Labyrinth of Desire (2)
Audrey's gaze locked onto the mirror. In the reflection staring back from her wide eyes… there stood a youthful Audrey who looked like a middle schooler, leaping joyfully into the arms of a man who resembled her.
Or rather, it wasn't that she resembled him. She simply took after her father.
"Daddy, why are you so late?"
"Sorry. Daddy tried to get here quickly, but traffic was terrible."
Audrey approached the mirror with a face like someone possessed by a ghost. She stared blankly at her own image warmly reuniting with her deceased father, then slowly reached out and pressed her hand against the mirror's smooth surface.
"Mom's making roast beef today. There's potatoes too, and…"
"Then should Daddy help out a little?"
"What are you saying—Daddy can't cook! Absolutely not!"
The young Audrey in the mirror was throwing a tantrum at her father. The scene soon shifted to a dining table, where the youthful Audrey ate with her parents, all three of them beaming with happiness. Then the image faded to black.
"……."
What the mirror showed now was only the adult Audrey, standing with her hand pressed against the transparent glass, staring vacantly into space as if her soul had left her body.
"H-hey, Audrey? Where are you going by yourself!"
After standing there motionless for a moment, Audrey suddenly broke into a run deeper into the labyrinth. Worried she might cause some kind of accident, I quickly chased after her, only to find her standing in front of yet another mirror, clutching its frame.
"I'm so glad Mom got better, right?"
"Yeah. When Mom collapsed, I really thought the world was ending…"
"Don't cry, sweetheart. Mom will stay by Audrey's side forever. Okay?"
This time the illusion was set in a hospital room. A high school-aged Audrey was sobbing tears of relief in her parents' arms. She stared blankly once more at the sight of her mother—who should have died from her illness—now fully recovered and embracing her. The moment the scene faded to black, she frantically ran off again in search of another mirror.
"Audrey, please snap out of it. Those are just illusions, Audrey…!"
Even when I grabbed her shoulder and called out to her, it was as if she couldn't hear me at all. She said nothing, simply wandering from mirror to mirror in a desperate search. And at the end of that search—
"Audrey, come to Daddy."
Before I knew it, we had reached the deepest part of the labyrinth. There stood an enormous mirror that covered an entire wall. Unlike the previous ones, this mirror showed Audrey's father directly gesturing toward the real Audrey on our side.
"Come on, there's a good girl."
With an incredibly gentle expression, he was calling out to the Audrey in reality…
This… is different. It's dangerous.
I instinctively sensed that this illusion was unlike the others before it and grabbed Audrey's forearm tightly.
"Can't you hear me? You can't go, Audrey!"
But she ignored me completely, as if I didn't exist at all, as if she couldn't even perceive my presence. She continued walking toward the mirror. I desperately tried wrapping mana threads around her to restrain her, even used my mana-enhanced strength to hold her back, but it was all in vain. Of course an A-class like me couldn't physically restrain an S-class by force.
…Yes. By physical force.
Damn it, do I really have to use that?
I had sworn never to use it again, but this was an emergency. If I didn't, both of us could be in serious danger. I just needed to stop her for a very brief moment.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and slowly opened them again.
"I'm sorry, Audrey."
She was already standing right in front of the mirror. I urgently connected a mana thread to the back of her neck, linking into her mana circuits. The moment I tried to intervene in the flow of mana running through those circuits to seize control of her movements—
"………!"
My eyes inadvertently drifted to the mirror, where my sister—covered in blood—hung like a broken doll on a string, swaying as she stared straight at me.
"N-noona…?"
Her hollow eyes with fully dilated pupils pinned me in place as if my gaze had been nailed there. Only when I registered the blink of her eyelids did I barely manage to regain my senses. By then, the illusion of my sister had vanished like a lie, and the mirror only showed Audrey in a suit, walking blankly with heavy steps toward the center of the black room.
"…Damn it!"
Alarms were blaring wildly inside my head. Just because Calathea had easily cleared an A-class gate didn't mean I could let my guard down around Audrey, another S-class. No matter who you entered with, a gate was still a gate. Because I had failed to properly stay vigilant against the malicious variables this demonic realm harbored, Audrey had let her guard down while watching illusions of herself being doted on, and the result was her crossing over into the world inside the mirror.
Normally, an A-class gate's mental attacks shouldn't have been able to pierce an S-class hunter's natural resistance, but…
…She must have wanted to believe it.
If the hunter themselves chose to accept the temptation, even an S-class's resistance became meaningless.
What now?
I still had no clue about the gate's clear conditions. I had simply assumed we just needed to avoid the illusions and make it through the labyrinth… If I left Audrey like this, found the gate's core mana stone, and claimed it, would she even be able to come out safely? What if she was judged to have already fused with the gate and vanished along with it?
…No. There was no time to think about any of that.
"I can't lose anyone else."
At least not in front of my eyes. I didn't want to lose anyone ever again. Never again.
"Haa… they say even hate can become affection."
I realized once more that human emotions refused to obey one's will. Standing before the mirror, I desperately wished that I would appear beside Audrey.
If my guess was correct, this mirror reflected the strongest person's desires upon entering the gate and used them to seduce its victim. That meant my own desires would now be reflected before me, since I was the only one left in this gate.
And what appeared in the mirror was—
"Yohan…?"
"…Noona."
It was my sister from when she was alive—Seong Hanna. Not the gruesome figure from my memories, but the beautiful, pure version of her who had been loved by everyone. She tilted her head slightly as she looked at me and offered a warm smile.
But…
I don't even deserve to approach someone like her.
"Not now, noona."
I slowly closed my eyelids as if imprinting the afterimage, then slowly opened them again with a deep breath. This time, I could clearly see Audrey standing precariously in the black room. I carefully placed my hand against the mirror's surface—
The surface, which had felt as smooth as glass, gave way like jelly. Little by little, my hand sank inward. I pushed my hand, then my foot, then my entire body through the membrane. The moment I penetrated it, I felt a light floating sensation as if I had entered another gate from within the first, and I found myself inside the black room where Audrey stood with her 'father'.
"Audrey, wake up…!"
Even when I called her name, there was no response. Audrey simply stood there like a stone statue in front of her 'father', her lips moving faintly as if she were engaged in conversation.
Had her mind been completely captured by the illusion?
The one small mercy in all this was that the 'father' wasn't attacking her. Still…
He really does look exactly like a real person.
This sinister gate had perfectly recreated the appearance of that S-class hunter once called a hero, making him seem truly alive. The only thing missing was the residual mana that should naturally flow from any hunter's body. It seemed this decoy's sole purpose was to lure Audrey inside.
In that case, all I had to do now was bring Audrey back to her senses and get her out of here.
"…Alright."
I extended my mana threads once more, slowly advancing them toward the back of Audrey's neck. I swore to myself that this time I would completely overcome the gate's interference. The moment the thread was about to touch the nape of her neck—
"What the… is this?"
The mana thread, which theoretically could not freeze since it was made of pure mana, froze solid just before it could touch Audrey's skin. At the same time, as if isolating herself from my interference, Audrey began to be covered in ice from her ankles upward, along with her 'father'. A massive ice pillar was slowly forming around the two of them.
If she froze completely like this, there would be nothing I could do. As someone incapable of breaking ice created by an S-class, I would never be able to save her. But then what—
"………!"
Even as I hesitated, Audrey continued to freeze. Before long, she was trapped inside a huge block of ice that reached up to her waist. As I watched the accelerating crystallization with no idea what to do, just before her upper body was completely encased—
"Audrey, please…!"
Without thinking, I reached out and grabbed her shoulder. At the same time, ice began spreading across my own body from that hand and—
"I'm fucked. Shit."
I was swallowed by the ice.