Invitation
Invitation
March 22nd.
As the Management Bureau's reputation of me changed, several interesting shifts occurred.
The first was a change in how people looked at me.
Until recently, the gazes directed at me were nothing but outright disgust or the fear of avoiding something terrible.
It's an entirely normal and emotional defense mechanism that humans manifest when faced with the essence of an anomaly.
I have no intention of feeling wronged, calling it discrimination.
Even I wouldn't feel favorably disposed if I encountered a monster with its head on fire in the middle of the street.
But now, the temperature of the gazes following me has changed significantly.
The eyes that were once filled with hostility have noticeably softened.
The sidelong glances, previously avoided as if looking at a snake, now carry a hint of curiosity.
The second was a change in the backroom gossip.
The damp, spiteful criticisms mixed with profanity and disgust.
Listening to countless fabrications and slanders, I sometimes felt the urge to lash out like a real monster and crush them all.
But not anymore.
The backroom gossip has vanished.
Its place has been filled only by my achievements and intrigue.
What kind of anomaly I devoured, whose life I saved.
What benefits my existence brings to the Management Bureau became their main topic of gossip.
What a peculiar sensation.
The hostility once directed at an unknown terror has, without my noticing, transformed into blind dependence and favor.
Is human adaptability truly this shallow and sly?
For me, it was a change that was hardly bad—extremely efficient and comfortable.
And today.
A doctor who introduced himself as Jung Won-joong came to the containment cell.
"I'm Jung Won-joong. A 1st-grade doctor."
The middle-aged man I'd seen talking with Kang Tae-jun before.
His graying hair and deeply etched wrinkles bear the marks of time.
But his eyes were strangely sharp.
There was an unpleasant ease, born from experience, without a trace of intimidation in his attitude toward me.
"I finally get to have a proper conversation with you."
I heard he'd been requesting interviews ever since I was brought into the facility.
But due to trust issues and the fact that he wasn't my assigned supervisor, his requests kept getting rejected. It seems permission was finally granted.
I stared at Jung Won-joong while sitting on the sofa.
'What's with that sticky gaze?'
For an old man, his eyes were childlike—excited and greedy.
A persistent observer's gaze, as if trying to find a flaw by licking every membrane. An unpleasant feeling rose within me.
This was my first time seeing a 1st-grade employee.
Are they all like this man, each one slightly off-kilter?
"Fascinating. The more I look, the more fascinating you are."
Whether bold or reckless, Jung Won-joong grabbed my hand without permission and pulled it close to his eyes.
He traced my palm lines like a rare insect's belly, and I shook my hand free in disgust.
"Such a docile, well-controlled entity."
Even if their perception of me had softened considerably, to them I was still an entity.
This cool distance that never narrows—I'll never get used to it, no matter how many times I experience it.
"I've wanted to meet you for a long time."
"..."
"By any chance, do you remember the moment you were first born into this world?"
I clearly have memories of awakening, but I didn't bother to answer.
"What was around you when you opened your eyes?"
A forest. I suddenly awoke naked on a cold forest floor.
Come to think of it, it's been less than a month since that day.
What a terrible, eventful time it's been.
"Do you have any idea who your parents might be? Or any being you can guess at?"
Nonsense.
Since I wasn't born from someone's womb with an umbilical cord cut, there's no way I have parents.
"Is there truly nothing you know about what brought you into existence? If not parents, no trace remains of a creator or a god who shaped you?"
A series of metaphysical questions.
I'm starting to find it not worth responding to.
Jung Won-joong, noticing the flickering of my flames, quickly waved his hands.
"The flame's getting smaller! Is it because I'm bringing up too difficult topics? Ah, right, that reminds me."
He rummaged through his coat pocket.
What emerged from the heavy pocket was a small chocolate bar.
"Want some?"
What I'd asked Kang Tae-jun or Lee Da-eun for before were full meals. Not simple snacks.
This is the first time someone's offered me a snack.
A new curiosity arose.
I wasn't keen on conversing with the unpleasant old man, but I obediently accepted the chocolate bar.
"Oh, you'll take it! You'll take it!"
Was that really something to get so excited about? Jung Won-joong delighted like a child.
Clicking my tongue at the exaggerated reaction, I tore open the chocolate wrapper.
An ordinary rectangular chocolate bar.
I took it out and plopped it onto the cross-section of my neck.
"..."
"..."
"...Haah."
Lee Da-eun, who had been silently observing the situation from behind, pressed her forehead as if exasperated.
Jung Won-joong, looking puzzled, soon covered his mouth, unable to contain himself, and burst into laughter.
"Pfft. Hup... heh heh, pfft hah!"
"..."
"Kang Tae-jun kept grumbling that you do weird things whenever someone gives you food. So this is what he meant?"
"..."
"Well, well. If you had a mouth, I'd advise you to chew and swallow it right away. But you don't even have such an opening."
Chuckling, Jung Won-joong reached his hand toward the cross-section of my neck.
He picked up the chocolate bar resting on the surface and, without a moment's hesitation, shoved it into his own mouth.
The playfulness vanished from his eyes as he chewed and swallowed the chocolate bar.
The sharp gleam of a mad anatomist.
In his bright eyes, which seemed unfazed by youth, flashed a terrible intellectual curiosity.
"What if we peel back the skin of that cross-section? Would there be a hidden throat inside?"
It seems the title of 1st-grade doctor isn't just for show.
This man bluntly spoke of a grotesque method that an ordinary researcher wouldn't dare mention.
"What, why the atmosphere like that? Hey, Da-eun. Is what I said really that strange?"
"It... it is strange. Saying we should peel back the neck cross-section of a living entity."
"It's possible, isn't it? All biological analysis starts at the pinnacle of dissection."
Lee Da-eun shook her head in horror.
So that's the level of ethical absence and imagination you need to reach 1st grade.
Rejected, Jung Won-joong smacked his lips.
"Tch, that's how the world is. Suppressing an individual's creative hypotheses with the yardstick of ethics. This is why pioneers are lonely."
He has quite an eccentric side.
An old man just as broken as any anomaly.
"By the way, you're stubbornly refusing to answer. What do I have to ask for you to speak?"
"How about talking about food? Blue Flame likes food."
"Food? I don't know much besides chocolate. Well, let's see."
Jung Won-joong stroked his rough white beard, then suddenly threw out a surprising question.
"When you consume anomalies, what do they taste like?"
"..."
"You can't eat human food, but you can eat anomalies. What's that taste that humans can never experience, that makes you seek it out so much?"
"..."
"Silence again. What's the difference between talking to you and talking to a wall?"
Jung Won-joong, openly showing his disappointment, leaned forward.
His eyes, propping his arms on his knees and looking up at me, held a terrible madness.
"You said consuming anomalies strengthens your abilities. So, if you ate an entity far stronger than yourself, could you fully inherit even that transcendent power?"
Is it my imagination?
Beyond simple curiosity, this was a question clearly forged with a certain purpose.
The doctor's eyes held some expectation toward my existence.
"You must have been born with an inevitable purpose. That bizarre consuming ability was surely intended by your creator..."
Psssshhhh-!
The sound of the decompression door cut through the conversation as Seo Young-eun entered.
Glaring at Jung Won-joong, she firmly waved her hand.
"Why do you keep prying into things even he himself doesn't know? The interview time is over. Stop and leave."
"Yeong-eun. I haven't had a proper conversation yet."
"If you haven't gotten a single answer until now, it means he's not comfortable talking. Don't upset him for no reason and just stop."
At Seo Young-eun's firm dismissal, Jung Won-joong glanced regretfully, but eventually straightened his hunched back.
As he was being chased out, he couldn't hold back and spoke as if lecturing.
"For the survival of the Management Bureau and humanity, I can endure some bloodshed! Even if you point fingers at me and call me a crazy old man, for the order and safety of the world..."
"What's wrong with you today? You're not actually senile, are you! Get out now!"
In the end, overwhelmed by her persistence, he was kicked out of the containment cell.
Even after being thrown out, Jung Won-joong turned on the management room microphone and shoved in one last remark.
"I'll see you again soon. Blue Flame."
"Ah, seriously! I told you not to use the microphone recklessly!"
It felt like dealing with a villain causing a scene on Line 1.
After only seeing weak humans trembling before me, dealing with someone so consumed by madness actually drained my energy instead.
"He does have a tendency to be a bit... unusual."
Lee Da-eun offered an apology on his behalf.
"People who've worked at the Management Bureau for a long time can never survive with their minds intact. They either get consumed by an incomprehensible, blind sense of mission, or they go completely mad."
"..."
"But please understand that he's not a bad person at heart. Dr. Jung Won-joong is someone who would willingly give his own life if it meant saving humanity."
The more stagnant the water at the Management Bureau, the more humans come to resemble anomalies, transforming irrationally.
Well, having spent a lifetime facing unknown terrors and being exposed to mental contamination countless times, it's no wonder his brain structure is damaged.
They have no choice but to change.
On the contrary, it's stranger not to change.
Because you have to change to survive in a world like this.
"Blue Flame. I have something to relay."
Seo Young-eun, who had personally seen Jung Won-joong out to make sure he'd left properly, approached me with her arms crossed.
Her attitude toward me had softened somewhat since that late-night consideration, but her characteristic prickliness remained.
"You went to Seoul Headquarters with Team Leader Kang Tae-jun last time, right?"
She looked at the chart in her hand and let out a small sigh.
"It's about the Blade Head case. It seems they're planning to move that entity to our facility."
Blade Head?
That uncontrollable fellow entity is coming here?
Come to think of it, I think I overheard something like that in the conversation between Kang Tae-jun and Go Jun-ho before we returned.
I thought the administrative procedures would take several months at least.
Who knew the approval would come through in less than a week?
So when he boasted that the authority of a 1st-grade doctor was immense, it wasn't an exaggeration.
"It was actually true."
"The Blade Head was impossible to analyze, no matter how much the doctors tried. It kept killing all the test subjects and employees that came near it."
Seo Young-eun pointed at me with the documents.
"But with you here, the Blade Head reacts. That means we can obtain a huge amount of information. I think Headquarters gladly transferred the Blade Head for that reason."
"So, does that mean the Blade Head will be added to the entities we manage?"
Lee Da-eun asked with a worried tone at Seo Young-eun's words.
She seemed to have heard about the Blade Head's ferocity.
"Nothing's been decided yet about an assigned supervisor. But it would be convenient to assign one from our side."
"I heard it's qualitatively different from Blue Flame."
"It's not different. The Blade Head is a normal anomaly; it's the guy lounging on the sofa who's horribly abnormal."
Right.
I'm the abnormal anomaly.
"In that regard, I'd like you to be fully involved in the isolation and management procedures for the Blade Head from now on."
At first, I thought to agree, but then sensed something odd and tilted my head.
Is she asking me to act as a supervisor now?
"Don't misunderstand. Just because you're helping with analysis doesn't mean you're not an entity anymore. Since the Blade Head only reacts to you, I'm asking for help."
Fizz- If you wish—
Having finished her business, Seo Young-eun looked behind her.
The heavy footsteps of someone trudging down. I already knew who it was.
Team Leader Kang Tae-jun.
Despite suffering an attack that broke both his arms, he returned in less than a week with his bones healed.
Lee Da-eun greeted him with a bright smile.
"Team Leader!"
"Yeah."
He answered nonchalantly.
"Are your arms fully recovered? Even so, being discharged in just a week..."
"Yeah. Praise the Management Bureau's bizarre healing technology."
Technology that welds broken bones back together in a week like soldering.
It must be the result of extracting and squeezing out some anomaly's regenerative ability.
I can't even fathom how much technology the Management Bureau possesses.
"No major incidents while I was gone, right?"
At his routine greeting, Seo Young-eun answered curtly.
"None, Team Leader Kang."
"Is that so? I was worried you'd be causing trouble for Blue Head while I was away."
"Don't talk nonsense. Do you take me for some woman who picks fights everywhere?"
"Hoho, you spout all kinds of bullshit at me, and now you're putting on airs?"
After creatively cursing him out, Kang Tae-jun grabbed a nearby chair and plopped down.
He looks fine on the surface, but it seems the aftereffects remain—his thick forearms were twitching slightly.
"Anyway, I rested well while I was laid up. Time to get back to work as much as I rested, right?"
Fizz- During that time— I consumed— anomalies.
"I heard they let you consume a few entities in the facility. Feeling stronger? Like Son Goku after eating the sacred fruit?"
The entities I consumed were all G-grade, and it was much easier than the film anomaly incident, so it wasn't particularly impressive.
Seeing my ability growth curve stagnating, it seems about time to challenge something at Yellow-grade.
"Doesn't seem like it was all that effective, huh? Alright. Then, Blue Head. Pull that out. Workout's over, time for the main event."
Even just saying 'that,' I could instinctively tell.
The business card for 'Velvet & Read' pulled from his inner pocket.
It's time to respond to her invitation.
※※※
jingle-jingle-
The antique brass doorbell let out a dull, cracking sound.
A two-story bar drenched in a red hue.
The dense velvet curtain covering the stage and the sticky red lighting warned that this space was a hidden side of the world, severed from reality.
The bartender, silently wiping a glass, confirmed the visitor who had entered through the door and wordlessly pointed to a seat at the counter.
click.
As the visitor approached and sat down, the bartender—whose head was a silver cocktail shaker—pushed a cocktail glass toward him.
The visitor took the cocktail glass and raised it to face level as if tasting it.
Of course, since he didn't even have an opening to tilt the glass and pour the cocktail into, it was merely a gesture of drinking.
But even that was enough for him to blend perfectly into the decadent atmosphere of the space.
"Why— do you accept a cocktail— every time— if you can't even drink?"
A woman's voice, sliding up from behind.
The owner of the sultry voice settled into the seat next to the visitor and plopped a small speaker onto the counter.
"Why— do you keep— imitating humans— when you're not even human?"
A sensuous silhouette revealed outside a tight red dress.
And floating above it, an elegant crystal wine glass.
But perhaps she hadn't fully recovered from the intense battle last time, as faint cracks were etched across the glass surface like scars.
The guest didn't say much.
Whether he was smiling or ignoring her, he maintained his silence.
As if used to his arrogant silence, Wine Glass Head accepted the red wine the bartender offered.
She, too, only indulged in the deep aroma, not drinking.
"We may not be able to consume— but we can at least enjoy— this rich fragrance."
The visitor tapped the counter surface with his finger.
Then pointed to the dark railing on the second floor.
Wine Glass Head lightly waved her hand toward the second floor.
"It's fine— don't aim."
click.
The Sniper Rifle Object Head, which had been extending its head from the second-floor railing, withdrew its barrel.
Wine Glass Head, having defused the tense standoff, swirled her wine to release its rich aroma and whispered in a teasing voice.
"You know what—? You're an irredeemable piece of trash."
Having finished her 'nosing'—smelling without a nose—she set down the glass.
"Telling me to meet you if it was okay—? It wasn't— okay at all."
She irritably traced the scars engraved on her crystal head.
No matter how excellent an anomaly's self-regeneration ability, once damaged by superheated flames, the wounds don't heal easily.
"How— are you going to compensate for this? The wine's aroma— keeps leaking out because of these gaps."
Her tone was teasing, but there was no resentment in her voice.
Rather, the wine in her glass turned even redder.
"But— that's why I liked you even more."
Depending on her emotions, the fermented fruit scent around her grew rich.
If a human just smelled this, they could become overly intoxicated and lose consciousness—a terrible magical power.
"For someone so newly born— you pushed me into a corner. Your potential is— sufficient."
click. She set down her glass and seductively swept her hand down her exposed white shoulder.
"Before someone else snatches you up— I need to pick you up first."
"The business card."
A voice like silver that instantly froze the air of the bar.
The sticky fruit scent that had been pressing down on the space evaporated and vanished in an instant.
An absolute silence, as if time had stopped, heavily weighed down the entire bar.
The bartender wiping glasses.
The Sniper Rifle Object Head watching from the second floor.
Everyone held their breath, focused on the voice.
A voice that penetrated through the head, not the ears.
An authority that Object Heads, who relied on speakers to converse, could never even imitate.
"Was the delivery done properly?"
Though his tone was soft and gentle.
His overall vibe and peculiar way of speaking made the man's presence infinitely alien and terrifying.
Wine Glass Head answered after a moment.
"I gave it—. So I hope— he definitely comes to our side."
"You must not recruit him."
At the unexpected instruction, Wine Glass Head's wine turned cold.
She turned her head to face the man directly.
"Why—?"
"Blue Flame is an existence that expands and grows stronger only when kept under the Management Bureau's control."
"I can provide— full support— no less than the Management Bureau."
"That's not true. Your greed would trap Blue Flame by your side like a collection piece and let him rot."
The visitor stood up, preparing to leave.
She had no intention of stopping him, but since she hadn't gotten the answer she wanted, she called out to stop him.
"I'm not— finished speaking yet—. If you don't draw Blue Flame into our faction now— other organizations will also start moving in earnest. You know— Blue Flame is already spreading on YouTube, right?"
"..."
"Are you planning to leave it alone— even if a war breaks out among Object Heads? The history we've built— hiding from human eyes— would all go to waste?"
"If it's a false peace inside a glass case, it was destined to shatter anyway."
A coolly cynical answer.
A deceptive attitude that watches over everything while also leading the charge in stirring up events.
Wine Glass Head realized belatedly.
Yes, that's right.
This man has always been this kind of being.
I had just momentarily forgotten during the long period of seclusion, but this man's nature has never changed.
An absolute being who controls the flow of the board while watching everything.
One of the two transcendent entities praised as being closest to the origin among Object Heads.
The Timekeeper's Pocket Watch, who holds and shakes the cogs of time.
click.
The back case of the pocket watch flipped open.
The inorganic clock face inside whirred as the mechanical gears engaged.
"The era of hiding in the shadows and worrying about others' opinions is over. The outdated remnants must be burned away."
Tic-toc. Tic-toc.
"Now, the time has come for the scattered Object Heads to rise to the surface and devour this world."
"What exactly— are you plotting?"
"I'm not plotting anything. I'm merely waiting for the right time and watching."
The Pocket Watch bent at the waist like a gentleman and gave a light nod.
"Blue Flame will become a lighthouse for the lost Object Heads, guiding them toward the true origin."
Tick.
With the sharp sound of a second hand, the Pocket Watch's form evaporated into the air like smoke.