The Auction
The auctioneer swept his gaze across the floor, wearing a smile designed to stoke every greedy impulse in the room.
"The true identity of this high-ranking undead remains unknown! But as you can see, the purity of the demonic energy contained in this head is unmistakably that of a high-ranking undead! We cannot determine what this being once was — but if you use this beautifully, perfectly preserved head as a medium, and if you handle it well..."
"It means you could bind this powerful high-ranking undead as your own familiar! Those of you in the know will already understand — a high-ranking undead can revive at any time, even after beheading, so long as the conditions are met! This is a lot capable of rewriting the balance of power in the entire 7th District. We will start the bidding at five hundred million won!"
A roar went up from every corner of the hall.
Before that heat had even begun to cool, Lumina raised her hand.
"Six hundred million."
That was how it started.
"The gentleman over there has bid seven hundred million!"
"The lovely lady from a moment ago, eight hundred million... and she raised again before I could even finish the call — yes! One billion! Excellent. From this point forward, we will proceed in increments of two hundred million."
Sums that made the word billion sound cheap flew back and forth across the floor. Lumina did not stop. Her eyes were full of a single, burning resolve: she would have that head. She had no intention of lowering her hand until the gavel fell in her favor.
And she was far from alone.
A high-ranking undead's head. In a world that had found peace after the war with the Demon King's army, merchandise of this caliber did not surface easily. The eyes of the underworld's heavyweights grew wet with greed. With that head in hand... the balance the 7th District had maintained for so long could come crashing down. Whoever claimed it would seize hegemony, one way or another.
None of them, Lumina knew, could actually handle the power in that head. Waking an undead of that caliber was extraordinarily difficult. Of course, if the head was hers, the problem would solve itself the instant she took hold of it. But if it wasn't?
She would be winning a piece of useless trash.
There's no other way.
Even if it wasn't hers, she had to win the bid. She had wandered for a long time in search of her lost head. She had ridden her bike in every direction, making deliveries, chasing every scrap of rumor, and this was the lead she had barely managed to dig up. It was possible — truly possible — that the head on that podium was her own.
If that really is my head...
Lumina could not remember. She could not remember how she had died, or how she had become a Dullahan. When she opened her eyes, she simply knew that her head was gone. How does a person perceive the absence of their own head? She had no idea. She had simply felt it.
She had no eyes, and yet she could see. She had no nose, and yet she could smell. She had no ears and no mouth, and yet hearing and speaking gave her no trouble at all. What sat in her head's place was an unidentified motorcycle helmet, left lying beside her as if someone had simply set it down and walked away.
In that moment, Lumina understood by instinct. This was a substitute for her head. A mask, so that a woman with nothing above her shoulders would not have to endure the contempt in other people's eyes.
But she could not remember why she — headless — had come back to life. All she retained was this: she had died climbing the Tower on a solo operation, and her name was Lumina. She did not even know what her occupation had been. Remembering her own face was out of the question.
A blue flame roared to life above the stump of her neck, announcing that she was alive.
And so Lumina lost her head the instant she was born a Dullahan.
The beginning of a headless life had not been particularly inconvenient. She had never known what she originally was. She had always assumed she was a Dullahan from birth. So at first, the thought of hunting down her head never even occurred to her. Nothing felt wrong. Of course it didn't.
She became a hunter again. She climbed the Tower. She hunted monsters. It was not difficult. Her memories were gone, but her body remembered how to fight. Reflexively, instinctively, her limbs knew exactly what to do.
So I was a hunter before I became a Dullahan.
She learned it through her body, one fight at a time. She climbed the Tower, and she settled into a new life in Taepyeong City — as the Dullahan named Lumina.
But the longer she lived in Taepyeong City, the more she came to understand just how inconvenient it was to have no head.
A woman with no face has no expression. A helmet cannot show what a person feels. When she wanted to break into a wide, helpless smile. When she wanted to cry. When she wanted someone to see the gratitude written on her face. What they saw, every time, was the same motorcycle helmet.
Hands and shoulders could only say so much. The misunderstandings piled up. Parties fell apart mid-raid because of them.
It was a strange thing to suffer. An undead, in pain because she could not pass her feelings along. Weren't undead supposed to have no feelings at all? Emotionless psychopaths. Wasn't that the entire point of being undead?
From the moment she first felt that absence, Lumina began to hear an echo circulating inside her helmet. Every time it came, phantom pain flared across the empty cross-section of her neck. A sensation like a cold wind brushing a cheek that was no longer there. A pull, as if her head — fallen somewhere far away — were calling for her, desperate and unfinished.
That must have been when she quit being a hunter and started wandering in search of her head.
She wanted to know. Who she had originally been. What face she had worn. What her smile had looked like, and what kind of gaze she had turned upon the world.
And now, the most likely candidate for that head was sitting right in front of her. A head that might be her lost other half.
If that head really was hers, she would never have to hide inside a helmet again. And if that happened... she would be able to show her real face to the man who had followed her all the way here. To Minchul. A smile of genuine, unguarded thanks.
That, more than anything, must have been why she did it.
"Five billion."
She poured in nearly every last won she had.
"Five billion! The beautiful woman over there has bid five billion! Do I hear any more? I will call it three times. Five billion... five billion..."
The auctioneer hoisted the gavel high, his face flushed with excitement — and that was the moment a tired voice drifted up from the back of the hall.
"Ten billion. All of it in cash."
Silence dropped over the floor as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water on the crowd.
"T-ten billion! The gentleman in the black suit over there has bid ten billion!"
Lumina's shoulder flinched. I felt the grip she had locked around my arm go slack, the strength draining out of her fingers.
"Ten billion...? That's..."
Our eyes found the source of the voice on their own. A cluster of men in immaculate suits sat in the rear seats.
And yet.
"Huh?"
Something was wrong. Hadn't they said the entrance used a life-sign detector specifically to screen out undead? So why—
Undead?
Both of the men in the suits were undead. A skeleton sat on the left. Across from him, a ragged zombie with a face full of fatigue held up a bidding paddle.
Lumina showed no reaction to their faces at all. She looked at them the way you look at anyone — as if she had no idea they were undead.
"Lumina."
"...Yeah."
The usual spark in her voice was gone. Even the flame above her neck had sunk lower than I had ever seen it. The loss of watching her goal slip away right in front of her, I guessed.
"Those men over there. How do they look to you?"
"The men? Exhausted office workers...? Looking at those suits, they have to be corporate. Dispatched from some major company to pick the item up on the firm's behalf."
So that was it. To her, those undead looked like ordinary people too.
"To my eyes, every one of them looks like an undead."
"...What?"
Her flame flared back to life.
"For real?"
"Yes. It's probably some kind of illusion magic — similar to yours, I'd guess..."
"So it doesn't work on you."
"Seems that way."
Strange. The hypnotic incense from that Illusion Grass last time had put me under just fine. Wasn't this the same family of magic? Then why...
No point tying myself in knots over it. What I could see right now mattered more.
"They banned undead from even entering, and these guys still made it all the way in here. We might be able to get the whole auction voided."
Hope lifted in Lumina's voice. In the rush of finding an opening, she seemed to have briefly forgotten that she was an undead herself.
I listened carefully to the conversation unfolding a few rows ahead. The auctioneer's cry that the lot was sold. Scattered applause. Scattered groans. And, threaded through all of it, two tired voices.
"Ah, for crying out loud. Why does Director Belarus keep saddling us with these annoying errands? Deputy Manager Kim — our operating budget maxes out at ten billion, right?"
"Yes, sir. Ten billion was the ceiling. We just barely made the deadline."
"I snapped and went all in, but it worked out."
"Manager Millero, why bid ten billion, though? Seven would have done it."
"You start a bidding war like that, the ones who followed you up get greedy and throw even more money at it. If that's how it goes, you're better off crushing their spirits in the opening move."
"Let's take possession and get back to headquarters. I'd rather wrap this up before the radicals show."
A familiar name. Director Belarus.
"Those undead are employees of Endless Operation."
"...Endless? Why would their people come all the way out here?"
"That I don't know."
"If it's that old geezer, there might actually be room to talk."
Lumina's voice brightened. The news that an acquaintance, at least, had walked off with the lot was enough to let her breathe again.
"The process is a pain, but it's not like there's no way to get a meeting with that old man Belarus."
"...I think I can set one up right now."
"A meeting? You can do that?"
"I have a business card I got from the director last time."
I pulled Belarus's card from my wallet and held it out.
"Let's contact him immediately."
"That's Belarus's card."
Her flame flickered.
"We'll just ask to confirm whether it's your head. Even if they turn us down, we can at least have a conversation, right? If we get lucky, we might even walk away with some information."
Belarus had been an officer in the Demon King's army, after all. There was a decent chance he knew something. And if their side came back with demands that went too far, we could always refuse.
"Minchul, you..."
The sway of Lumina's flame as she looked at me grew larger. Then, without warning—
She threw her arms around me and squeezed.
The soft scent rising off her body stopped the air in my throat. Something yielding and warm pressed against my chest, and I flailed, with no idea where to put my hands. Where was I even supposed to—
"Thank you. Really... If it weren't for you, I never would have known who took the head."
Her voice brushed my ear like a whisper, and a shiver ran through me before I could stop it. That had been genuinely dangerous.
"L-Lumina — i-it's touching."
"...Ah. Sorry."
She registered what she had done a beat too late and pulled away in a hurry. If she had held on even a little longer, it really might have made full contact.
"Let's catch them before they move. If we want that meeting, we need to talk to those people first—"
That was when the ground shook.
A heavy, rolling tremor.
"Huh?"
I looked up at the ceiling in alarm — and the massive wall along the right side of the auction house tore open like paper.
The explosion hit a heartbeat later.
"Aaaaaaah!"
"W-what the hell! It's a raid!"
A choking cloud of dust and the acrid stink of gunpowder swallowed the hall in an instant. The chandelier tore free of the ceiling and shattered across the floor. People screamed and ran, and the auction house became a slaughterhouse of panic in the space of a breath.
"Have you bastards lost your minds?! Do you have any idea where you are— ghk!"
The orc guard at the entrance charged with his club raised. A mace punched out of the dust cloud and dropped him in a single blow.
Bone crunched.
"Ghhk..."
The orc slammed into a corner and did not get up. Something in him had broken.
"Don't you— quack!"
The duck beastkin guard and the pawn shop's security officers raised their weapons toward the attackers. The dust began to thin, and the uninvited guests stepped through the wreckage of the wall.
Rusted iron armor, reeking of old blood. Sinister red light gleaming through the slits of their helmets. An ugly aura seeping from flesh that had already begun to rot. A feeling washed over me that had nothing in common with the presence of Belarus, or of any other undead I had met.
Undead?
The hulking skeleton at the head of the raiding party slung a bloodstained greatsword over his shoulder and spat the words out like a taunt.
"You rotten traitors. Playing house with mortals. Pretending at peace."
His gaze was locked on the silver-haired head inside the glass case on the podium.
"To think you would put that great one on a block and sell them like livestock. Do you even know who that is? This is a desecration of the dead!"
The red light in his sockets flared as he roared at the auctioneer and the remaining security.
Well. Not sure this was the time or the place, but... that head? The undead gentleman over there already won the bid. If it was a desecration among the dead, that was just self-defense...
A joke I could not possibly say out loud in front of undead this angry. I kept my mouth shut. Those eyes were genuinely murderous. Now I understood why the pawn shop had banned undead from the building. How do you send invitations to people who cause this kind of chaos?
"...Remnants of the Demon King's army. The ones who refuse to accept that Taepyeong City exists."
Lumina growled the words low in her throat and pushed me behind her back.
"I guess not everyone in the Demon King's army signed the treaty."
"Not everyone loves peace."
Blue flame gathered in her hand.
That was when a familiar, bone-tired voice cut through the wreckage.
"Ah, shit. The timing on this is seriously fucked."
Through the chaos the raiders had made, the zombie department manager from Endless Operation stepped forward, yanking his tie loose with both hands.
"Deputy Manager Kim, overtime is confirmed for today. Add a combat-bonus claim for the radical faction incursion to the report we're sending the director."
"Haaah... There goes my weekend."
"You're a skeleton. You don't even have weekends. Quit whining."
"Must be nice having weekends, Manager Millero."
"Of course it is. I've got a daughter as cute as a bunny."
They faced a raiding party that had just demolished an auction house, and they sounded like two men arguing over a timesheet.
"Civilians, please step back. We'll handle all of them."
Lumina sighed at the skeleton deputy manager's words.
"I'm afraid we can't do that. We've got business with you as well."
"Excuse me?"
"We can talk about that after the fight's over."
At that, the zombie manager — Millero — looked at us. His gaze landed on me. A face missing one eye, packed to the brim with exhausted dark circles, turned in my direction for a moment. Then he let out a long, deep breath.
"Haaah. Tsk. This just got reeeal annoying."
"Minchul."
Lumina's voice pulled my eyes back to her.
"Just wait here a bit. Big sis'll keep you safe."
"Good luck."
"Yeah."
Her flame flared high.