“What a joke. I told you to take responsibility, and you’re just sitting here apologizing.”
He muttered that if Oscar had not been outside, blood would have been spilled here several times over already. He pulled out a cigarette. The absurdity of the scene made his blood boil, so he turned his back on the bed.
“Go find a place to bury that woman.”
However, the adjutant, who had been carefully observing his superior’s sharpened gaze, hesitated before speaking.
“Uh… Senior.”
“Why.”
“For some reason… she seems to be regaining consciousness.”
“……?”
Simon, about to light his cigarette, turned sharply. He met the woman’s eyes, bathed in hazy light.
Brown pupils set in a pale-fair face irresistibly drew attention. The moment their eyes met, Simon felt awareness returning to her.
“I’m sorry, miss.”
The old prostitute of Felpe held and comforted the woman she had intended to sell for profit, while the naïve foreigner slowly regained stability in the arms of the very woman who had meant to ruin her.
Of course, Simon’s reaction remained consistently horrific.
“I can’t comprehend this. What is this scene?”
Even as he spoke, her clear brown eyes sharpened by the second.
The woman who had become a living key was troublesome even in death, even with her mind broken.
Watching her with cynical eyes, Simon lit his cigarette and thought:
Right. What does it matter how it happened? Isn’t it enough that it happened?
Yes. That was enough for now.
Through drifting smoke, her brown eyes remained visible.
Simon held the cigarette in one hand and offered a cynical greeting.
“Are you conscious?”
—
The nightmare constricting her breath faded the moment she registered the hand stroking her back and its warmth.
I’m sorry. It was my fault.
The voice that had sounded distant, like one heard underwater, grew clearer. Seo-ah met the red eyes looking back at her. The man who exhaled smoke opened his mouth.
“Are you conscious?”
At his sharp voice, Seo-ah realized he was part of that chilling conversation. At the same time, she recognized he belonged to that man.
Behind the man approaching her step by step, men of equally solid build appeared. They pulled away the one who had been holding her.
The warmth that had saved her from surging memories vanished abruptly.
“What? Why—why? Please save me, I’m awake!”
Only then did Seo-ah realize the warmth that had rescued her was also the person who had pushed her into the abyss. When the red-eyed man stood directly before her, she saw the one being dragged away was the elegant innkeeper.
Through the briefly opened door, heavy and intense presences swarmed.
She could not remain sitting. She hurried off the bed. The moment her feet touched the floor, her knees nearly gave out. Bracing herself with her palms, trying to stand, her gaze dropped to the ground.
A pair of long, slender legs.Black shoes with gleaming tips stopped one step before her.
“…….”
Leaning on her thighs, she looked up. The man with ruby-colored eyes looked down at her.
“Can you walk?”
His tone was polite. Yet she knew that if she said no, he would tell her to crawl.
“…Yes.”
The cracked voice scraped her throat as it emerged. The man turned his back. With long strides he reached the doorway, stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray, then looked back.
Under silent pressure to obey, she took a step. Her heart pounded as if it would burst.
Beyond the open door, terrifying presences coiled like venomous snakes.
Where was this place?Who was the one waiting for her to wake?
The man flashing through her mind was undoubtedly him.
The man carved from darkness.
At the same time, her teacher’s words surfaced.
Her life would become as precarious as a lamp in the wind the moment she revealed she carried the key.
But she did not fear a precarious life.
If the beginning of life was the beginning of sin, then atonement was ultimately death.
There was only one thing she feared.
A meaningless death—one that would not bring her grandfather with her.
The pounding of her heart echoed in her ears like thunder. Her exhaled breath felt like frost. At that moment, the man with red eyes vanished through the door, and Seo-ah stepped beyond it.
The presences, hidden beneath a layer, rushed in into clarity.
A vast space opened before her, an exotic landscape unfolding. Fragmented light poured through rows of windows. Yet the place felt dark, likely because of the men in black filling it.
Each presence differed from the guards of the Felpe Bank. Every man was as sharp as a honed blade, as immense as a named mountain.
One by one, gazes turned toward her. All of them looked at Seo-ah. She felt as if she stood in the middle of a vast of a rugged canyon.
A treacherous mountain of jagged stone. Wind howling like a terrifying cry whipped her hair. Spray from a waterfall crashing from a great height soaking her face.
She stopped without realizing it. But the red-eyed man kept walking.
Step by step, leisurely, like a predator crossing a canyon. As he walked, the men on the path moved aside. As if finding their positions, the room shifted with disciplined precision, as if forming a perfectly assembled picture.
At last, when the men spread long on either side like wings, the walking man stopped. He bowed deeply toward the right.
Sunlight poured over his bent black back.
Everything flowed naturally, yet sound itself seemed erased. Her breathing sounded unnaturally loud. The light reflecting off his back was blinding.
Then—
A curtain of light parted.
Ancient scriptures said: in the beginning there was light, and darkness was born from it.
The one who appeared beyond the bowed man was like that darkness born of light.
As he walked forward, the men lining both sides bowed their heads. Receiving their greetings, he crossed the space as though passing through a dense canyon.
The red-eyed man straightened and took position on the right; he stood leisurely in a spot. The arriving figure stopped in a place that, among them, was unmistakably a throne.
With the men, each with a presence as grand as a named mountain, lined up like a folding screen on either side, he had both in his pockets. Despite his expansive, relaxed demeanor, the presences lined like a folding screen were lesser than his alone.
The moment her eyes met his unusually piercing blue, Seo-ah lowered her head.
She saw her skirt clenched in her fists, the back of her hand pale as snow. Her breath and heart, pounding as if to burst, shook her ears.
Her overstretched nerves traced his presence.
He took a step.
Her breath caught with each deliberate stride. Like watching distant floodwater racing closer, she could not stop the approaching man's steps.
Before she knew it, her gaze dropped to the floor. Gleaming black shoes and long legs entered her sight. His shadow drew a long line across her vision. A breath-soft laugh settled over her crown.
“Don’t just stand there. Look at me.”
His voice, threaded with laughter, was low.
At the end of his words, her chin lifted naturally. Trembling slightly, she hesitantly she raised her head—then froze. The moment her gaze leveled, she could no longer look up.
A black coat. Broad shoulders several times her size. Another low laugh. Her shoulders hunched reflexively. His face descended into her vision.
“……!”
Their eye level matched. His features stamped onto her retinas before she could react.
Curled hair like an elegant vortex. Straight nose. Long eyes. A jawline sharpened by tilt. Pupils bluer than an autumn sky.
In the bright sunlight, at this closeness, he was astonishingly beautiful.
As her gaze fixed on the slow rise of his red lips, Seo-ah lowered her head again.
Laughter rained over her once more.
The pleasant sound tightened around her throat.
—