The Doll Collector
"Are you… okay?"
I asked cautiously, holding out a bottle of water I'd bought from the vending machine to Arin, who sat slumped on the park bench.
Thankfully, she seemed to have calmed down somewhat, settling back into the same aloof, composed air she'd had when we first met.
"Th-thank you…"
Then, taking the bottle with both hands as if it were some sacred offering, the atmosphere flipped all over again.
I'd noticed it back with the texts too — why her attitude toward me kept swinging so abruptly into this deferential, almost groveling politeness was beyond me — but this didn't feel like the right moment to press the question.
I sat down beside her, torn between the urge to flee and the urge to stay, fidgeting awkwardly until I finally managed to ask.
"How did you… find me?"
"Ah, yes! So, um… the phone I gave you has a location tracking feature. It turned on, so I could get a rough idea of where you were, but not your exact position, so I've been running around that whole area like a madwoman for ages."
At my question, Arin answered politely once more, fists clenched tight, back ramrod straight like someone in a job interview.
Her designer clothes, plastered in luxury brands, were frayed and filthy in patches — proof, just as she'd said, that she'd been desperately scouring the streets for me all this time.
"Then why… did you come looking for me all of a sudden? And how do you know my girlf— S-sung-ha, I mean, how do you know my girlfriend?"
Her baffling behavior had me asking in a jumble of confusion and suspicion.
As if hiding something, Arin averted her eyes and stammered.
"Ah, that's… um… I m-missed you all of a sudden? And your girlfriend and I are… we're… colleagues… of a sort…?"
The evasive answer only deepened my suspicion, but I had no desire to get any more entangled than I already was, so I let it go.
She still wore the appearance of a beautiful woman, but nothing had changed the fact that beneath that skin was a monster that had devoured more humans than I could count.
"Okay, understood. You seem uncomfortable with the questions, so I won't pry. Then, since you seem to have calmed down, I'll be going now."
Grab!
The moment I tried to stand, Arin seized my collar with crushing force, the reaction yanking me off balance.
"Where do you— no, I mean… where are you going?"
"H-home? I have to go home."
"Let's go together."
"Why… why would we?"
"That way, I get to see you often from now on, Mr. Hyun-ok."
When Arin smiled brightly with that manufactured face of hers, a queasy shiver ran down my spine.
"I don't want to see you anymore, though…"
"Is there nothing you're curious about? About your girlfriend?"
"There is, but… I'll ask her myself."
I grabbed her hand to pry her loose from my collar, but her grip, tight enough to tear the fabric, didn't budge an inch, like solid rock.
That strength far beyond any ordinary woman's made me realize all over again that the being in front of me was not human.
"Want to have sex with me? I'll use a condom."
"…Excuse me?"
What on earth was this contextless nonsense?
"I'm honestly gorgeous, right? I'll do everything you want, Mr. Hyun-ok — every play, every costume, all of it. Masochist? Sadist? Backdoor play? Outdoors? Just say the word, and I'll do anything. Or if there's some other woman's face you'd rather have than mine, I'll come to you as her. In exchange, keep in touch with me. No — do keep in touch with me."
She was so desperate to bind me to her with her body that at this point, ignoring her was getting difficult.
"What the hell are you—"
I cut off mid-sentence as Arin's expression abruptly darkened.
When I followed her glare and turned my gaze to the same spot, I saw a girl standing there quietly with her hands clasped behind her back — silver hair spilling down to her waist, a slender white slip dress with thin straps.
Her appearance was so demure and saintly it might have radiated a holy aura, yet she gave off an otherworldly wrongness, as if she belonged to some different world entirely — and a grin like a little devil's at the corner of her mouth canceled out that whole aura at a stroke.
Above all, her red eyes — eyes I had never seen on anyone but the monster — felt eerily, unsettlingly similar to hers.
Behind the girl, so jarringly out of place against the ordinary scenery, stood a row of women dressed in maid uniforms.
Every one of them wore an identical smile, pleasant to the point of revulsion — human in shape, but somehow like well-made dolls.
"Wow~ I just caught a whiff of something and wandered over by chance, and who knew there'd be a brand-new doll in a place like this? Lucky day, huh? Keke, keke… Oh, is that mister your food? Hmm… wait, that mister's a little off too, isn't he? Doesn't feel like an ordinary human."
The girl burst into her signature impish giggles, watching Arin with evident amusement before finally sweeping her gaze over me and curling her lips upward.
"Is she… your kin?"
That she was anything but an ordinary human was obvious at a glance, so I asked as quietly as I could, low enough for Arin alone to hear.
"…No. That one's human, but not human. And the maids behind her… those are my kin, all right."
Flustered, Arin answered stiffly, back in the curt tone she'd used with me when we first met.
Her face was etched with bloodlust and the fear of death — emotions an ordinary human like me could hardly hope to encounter even once in a lifetime — and she kept her eyes locked warily on the beings in front of us.
Human but not human…?
And why that being had brought along Sung-ha's kin was beyond me, too.
Then it suddenly struck me how quiet the park was. I turned my head — and saw that at some point, there was no one left in the park but us.
All that remained in view now were the streetlamps casting their glow over the bleak, deserted grounds and the moonlight pouring down from above.
Beneath that light, the girl with skin pale as porcelain smiled her innocent smile, maids in tow.
"What are you two whispering about so happily? Can't I listen too?"
As the girl of unknown origin took a step closer with a sweet smile, Arin planted herself in front of me.
I was conscious of the doll Sung-ha had given me, tucked inside my jacket — but it showed no particular reaction.
She'd told me the doll would tremble if I were ever in danger or if anyone bore me ill will. Its silence meant that, at least for now, the girl was not hostile toward me.
"I've heard there are monster-like humans in BRGI who could even take on a rook single-handedly — S-rank, is that what you call it? You're one of them, aren't you? I don't know how it works, but those castoffs trailing behind you… the kin made from phones, they're yours to control too, right? Even if you are controlling them, from what I can see, they're barely more than corpses."
"Yes, everything you just said is right."
The girl acquiesced readily, pressing her palms together and beaming.
"And soon, you'll be joining my collection too. There aren't many knight dolls around, so I'm in a very good mood."
"…You're saying you'll turn me into a doll?"
Arin's brow furrowed, discomfort plain on her face, though she visibly fought to hold onto her composure.
Parasites controlling humans was one thing — a parasite being controlled by a human was something I'd never heard of.
"Don't worry. It won't hurt much."
Keke, keke…
Belying her radiant smile, the girl let out that sickening giggle as if by habit.
Half angel and half devil in looks and manner, she gave off a chill unlike anything I'd felt facing the monsters before.
"…I'll buy you time. Run."
I couldn't understand why Arin was being so self-sacrificing on my behalf, but with some nameless crisis unfolding around me, I had no room to dwell on it.
"No can do. That mister seems like he'd be interesting too."
Arin had murmured it just loud enough for me alone — yet somehow the girl heard, and a decisive thorn rose in her laughter.
Thwack!
A suspicious rustle came from behind me, and at the same instant a blurry afterimage flashed past before my eyes.
A beat behind the heavy sound of impact, I turned my head and saw one of the maid-dressed women — one who had crept up behind me — sent flying by the tentacle Arin had snapped out.
"You fucking bastards — how dare you bare your fangs at me!? I'm — I'm a Knight! Not trash like you phone-things!"
Driving forward the four tentacles rippling out of her back, Arin snarled at the maids shambling toward us like zombies.
In her battle stance, Arin's eyes glinted with the bloodshot ferocity of a beast, and the tentacles that had been writhing across her body bristled up menacingly.
In response, pale pink tentacles burst from within the bodies of the approaching maids as they, too, took up combat stances.
Then the monsters of the Pawn rank and Arin the Knight collided, and a grotesque battle began — blood spraying in all directions, limbs hacked away.
"My, my, that's very cold of you, unnie. Aren't we kin, after all? Keke, keke…"
The girl watched it all with that same leisurely air, like someone enjoying a good show.
I, on the other hand, was desperately fighting to keep my grip on my sanity amid that horrific bloodbath.
Sung-ha, my girlfriend, was a monster, yes — but I was just an ordinary man in his twenties, a civilian swept into a battle between creatures I couldn't even name.
Honestly, my body was trembling at the surreal scene unfolding right in front of me. All I wanted was to run.
The only reason I didn't was the thought that kept circling back: Arin knew Sung-ha. They knew each other somehow.
If Arin and Sung-ha were close, and Arin died here while I stood by and did nothing… the guilt of having failed to save my lover's friend would haunt me for the rest of my life.
Even knowing that, there was nothing I could actually do — so I made my choice: swallow my pride, face reality, and pick the only option that made sense.
"Mister, who are you calling?"
The voice came out of nowhere and startled me so badly my eyes went round — and there was the girl, tilting her head right beside me, peering at my phone screen.
"Hmm… Yoon Sung-ha? Is that… your girlfriend's name?"
"Ah, you… that's… you… uhh."
Wh-when did she…
"Keke, keke… What's wrong, mister? Go ahead and call if you're going to — actually, no. Mister, could you do me a little favor first? Look at me for a second?"
Even with the girl having closed the distance to within arm's reach, the doll in my jacket still showed no reaction.
Before I could say anything, she rose onto her tiptoes to overcome their difference in height, matched her gaze to mine, then took my face in both palms and forced me to meet her eyes.
Those red eyes, so like the monster's, looked into mine — and for an instant they seemed to strip me bare inside, peering all the way down into my depths.
"…Ah, it's warped. No — it's warping. Who's making you like this? How interesting. …Now that I think of it, that doll of yours is giving off a scent too. And a very… fascinating… and dangerous doll-scent at that. Especially… there's such a strong smell from down below?"
The girl let her gaze slide subtly downward, then, leaving me frozen in place, crouched down and brought her nose right up to my crotch.
Sniff, sniff.
Her small, warm breaths stirred a spreading heat that seeped through the fabric and into what lay beneath my clothes.
"Just as I thought… the scent's strongest right here?"
Keke, keke…
The girl's laugh — innocent and yet utterly chilling — rode the darkness and coiled itself around my ear.