the situation shifts, he's trying to sell out his own cult leader…."
"How frightening. For a person's faith to be this paper-thin."
Between answering Yoo Jinchae's questions, we somehow arrived at the first floor.
The emergency exit door swung open… and revealed a space so desolate it was practically a void.
It looked like a building long since abandoned — the kind of place where not a single soul had lived for years.
But what caught my eye before any of that was the transparent front door leading outside.
'Every fiber of me wanted to bolt straight through it.'
But thanks to the rope — made of who knew what — that kept me from taking even a single step at will, I couldn't move.
'The exit is right in front of me, and I can't even have it.'
"Move. Follow me."
The man yanked hard on the end of the rope and headed straight down the stairs leading to the basement, and we dragged helplessly along behind him.
Out of pure longing, I couldn't tear my eyes from the front door.
Well — it does waver a little. If only this rope would come loose….
……Hold on.
Why hadn't I thought of this before?
"Nabi-yah. Could you untie this rope without those men noticing?"
Right — even if I can't get that kind(?) of help, there's no reason I can't accept this kind of help!
"W-why not?"
This kid is going to drive me insane.
'Candy is more important to you than this, right now?'
In a sulky voice, Nabi finally slid the black sword partway out of the doll's back and pointed it back and forth at the two men dragging us along.
This time, truly with blood in my throat, I refused Nabi's proposal.
"No. Let me try first — if I need Nabi later, I'll call you."
With Yoo Jinchae's eyes wide open right there, I couldn't exactly summon Nabi openly and knock those two men out….
I was whispering quietly into the doll, watching for anyone looking my way — and right then, of all moments, Ahn Param, who'd been about to say something to me, turned his head.
"Cult Leader — no, Teacher! No wait, do something! Bring that demon back out and—"
Then he caught sight of the black finger poking out of the doll's torn back and clamped his mouth shut.
"He says he doesn't feel like coming out right now. So eyes forward."
At my words, Ahn Param turned his head back around with a creak of his neck.
"Ugh, seriously, what am I supposed to do! Die? This is insane. This side, that side — not a single person is on my side!"
'What… am I going to do with this kid.'
We climbed down the dark staircase for what felt like ages more, until at last we stood before a massive door.
From beyond it came the steady pounding of drums.
"Who is it?"
"Sacrifices."
"Oh, the ones from the rumors? But I heard there were only two?"
"No idea. Figured they might make good extra sacrifices."
"Aha."
As the man and what looked like an insider exchanged words, the door before us burst open.
And the instant it did, a roar of cheering slammed into our ears.
—WAAAAAAAH
—They're here! They're here! THEY'RE HERE!
Dozens of people robed in white, wild with fervor. Behind them, colossal serpent sculptures that seemed to coil up each of the four pillars anchoring the corners of the underground hall. A red carpet running up to a raised platform.
And on that platform, a young man wearing a crown was smiling.
"Insane."
It was a scene that wrung the words out of me on their own.
But what was even more staggering than all of that—
was the pattern on the floor beneath our feet.
"Th-the… sky?"
I grabbed Ahn Param by the side as his knees buckled and steadied myself.
Holding back the urge to collapse right there, I looked down at the floor too.
……It really was the sky.
Clouds drifting, birds passing now and then, and between them the silhouettes of tall buildings — an honest-to-god sky….
"Insane."
Which meant… were we floating in midair right now?