The Crow's Interrogation
When people picture the morning after a night with a woman, they tend to imagine birdsong and soft light. Two people waking under the same blanket, murmuring to each other while pale sunlight filters through the curtains. Quiet talk about breakfast. The classic, tender scene of whispered affection.
Maybe I'd gotten careless, telling myself this was only a world inside a novel.
"…Mm."
When I came to, my hands and feet wouldn't move the way I wanted. I was sure I'd fallen asleep in a bed, yet I felt like I was sitting in a hard chair.
Sleep paralysis?
That didn't fit. The lavender scent lingering at the tip of my nose and the solid restraint on my limbs were far too real. A rough, thick cloth was bound tight over my eyes, so even when I opened them, I saw nothing.
Clink—
I tried to thrash my body free, and a sharp metallic sound rang out. Chains around my wrists, then.
"You're awake?"
A woman's voice settled against my ear. It sounded a great deal like Neria's, but the tone and manner were so different I couldn't be sure. Unlike the clumsy, stammering voice from yesterday, this one was full of laughter — sly and teasing.
"Who are you?"
"Yesterday you clung to me so desperately, and you've already forgotten my voice? How hurtful."
"…Neria?"
"Yes, that's right. I'm Neria."
Standing behind me, she slowly peeled the blindfold from my eyes.
Thud.
The moment it came off, bright light poured in all at once. I squinted, letting my vision adjust, and the scene that emerged was the classic interrogation room straight out of a movie or a TV drama.
A table in front of me. An empty chair across from it. On one wall, a massive one-way mirror that showed nothing of the outside. And, of course, my arms and legs were chained fast to the chair.
Neria approached with the click of high heels, looking nothing like she had the day before. Properly dressed clothes. Neatly combed blackish-purple hair. The hazy eyes from yesterday were gone — now they shone cold as she looked at me.
Clack—
She perched on the edge of the desk, set a file folder down on the table, and went on.
"Well then. Shall we start with introductions again?"
"…Introductions? We finished those yesterday."
"Oh, come on. I already know everything. 'Lee Seohyun' is an alias, isn't it? Don't underestimate the Ohsung Group's information network. What I want is your real name."
She propped her chin in her hand and smiled sweetly. The moment I heard her words, something like an electric current ran down my spine.
The Ohsung Group.
One of the massive conglomerates in the novel, run by the Oh family — the crow beastfolk, notorious for their obsession with information and their monopoly over it. And the place that housed the boss Yun Hasol took down first.
That was enough for her identity to start taking shape in my head. No wonder I hadn't recognized her — she was nothing like the character I remembered.
Neria O Corvus.
Eldest of the three direct-line sisters of the Oh family, and the one who teamed up with the protagonist Yun Hasol to take down the first episode's boss.
If someone wanted to scold me for not recognizing a major character, I had my defense ready. This damned novel never had heroine illustrations, so all I'd ever been able to do was imagine her from the text alone.
She looked nothing like the novel's description. How was I supposed to know…
The Neria I knew never went into heat and clung to anyone the way she had yesterday. She never stammered. She never looked disheveled. At this point, was this multiple personalities? The heat cycle setting hadn't even existed in the original.
"Seohyun, why aren't you answering? I'm being perfectly civil. I'd appreciate it if you understood how hard I worked to stop my aides from torturing you…"
"Ha…. How about you start by telling me why you've got me locked up like this?"
I had no interest in keeping up the polite register in a situation like this. The chains digging into my arms were starting to get on my nerves.
Neria narrowed her eyes for a moment at my tone.
"Hmm…. Are you genuinely asking because you don't know?"
She tapped her chin with a finger and tilted her head. After holding my gaze for a beat, she let out a sigh as if she had no choice.
"Haa, fine. Really, having too much affection is my greatest flaw. Seohyun, do you have any idea how suspicious you look right now?"
"…What?"
"The truth is, after you fell asleep last night, I did a little digging into your background."
She picked up the file folder from the table, her smile growing denser.
"Name: Lee Seohyun. Born April 15, 2037, in Bordanborg of the Dog Nation. Elementary, middle, and high school — no special notes of any kind. A thoroughly ordinary school life, it seems. No disciplinary records, nothing of interest…"
…Wait. I went to school in this world? So I already had an identity here?
Then why the hell did I start out with nothing on the side of the road?
They could have just dropped me in normally like Yun Hasol, couldn't they?
I fumed for a moment, then got my head back on straight and asked her.
"And how is any of that a problem?"
"Oh, no. The school years aren't the problem."
She answered and held out a document. It was the list of successful applicants for the Special Admission track at Manryeong Academy — the academy that had been the novel's main stage.
Every name on that list, including the protagonist Yun Hasol, was a lead character, so they were all familiar. But at the end of a roster that should have stopped at five, three characters were stamped in place: Lee Seohyun.
"How did our Seohyun, who can't even use mana, get selected as a Special Admission Student?"
It was a fair question. In a world where mana existed, there were people who abused it, and since this was a game-transmigration novel of sorts, monsters and labyrinths existed too.
And Manryeong Academy is where they train the heroes who stop those things.
So how does someone get into Manryeong Academy — a place where the geniuses of every race gather — through the Special Admission track, which only takes people with exceptional talent? It wasn't something a guy who couldn't use mana should have been able to pull off.
More than that, according to the story, Neria had known in advance who would be selected through the Special Admission track, which was why the wild card Yun Hasol had caught her interest. From her perspective, I was another unexpected variable that had just appeared.
Even so, none of that was reason enough to lock me up. What kind of lunatic kidnaps someone out of bed and imprisons them just because they look suspicious?
"Ha. That's half a lie. No matter how powerful the Ohsung Group is, you don't lock someone up like this on 'suspicious' alone."
The Neria from the novel had been an intensely rational person. Someone who calculated the gains and losses of every action, and who, when necessary, performed every expression and gesture like an actress.
There had been only one time that version of her made an irrational choice.
"You. My body is what you're after."
"…What are you talking about. Why would I be interested in your body, Seohyun?"
The words left plenty of room for misunderstanding, but they weren't enough to shake her expression. Of course, that wasn't the kind of meaning I'd intended either.
What I meant was the peculiarity of my body — the fact that mana didn't circulate through it.
Every human being, which is to say every beastfolk, could use mana. So setting aside the protagonist Yun Hasol, I was the single anomaly that existed in this world.
Thinking back on how she and Yun Hasol had defeated the first boss, I would look like a highly desirable asset. This was still before Yun Hasol's enrollment — before Neria had even met her. Right now, my body would be the only breakthrough she had for achieving her goal.
Of course, that was only my guess. She might genuinely have gone insane and locked me up for some pathetic reason. She might simply have fallen for me physically.
But based on the information I had, it was the most rational answer.
"Because you're looking for a way to seal the Gold Crow."
"…."
At last the smile cracked off her face, and her original blank expression surfaced.
The Gold Crow.
A legendary three-legged crow that hauled a black sun behind it and hungered after every scrap of knowledge in the world with its thousands of eyes. The embodiment of Greed among the Seven Deadly Sins that formed the novel's theme — a monster sealed in the deepest reaches of the Oh family.
And that was information only a tiny fraction of people in this world would know.
The boss of the first episode had been Neria's father.