Grey City (2)
The moment the call with Yui cut out, Sehyun gripped her smartphone in one hand and the bicycle's handlebars in the other.
"Goddamn it…"
Whenever he glanced back, the creature stood waiting roughly ten meters behind him — frozen mid-stride, as if it had always been there. The instant Sehyun's eyes found it, it refused to move.
Keeping the bike moving was hard work in its own right. While the creature remained still, Sehyun eased off the pedals and caught his breath in short, measured pulls. He could have poured on speed and tried to open the gap, but the second he vanished from its sight, it would simply reappear close by. Better to hold a steady pace and recover what stamina he could than burn himself out on a futile sprint.
At this rate, capture wasn't immediate. The real problem was that every path out of danger had also disappeared.
To gain something, you had to put something on the table. Wasn't that what some famous gambler once said? To escape a crisis, you needed a sure path to safety — and to secure that safety, you needed information. And information only came if you were willing to risk something in return.
Right now, Sehyun had only one thing he could put on the table.
His own life.
He understood that with perfect clarity.
"Yeah. But how?"
That was the honest truth of it. He knew he had to do something. But out here, what the hell was he supposed to do, and how?
Keep running forever? Even if he somehow escaped completely and made it back to the real world, Yui would still be trapped in this bizarre city. He couldn't even picture a way out alone. If they didn't return together, none of it meant anything. That was Sehyun's judgment.
Hold out until Yui contacts me again.
He kept the bicycle rolling along the main road. He didn't know the local geography in any detail, but major streets generally connected to other routes. Better to follow a thoroughfare thick with intersections than risk a dead-end alley and find himself cornered.
"Fuck! What even is this world?!"
Were all urban legends like this? The classroom had been the same, and now this. Every time, they were dragged into some strange space cut off from reality. Sehyun knew a few legends about places like that. The most famous was the afterlife — the River of Three Crossings, and so on. There were rituals that supposedly shifted you into a parallel world if you performed them in the right order. Methods involving elevators. Methods using pillows or mirrors. Whether the destination was another world, a parallel dimension, or the underworld, the structure was always similar. Closer to urban legend than pure ghost story, maybe.
But none of the stories Sehyun knew matched what was happening now. He and Yui hadn't performed any ritual. They hadn't deliberately fulfilled any conditions. They had simply been walking through a park and found themselves inside a grey city — as if a horror game's map had suddenly switched.
"Wh— wait?!"
He had gotten so lost in thought that he forgot to check behind him. He whipped his head around. The monster was closer than he expected — about seven meters. Close enough that a grown man running flat out could close the gap in seconds.
"Shit!"
Sehyun stared the creature down and slammed the pedals. As long as his gaze held it, the monster did not move. The shrinking distance almost certainly meant Sehyun had slowed, not that the thing had sped up. It seemed to operate by fixed rules. Which meant the change was on his side — breathing, focus, the rate of his pedaling. His limits were starting to show.
Just as he locked eyes on the monster and pushed for more speed, the phone in his hand rang.
"Hello?!"
"Yeah. I've got a proper look at the map now. Any buildings near you?"
Yui's voice on the other end was steady. Sehyun's tangled thoughts settled a little to match it. Right. He had a partner. He wasn't alone. Knowing someone else was out there to reason with him, even inside a nightmare, was enough to give a person their calm back.
"A seven-story building with a karaoke place. Passing it on my left right now."
"Hmm… so you're on a main road?"
"Yeah. If I stick to the big streets, they keep going."
Sehyun also told her about the other-world legends he'd been turning over a moment earlier.
"Urban legends about crossing into other worlds, huh."
Silence on the line as Yui thought it through.
"I didn't even consider that. Blind spot."
"Not sure it fits the situation, though."
"But the idea that the road just keeps going if you follow it — that's a blind spot too."
"What?"
"According to the map, if you keep going straight you'll hit a lake."
"What?!"
Bicycles did not ride on water. This wasn't a hoverboard. He would have to change direction before he reached the shore.
"How far?"
"About a kilometer. Past the park entrance, a little farther, and you're at the lake."
Sehyun looked up at a road sign as he passed. Sure enough, it pointed the way to a park. Nine hundred meters straight ahead.
"Which way do I turn?!"
He dragged in a deep breath. A bicycle was faster than running and burned less stamina, but it wasn't limitless. Sehyun wasn't the type who worked out for fun; the fact that his legs already ached was warning enough.
"Take the next intersection left. That'll put you into the commercial district."
Sehyun turned the handlebars the way she said. Compared to the open thoroughfare, the commercial streets would be harder to ride — tangled roads, plenty of obstacles. But there were high-rises and shops too. Better odds of finding something useful. More importantly, Yui had been studying the map; her judgment would be sharper than his gut.
He slowed at the intersection and twisted around to check the monster's position. It had stopped about ten meters back. Riding one-handed with a phone was a lot harder than it looked. From here on he was heading into the commercial district — more variables than a flat main road. If he wiped out midway, it would be a catastrophe. He had no idea what happened if that thing caught him, but judging by its appearance and the situation, nothing good.
"I'll head that way too, then."
"You're coming yourself?"
"Yeah. I've got an idea. Honestly, it's kind of genius."
He had no idea what she meant. Yui reached conclusions at lightning speed inside her own head, but she was terrible at explaining the steps to anyone else. Whatever plan she'd cooked up in this mess had to be built on the information and guesses they already had about the monster. Maybe she meant to use her Status Window ability. Sehyun still didn't fully understand what that window showed or under what conditions it worked, so with the information he had, he couldn't reverse-engineer her plan.
"Once you're in the commercial district, go to the tallest building."
"The tallest building?"
"Yeah. I'll meet you there."
With that, Yui hung up. Alone again. The thought hit Sehyun all at once.
"But fuck! Why are there so many cars in the road?!"
Vehicles sat abandoned all over the street, blocking his path. As if only the people had vanished, the cars had been left wherever they stood. A clean straight line would have been fastest, but with this many obstacles he couldn't hold his speed. Every time he threaded between cars, he checked behind him — roughly once every ten seconds. The gap to the monster hovered around ten meters, closing and opening in turns, because Sehyun couldn't keep a constant pace while dodging wrecks.
Could he even make it to the tallest building like this?
When he tore his eyes off the monster and looked ahead, the destination was easy to spot. The highest building in the area — so tall its top vanished into the fog. On a bicycle, only a few minutes away. Had Yui already arrived nearby? She moved slower than he did, so she had probably started somewhere close to that building from the beginning.
"Wh—?!"
Maybe the thought that he was almost there made him careless. He twisted around to check the monster's position and never saw the low road sign jutting into his path. By the time he registered the slightly wider gap behind him, felt a flicker of relief, and looked forward again, it was already too late.
"Ah."
He wrenched the handlebars. A clean miss was impossible, but he refused to give up and kept turning until the last instant.
CRASH!
"Argh—?!"
The front wheel slammed into the base of the sign. The bicycle toppled sideways and flung Sehyun onto the asphalt. He threw both arms up on pure instinct, shielding his head. His shoulder hit first, and his body tumbled several times across the road.
"Ghh…!"
Shock rolled through him from head to toe. It felt like every scrap of air had been punched out of his lungs at once. But there was no time to inventory the pain.
"Shit! The monster!"
The second his mind cleared, he snatched up the dropped phone and spun around. For those few seconds of rolling, his gaze had broken. In that tiny window, the monster had closed the distance until it stood right in front of him.
"Fuck…"
His jaw locked on its own. Goosebumps raced over his entire body. A crushing terror he had never felt before. From a single step away, that pure white face looked down at him. The creature stood frozen with one hand stretched toward him.
If he turned and ran—
No. The moment he tried to get up and turn his back, it would grab him. He had to rise slowly while keeping his eyes locked on it. Then walk backward, opening the distance. Once he had enough space, he could figure out how to run again. Break eye contact now and it was over. The instant his gaze failed, distance meant nothing to that thing.
Damn it. He had opened a solid lead just moments ago. One fall, and every bit of that effort was wiped out.
The high-rise destination was maybe a few hundred meters off. Without being able to look behind him, he couldn't measure it exactly, but the last time he'd checked it had been close enough to reach on foot if he ran. The problem was simple.
With the stamina I have left, can I cover that distance without getting caught?
The fallen bicycle lay behind the monster. He wasn't getting back on it. He had to erase impossible hopes from his mind. The only path left was to run on his own two feet. But this was a commercial district full of obstacles. Full-speed sprinting would be hard. His scraped arms and legs still stung from the fall. That thing had kept pace even when he was on a bicycle. A flat-out run might buy him a little distance — but the second he slowed, it would have him for certain.
He needed a way to pin the monster in place. A way to keep watching it while still looking forward and running.
Sehyun held its gaze and slowly pushed his upper body upright. In that moment, a single idea flashed through his mind.
A mirror.
If looking through a mirror still counted as seeing it, he could watch behind him while running forward. If he just had a hand mirror—
"Shit…"
Despair hit at the same time. He was in the middle of a street, and he was an ordinary high school guy. He did not carry a hand mirror. He might find one if he searched nearby shops or car interiors, but right now he couldn't even risk looking away from the monster.
"Damn it…"
His arms and legs burned. The fall had torn his clothes and scraped the skin underneath. A full sprint in this condition — he might manage a burst, but he wouldn't last. His breathing still hadn't fully recovered. Without a way to hold the monster still, he would only slow down until it caught him.
Is this really it?
His head filled with nothing but dark possibilities. No matter how he turned it over, he couldn't see an answer. He had figured out the tool he needed — and had no way to get it. But he couldn't just sit here and die doing nothing.
"Still… I have to try."
If he did something, the odds weren't zero. If he did nothing, they were exactly zero.
Sehyun locked eyes with the monster and rose carefully to his feet. One step. Another. He edged backward while staring it down. The white face that had filled his vision shrank little by little as the distance grew.
Was there anything he could use in place of a mirror? He couldn't look around properly. The only thing in his hands right now was—
The smartphone.
"The phone…"
His fingers traced the side of the device. A smartphone had a function that could stand in for eyes.
The camera.
"Phones have a way to see."
Without taking his eyes off the monster, Sehyun double-tapped the power button. The camera app opened. Still without looking at the screen, he switched to the rear camera by feel. He lifted the phone in front of his face and adjusted the angle until both the screen and the real monster beyond it sat inside his field of view. The rear lens pointed at the creature.
The road appeared on the phone's display. And right in the middle of it — the white-faced thing stood waiting.
Sehyun swallowed hard. So the camera could see it. But the real question came next. Would looking at it on a screen still count, to the monster, as being watched?
He kept both the real creature and the image on the phone in sight at once. The monster did not move. Now came the gamble. Sehyun slowly lowered his gaze. The actual monster slipped out of his direct vision. Only the version on the phone screen remained.
One second.
Two seconds.
The creature did not move. It stayed frozen in that mid-lunge posture, trapped inside the display.
"…It works."
The corner of Sehyun's mouth curled upward. Watching through the phone camera counted as watching the monster. He no longer needed to twist around and look behind him. He could keep the thing pinned through the screen while facing forward and moving.
Of course, Sehyun assumed the camera was actually recording the monster's appearance — that if someone else looked at the same screen, they would see the same creature.
"Found you."
He glared at the white face on the display.
"Got you, you bastard."