The Outer God Descends
The world flickered white, then my vision returned.
The hole in the window had changed into something grotesque.
The entire red sky had opened its mouth toward me.
From within, liquid light poured into the room like a waterfall.
It was light, yet it illuminated nothing. Wherever it touched, the shadows only deepened.
“Kuh, hah—”
My sister dropped to her knees beside me.
Even an S-rank body, hailed as humanity’s strongest, was powerless before this colossal presence.
The air inside the room grew heavy. Gravity twisted. Light bent. Hyeonwol was already sprawled on the floor, unable to breathe.
■■■ is descending.
A massive hand large enough to crush a planet reached slowly over the windowsill toward me.
In daylight, this would have been dangerous.
But right now—
The sun had set.
“Who said you could enter someone else’s house without knocking?”
I raised my hand.
A neutron star wouldn’t cut it. This was an existence that devoured stars and shattered planets.
So against something like that, I needed something that could devour even it.
I pushed my cognition outward.
Past Mars, past the solar system, to a point twenty-six thousand light-years away.
The heart of this galaxy, around which every star in the Milky Way orbits.
Star Script magic is being used.
Target designated: Supermassive Black Hole (Sagittarius A*)
A black hole with four million times the mass of the Sun manifested here.
Warning: Fixing the coordinates may cause nearby space to collapse.
I know. So just a handful.
A single point formed at my fingertip—a perfect dot of darkness that neither shone nor allowed any surrounding light to escape.
Every sound in the room was sucked into that tiny point.
My sister’s ragged breathing and the distant traffic noise cut off in an instant.
The world held its breath.
The massive hand reaching toward me froze in midair.
The darkness at my fingertips began devouring the liquid light that had been pouring into the room.
The Outer God’s outline unraveled, thread by thread, into the darkness.
『■■!?』
For the first time, it made a sound.
A noise like fingernails scraping bone.
An existence that had spent hundreds of millions of years only consuming was, for the first time since its birth, experiencing what it felt like to be eaten.
“You’ve eaten plenty, so you should know.”
I flicked the point of darkness forward. Another chunk of the Outer God’s outline peeled away.
“Being eaten isn’t very pleasant, is it?”
『■■?! ■■!?』
The colossal shadow thrashed wildly.
But struggling meant nothing before a black hole.
How do you escape a place even light cannot leave?
“So choose.”
I brought the point of darkness right up to the Outer God’s face with a flick of my finger.
“Either get ground down completely right here, or—”
“Shrink yourself down so my room doesn’t get destroyed.”
A brief standoff.
Then the Outer God began to change form.
Like folding origami, the planet-crushing mass compressed itself to fit inside a five-pyeong studio apartment.
The enormous body condensed. The scattered outline grew distinct. Finally, small bare feet settled gently onto the floor.
Standing before me was—
“.....”
A soft-looking girl who seemed to have been plucked straight from the Milky Way.
Her hair was so pale it carried a faint blue sheen, and starlight seemed to linger between the strands.
Depending on the angle of the light, her hair shimmered between silver and violet.
Her eyes were deep, like a tranquil lake mixed with a night sky dotted with stars.
She was a head shorter than me. She wore a loose, whitish garment like pajamas and was barefoot.
To any observer, she looked like a fragile girl who might collapse in the slightest breeze.
Yet the shadow cast behind her remained unchanged.
A massive, ferocious shadow that had nothing to do with her small frame still rippled across the walls and ceiling.
Her body had shrunk, but her essence had not.
The being itself, however, had lost all its former majesty. It now crouched in the corner like a beast with its tail stepped on, warily eyeing the darkness at my fingertips.
Then, suddenly, the girl plopped down onto the floor.
Her shoulders were shaking.
“This lady is…”
Tears welled in her eyes.
“This lady has… for hundreds of millions of years…”
Don’t tell me.
“Ugh…”
Don’t tell me.
“Hic… hngh… waaah—!”
She burst into tears.
‘She’s really wailing her heart out.’
A planet-devouring existence was sitting in the middle of my room, bawling like a child.
Even the shadow behind her twisted into a sobbing expression and rippled pathetically.
“Hundreds of millions of years… hic… This lady was always alone among the stars… hngh… Everything This lady encountered fled, and This lady has never exchanged a single word with anyone… hic—”
She flopped onto the floor and kept wiping her tears.
She was no different from a lost child who had finally found a guardian.
“Hey, listen—”
“Then, for the first time, someone actually looked at This lady… Because you looked at This lady… This lady came running right away, and then—”
The Outer God stared at me with tear-filled eyes.
“The moment This lady arrived, before even receiving a greeting, you tried to grind This lady into darkness—!”
“No, you reached out first—”
“Waaaaah—!”
She wasn’t listening. She had no intention of listening.
I sighed and scratched my head. I wasn’t great at comforting crying kids.
“Fine, fine. Stop crying already.”
Sniff.
The crying stopped instantly.
It stopped so abruptly that I was speechless.
The same Outer God who had been wailing loud enough to bring the building down now looked up at me with a tear-streaked face.
“…Are you truly not angry with This lady?”
“I’m not angry.”
The Outer God remained motionless for a long while.
She watched me the way a stray cat might watch a stranger.
Then she took one careful step forward. She paused, gauging my reaction.
When I didn’t move, she took another step. Then two more.
She approached slowly, ready to retreat at any moment.
The massive shadow behind her crawled along the wall after its master.
Unable to watch any longer, I sighed and dismissed the black hole at my fingertip. Only then did the Outer God’s steps quicken.
She stopped at arm’s length.
Then she grabbed the hem of my clothes and spoke with the most solemn expression imaginable.
“You… could have destroyed This lady.”
The Outer God’s voice trembled faintly.
“In all the hundreds of millions of years This lady has existed, you are the first to be able to destroy This lady yet choose not to.”
The Outer God knelt on the spot and curled up like a cat.
“This lady will stay by your side.”
“That’s a bit—”
“This lady will stay by your side.”
She said it twice. Apparently, refusal wasn’t an option.
Well, at least she stopped crying.
*****
The room grew a little quieter.
The Outer God fidgeted for a moment before speaking to me.
She looked like she had something important to say.
“…You.”
The Outer God continued in a voice that seemed to carry the weight of ages—a tone I had never heard from her before.
When I turned, she was still crouched, staring at a single point beyond the torn window, somewhere in the darkened night sky.
“This lady will tell you why This lady wandered only among the stars for so long… and why This lady could not come here until now.”
Her small hands trembled slightly.
“This lady consumed everything This lady encountered. Stars, planets—it was This lady’s nature.”
The atmosphere suddenly grew heavy.
“Yet even This lady… once… turned tail and fled from something.”
The Outer God slowly raised her head.
Fear shimmered in her eyes.
“This lady has been running from it ever since.”
“What is it?”
The Outer God did not answer. She merely stared at the night sky with fearful eyes.
Then, with a soft rustle—
She burrowed into my arms.
???
She pressed her small body close, as if my embrace brought her comfort, and buried her face against me.
My sister’s jaw dropped at the sight. Honestly, I was just as dumbfounded.
I looked down at the Outer God in my arms for a moment, then sighed and leaned back onto the bed with her still there.
“…Well, it’s not like it’s attacking right now anyway.”
Exactly. Tomorrow’s problems could wait until tomorrow.
‘Right you are.’
“You?”
The Outer God, still nestled in my arms, looked up at me with sudden curiosity.
“You said it didn’t come charging in right away. Then it’s a problem for later. Future me can handle it.”
“Are you not afraid? Even This lady fled from it.”
“I don’t know about that. I’m just sleepy right now.”
The Outer God’s mouth fell open.
A cosmic being who had lived for hundreds of millions of years was experiencing, for the first time in its existence, being brushed off by a yawn.
“I see.”
The Outer God nodded with an expression of deep misunderstanding.
“So you have reached a height where even that is beneath your notice…”
No, I’m literally just sleepy.
“By the way, Star Boy.”
My sister spoke up quietly.
“Yeah?”
“Is that thing really safe? That unidentified object the observatory went crazy over. The one that eats planets.”
“You can see for yourself. It looks harmless now, doesn’t it?”
“That’s what makes it scarier. What if it suddenly goes berserk?”
“And why is it clinging to you? Weren’t you two trying to kill each other just now? Shouldn’t it be hostile?”
“Good question.”
“That’s not an answer!”
My sister clutched her head. She seemed extremely flustered by the situation.
“I don’t get it. What even is this situation?”
My sister shot the Outer God a sideways glance, sweating nervously. Whether it noticed or not, I flopped back onto the bed with the Outer God still in my arms.
It had been one hell of a day. All sorts of things had happened. So now it was time to rest. I needed to take a nap.
That said, the Outer God was soft and warm. It made me sleepy. How could something be this soft?
‘Hmm… Outer Gods are soft.’
Yet while the atmosphere inside the room was peaceful, the night sky outside the window remained perfectly calm, as if nothing had happened.
Unaware that somewhere out there, something was slowly raising its head.