Taboo (5)
"Pitch a fit. Go on—pitch a fucking fit."
Jeon Taeho lurched to his feet, curses spilling out of him the way they always did.
"You know where the hell you are? Whose money do you think I'm taking to stand out here—!!"
"Enough. Planning to tell them everything, Jeon Taeho? Shut your mouth and fall back to H Point."
"...Understood."
"The rest of you would do better to stay out of it. Take your hands off this."
"This sort of thing is common in the Yellow Zone. Let's each go our own way."
A mask only holds so much. Sometimes the malice punches straight through it.
I was hearing nothing but a voice through a speaker, and still I could feel it. That wasn't a human throat. The words were welling up out of something deep and vicious.
"Oh, that's rich."
I glared at the speaker.
"Go our separate ways? Pull back now and you'll still come to kill us. Don't put on a show."
I thought I heard a scoff.
"Us backing off is the better deal for you, isn't it? That's the only way you get to erase us later without anything coming back to bite you."
"Smarter than Taeho, aren't you."
"You're right. We can't get rid of a high-grade Librarian with no plan at all."
"But can you handle it?"
"That's what people say when they're the ones getting scared."
"While we're at it, want to take this job instead of Taeho? You're smart. Seems like you'd be good at it."
They didn't bother answering the provocation. They kept their own pace—someone who didn't hand the initiative over easily, and knew exactly how to swing it. Nothing like Jeon Taeho.
The sense that this would not be easy, and the unease riding with it, began to grow, slow and sure.
"Scratch all you want. I don't itch. Don't waste your breath."
"Hahahaha!!"
"I like you. See you soon."
The laugh was packed with malice, and yet, somehow, it filled the room with a clarity that was almost refreshing. The contradiction sent a strange chill climbing my spine.
As the sound died away, Seoyoon came into view, still down on the floor.
"Seoyoon. How bad is it?"
She had torn the sleeve off her top and was binding the wound in her leg.
"I can fight."
The leg was a sheet of blood, her lip split open. Her left eye had swollen just enough that she couldn't hold it open.
Hana reached a hand out to her. Seoyoon looked at it for a moment, then seized it hard and hauled herself up.
"Um... but how did you know about this place?"
"That can wait until lat—"
"That would be thanks to me, of course!"
Seo Young cut me off and barreled straight in, but—
"Noona Seo Young, Miss Seoyoon isn't on the shared channel."
"Ah! Then let's get her linked up, quick!"
"I'll tell you everything once this is over."
"Understood."
A different resolve began to carve itself across the face of a woman who had been ready to die.
Right. She had to live. Atonement paid in death didn't mean a damn thing.
"Noona Seo Young, this building... can you get a read on the layout?"
"Obviously not!"
A thin sigh slipped out of Hana.
"Haa... yeah. Of course you can't."
"But there is exactly one place where they've left the information open."
"There's a very high chance it's a trap they opened on purpose."
An invitation, sent to us on purpose? Or a trap meant to crush us, or poison us, the instant we stepped inside?
Whichever it was, we weren't turning away. I had never meant to walk into the tiger's maw. I had meant to tear that maw apart.
"Guide us."
We went down a long, long corridor. No guards. Nothing at all. Overhead, the lights switched on one by one, keeping pace with our route, and here and there on the floor lay spatters of blood—left, most likely, by Jeon Taeho and his crew as they went ahead of us.
A red carpet to hell.
At the end of that carpet, we came to a massive door. A single word was written across it.
"I cannot observe the interior, Librarians."
"Be careful."
Carefully, slowly, I opened the door.
We stepped into a vast chamber that looked nearly four stories tall. A single lamp burned alone at the peak of the ceiling, and its light fell on a restraint apparatus in the middle of the room. Scratches scored the glass wall here and there. White fur lay scattered across the floor.
Had they really... created an aberration?
"Well, look who showed up. Should've left back when I was still gonna let you go."
Jeon Taeho's filthy voice drifted down from above. He stood leaning on a railing four floors up, and behind him... the owner of the speaker, maybe. A hood was up, and I couldn't make out the figure beneath it.
Thud.
Thud.
From the dark beyond the restraint apparatus, something enormous made itself heard.
Thud.
I could feel it. A vast weight of Black Imagery. The nearer it drew, the harder the ground shuddered, and the silhouette grew sharper by the moment—a body huge enough to fill the great doorway, a pelt of thick white fur, two pairs of yellow eyes burning with ill omen, four fangs thrust out in a savage jut.
Was that... a true Jangsan Tiger?
Upper Short-Form? Lower Mid-Form? I couldn't begin to gauge it.
"Stop."
The moment the hooded woman opened her mouth, the Jangsan Tiger stopped dead, obedient as a lie. She shoved Jeon Taeho aside and looked down at me. I still couldn't see her face, but I could guess well enough what expression she was wearing.
"That offer from earlier is still good, you know."
One corner of a mouth painted dark with lipstick lifted, just slightly.
"What do you think I'm going to say?"
"Figured as much."
The hooded woman smiled wide.
The word had barely ended before the Jangsan Tiger came down on us. It tore the restraint apparatus in front of it to shreds like paper and lashed out with a forepaw. I drew my sword and threw every ounce of strength into the block.
Kang—!!
The paw was bigger than I was. Both arms on the hilt began to shudder.
Lower Mid-Form... I was sure of it. Now that we were locked together, I knew. The flow of Black Imagery I had been able to see before was hard to make out, as if fog had settled over it.
A bullet skimmed past my ear. A heartbeat later, the report caught up with the round.
Bang—
Condensed frost Imagery Power slammed into the Jangsan Tiger's head. I didn't miss the opening. I snapped the sword hard and knocked the paw away. The black flame refused to vanish easily into my glitch.
So it was different, from mid-form on.
Temporary entity identification code assigned: Jangsan Tiger
This aberration possesses the power of a Lower Mid-Form.
"Are the narrative settings unfolding too?!"
Confirmed. Full deployment in three minutes. A Flooded Zone will form.
Beware the flood!
The instant Noona Seo Young's words ended, the white beast reached out again. The heavy impact rang through the whole room, and numbness shot through my body.
It was rising. Black Imagery. Past the feet, to the knees—soon it would climb all the way to the waist.
Still driving its strength into the forepaw, the Jangsan Tiger turned its head and looked at Hana.
Imagery Shift: Freeze — Frost Flower
A razor-cold bullet left the muzzle with a roar. Frost Flower bloomed in the Jangsan Tiger's right eye, and its body tipped backward.
Boom—!
Hana still had room to spare. If I had been alone, it might have been too much for me. But I wasn't alone.
I gathered my strength. Before I knew it, the Black Imagery had climbed to my waist—and Cha Seoyoon flashed through my mind.
Cha Seoyoon!
If the Flooded Zone had already reached the waist... could a Grade 6 endure that?
"Cha Seoyoon!!"
I called for her in a rush. No answer.
"Hana! Where's Cha Seoyoon?!"
"Miss Seoyoon! Where are you?!"
The Jangsan Tiger hauled itself upright and roared. A roar that shook the entire building.
"Kill... me... You know. I'm about to flood..."
"Jaehee, this is your fault. You're the one killing me."
Hana's voice?
A hallucination.
Get a grip. I had to get a grip!
"Hk—!"
Glitches were erupting wildly all across my body.
Then pressure crashed down from above, riding an enormous shadow.
The forepaw!
I barely stopped the paw that meant to smash me flat.
"Hana! Are you okay?! Hana!"
The hooded woman's expression suddenly locked rigid.
That... don't tell me.
"Hana!!"
The roar just now must have dragged the trauma out. Cha Seoyoon would already have been thrashing, sunk in Black Imagery—and if Hana was swallowed by trauma as well...
"Hana!! Snap out of it!"
I was being crushed. Little by little. Hold. Hold on. I screamed with everything I had, trying to wake her.
"Seo Hana!!!"
The pressure... let go?
A bullet that had split the air buried itself in the wall and left a single blue point.
"Jaehee... sorry. I blanked for a second."
All at once, my mind cleared. The pressure that had been climbing toward my waist began to ease. Had the Imagery Power carried in my voice rewritten the battlefield?
As if it had noticed the change, the Jangsan Tiger's power began to spread through its whole body. Black flame swallowed it from end to end.
I prepared my final attack as well. I began to drive this space—ruled by black flame—out into colorless white.
The view I wanted to reach. In a life that had only ever been a blur, I finally had a view I wanted to reach. To see the end together with everyone. Not a bad ending. A happy one. To get there, I had to erase that thing. Not only that thing—every bad ending that would stand in front of us. Even if I myself were erased along the way.
"Watcher... this looks dangerous, doesn't it?"
"Jeon Taeho."
"Yes..."
"...I'm sorry. I'll be quiet."
Achromatic fire covered my whole body. A violent agony tore through me, as if my very existence were being burned away and erased. But I could endure it. If I could protect them. If I could erase it. This much...
"Jaehee!"
The sword slipped from my hand, struck the floor, and rang out clear.
"Jaehee!!"
Hana's face was in front of me, grabbing me, shaking me. My dazed mind snapped back into place.
"Hana... I'm fine. I'm back."
I shifted her aside for a moment and looked around. Worry filled her expression. Thick blood poured from the Jangsan Tiger's corpse, torn open clean across the middle. The pressure was releasing. The black scenery had already lifted.
So we'd won, for now...
In the corner, Cha Seoyoon was crouched and trembling violently. When I turned my head from her, my eyes met the hooded woman's. The blast had ripped the hood away, so she was no longer the hooded woman—but even so.
We held a taut, wordless standoff for a while. Then she looked away from me and turned her gaze on Jeon Taeho.
"...Why? What's the matter?"
The expressionless woman didn't answer. She only shoved Jeon Taeho off the edge.
A scream tore out of him as he fell.
"Nihila!! You fucking bitch!!"
Thud—
Jeon Taeho's blood began to mix with the Jangsan Tiger's, and Nihila opened her mouth.