10. The Yellow Raincoat (4)
Chomp, chomp, chomp.
Setting off to wander this way and that, I spent a good long while floundering through a space with no end in sight. I tried going left, then right. Sometimes I struck out at thirty degrees, or one hundred seventy-eight, or other angles besides. But no matter how far I roamed, nothing changed — I couldn't even find so much as a single ordinary pebble.
"Uuurgh... what the hell is that guy even playing at?!"
I screamed at the sky and stamped my feet against the ground. Naturally, none of it changed a thing. By the time I'd finished venting, I was mentally wrung out, so I decided to sit down for a short rest. I'd been wandering for roughly two hours, after all — a little break couldn't hurt.
"Haaah. All I did was come out for tteokbokki. How did it come to this?"
The sighs just kept coming. How on earth had I ended up like this? All I wanted was to eat tteokbokki, and somehow I'd gotten tangled up with an Anomaly — and now I couldn't even find a way out!
A gloomy feeling settled over me. My ears and tail drooped right along with my mood, which somehow made everything feel even more dismal.
"Haa... if only I had some tasty snacks right about now."
Just as I was in the thick of my pity party, a sweet scent suddenly began drifting through the air!
Sniff, sniff.
My ears snapped upright!
"This is... pudding..?!"
No doubt about it — that was unmistakably the smell of pudding! My ears reacting was proof enough! But since when did pudding give off a scent this strong?
"Hmm... well, let's go take a look, shall we?"
After a moment's deliberation, I decided to head toward the smell. Suspicious? Sure, a little. But I'm an Anomaly myself — what's the worst that could happen?
Tail swaying, I set off in search of the scent's source, sniffing away with every step. A few minutes of searching later, I finally found it — the pudding!
"P-pudding! And isn't that a limited edition?!"
From the moment I laid eyes on it, my ears and tail couldn't contain themselves. No — my hand was already moving to grab it. That is, if my intuition hadn't sounded the alarm one more time.
My hand wanted to snatch up that pudding this very instant. But my intuition was screaming at me not to — absolutely, positively not!
So I began agonizing between intuition and instinct. No, honestly — I pitted the two of them against each other and let them fight it out.
—Absolutely not! No means NO!
—Why not?! There's a limited-edition pudding sitting right in front of us!
I-it was dead even..!
I watched the clash between intuition and instinct with breathless interest, cheering them both on, palms slick with sweat.
Whoever wins is on my side!
Even as I cheered, the fight raged on.
—The pudding is RIGHT THERE. How am I supposed to hold back?
"R-right! Holding back would be the weird thing to do!"
I started raising my hand for Team Instinct. Come to think of it, instinct had a point. Why should anyone hold back in front of a snack?
But just as I reached for the pudding once more, intuition bellowed:
—NO! Did you forget?! We're inside an Anomaly! Since when does Anomaly-space come with snacks?!
"H-huh? Now that you mention it..."
Taking intuition's advice, I turned the matter over carefully. This place was presumed to be the inside of an Anomaly. Fog blanketed everything around me, and there was no telling whether this space was infinite or not. I couldn't even get a proper read on the future, so I'd been pushing forward on gut and luck alone. And out of nowhere — pudding?
I looked at the pudding again. It still smelled delicious, but this time I finally noticed it: the wrapper hadn't been torn open anywhere!
"...It was a trap."
The instant the realization hit, the pudding vanished from before my eyes. So it had been some kind of illusion, then.
Phew— Letting out a long breath of relief, I thanked my intuition. It told me to leave everything to it anytime, then breezed off. Instinct, on the other hand, was still smacking its lips in disappointment.
"Hmm. But why pudding, of all things?"
Arms crossed, I set my mind working again. Why would pudding appear out of nowhere? I went back over everything I'd learned so far.
The Anomaly charms people. It swallows them whole. And it presumably dumps them into this seemingly infinite space...
My ears shot straight up!
"That's it! The pudding showed up because it wanted to charm me!"
My eyes flew wide open in shock. If my hunch was right, then this Anomaly — or this space — had dangled pudding in front of me in response to my desire! In other words, if I'd actually eaten that pudding, the odds were very, very high that I'd be in a world of hurt right now!
And with that realization, I could feel goosebumps crawling up my skin. I mean, I'd been halfway taken in myself just now, hadn't I? Under normal circumstances, if pudding turned up in a situation this suspicious, I'd have ignored it flat out. But a minute ago, I'd nearly gone with my instinct.
"Haa... I really do owe my intuition another thank-you."
My intuition truly is a splendid partner. Sure, it only bothers to show up once in a while, but it does steer me clear of dangers like this, doesn't it?
"Alright. Then let's... hold on. It reacted to my desire, which means...?"
No way!
My ears snapped upright at the fresh realization. If I was right, then right now, this very moment, I was closing in on the heart of this space!
Here's the logic: if I weren't nearing this space's center — its core — there would be no reason to bother showing me pudding at all. It can't possibly know what abilities I have, and flashing its power around carelessly would be risky, no? A mindless Anomaly might get away with that, sure, but this one is genuinely careful. And it knows how to gamble, too. It was precisely that pairing of caution and gambler's nerve that let it swallow me whole in the first place. Would something like that act without thinking? My answer is no — a hard, resounding no.
Which meant the pudding had to be bait for my attention or a trap to snare me — nothing else fit! Of course, the thing might have predicted even this line of reasoning, but as of now, I didn't think it had gotten that far. Which meant I was walking in the right direction. And if that was the case—
"What I want to know is — can I see the future from here?"
When you're curious about something, you test it right away. That's just how it's done!
I started looking into the future on the spot, and at long last, the possible futures began to flicker into view! No idea why — probably an aftereffect of having just 'defeated' that pudding.
"Heh heh heh. For all I know, this could be a trap too... but either way — I've found a path!"
My tail swished happily back and forth. Sifting through the countless futures, I searched out the direction I took most often, and soon confirmed it: roughly thirty degrees to the right.
"Alright! Let's go!"
With my next objective in hand, I smiled and stepped forward.
But hold on — didn't I forget something?
"Hah! Hah! Hah!"
When had it started? Just when had the world turned into this sorry mess?!
"You there!"
"Aaaahhh!! Stay back!"
A strange figure was chasing me down from behind, and it was terrifying! No — it wasn't just one figure, either! There were at least ten people on my heels right now, if not more! I had no idea how I'd even ended up being chased — not the faintest clue why!
"Why are you chasing me?!"
"You made our kid cry!"
"You stared at me and startled me!"
"You looked at us with a weird expression!"
What kind of bullshit is all of that?! I couldn't make sense of a single word! All I did was walk down the street! So why was I the one being hunted?!
"Hah! Hah!"
My breath grew shorter and shorter. My legs wobbled more and more. A dark thought crept in — at this rate, I might actually get caught. No way through this situation came to mind at all. What on earth was I supposed to do?
Even so, I kept running. Running, and running, and running. Every time my speed dropped, I bit down on my hands, my arms, my tongue — whatever it took to claw my way through another stretch. Thanks to that, there wasn't a spot left unharmed above my waist, but it beat being caught by them.
But was even that reaching its limit now? My pace slowed, and slowed. "Please, please, please! Damn you, legs! MOVE!!" But my body wouldn't listen to my heart; it insisted there were no more steps left in it. Just as I felt my whole body going on strike, a police box appeared before my eyes.
"Aaah! Hey there! Help me, please!!"
I waved my arms in a frenzy, begging for help. The officers chatting in front of the police box turned toward my voice — and bewilderment and shock began spreading across their faces. Well, of course it did. This many people had gathered just to hunt me down! But I had no time to spare a thought for their feelings. I kept waving my arms high overhead, pleading.
"Please! Somebody help me!"
The two officers traded grave looks. At length, they drew revolvers from their holsters. Apparently they meant to fire off a warning shot or two.
And seeing that, I beamed. Genuinely, brightly beamed — overjoyed that this endless, exhausting chase might finally be over! Whether it was that or something else, my flagging legs found a fresh wellspring of strength. But as I picked up speed again and made straight for the police box, my face froze solid.
Why?
The officers leveled their muzzles — not at the sky, not at the crowd behind me, but precisely, perfectly, at me. They shouted:
"Halt! Stop, or we open fire!"
"You are under arrest for aggravated murder and twenty-three other charges—"
Why.
There was no way I could stop. People were charging at me from behind. I glanced back over my shoulder — the ones chasing me wore faces like vengeful spirits, ready to tear me apart on the spot. I looked ahead — the police were shouting my name, ordering me to halt.
...Why?
"Fire!"
One of the two officers shouts, and from the two revolvers, bullets fly.
Setting aside the question of why I can even see this — there is a far greater mystery. Why had it come to this? Until only yesterday, my luck was so good it pierced the very heavens, wasn't it? So why was this happening to me?
Were the heavens angry? Because I'd come to possess luck no human was meant to have? And so they bestowed misfortune upon me to restore the balance? I didn't know. But one thing was certain.
Two bullets had just pierced me square between the eyes.
Their marksmanship is certainly something else.
And with that thought as my last, my consciousness faded to black.
"Uuurgh..."
A man lay there, his face twisted in torment. Still bound in tentacles, still wandering lost through a dream. And beside him stood an entity whose lack of a face did nothing to hide its fury — its 'expression' was warped hard enough to make very, very clear just how angry it was.
As if to vent that rage, it slammed down into the ground again and again and again. Then it did something to the man. The man's face twisted into something even more agonized than before — and at the sight, the entity seemed, just slightly, appeased.
Clad in its yellow raincoat, the entity melted into the empty air and was gone.
Off to kill a fox that didn't know its place.