Chapter 169
Chapter 169
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Vine
Chapter: 169
Chapter Title: The Black Crow and the White Ghost (6)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Raven and I were covered in musty dust after squeezing through the cramped ventilation shaft.
After somehow making our way down to the laboratory, we were greeted by a darkness so thick we couldn't see an inch in front of us.
Strange. When I first woke up here, it was so bright it almost hurt my eyes.
I tilted my head for a moment, then pulled my coat tighter in the cold, warehouse-like air and stuck close to Raven.
It would be dangerous if some unseen attack suddenly came our way.
It definitely wasn't because I was scared of the dark surroundings. Really.
“We seem to have come down quite a way... To think there's a space this large. It's almost unbelievable that it went undiscovered.”
But was Raven unfazed by this eerie environment?
He simply moved the flashlight he’d brought with the same composure as always.
The flashlight's powerful beam revealed spotless, pristine white walls and floors.
In the silence, so profound that not even the scuttling of an insect could be heard, I unconsciously swallowed hard.
How could it be this quiet?
I could only pray that we hadn't come all this way in the cold for nothing.
‘Wait, wasn't it always this devoid of people? I think I wandered around for over an hour that time, too...’
But thinking back, this place had always felt like this.
When I first woke up, I didn't meet a single person or even hear a sound.
So, if there was any change at all, it was probably just that the power was out.
I muttered to myself inwardly, as if to convince myself, and steeled my resolve.
While I was mustering my courage, had he been meticulously checking our surroundings?
Raven, who had crouched down to touch the floor with his fingertips, looked at me and spoke seriously.
“Let's start moving. Yuria, don't stray too far from me. And just in case, be ready to use your psychokinesis at a moment's notice.”
“…?”
What? You told me not to use it earlier, and now you're telling me to?
I stared at him, dumbfounded by his sudden change of tune.
Even with his mask on, Raven could apparently interpret such a look with ease.
He averted his gaze to one side of the hallway, as if he had no good comeback, and opened his mouth.
“That was about being careful in general. When there's no one around to see, like now... you should use enough to protect yourself. Are you just going to let yourself get hurt unfairly?”
“…”
“…If you understand, let's get moving. We'll catch a cold if we stay in a place like this for too long.”
Cutting the conversation short, Raven hurried off, as if telling me to follow quickly.
The sight of his back as he walked ahead with the flashlight was incredibly irritating.
Well, I could understand what he meant.
I had to be careful in my daily life to avoid carelessly using my psychic powers outside and revealing their existence.
But when something more important was at stake than hiding my powers, like now, it was crucial not to hold back.
Still, from my perspective, I couldn't shake the feeling that he was being completely arbitrary.
If this was the case, why did he scold me earlier? I was genuinely scared. How could he?
‘…I'm putting salt instead of sugar in his hot chocolate tomorrow morning.’
I concocted a devilishly evil plan in my head and fell in step right behind Raven.
Getting revenge was one thing, but for now, I needed to focus more seriously.
I wonder how long we walked like that, with me stuck to Raven's back like gum.
After turning this way and that, going up and down stairs, and knocking on the walls several times, he finally stopped.
“Hah, what is the layout of this place? Why does it feel like we're just going in circles?”
Raven's face was contorted in frustration.
The reason was likely that we'd been wandering for over half an hour and still hadn't found our way out of the hallway.
Worse, there wasn't a single light on inside, so we had to rely solely on the flashlight's beam.
Following the path felt like we were spinning around in a complex maze.
Even the doors we occasionally saw in the hallway were firmly locked, just like the room I'd been trapped in.
All we could do was keep walking forward down the seemingly endless corridor.
At this rate, we'd make no progress at all.
Having reached that conclusion, Raven handed me the flashlight he was holding and said.
“Hoo... Yuria, hold this for a second and shine it over there.”
“…”
I obediently took the flashlight and pointed it at a door on one side of the hallway, as he instructed.
It was a pristine white door with a bar-shaped handle, completely free of stains.
The handle didn't budge even when Raven used his strength, indicating it was securely locked.
Looking down at it, Raven let out a light breath and, with a sharp glint in his eyes, kicked the door with all his might.
*CRASH!*
Even though I knew it would be loud, a powerful roar echoed, startling me nonetheless.
It was a merciless roundhouse kick, as if he were unleashing all his pent-up stress.
‘Wow... If anyone was nearby, they would've noticed that immediately...’
Still, I didn't feel like blaming him.
Since we didn't know anything about this place, we had to do something.
And if there had been anyone nearby, Raven would have sensed them long ago.
I simply watched nonchalantly as he broke down the door.
After kicking it several more times, Raven finally shattered the door.
With a perfectly calm expression, he took back the flashlight and carefully peered inside the room.
“This is...”
“…!”
Peeking my head through the gaping hole in the door, I couldn't help but widen my eyes.
Inside the room, which had a similar structure to the one I first woke up in...
someone was lying quietly on the bed, as if asleep!
Could there be another survivor in this laboratory besides me?
As I stood frozen in shock at this completely unexpected situation, Raven approached, carefully checked the person's condition, and then frowned slightly.
“A corpse…? No, for that to be the case, there's no decay at all...”
“…?”
I tilted my head at Raven's puzzled expression.
What on earth was it that made him react like that?
Having been observing from outside, I cautiously stepped into the room.
And the moment I realized that the still figure on the bed was a young girl.
I immediately understood the source of the unease Raven had felt.
‘There's no breathing. Is it a corpse, or a doll made to look human? But... what is this incredible sense of wrongness?’
Staring quietly at the girl on the bed, I finally pinpointed the source of that feeling.
It was because the two possibilities I had instinctively considered... were both wrong.
First, the girl was definitely not a corpse.
She wasn't breathing, had no heartbeat, and no blood was flowing.
But she showed none of the signs a body should: no foul odor, no discoloration, no decay.
Then was she a doll? No, she was clearly a living being made of flesh and bone.
She just didn't have blood flowing and wasn't decomposing. She was, without a doubt, human.
Then what in the world was this girl?
Raven, who had been examining her all over with the flashlight, spoke in disbelief.
“It's as if... time itself has stopped for her.”
“…”
“…Still, this might give the Association some clues. Yuria, let's look around a little more. I want to check if the other rooms are like this too.”
Still reeling from the shock, I nodded at his words.
The reason I gave him that answer, wanting to organize my thoughts, was simple.
The girl on the bed had short brown hair and bore no resemblance to me...
But a gut feeling, an instinct that I couldn't just leave this child here, rang a bell in my chest.
So, Raven and I went from room to room, opening doors and checking each one.
And along the way, opening the locked doors naturally became my job.
Because my psychokinesis was much faster and quieter than Raven kicking the doors down.
“Hoo, there's a child in here too. Alright, I've marked the location. Let's move on to the next one.”
“…”
When we finally opened the tenth room, the result was one that made my thoughts grow complicated.
Besides the first girl we found, there were three other young girls.
I quietly looked down at the face of a girl who seemed to be asleep in frozen time, crossing my arms lightly as I continued to ponder.
‘Not every room has someone in it. So what's the difference between the rooms with people and the ones without? And why are they all young girls...?’
...Yeah, I have no idea. How am I supposed to know about something that wasn't in the original story?
With so little information, I neatly folded away the thoughts that had no clear answers.
The one thing that was certain was this.
That I might have been one of these countless girls.
Perhaps it was the feeling of getting one step closer to my own secrets.
My expression, tracing my faint past, unconsciously hardened.
“Yuria, can you open this one too?”
“…!”
My thoughts tangled, I approached the door Raven pointed to and reached out my hand.
Using psychokinesis required considerable concentration, after all. I wanted to forget my distracting thoughts.
Was it because my power had grown several times stronger than when I first awoke here?
Forcing the internal mechanism to break and open the door wasn't particularly difficult for me now.
But the moment I extended my psychokinesis and penetrated the inside, I noticed that this door was different from the others.
The unseen interior mechanism was far more intricate than any we had encountered so far.
It looked no different from the other doors on the outside. Strange.
Tilting my head for a moment, I decided to just break it and forcefully distorted the inside with all my strength.
*KRRREEEK...!*
The uniquely complex door broke easily, and the lock came undone with a weak click.
Seeing this, Raven strode forward, grabbed the handle, and yanked it as if tearing it off...
“Hmm? This is...”
“…!”
Inside was not another small, white room like before, but a passageway leading somewhere else.
This definitely leads somewhere.
I exchanged a look with Raven, certain of it.