Chapter 156
Chapter 156
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Translator: crow
Chapter Title: 156. Red Eyes
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What if you could control people however you wanted?
It would certainly be convenient.
Song Arin thought so too.
How wonderful it would be. To bend everyone to your will. It was like a dream come true.
But humans are cunning creatures.
They find poverty even in abundance.
She was no different.
Her satisfaction lasted only a moment before an infinite weariness washed over her.
She always ended up doubting.
Does this person really like me?
Even if they truly did like her and hold her dear, she had no way to prove it.
After all, she had the power to manipulate even that sincerity.
That's why she craved it even more.
Someone who would love her not because she made them, but of their own true volition.
And finally, someone qualified to fill that role appeared before her.
Someone who never bent to her will, who pushed forward with what they believed was right no matter how she pleaded. And who succeeded most of the time.
He was the first for her.
Of course, there had been a few monsters like that.
Like the Kangseo Branch Chief, who had stared her down with a terrifying grin when she tried her hypnosis on him.
And naturally, she wanted to look good in this man's eyes.
...
A quiet sigh escaped her.
Song Arin opened her eyes.
She was no longer the girl from her childhood who had survived on luck alone.
She was different now.
*
I watched as people moved like puppets on strings.
It wasn't an unfamiliar sight.
Where had I seen this before?
I didn't need to think. The answer sprang to mind.
The doll-like creatures that attacked us in the midsummer night's dream.
And the theater director.
"What is that?"
"I want to know too."
Yoo Daon, now freed, whispered as she approached me, and I had no choice but to whisper back.
But I could grasp how the control mechanism worked.
As Song Arin swung her hand, her mother's body began jerking this way and that.
...
Ha.
After repeating the motions several times, she let out a scoffing sigh.
"So it always ends like this."
She muttered, flicking her hand.
Her mother pulled an old key from somewhere.
"You!"
...
Song Arin slowly walked toward her mother, who screamed.
"This is the key to Arin's room! You can't touch it!"
"It's the key to my room, so I'm taking it back."
Song Arin slowly took the key.
"Arin. Your mother is..."
"I know. Not human."
She nodded, cutting me off.
"But still. I can't kill her myself."
I hurriedly covered Yoo Daon's mouth.
Yoo Daon blinked at me.
*I didn't say anything?* her eyes seemed to say.
But with her right now, it felt like she might say, *Should I kill her?* So I acted on reflex.
"So, I'm letting her go."
...
"Alright."
"Thanks."
Song Arin nodded and flicked her index finger.
Her mother's body straightened.
"Let me go!"
She shouted as she walked off into the distance.
Song Arin watched her with an expressionless face.
She crossed the entryway, down the hall. And vanished.
...
"No matter how I think about it, I must've used up all my luck as a kid."
"Huh?"
Song Arin muttered.
"I survived back then on wits and luck."
"Here?"
"That's why I say I used it all up."
...
"But still, it was pretty miraculous from such a young age, right?"
Song Arin chuckled softly as she muttered.
"How else do you explain me surviving?"
...
"Right?"
She looked at me.
"Yeah."
I had no choice but to nod.
"So."
She opened the door.
With a click, the key turned, revealing a child's room.
It could only be described as cute and cozy.
Even though it had been her room as a little girl.
...
Song Arin squeezed her eyes shut.
"It's exactly the same."
...
"You cleaned it up."
Just as she said.
The room looked unlived in, but traces of someone tidying it remained.
...
"Shall we lie down?"
...
"You first."
Song Arin looked at me.
Was it really okay to leave her and go first? What if she was late or didn't come?
"Don't worry."
She chuckled, wagging her index finger.
"I'm worried the connection might break if I go. And it's easier for me if you go first."
"Should I go first?"
"Do whatever."
Song Arin shot down Yoo Daon's words sharply and looked at me.
...
"Got it. Then—"
"I'll go first."
Yoo Daon cut me off and looked at Song Arin.
She didn't seem fazed by whatever Song Arin might say.
"If that place is dangerous after we wake up, shouldn't I go ahead and wait instead of Jaeheon?"
"That's true."
Song Arin nodded in agreement and looked at me.
"Got it. Go first."
"Yeah."
Yoo Daon lay on the bed without hesitation.
"But how do we sleep here—"
And before she finished, Yoo Daon vanished.
...
...
"You really have to come, Arin."
"You think I won't?"
Song Arin chuckled and looked at me.
"I have no choice but to come."
She poked me with her index finger.
The bed creaked and shook.
"You mean it?"
"Yeah. Idiot."
She smiled quietly.
I gazed at her slowly, then lay on the bed.
"You really have to come."
"Of course."
Song Arin still smiled at me.
Suddenly, overwhelming drowsiness hit me.
This must be what Yoo Daon meant—
"You have to go there for me to be with you."
Song Arin's final words barely registered.
*
"Ah, you're here!"
The moment I came to, Yoo Daon was staring at me with wide eyes.
"Jaeheon, you're not hurt? Nothing hurts? You feel okay...?"
"I'm fine."
"Arin didn't do anything to you?"
"What would Arin do to me?"
"Oh, nothing."
Yoo Daon smiled faintly.
The door opened, white hair fluttering.
...
"Huff... huff..."
"Chaeyeon."
...
"Sorry."
She muttered.
"I came as soon as I got the call. But I was a bit late."
...
"You came right after the call?"
How much time had passed?
I checked the time in a hurry.
Exactly 20 minutes.
...
I exchanged glances with Yoo Daon.
It had definitely been hours.
"The time—"
Before I could finish, Song Arin appeared before us like magic.
...
With a complicated expression, she stared at her own portrait.
"That painting is ugh!"
Yoo Daon opened her mouth to say something, but Song Arin wiggled her fingers, and she clamped her own mouth shut.
"Ugh! Ubbgh! Ugh!"
...
"Sorry."
Ignoring Yoo Daon's muffled protests, Song Arin bowed to me.
"I'll handle this painting."
...
"I trust you."
"Yeah."
"Ugh! Ubbgh!"
Song Arin nodded, and with that, the Kunhagi Apartments incident ended.
Or so I thought.
*
"I hate you now, Kim Jaeheon."
"What's that all of a sudden, Branch Chief?"
The branch chief stared at me with wide eyes.
"What do you mean, all of a sudden?"
Her red eyes glared at me.
"Do you know what I got yelled at for by the boss?"
"No?"
"She went crazy saying I was some lunatic working our next ace to death!"
"You are overworking me... kinda?"
"I keep telling you to rest!"
With a shriek, she clutched her head.
"I send you off to rest, and you come back loaded with incidents. Now you're even causing trouble on a team dinner? Should I seriously set up an office in the branch chief's room?"
"No thanks."
In company terms, it'd be like setting up an office in the president's suite.
"If you don't want that, live more carefully for once!"
She yelled, sounding wronged.
I want to. Really.
...
She sighed deeply.
"First things first. Brief me."
"Got it."
I slowly began briefing her.
What happened with Song Arin and Yoo Daon.
The fight, the escape. And Song Arin's story.
The branch chief listened quietly, but her expression grew serious starting with Song Arin's part.
By the time I finished,
...
She wore a devastated look I'd never seen before.
"Branch Chief?"
...
"Arin said that? That she survived because she was lucky."
She muttered.
"Yeah."
...
"Kim Jaeheon."
She looked at me.
"When do you think people's abilities awaken?"
...
"When they're in danger?"
"That's one case. But usually, it's when the time comes that they need to use it."
She continued calmly.
"For example. Immortality is discovered when you die. Telekinesis when you need to move something."
...
"Wait a sec."
She walked off somewhere.
Soon, she returned with a dusty terminal.
It was a small device with a screen.
"This is the record from the first anomaly at Myeongil Apartments. Using closed-circuit cameras and the Management Bureau's tech at the time, we recorded the inside of the building."
...
Was this really something I should see?
But before I could say anything, she operated the terminal.
CCTV footage played.
A college-aged youth studying, families playing normally, an elderly couple chatting, a man on the phone. Kids at the playground.
And in one instant, everything changed.
The elderly couple cowered on the floor, trembling. The man dropped his phone, staring outside. The playground kids were scattered in pieces, dead.
The screen switched.
A couple ran, clutching a purple-haired child.
The child trembled in the man's arms.
The man fell, looked back.
Terror twisted his face. He hurriedly passed the child to the purple-haired woman.
She hesitated only briefly before his shout sent her running down the hall again.
She ran.
Past the second-floor hallway, she tripped on the landing.
Her legs shattered. She screamed in agony.
The child hit the floor. Looking back, she shouted something at it.
The child ran.
As the child climbed to the third floor, a man in the hall hurled his phone and charged toward it.
As if it were natural, he scooped up the child and ascended the stairs.
Chased by something? He kept glancing back as he climbed.
To the fourth floor.
He pounded on a door.
Two elderly people on the floor hurriedly opened it.
He handed the child to them, urgently said something, and shut the door.
He clenched his fists.
And immediately disintegrated.
The two elders, clutching the crying purple-haired child, rushed to the balcony.
The door splintered. The grandfather shoved the child and grandmother onto the balcony and closed the door.
Blood sprayed. The grandmother screamed.
A young man studying on the next balcony leaped over and reached out.
The grandmother turned, hurriedly passed the child to him, then stepped onto the railing to cross—only to be grabbed and dragged away by something.
Terror filled the young man's face. He fled into the room with the crying child.
He hid the child under the bed, locked the door, and gripped a kitchen knife.
Blood sprayed again.
After a long time, a brown-haired woman raced through the apartment at incredible speed, weaving past corpses.
She found the child under the bed.
The purple-haired child, identical to young Song Arin.
Clutched in her arms.
...
"Sometimes, people erase memories they don't want to remember."
...
"Because that's how they survive."
The brown-haired woman from the footage—the branch chief—spoke to me.
The child on screen stared out with emotionless eyes.
As if feeling nothing.