So I Really Am a Bad Person
Outside the gate, camper-like research vehicles sat parked among a scatter of trailers, and the whole place felt as if I had wandered into an Antarctic research base.
The night was pitch-black, yet with lights thrown up everywhere and people bustling through them, it seemed less like night than the thick of a busy afternoon.
A shaggy giant of a man, his beard grown out like a dwarf's, was leading me along by a line around my neck. The clothes I had on were little more than rags, I had no shoes, and the whole of me looked wretchedly pitiful.
Everyone who passed turned to stare. The man dragging me seemed to feel every one of those looks land on him at once. His face flushed red, and the giant quickened his steps.
I wasn't used to a pace like that, and I went down hard. He might have spared a thought for how short my stride had become. Keeping his old one, there was no way my little legs could keep up.
"Agh!"
I couldn't form words, but I could still scream that it hurt. The moment I did, the murmuring around us swelled.
The giant hastily scooped me up under his arm and took off at a run. He could have done that from the start. Why he'd been hauling me around on a leash like a dog, I had no idea.
I hung there against his side for a few minutes before we arrived somewhere. Electronic equipment lay spread all around, and atop a parked vehicle like a box truck sat a large round antenna. It looked like a place built for research.
"Bora! You in there?"
The giant pounded on the door and called to whoever was inside. I stared, nerves drawn tight, waiting to see who would come out.
To my relief, it was a young woman in a lab coat, her hair pulled into a ponytail. I'd been half afraid another strange man would appear, and I let out a small sigh.
"Deokgu? Is something wrong?"
"Ah, got something I need to hand over."
Park Deokgu seized me by the waist on either side, where I still hung against him, and turned me to face her. The researcher went blank for a moment. Then her eyes flew wide, and she spoke like someone who had seen a thing she was never meant to see.
"What—handling a child this small and frail so roughly! Deokgu! I'm disappointed in you!"
"No... it ain't—it's not like that!"
She snatched me up and yanked me hard toward herself. Thanks to that, I escaped the arms of the man called Deokgu, who reeked of unwashed bachelor. It had been bothering me for a while.
"Are you all right? Aigoo, look at that scraped face. And why in the world is there a chain around your neck?"
Soft hands stroked my face this way and that. It was the first kindness I'd been shown in so long that I couldn't help it—the tears came. Whether the day had simply been too much, or my tear ducts were just that pathetic, I started crying almost at once.
I had never been much of a crier, but now the tears came strangely easily. As I wept, the woman drew a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped them away. She was kind beyond measure. Human warmth, after all this time.
"Ahh..."
I tried to say thank you, but the words wouldn't come. All that escaped was some sound I couldn't name.
If I could only speak, I could tell them I was an ordinary person and beg them to have that man punished under the law. Not being able to was maddening. I was beginning to understand why people who cannot speak grow so desperate when they cannot get what is inside them out.
Still holding me, the woman spoke sharply.
"Deokgu, she's a little girl. You ought to handle her all the more carefully. Girls are delicate."
At the scolding, Park Deokgu broke into a sweat and answered with care.
"No, Bora... you need to watch yourself. That's a humanoid monster that came out of the gate."
"What?!"
The woman who had been holding me hastily pulled me out of her arms. I had liked the warmth, so I reached for her in a please-hold-me gesture. She didn't take me back. She set me a little farther off than before.
"So that's why you put a restraint on it..."
She said it while looking at the chain around my neck. If you're going to stare, you could at least take the thing off first, I thought. The clank of it was unbearably irritating.
"Yeah. Don't look dangerous at all from the outside, but just in case, I put it on by guild regulations."
"Ah, you did the right thing. Judging by the hair and the eyes, this definitely isn't human."
"Long as the restraint's on, there shouldn't be any trouble. Looks-wise, and back when I grabbed it—didn't have any real threatening ability or strength."
"You must have had a hard time of it inside the gate."
Then she took hold of me and stared, unblinking, at my head and then down the rest of me. The sudden change in her gaze made my skin crawl, and I twisted and squirmed. She didn't stop looking.
The day felt far too long.
Clatter. Clatter.
I was shut inside something like an iron cage, being carried off somewhere. The researcher called Kim Bora watched me and scribbled, and every time I so much as fidgeted she caught it, pen never leaving the page as she filled out her documents.
Watching her, I was desperate to tell her to let me out. This was kidnapping, plain and simple, with not a thought spared for my human rights.
But I had already seen my changed face in a mirror, so I couldn't bring myself to argue. It wouldn't have mattered anyway. What came out of me wasn't proper Korean, only some strange moan of a sound.
The face in the mirror was a world apart from the one I used to have. Ask a hundred people on the street and every last one of them would say I was someone else. Anyone with eyes would have said the same.
I had been black-haired, of average Korean height and perfectly average looks. Now I was a little kid with green hair and green eyes, no taller than an elementary schooler.
And pretty enough to make your eyes pop. Grow up in a face like this and I would clearly have the makings of a beauty who could turn the whole country on its head. If I had married and this had been my child, I would have praised them to the high heavens a hundred times over.
I wasn't glad of it. If I could at least make myself understood, that would have been something. I gripped the bars and protested to be let out, but Korean never left my mouth.
When will I be able to speak? Or is it that this isn't a human body, so human speech is beyond me? While I was turning that over, Kim Bora watched me thrash and quietly drew closer.
"Want this?"
She fidgeted around in her sleeve and produced a single lollipop. She seemed to think of me as a little kid. I was not about to fall for a trick that obvious.
"Ah... ah..."
But by the time I came to my senses, the lollipop was in my mouth and my face wore a look of perfect contentment. Well, I hadn't eaten all day and I was hungry, and surely one lollipop was fine?
Rationalizing like that, I sucked hard at the candy Kim Bora had given me. As the sweetness spread through my mouth, the feeling of having been ground into the dirt eased, if only a little.
Watching me, Kim Bora looked thoroughly pleased. Then she took out her phone and started snapping pictures of me with the lollipop from every angle.
One or two I could have forgiven. When it became clear she meant to take far more than that, I covered my face with both hands so the phone couldn't catch it, and planted my face against the floor. If she wanted my picture, she would have to give me more candy first.
"Hnnng... won't you show your face so I can take more pictures?"
Kim Bora put on a tearful pout at the sight of me refusing. I lifted my head just enough that she still couldn't see my face, then turned my back on the phone. Ending up in this body was already unfair enough. Having my picture taken on top of it was too cruel.
Only then did she seem to realize I hated it. She set the phone carefully down on the desk and slowly came closer.
"So our guild finally has a humanoid monster of its own~ You're so cute I want to take a bite out of those cheeks."
There was something not right in the way Kim Bora was looking at me. Even I, who usually couldn't read a room to save my life, felt a chill.
Clatter. Clatter.
In the rocking vehicle, I wanted nothing more than for the time to pass.
Being alone with a woman was a miserable predicament. Whether she knew what I was feeling or not, the vehicle carrying me swayed and jolted onward toward a destination I couldn't begin to guess. I just wanted this to be over.