A Private Audience with the Saintess
"At first, you know, I couldn't make sense of any of it.
"I opened my eyes and Seoul was a ruin. The Management Bureau had already fallen.
"I was so rattled I even left writing on the walls of the building."
Seo I-hyeon let out a dry laugh, and the Management Bureau staff around him broke into laughter with him.
"But as time went on, the reality of it settled in piece by piece.
"In this insane world, there's nothing left but that one anomaly."
The humor drained from his face. What remained was the hollow look of a man who had fought to stay alive and run, and failed.
"We pressed the button on Basement Level Ten and were used as material to rewrite causality.
"We ended up sealed in here with that thing — the only ones left in this world.
"That thing is the prisoner. We're the wardens. Locked in a prison we can never escape."
I lowered my head at Seo I-hyeon's words.
Wait… if what he just said is true, doesn't that mean the mannequin anomaly is about to be released too?
The Causality Regenerator wasn't all-powerful. It was more like tossing something into a trash bin for a while — it never fully erased an anomaly.
"There's one thing I don't understand.
"If this is a sealed prison… how can people still be dragged into it?"
"Asking me that won't get you anywhere…"
"I think you know.
"You pressed the button on Basement Level Ten for free, didn't you?"
I had paid a price. I'd spent my remaining regression counts to erase the mannequin anomaly.
But I can't explain that part.
I couldn't explain the infinite regression. For all I knew, something inside this anomaly — or near it — was watching me.
"I can't say."
"Why not?"
"I can't say. I can't say. I can't. I can't. I said I can't."
I flopped onto the floor and dodged the question.
"Fine."
"Kieeeek. I can't say. Kill me now if you're going to. I will never say it."
"I said fine! Stop throwing a fit."
Only after I got a firm answer did I shut my mouth. Even then I couldn't fully relax, so I kept scanning the room.
"That's enough. Do you believe me now?"
The lie detector strapped over my head came off. Roughly thirty percent of the suspicion evaporated.
"…Dad? Is that you?"
"So the memories weren't completely wiped after all."
"Father-in-law?"
Was he really my father-in-law?
I looked back and forth between In-seo and Seo I-hyeon. Somehow, their faces shared the same cast.
This man really was my father-in-law!
I-hyeon's eyes narrowed — the look of a man wondering who the hell I was to interrupt a moving reunion.
"In-seo's boyfriend…"
His eyes narrowed further. He looked ready to hit me on the spot.
"Ahem. First, let's discuss how we're going to deal with the anomaly."
I shut my mouth and changed the subject.
"Fine. The touching reunion can wait.
"What are you two planning to do?
"Date inside the anomaly? Hold a wedding in here?
"Do you have a way out?"
"I have a method."
"What is it?"
"The woman who became the Saintess's host body is someone I know.
"If I can get close to her and restore Eun-hwa's mind, that should do it."
"The Saintess?" "Her appearance doesn't look any different."
People fused with the anomaly couldn't recognize Eun-hwa.
"What does your Saintess look like?"
I had the Management Bureau staff describe her appearance. It was definitely not Eun-hwa's face.
Her personality's the complete opposite, too.
If Eun-hwa was venomous on the outside and pure underneath, the Saintess was pure on the outside and venomous underneath. Like the shell and the core had been swapped.
"Wouldn't it be better to just kill her?"
"If someone can be saved, we should save them."
I wasn't thrashing around out of pity, trying to spare her out of charity.
"Is there a way to approach her?"
"There is. This is the only place food comes out of.
"We've already mapped almost every route we can move through."
"And the anomalies guarding her?"
"We can clear them if we put in the work.
"But can you actually put her back the way she was?"
"Yes."
"All right. I'll trust you.
"Go back and sleep.
"We move tomorrow."
"Yes, sir!"
They guided us to a secure shelter. It was similar to the makeshift shelter the Management Bureau had thrown together in a corner of the fifth floor when the mannequin ghost story overran the building — a temporary refuge built from items and anomalies.
For the first time in a long while, I slept deeply and without worry.
"Is that really the entire plan?"
"Yes. I'll have a one-on-one audience with the Saintess."
"How long has it been since you woke up in this world?"
"Not quite a month."
Only a month. That explained why he still didn't know certain things.
"Let's move. Once I face the Saintess one-on-one, my angle will work."
"Fine. I'll trust you this once."
With help from the Management Bureau staff, we moved through the interior of the cult. Thanks to agents who knew the compound's layout cold, we reached the room where the Saintess resided without trouble.
"She should be inside by now.
"Whatever your angle is, give it a shot.
"We'll hang back."
"Understood."
Seo I-hyeon fell back. I stood alone in front of the door.
A sliding door made of paper screens. I set my hand carefully against it and eased it open.
Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.
A subway train was arriving.
"What the hell."
When I came to, I was in the subway at Jamsil Station.
What was I about to do again?
My head felt fogged over.
"Right. I was trapped inside an anomaly."
I dragged the memory back up. I was sealed inside an anomaly. To survive, I had to stake my life on a fifty-fifty gamble and get it right.
The train pulled into Jamsil Station. I stepped off immediately.
I had been possessed by the kind of ghost story where you leave the platform, climb the stairs, and never find an exit. I sprinted up the stairs and arrived at the exact same platform again.
Eun-hwa was coming slowly down the stairs.
"I don't want to die. Eun-hwa. I don't want to die. You don't either, right?"
I closed in on her and slid my hand under her clothes. Full, soft breasts. A narrow waist. No matter how many times I took Eun-hwa's body, I never got tired of it.
"Eun-hwa, I love you. Because of you, I could keep moving forward!"
Thanks for taking a twenty-five-year-old man's virginity, too!
I ducked my head under her skirt and dragged my tongue across her panties.
"Eun-hwa's panties taste so good!"
"Easy side job… nngh."
"Eun-hwa's pussy tastes amazing!"
"Haah."
"Taking Eun-hwa's virginity again!"
I pressed my hard cock against the entrance of her pussy. I had no idea how many times I'd taken her. Every time we returned to the starting point, her hymen regenerated. An infinite virgin. I tore through Eun-hwa's hymen and drove myself all the way in.
"What the hell… what kind of anomaly has this bastard run into…"
Something was off. Eun-hwa's reaction had gone strange. She wasn't saying the lines she always said. She was saying something completely wrong.
"Eun-hwa?"
"You crazy bastard! Get the hell off me!"
Eun-hwa shoved my body away!
I went flying helplessly backward.
"Kheck."
At the same moment, I snapped out of the illusion.
"Where… where am I?"
"You all right? You blanked out all of a sudden."
My father-in-law's voice pulled me back. I was standing in front of the room where Eun-hwa lived — the room I had come to meet her in.
My guess was right.
I had broken free of the illusion. Certain now, I shoved the sliding door all the way open.
Deep in the heart of the cult compound, behind a curtain of thin thread, Eun-hwa lay collapsed and unconscious.
"She's been neutralized. How did you do that?"
It was the ability of the Saintess who had seized Eun-hwa's body. I still didn't fully understand why she had taken Eun-hwa's body in the first place. But one thing was certain.
The Saintess's power was mind-reading.
The moment that suspicion hardened into certainty was when Goe-bung-i found the scripture. The last line of the first page: the Saintess knows everything. In a previous loop, when she interrogated me, she had cut straight through my private thoughts as if she already knew it all. Beyond that, she had read the muttered asides of high-ranking believers and the notes in their ledgers and passed judgment from them.
The Saintess's ability was reading minds.
"And how exactly did you know that?"
"I can't say."
That part was tied to regression. I couldn't talk about it.
"Fine. Move on. What now?"
"Hmm. Give me a second."
I pressed a finger to my temple.
On the way back from searching the Management Bureau Building in Seoul, I had run into Eun-hwa and she had screamed and collapsed. At the time, I had been thinking about the sex we'd had on the subway.
"Hiiik."
The moment I dragged up the memory of pounding into Eun-hwa without mercy, she woke with a faint moan. Her eyes trembled without pause.
The "Saintess" could not control her own power. The filthy thoughts I was feeding her left her unable to hold herself together.
"This goddamn filthy blood… my mind is… resonating…"
"Hey. Give Eun-hwa back."
"And if I say I won't? Hiiiit."
"Then I'll do this."
I stacked the subway sex footage with Eun-hwa in my head, one scene after another. The Saintess-only finishing move landed clean. She cried out. For reasons I didn't fully understand, just recalling the sex was enough to make her feel it.
"Aaaah? Mister?"
"Eun-hwa. You're back."
Her eyes went soft and round. This was the Eun-hwa I knew.
"There's this weird scene playing in my head.
"I'm on a subway, and I'm having sex with you, Mister."
"Ah. The ghost that forced its way into your body is feeding you false information."
My father-in-law's eyes turned murderous. I mixed in a lie as fast as I could.
I had slept with Eun-hwa — that much was true — but it had been while she was an anomaly. Anything that happened while she was an anomaly had to be treated as an exception!
"The voice in my head says that's bullshit!"
But the Saintess immediately snitched that I was lying. My father-in-law glared at me like he was about to kill me on the spot.
"Kheeeek. First, let's grab the Saintess and run."
His hand closed around my throat. He still had enough reason not to squeeze, but that reason might not last.
I decided to get to the shelter before he strangled me to death.
"You okay?"
"No. I thought I was going to die."
"Daughter. Can't you date someone other than this guy?"
"Why?"
"He's got a girlfriend and he's cheating right out in the open."
"That happened at a subway station."
"So in the end, he still did it."
"He did it while she was an anomaly."
In-seo's excuses didn't land at all. I pressed my lips shut and listened to the father-daughter exchange, watching my father-in-law's face like a guilty man waiting for sentencing.
"You son of a bitch. Give me my daughter back."
I dodged my charging father-in-law and ran. But even in a cramped shelter, there was only so far you could flee.
"This is not the time for this. We need to take Eun-hwa and find a way to escape the anomaly — or a way to destroy it — as soon as possible."
"Right. Work first."
With permission granted, I woke Eun-hwa.
"Eun-hwa. Get up."
The second I pulled up a memory, she rose with a moan.
"Eun-hwa. How do we resolve the anomaly?
"If it can't be resolved, then at least a way out."
"The anomaly? Asking me that won't get you anywhere…"
This approach wasn't going to get a real answer out of her.
"Eun-hwa — how did you survive the Causality Regenerator's regression?"
I asked the thing I'd been most curious about instead.
In-seo had been at my side, so I could believe she'd ridden out the Causality Regenerator's regression that way. But Eun-hwa had been far away. I still didn't understand how she had endured it.
"Ah. I ate the blood you gave me, Mister.
"My head went fuzzy and then this huge rush of power hit me…"
"Huh? The Vampire Queen's blood?"
"Anomalies can resist stronger anomalies.
"A Vampire Queen is top-tier.
"That's how she could survive the regression."
Oh… Puppy was surprisingly strong.
Tsk. Don't tell me Puppy survived the regression too?
A cold prickle ran down the back of my neck. For all I knew, Puppy still remembered me.