The Older Sister Is Right Here
After dodging Seongha's temptations, I ended up near a building that was under heavy construction.
It was on the outskirts of town, where development was still underway, and the scattered construction sites lent the area a desolate, haunted air — the kind of place you half expected a ghost to drift out of the shadows. Especially on a night like this, when darkness had fully settled, the only sound to be heard was the occasional car passing in the distance, and the emptiness pressed in all the heavier for it.
Even so, the reason I'd come here was the quiet — a stillness so complete I could almost believe I was the only person left in the world.
I was walking alongside the half-built structure, its bare skeleton exposed to the night, lost in one thought after another. Now that I'd quit my job, how was I supposed to live going forward? How long could things with the monster keep going like this? Questions like that churned through my head with every step.
Tap.
…Hm?
When I turned toward the sudden sound of footsteps, I found a girl who looked like a high school student standing right in front of me.
"Ah… h-hello?"
She greeted me first, cautiously, as if slightly frightened, and I flinched in surprise, feeling a flicker of awkwardness on top of it. What were the odds of running into a high school girl out here of all places, at this hour of night?
"…Oh, hello?"
We exchanged greetings, but I still didn't know what to do with myself — and I couldn't help feeling suspicious, too.
"Um… sorry, but I'm lost… and I lost my phone, so… I was wondering… could you maybe… walk me to the station nearby? Please. I'm begging you."
Her explanation was reasonable enough to be believed, so at last I let my expression soften.
"Oh… I see. There are so many buildings under construction around here that it's easy to lose your way, right? I'll walk you to the station."
She'd desperately worked up the courage to ask a stranger — a man, no less — so I did my best to speak kindly, careful not to trigger any wariness in her.
"Yes… thank you."
Giving a shy little bow, the girl fell in warily behind me, and together we set off shuffling toward the station.
The distance turned out to be longer than I'd expected, and the route was dark and empty of passersby — dark enough that even as a man, I found it a little unnerving.
Definitely too dangerous for a high school girl to walk alone… hm?
Then, in the moonlight, I noticed something smeared on the front collar of her white school blouse.
…Blood?
"Did you hurt yourself somewhere?"
"…No? Why do you ask?"
There was a note of guardedness in her voice, and I felt like I'd made a mistake — but I couldn't leave the question half-finished now.
"There's… blood on your clothes."
"…I don't know anything about that."
"Right… um… j-just asking to be safe, haha…"
The girl gave no answer, and another awkward silence settled over us until she was the one to speak first.
"What about you, oppa…? Why were you walking around a place like this all by yourself?"
At least she was asking me something now, so I answered with an inward sigh of relief.
"Ah, well… I had some things to think about. I live around here, and there's nowhere quieter than this."
"I see…"
"So… what about you? How did you end up all the way out here? As far as I know, there aren't even any high schools in this area…"
"I don't know. I was just talking with some older girl, and when I opened my eyes, I was here…"
…An older girl?
Something about the conversation had shifted, subtly off its track.
"And that older girl? Where is she?"
"…She's right here."
Hm?
At that strange answer, I stopped mid-stride and looked around — but there was still nothing to see except the two of us, the girl and me.
…Did I mishear her?
"Sorry, I must have—"
"Here. Here. It's me. I'm that older girl."
"…I'm sorry?"
The girl was pointing at herself, claiming that she was the very person who'd brought her here.
Unable to make sense of the nonsense, I narrowed my eyes and stared at her in bafflement.
"I brought this high school girl here and ate her. And right now, I am that high school girl."
If this had been the me from before I met the monster, I wouldn't have understood a word of that.
But I had crossed paths with the monster since then, and having become her boyfriend, I could grasp exactly what it meant.
Crack. Pop…!
With a grotesque chorus of flesh and bone twisting, the girl's body heaved and rippled, reshaping itself into something else entirely — until what stood before me was a tall, aloof-looking beauty, the sort of woman who looked like she belonged in Gangnam. Her clothes changed too: the school uniform melted away, replaced by a revealing all-black outfit stitched together from expensive designer labels.
"So you really are human, kid. …Though interesting — you get startled, but you don't run, and you don't scream? What are you? And what's with the smell of our own kind coming off your body?"
The being who'd transformed from schoolgirl into woman — clearly one of the monster's own kind — fired her questions at me as I stood rooted to the spot, shaking.
Seeing her like that brought the memory of my first encounter with the monster surging back. Back then, just like now, my survival instincts had been flashing red, every cell in my body screaming at me to run.
But I also understood, instinctively, from everything that had happened since meeting the monster: running from a creature like her was impossible.
Gulp.
"…I, uh… I wouldn't taste very good."
My lips quivered blue as I forced out a joke, trying to steady my breath before it turned ragged.
The woman blinked at me in wide-eyed astonishment — then burst out laughing.
"Pfft! Kuk-ku! So you do know about us… Let's see… you're not one of those trash human agents, I can tell that much — those squads only ever use women in combat roles anyway. But you still haven't answered my question, have you?"
Slither.
Her pupils flushed a vivid crimson, just like the monster's, and I could see a tentacle slipping quietly out from the vicinity of her neck. Faced with an attitude that made it plain she'd kill me on the spot if I dodged or deflected, I did my best to feign calm as I spoke.
"If I tell you… will you let me live?"
"Mmm… we'll see how it goes?"
The woman toyed idly with the tip of her outstretched tentacle, twirling it this way and that with a finger, and answered with a careless shrug.
"I know someone who's like you."
I deliberately avoided saying "girlfriend," afraid the monster might somehow come to harm — I covered it with "someone I know" instead.
"Hmm… someone you know. Then it's obvious, isn't it? Either you're a pet human, or you're emergency rations she's keeping around to ripen for later. Either way, I've never understood that sort of thing."
A… pet human?
"It's like how you humans keep dogs. Every so often, one of our kind keeps a human the way you'd keep a pet. Most of them play with it until they get bored, and then kill it. But you… you don't look tasty, so I'm guessing you're the pet kind. And that actually makes sense of it — why you smelled like our own kind, I mean."
Having read the question right off my face, the woman gave a snort of laughter and took a single step toward me — and I felt the Doll tucked away against my stomach give the faintest twitch.
"Tch… Whatever. If one of our kind has already staked a claim on you, I can't exactly play with you. I'd rather not fight over it for no reason. And I'm actually full, as it happens."
She clicked her tongue, retracted the tentacle, and let her displeasure show plainly on her face.
Full… huh.
"…You ate that high school girl… just now, didn't you?"
At my question — careful, yet carrying something suppressed beneath it — the woman glanced at me with faint surprise, then smirked.
"Why? Angry? Is your blood boiling over the poor, pitiful high school girl meeting such an unhappy end? Now, of all times? If you're her pet, you must have watched your owner devour humans dozens of times over, haven't you?"
Her casual admission made my anger flare, and I did feel sympathy for the dead girl.
But none of it would change anything. I was a powerless, ordinary human being — if I'd thrown myself at the monster before me with nothing but fury in my fists, the outcome would have been nothing but a dog's death.
The death of that high school girl was, without question, something to grieve over as a fellow human being, something that made rage boil up in my chest. But for someone who could do absolutely nothing about it, it could only ever amount to sorrow, and nothing more.
Even so, there were a few things that had been grating on me for a while now, and I couldn't just let them slide.
"I'd like to correct two things."
Under normal circumstances I'd have kept my mouth shut, not wanting to bring any harm down on the monster — but the way this woman was carelessly misreading the relationship between us was more than I could stomach.
"…Huh?"
"First: I am not a pet human. She and I are dating. That's what we are — me and your fellow kind. Second: I don't know how things were in the past, but at least since I met her, I've never once seen her devour a human being. She promised me she wouldn't eat humans."
"…I think I misheard you somewhere in there. Say it again?"
"You heard it right the first time. Nothing wrong with your ears."
When I met her eyes and repeated it clearly, word by word, the woman stared at me in blank astonishment — then suddenly exploded into laughter.
"Ha! …Haha!! …Hahahahaha!!"
Clutching her belly like an ordinary human, she laughed long and hard — loud enough to echo through the hollow, empty buildings around us — before fixing her gaze on me again.
"This kid— no, I mean, oppa, you don't seem to be lying… Wowie~ so one of our kind like that really exists? One that wants to live in symbiosis with humans? And she's dating one? A human? I'd only ever heard rumors, but I guess they're real… Haha! Making promises to some lowly human… I have to hand it to her. Truly impressive."
Muttering with vinegar in her voice, the woman curled both fists tight and flashed a wide grin at me as I stood there holding my fear in check.
"That kin of ours is a strange one, sure — but you're even more interesting, oppa. You knew what she was, and you dated her anyway? Wow… genuinely impressive."
Only afterward did it occur to me that I couldn't explain why I'd spoken up at all instead of keeping quiet — why I'd said things that put my life at risk. But at the very least, I felt no regret.
"Oppa… you see, I've suddenly become suuuuper, super, super, super curious about you? So with that in mind — would you mind if I just opened up that brain of yours and took a little look inside?"
Slither.
Her fingers shifted, reshaping themselves into the form of tentacles, and narrowing her eyes, the woman began to close the distance between us — slowly, one step at a time.