The Bathroom Is That Way!

That was the way, all right!

"Whoa! Whoa-ah! Whoa! Whoa!"

"Kieeeek!!!"

...

There I was, watching a bunch of masked wooden dolls hack Kim Young-hak's corpse to pieces.

The moment I kissed the ring, they'd come crawling out of it, guzzling my mana without so much as a by-your-leave.

"Why are they doing that the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠second they pop out..."

Context made it pretty clear they weren't hostile to me, but still — that was brutal. Not that I was brave enough to step in and stop them.

So I simply stood there and watched them for a while.

I wasn't just spacing out, mind you. Curiosity had gotten the better of me, and I was studying them closely.

Their joints move way too smoothly for them to be simple dolls.

Twenty to thirty centimeters tall. Visually, they were wooden carvings through and through — but the way they moved was straight-up monkey business.

Keeping my distance and squinting from afar only got me so far, so I worked up my courage, walked over, and picked one up for a closer look.

The instant it touched me, it went docile as a lamb. Thanks to that, I got my chance to inspect it properly.

Wait — this isn't the texture of dead wood?

"You... what exactly are you?"

Ring-

"...Close info window."

So the ring boosted my summons' stats, too.

No — they came pouring out of the ring in the first place, so of course it did.

Now, how did one go about dismissing them?

I figured I'd just try saying something plausible.

"Dismiss all."

"Ki-kiiee!!"

"Uwawawa!!"

And just like that, the Pygmies went slurping back into the ring. A message window popped up in the same breath.

Ring-

"...Accept."

No reason to fumble around with a magical beast tongue I'd only just learned.

There we go.

I'd bagged a harvest I never even expected. Honestly, I hadn't trusted myself to fight anything directly... so having some backups to step in when things got dicey was a genuine stroke of luck.

Better yet, recalling the Pygmies restored my mana.

There'd been a small loss along the way, but if it recovered fully just like that, that would almost be worrying in its own right. Nothing in this world comes free, after all.

I crossed my arms and muttered.

"So... now what do I do...?"

Mocking my own question, the answer came fast.

Step one: get the hell out of here, ASAP.

The Pygmies had chopped the body into pieces far too thorough for any excuse to hold up anymore.

Fortunately, the van Kim Young-hak had arrived in was still sitting there. I grabbed only the bare essentials from inside and slipped away.

GPS works fine too... getting to the city shouldn't be hard.

After a few hours of hard driving, I made it to Cairo.

"Skill window."

Fwoosh!

I combed through my skill window as I picked my way through the slums.

I was a murderer now, and a magical beast on top of it — so finding something that could get me out of this mess was priority number one.

And yet...

"Hmm... well, this Confusion skill looks pretty usable for now."

"Please-click-recommend!!"

"I want to have sex with you."

"Ugh, what are you even saying?! Quit following me around already!"

The words burst out of me before I could stop them.

Ever since earlier, a pack of freshly buzz-cut little kids and teenagers had been trailing me like ducklings.

I'd been waving them off with my hand again and again, but it was useless.

What do they even want... huh?

Tap-tap-

Something kept brushing against my chest.

I turned my head — and found someone pressing their elbow against me, over and over.

A boy who looked to be middle-school age.

Pretending it was an accident, but making the gesture so deliberately it couldn't have been less accidental. I let out a long sigh.

...You little degenerate.

"Hey, quit while you're ahead, yeah? Can't understand the words, but you can sure read a face, can't you?"

"وجه لطيف!" (Feisty!)

"Excuse me?"

Grab-grope—

...Huh?

He's — he's openly groping me?!

I froze solid, caught completely off guard. It was my first time in a situation like this, and I had no idea what to do with myself.

Reading my non-reaction as an invitation, the other kids started edging closer too, watching my every move.

Th-that's... that's my own body, and I haven't even properly touched it myself yet...!

So this was what it felt like for women getting groped?

The sheer audacity of it — some punk helping himself to my body for free, when I hadn't given him a thing — made my blood boil.

Judging that I couldn't just sit here and take it, I served the little wretch his wasabi.

"Drop dead, punk."

THUD!

He went down flat on the dirt, then scrambled right back up, squirming.

I hadn't put real force behind it, so nothing was broken — but his eyes were bugging out of his head as he looked wildly around.

Embarrassed, are we?

I flashed him a sneer.

"Before you see something even uglier..."

"من فضلك أوصي!" (Egyptian punch!!)

So he wasn't going to surrender quietly, huh. He probably carried on like this because he had no idea I was an Awakened... no, a magical beast. Honestly, it was laughable.

I slipped his punch with ease and sent it right back — as an open-handed slap.

CRACK! He hit the ground again.

"اقتراح!" (Ugh!)

"Want some more?"

"يرجى التعليق أيضا!" ("Pretty entertaining. Truth be told, that guy's the weakest of all of us.")

One of the kids sitting a little ways off said this. Judging by how everyone around him shut their mouths, he had to be the leader.

He even had a wooden plank in his hand.

That's... a problem.

Awakened or not, unless you were a high-rank Hunter, getting walloped by one of those hurt. And this body of mine looked like anything but a defense type, no matter how I checked it.

...Shall I test it out, then?

Watching the leader come charging at me, I triggered a skill.

Ring-

Dadadada—!

"أحبك نوبل!!!" ("This is for my little brother, you fucking bitch!!!")

WHACK! THWACK!

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Whoa...

The leader had started beating the stuffing out of the kid I'd knocked down instead of me.

His underling kept screaming something at him right in front of his face, but he just kept swinging that wooden plank without a shred of acknowledgment.

Somehow, watching it all, the true nature of the Confusion skill began to click into place — and I stepped in to rein the little thug in before things went too far.

If this blows up, I'm the one who loses.

The whole point of the skill was to avoid laying a hand on them myself. If the police showed up because of this, I'd be the one in hot water.

After that I quietly slipped out of the area and headed for the city center as best I could.

I'd had to cut through some deserted stretches to deal with Kim Young-hak's van... but by then I already knew these backwaters were hell on earth.

"Thank god the Pygmies didn't skewer the wallets too..."

Once I hit downtown, I used Kim Young-hak's money to buy a few basic changes of clothes. I'd expected people to gawk at my vagrant look, but aside from some lecherous stares, nobody really batted an eye.

...Though there were kind of a lot of those lecherous stares.

I needed to study the Confusion skill in more detail — but in the end, I couldn't beat down the creeped-out feeling, ran a few half-hearted experiments, and checked into a room early.

The moment I stepped into my room, I bolted for the mirror, and only then could I finally take a good, long look at myself.

"Wow... I did catch a glimpse in the van's side mirror earlier, but still."

Beautiful.

A face like East and West, blended together in perfect measure.

I was short, barely cracking one hundred fifty-something centimeters, and my face looked fresh and boyishly young — but every one of my features came together with a striking, natural charm.

Speaking of which, why is my skin THIS pale?

Vampire-pale — like I'd never once seen sunlight in my entire life.

Looking at it got me thinking.

...Hold on. Is this body a vampire, then?

No — the looks were completely wrong for a vampire.

Most magical beasts have their traits and appearances well documented, so mistaking myself for one of those wasn't in the cards.

What about other snowy-white beasts, then?

A succubus? A siren, maybe?

Not a chance.

After that, I ran through every humanoid magical beast I could think of, and in the end couldn't find a single one that fit.

"...I'll just sleep."

My body and mind were both completely wrung out.

There was still so much to figure out and so much to fix — but none of that was possible unless my head was working right, was it?

And so I turned in early.

"Let's go, Raebi."

The next day, with the help of a Korean couple staying at the same inn, I made my way toward the South Korean Embassy.

Someone had come knocking the night before, claiming to be a guide, and had tried to force their way in — I'd loosed the Pygmies to drive them off, and the couple and I happened to run into each other in the commotion.

They seemed to have no idea whatsoever that the monsters who'd gleefully shredded their clothes to ribbons were mine.

I-I need to be more careful...

What was I supposed to expect, when I'd only ordered them not to kill anyone?

It had been a spur-of-the-moment experiment to see just how far the Pygmies would follow orders... but it hit me that things could go very, very wrong if I wasn't careful.

"What brings you in today?"

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

After the couple left, I walked straight into the Egyptian embassy — ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the South Korean one, that is.

The building was bigger than I'd expected, and I'd been wandering around lost when a woman in her thirties in office attire struck up a conversation.

How do I even put this?

"Um... I-I want to go to Korea."

"...?"

The woman's eyebrows rose once.

"A young friend... lost her passport?"

"Yeees..."

"And how did you get to Cairo?"

...I rode here in the dead man's car.

My mouth snapped shut, and I just stood there for a moment, smiling awkwardly.

I didn't know it then — that the careless words about to leave my mouth would bring a colossal wave crashing down on me.

The plan had simply been to gloss things over with a skill or two and hop on a flight to Korea.

Trusting in Confusion alone, I started answering with a brain completely emptied out.

"Honestly, I don't remember anything at all."

"You don't remember... what, exactly?"

"Ah, well, whether I got kidnapped or what, but I really can't remember anything, from start to finish."

The woman's eyes went wide.

"K-kidnapped?"

"Yes? Probably, yes. It's just..."

"...This doesn't sound like an ordinary problem. We've actually had instructions come down, because so many ugly incidents have been happening one after another lately. One moment, please."

...Instructions?

The woman hurried off to make a call somewhere. She drummed her fingers against the back of her smartphone, visibly on edge.

A moment later, a man's voice came through the speaker.

...Huh?

The ambassador?

"E-excuse me. Unni? What do you mean, the ambassador?"

"You heard. We're going to meet him right now. He's the highest-ranking person here, so I'm sure you can get help from him."

"Wait, no... I just need you to put me on a plane, that's all...!"

"Yes, yes. First you meet the Ambassador. Now — this way, please."

...I'm screwed.

An ambassador would be a C-rank Awakened or higher.

How was a skill that barely worked on ordinary civilians supposed to land on an ambassador...?!

And if it was the Ambassador to Egypt... don't tell me. Lee Chang-jin?

I have to run. Now.

This man was the most famous Korean hero in all of Egypt. If he caught me, it was over — so I started wrenching my hand out of her grip.

"Huh? Wh-what's wrong?!"

"Ah, it's just...! I really, really need the bathroom!!"

"Oh, the bathroom isn't that way. It's this way."

...THAT was the right way!!

But word had already reached the Ambassador.

An escape route had never existed in the first place, and despite a bottomless well of excuses, I found myself hauled off toward the Ambassador's office.