Thank You for Waiting
White pupils opened.
It had come to this place along a thread, because the prey it had tasted through that thread was delicious, and it had slipped in unseen to learn what that prey really was. It rolled its eyes toward the meal. In the instant of looking, it thought cognition itself had come apart.
There was infinite life. Set beside it, even the light of the universe was a candle flame.
A shame. Such a shame. Had it known, it would have come in person. Had it known a mere thread could grant a taste like this, it would have spent far more of its strength. In a body like the one it wore, it could not savor that thing whole, nor haul it back to where it dwelt. It was afraid of what something it dared not ignore might do, if that something ever learned of this little outing.
Still, a brief taste ought to be permitted. It could always taste again later. The wait would be long, but was waiting not a refinement of its own?
It licked its tongue. Simply to feel the life breathing out, faint and steady, was rapture. Ah. It wanted to taste it now.
It coveted life. It coveted fear. It coveted consciousness. It did nothing but eat—anything, whatever it might be, whether it existed or did not, living or unliving. That alone was a reason to live. That alone was happiness. That alone was interest.
Its eyes curved.
The tree's eye split.
White arms and white legs tore through the eye and thrust themselves out, and blood ran from the wound—the waters of a fetus, the announcement of a birth. Death spread around the pool where the blood gathered. Grass that had stood upright blackened. Earth fat with richness cracked open. Buildings weathered away, and stones became sand. Birds that had spread their wings and climbed twisted in the empty air and fell. Even corpses rotted past rotting and ceased to be. The sky darkened, and light itself disappeared.
The thing that had ripped its way out of the eye set a foot upon the ground. Wherever the foot touched, life ended.
It ate. Things were eaten. Air, and sound, and light. Even a person's gaze was eaten.
It blinked, and drew a new gaze out of itself. If it did not, it seemed certain to lose sight altogether.
It was a grotesque being, nothing on its face but a single red spot and teeth. That white body turned its gaze on us.
Breath locked in the throat. We were being eaten—gone without a bone left behind, become food for that existence. Instinct passed judgment.
Run.
"Ru—!"
"Do. Not."
I never even saw it. The sight that had meant to look was eaten. The will to answer was eaten. Even the body's instinctive flinch was eaten.
"Khack—!"
Korea's strongest hero could not so much as react. A hole opened through his chest.
"Un.sta.ble?"
It flicked its hand, and Hwang Seokgu dropped. The root of his life drained out of him, and the ground at his feet soaked red.
"Graaaaaah!!!"
Dan Miryu charged, scattering a green light unlike the one he had used before. What the light carried was not Life. It was the will to kill.
"Oh."
"You bastard!!!"
The fist Dan Miryu threw landed dead center—a fist that could bring a mountain down. Anyone who took it should have died. The thing was unhurt. It rolled its shoulders as if it had just been given a massage and then, as though granting that this was rather good, it began to trade hands with him.
Its body creaked. Its movements were wretched. Even I, an ordinary person, could see that it did not know the first whisper of technique. It moved like a mannequin.
Boom. Boom. Boom. The exchange was entirely one-sided: Dan Miryu struck, and the thing was struck. Desperation sat on his face all the same. Now and then it reached out, a gesture for pinching gnats from the air, and Dan Miryu dodged those reaches as if his life hung on each one.
With a sharp breath he drove it into the earth and planted it there. For a moment the green light left his body. Then it blazed up again, and he attacked once more.
"Mr. Phantom!"
Blood ran from Dan Miryu's mouth.
"I will hold it! Please, run!"
He was launched high into the sky. The arm that seemed to have blocked the blow hung in shreds. Inside the crater, the thing stood.
"Go! I will hold the line with my life!"
Dan Miryu shot downward out of the air. Somewhere in the fall, the shattered arm was whole again.
"Fun."
It lifted the corners of its mouth, and the teeth tore open to either side. His fist and its fist met.
The shockwave sent my body tumbling. Pain snapped me awake. Run? Could I? Leave Dan Miryu here alone? Just me? No. If I ran, Dan Miryu died. There was no other ending. The Stone of Resurrection could not be allowed to pass into that thing's hands. If it did, the Earth ended.
Get up. I was a phantom thief. I was not allowed to fall. A phantom thief had to look at ease. Always.
"...Run."
Hwang Seokgu was on his feet. The hole through his chest had already vanished. In that brief interval, Dan Miryu had restored him.
"You, at least. Run."
Hwang Seokgu hurled himself into the middle of the clash. I bit down on my lip at the sight of them. Arms came off. Legs came off. Entrails burst. Blood and slaughter made a shambles of the ground.
I had to answer for this. I had to step in. This phantom thief's mask would protect me. So—hurry. Hurry...
"Mr. Phantom!"
The thing looked down at me. Mouth torn wide to both sides in a vicious grin, it picked me up.
"Bug."
Its mouth opened. A darkness deep as the bottomless pit rose to welcome me.
I fled at once. I made an impossible escape possible, the same way I had lived through the attack Sword had thrown.
Thud.
"Ghk—!"
It was a soft, slack fist, neither fast nor slow. It only touched me, lightly, and that alone drained the strength from my whole body. Pain drove my mind out.
"Heh. Heh."
A ghastly laugh. A hand closed on my throat. I could not even struggle. I looked at it, and the red spot glinted.
"Prey."
"No!"
Something crunched.
"Hm?"
The man who had been drawing looked away, and Anastasia asked.
"What is the matter?"
"Mmm."
He blinked.
"No. Something caught."
A tickle. Something had brushed his senses, and it was not a feeling he could dismiss. It vanished almost at once, but the man had not felt anything like it in a very long time.
"Anastasia. Has something happened?"
"...Nothing in particular."
"Hmm..."
He looked at the world map hanging in the room.
"Update the report and bring it to me."
"Understood."
Anastasia left, already placing a call, and the man's face went blank. The childish boy of a moment before was gone. What remained was someone indifferent to everything, interested in nothing.
"...Strange."
Not the man. The Darkness rippled. A flame with no form wavered and drifted, aimless, through the room.
He seemed to have missed something. For the Darkness, that was an experience he had not met with in a long while. He brought his face to the map for the briefest instant.
"...It stepped out."
Had the mischievous tree grown restless over some sweet prey? But it was not the tree.
"Now this is interesting."
The Darkness returned to his seat. He stared at the map. He considered. And then he decided.
With the Stone of Resurrection, Dan Miryu barely managed to heal his burst eye and his arm.
"Cough—! Cough—!"
The blood from his mouth would not stop. These were wounds even the Stone of Resurrection could not mend. The man called Dan Miryu was being scraped away, piece by piece.
"Finished?"
It flung Hwang Seokgu to the ground. Dried out like a mummy, he stared with empty eyes. Off to one side, a suit lay discarded, and a mask, and nothing else.
I die here. Dan Miryu was certain of it. But I take that thing with me. He would end this by spending his life. I'll follow soon. He put Life itself up as collateral and brought a new life into bloom.
"Oh. Oh. Oh!"
It stamped its feet, shivering with delight.
It ends here.
Before he could land the final blow—
"You don't have to do that."
"...Mr. Phantom?"
The phantom thief he had been sure was dead caught him by the shoulder and held him still.
He was absorbed. He was gone.
"A.live?"
Even the thing cocked its head.
"I am a phantom thief. Were I dead, I should hardly still be one."
He looked perfectly intact.
"Thank heaven. I was certain you had died..."
"Please forget that disgraceful display a moment ago. Just now, we must save Mr. Hwang Seokgu."
"But Mr. Hwang is..."
Phantom soothed him, easy as if nothing at all were wrong.
"He is still alive. He does look rather likely to die at any moment, however."
"...Understood."
"You?"
Before Dan Miryu could move, it came closer.
"Oh dear. I nearly forgot."
Phantom wrapped Dan Miryu and himself in a great cloth. The thing punched a hole straight through it, but there was nothing inside.
"Ta-da. One modest little escape, successfully performed."
He was already standing at Hwang Seokgu's side. Dan Miryu knelt there and set about healing him.
"Please wait. I shall have this tidied away shortly."
"If I can, let me—"
"There is no need."
The phantom thief's mask moved. The smiling part stretched. The eyes shrank. Black spread, and white dwindled.
"I am a phantom thief. This much is simple."
Dan Miryu felt fear. An abyss he could not name was standing in front of him.
...Is this really Mr. Phantom?
The thing stared blankly at the phantom thief.
"You. Are. Strange."
"A phantom thief is rather strange, yes."
Phantom walked toward it.
"Now that I think of it, I never introduced myself."
"...?"
He bowed with a showman's extravagance.
"A pleasure. I am a phantom thief. Phantom, the phantom thief."
"I leave myself in your care."
The phantom thief's mask tore into a long, splitting grin.