Bonds, and Bonds (2)
Bonds, and Bonds (2)
The first to react was Idni.
“Uuup……!!”
Covering her mouth as nausea overwhelmed her, Idni shook off her friend’s hand and ran blindly into the rain.
Soon the sound of retching mixed with the steady patter of the downpour.
Crunch─!!
Maria’s fists clenched until her knuckles went white.
If she didn’t hold herself together like that, she might have chased after Idni. But she couldn’t afford to.
She had to smile—if only for the fragile little girl who was watching with anxious eyes, struggling to breathe as though she might stop at any moment.
She had to.
“Hoo…….”
She had been trained to smile no matter the situation. Why wouldn’t the corners of her lips rise?
“…Is it, t-true?”
A cracked voice cut through the empty sound of rain. Lee Na-young, clinging to Nam Seo-hee’s back, stared at Claire with a face completely drained of blood.
“F-for... just a... few days……?”
Claire only nodded once more.
“Ah…….”
Lee Na-young’s eyes trembled violently.
Just then, Baek Ha-na, who had been staring blankly at the fairy, raised her head.
“…You have it.”
Her voice was tiny.
Baek Ha-na spun toward Maria and shouted.
“Maria! You still have yours, right?”
“……?”
Maria, who had been suppressing her emotions, flinched. Then her trembling eyes flew wide open.
She didn’t need to ask. She knew exactly what Baek Ha-na was thinking.
“I have mine!!”
“Me too……!!”
The two locked eyes and nodded.
“Then─”
“The Balance Scale!!”
Baek Ha-na’s sprint toward the mansion halted.
“Ha-na!! The Balance Scale! The artifact we got as a prize! We need that!!”
“…You know where it is, right? Go with Seo-hee.”
“Okay……!!”
She didn’t ask why.
Baek Ha-na had no composure left to question such things.
Nam Seo-hee also understood the severity of the situation. The moment Baek Ha-na gave her permission, she bolted toward the dormitory with Lee Na-young still on her back.
“Idni!!”
-Just wait!!
Through the thickening sheets of rain, Idni’s reply erupted like a beast’s cry.
“Ha-na…….”
“I’ll be right back.”
Baek Ha-na glanced at the fairy gasping on Claire’s palm, then turned.
Swoooosh─
She tossed aside the cumbersome umbrella. White beast ears sprouted from her head.
Crunch!!
Her feet hammered into the ground, cracking and scarring the earth with each stride.
The rain grew heavier, and she nearly slipped several times. Yet Baek Ha-na didn’t slow down. She drove more mana into her legs, pounding it in.
‘Please….’
She tried to force a bright face, but the image of the fairy—too weak even to hide her exhaustion—kept flickering before her eyes.
‘Please….’
Her thoughts couldn’t go any deeper.
Her head was filled with only one thing: she had to get back to that child one second faster.
Boom─!!
Baek Ha-na flung the front door open as if to break it and burst inside. Her muddy shoes left trailing footprints across the dark corridor.
“…It’s here!!”
The shining sphere she had feared might have vanished was still in the drawer, casting a soft glow to mark its presence.
Thud-thud-thump─!!
The bag under the desk toppled over. Diaries scattered across the floor. Baek Ha-na emptied the bag in an instant, carefully lifted the sphere, placed it inside, and secured the opening tight.
She was terrified it might shatter in her grip, or slip from her rain-soaked fingers, or that she simply wouldn’t make it in time.
“Get a grip….”
After catching her breath, Baek Ha-na hugged the bag to her chest and roughly swept back her wet hair. She forced her convulsing legs to move again.
It was the backlash of drawing in mana far beyond what her body could contain. But Baek Ha-na knew her own limit better than anyone, so she pulled once more on the mana coiled around her heart and sent it straight to her legs.
Wooosh─!!
Even the time to navigate the maze was too precious to waste.
Baek Ha-na vaulted over several high hedges, stepped on their tops, and cut straight across the labyrinth.
Crunch─!!
“Ugh…….”
A searing agony tore through the sole of her left foot and her thigh, as if something sharp had pierced and ripped through the muscle. Her leg cramped. Still, Baek Ha-na ran. Her speed didn’t drop in the slightest.
“Ha-na!!”
“Haa, haa……!!”
Collapsing into Maria’s arms, Baek Ha-na looked up right away.
‘I... made it….’
Nam Seo-hee, Lee Na-young, and even Idni, who had vanished earlier, were all back.
‘Thank goodness... I wasn’t too late….’
The fairy still sat on Claire’s palm, her expression unreadable as always.
Though her breathing was ragged, the little girl was still alive, fighting for every breath just like them.
“Here, right here.”
“Okay…….”
On legs that threatened to buckle at any moment, Baek Ha-na pulled away from Maria and took the glowing sphere from the bag. She tried to approach the fairy, but Maria stepped in her way.
“…What are you doing?”
“C-calm down. Ha-na. That won’t save her.”
“……What?”
Baek Ha-na’s eyes shook.
“Ha-na. Stay calm. There’s a way.”
“……The Balance Scale.”
“Yes.”
Only after Maria nodded did Baek Ha-na’s gaze steady a little. Instead, her focus shifted to Lee Na-young, who was clutching the Balance Scale.
“…Na-young.”
“The potion.”
Lee Na-young’s face was ghostly pale, but her voice was calmer than they had ever heard it.
“When that child drank the potion I made back then, that person took it away. And then the professor asked me to—”
“…That’s enough. It’s fine... just hurry.”
“……Right.”
Under Baek Ha-na’s desperate stare, Lee Na-young nodded and raised the Balance Scale in her hand.
‘It’ll work.’
She was more anxious and fearful than anyone, yet filled with an intense certainty. Lee Na-young slowly streamed her mana into the Balance Scale she was holding.
‘That sphere alone can’t solve this.’
If it could, they would have been told not to use it when they received it. Besides, she distinctly remembered her first visit to this mansion.
Back then, she hadn’t understood why such a reaction had occurred or why a warning had been given when the child swallowed her potion. Now, she did.
‘If that gets returned to her, it’ll just be poison.’
After all, the sphere didn’t extend lifespan. Its effect accelerated the flesh’s time.
Wooong─!!
The Balance Scale in her hand began to glow.
Lee Na-young stared at it with her brow tightly furrowed.
When Baek Ha-na had won it, Professor Jaden had said as he handed it over:
-They say if you offer a price, it grants a wish of slightly lesser worth.
Her friends had been too shaken to remember those words, but she had not forgotten.
‘Equivalent exchange….’
The first mindset a would-be alchemist learns.
Every result is proportional to the price paid.
The scale supposedly returned a wish of lesser value than the offering, but that was precisely why she trusted it more.
Flash─!!
“Uh…….”
An intense light erupted from the Balance Scale. For a moment, everyone there had to look away or shield their eyes.
Then, as the blinding light that had illuminated the area subsided.
【What will you offer?】
A colossal woman wrapped in mysterious light loomed in the dark sky, looking down at Lee Na-young.
Holding a giant balance scale identical in shape to the one Lee Na-young gripped, the woman asked once more.
【What will you offer?】
“Ah... th-this…!!”
Snapping back to her senses, Lee Na-young thrust the shining sphere forward.
“Th-this too!!”
After receiving the sphere from Baek Ha-na, Maria hurriedly came up and raised it.
Swoosh.
The spheres in their hands vanished like a mirage.
【What do you wish for?】
The woman asked.
“P-please... extend that child’s lifespan…….”
Without a hint of hesitation, Lee Na-young pointed at the fairy struggling for breath in Claire’s hand. The woman’s gaze followed.
Clink.
The scale in the woman’s hand moved.
It tilted one way, then the other, wobbling back and forth until it settled into a perfect balance.
【Your wish has been granted.】
The woman answered Lee Na-young. But.
-Peep... peeeep…….
The fairy’s breath remained labored. Her sparkling eyes were still dimming.
“H-H-How much... how much did it increase…?”
Lee Na-young asked urgently.
【1 minute.】
“……What?”
Lee Na-young’s eyes shook at the answer.
“Cut the crap!!”
In the midst of the shock, Idni let out a furious cry.
“One minute? One minute? You fucking bitch!!”
“Idni…!!”
Maria desperately seized Idni, who looked ready to launch herself at the woman.
“Let me go!! I’ll—”
“……Please.”
At the desperation in Maria’s voice, as if her emotions had been crushed down, Idni bit her lip.
Clenching her teeth hard enough to nearly crack them, Idni’s gaze fixed on the Fairy.
The little trickster who had always smiled so brightly was wearing a face frozen with terror.
“……Hah.”
Swallowing the surging emotions, Idni stepped back.
The woman, who had been gazing down at Idni with brief curiosity, opened her mouth again.
【I shall ask you. How much value do these offerings you have given me hold for you?】
“O-Of course—”
【Do they hold value great enough to sacrifice your life?】
A sneer bloomed at the corners of the woman’s desiccated lips.
【In any era, you humans never change. You dare to beg the natural order to be twisted, all while offering things that are nothing more than keepsakes that matter little whether you have or lack them.】
Whirrrr—!!
The balance scale in the woman’s hand moved once more.
The scale was unmistakably tilted to one side.
The sneer on the woman’s lips deepened.
【The time granted to the Young Queen is seven minutes.】
Thud—!!
The scale the woman held settled onto the ground.
【Within that time, make the scale level. Do so, and what you desire shall be granted to you in full.】
The woman looked down with arrogant eyes and bared sharp teeth.
—10 years.
A man walked up through the rain.
“10 years.”
Stopping in front of the woman, the man swept back his soaking hair and spoke again.
“I’ll offer ten years of my lifespan.”
**
Kim Gyeong-tae.
A graduate of Arena Academy and a leading Awakened of the Galaxy Guild.
He shouted toward the woman, whose appearance was both goddess-like and fiendishly sinister.
“I said I’ll offer ten years.”
The woman did not answer.
Instead.
Whirrrr—!!
The scale’s counterweight moved a little.
“Ha, fuck. It barely budged.”
Kim Gyeong-tae frowned at the weight that had risen by the barest sliver.
“I—”
“Junior. Don’t.”
Noticing that the girl with pure white hair, whose name he didn’t know, was about to try the same thing, he stopped her.
“You juniors have already done more than enough just by creating this chance. So….”
Kim Gyeong-tae drew up his mana.
“Stop holding back. If you’re coming out, come on out, seniors and juniors alike.”
His voice, though no louder than before, carried mana and cut clearly through the now heavier rain.
“…I was about to step out anyway.”
“Tsk, that does a number on a senior’s pride.”
“Look at this bastard Kim Gyeong-tae. Got into Galaxy and now he’s got a mouth on him.”
Six men and women walked out of the darkened street.
Just as Kim Gyeong-tae had done, they each spoke toward the woman.
“Ten years from me too.”
“Eleven years.”
“Quit your bullshit and just say ten.”
Whirrrr—!!
The scale’s counterweight moved again. But level was still impossibly far away.
Kim Gyeong-tae scrunched his forehead, then quickly shook off the feeling and turned his body.
“Um, may I be excused for a moment?”
“…….”
The most powerful sword of the God of Amusement, the Executor who carried out the god’s will.
The woman, standing so far above him that he dared not even meet her eyes, nodded.
“…Thank you.”
Kim Gyeong-tae let out a silent sigh of relief and approached the Fairy. The rest of the graduates, who had been watching from behind, hurriedly followed.
“Miss Fairy.”
—Peep…?
The Fairy, who had been exhaling weakly, lifted her head.
Kim Gyeong-tae took a breath, then smiled again and pulled a chocolate from his pocket.
“Do you remember me?”
—Peepang…!!
A small light flickered back into the Fairy’s fading eyes.
“You remember, right? That….”
“Move it, punk.”
In an instant, Kim Gyeong-tae was shoved aside, and another graduate took his place.
“And me? You remember me too, right? I bought you this back then—”
“Our sweetie~ What about big sis? Does my little one remember big sis?”
“Big sis, my foot, you’re an old lady— Pffft?!”
“You wanna die?”
Each of the graduates crowded toward the Fairy, pushing their faces forward and bringing up old stories.
Kim Gyeong-tae, briefly pushed aside, scratched his head as he watched the scene and moved to close in again.
—Gasp… wheeze…!!
The Fairy, who had been panting as if she would collapse any second, rose up from her spot and spoke.
—Fwiend…!!
Pointing to the faces of each graduate one by one, she showed them the same lively smile she had once given them long ago.
“Ah, dammit….”
“You crying?”
“What are you talking about… got rain in my eyes, that’s all. Isn’t this senior the one who’s crying?”
While the graduates each sniffled and wiped their noses, Kim Gyeong-tae was also rubbing his stinging eyes.
‘Thank you, Chairman.’
The message had only vaguely indicated the location, the time, and to stay hidden. He had even considered just leaving. But—
—Peephee. Hee…!!
That mischievous smile simply would not leave his mind.
—Peephee, peephee….
The Fairy, who had been smiling widely, slumped onto Claire’s palm. Then, with effort, she raised her head and her tiny lips moved.
—Wanna… play more… sleepy….
“No!! Hold on!!”
“Hey?! You can’t fall asleep!!”
Seeing her breathing grow so thin it threatened to stop at any moment, Kim Gyeong-tae ground his teeth and shouted at the woman.
“Hey!! Add the years we just offered to her right now!!”
In response, the woman smiled with narrowed eyes.
【Impossible.】
“What?!”
【Once a deal is begun, not even I can rescind it. It can only be completed in full, or naturally voided in accordance with the natural order.】
【Do not fret. In three minutes, the lifespans you placed on the scale will return to you.】
“No, you crazy…!!”
Kim Gyeong-tae did not shout at the sneering woman. He knew it would only entertain her more.
“You bastards!! Get out here, now!!”
Instead, Kim Gyeong-tae yelled toward the remaining graduates who were still hiding and watching. But no one else walked out through the rain.
“You…!!”
“Enough.”
A cool voice that froze even the rage surging to the top of his head. Kim Gyeong-tae went rigid on the spot.
**
—Peep, peeeep….
Baek Ha-na could not look at Claire as Claire strode this way, cradling the Fairy whose breathing grew ever softer.
She simply did not have the courage to meet those eyes.
—Peep, peep….
Carried to the children’s side by Claire, the Fairy barely lifted her trembling eyelids.
—Fwiend… wasso fun… zoomzoom… peephee, heehee….
How can she still smile?
“Aga…”
Her throat was so tight the words would not come out properly.
“…Let’s play again.”
The corners of her lips trembled as she smiled.
“Y-Yeah! After you’ve slept, let’s play again. Okay? I’ll, I’ll scribble with you, play tag… everything… I’ll do it all for you….”
Idni’s eyes were flushed red.
“I’ve bought a whole pile of clothes for you, you know….”
“…Chocolate. I’ll buy you tons.”
“*hic*… hu-urk….”
—Nn… heehee….
The Fairy’s eyelids were slowly lowering.
【One minute remains.】
At the woman’s words, no one spoke.
They only stared blankly at the Fairy, whose eyes were now closed.
“Ha-na.”
“…….”
Baek Ha-na’s bloodshot eyes turned to Claire.
“Do you resent me for not telling you sooner?”
“……No.”
Baek Ha-na bit her lip.
“Even if you’d t-told… told me, nothing would have changed….”
If anything, Ha-na would have been devoured by guilt and every other emotion, unable to leave behind anything that could truly be called a memory. And more than anything.
‘…I have no right to resent anyone.’
Wiping the blood trickling down her lip, Baek Ha-na tried to take in the Fairy’s final moments as those breaths grew weaker still.
Baek Ha-na.
‘……?’
She heard the voice she had longed to hear.
If you wish it, I will help you.
‘Help… me?’
The little girl from whom even the sound of breathing had ceased.
The scale that, despite the sacrifice of seventy years of lifespan, still remained irrationally tilted.
Baek Ha-na’s lips moved.
【It is over—】
“Please… h-help me….”
Whrrrrrr—!!
With a thunderous sound, the scale that had seemed like it would never move again shifted.
【Wha-What is the meaning of…?】
The woman could not close her mouth as she stared at the scale, now perfectly level in an instant.
Just then.
…tap.
…tap.
An alien sound mixed into the street filled with rain.
……tap.
The distinct echo of dress shoes stopped.
“Come down.”
An irresistible force pressed down upon the woman.