The brilliant light that seemed like it would set the world ablaze didn’t last long.
When the world, washed out in white, regained its original colors, the first to move was Lee Sang-yong, his face swollen like a balloon.
It appeared that because his eyes had been completely shut tight, he absorbed less of the light, and thus was the first to be able to move. Even so, because the light had been so intense, for a while he had to keep blinking.
As his sight returned, the strange scene—no, the unbelievable spectacle—unfolded before his eyes.
“…What? Where did they go?”
Just moments ago, the locals who were beating him as if trying to kill him now stood there lifelessly, their heads bowed.
However… There was no sign of Lee Yoo-jin, who had been lying unconscious. There was no trace of her, as if she had evaporated from this world.
There was no trace as if she had never existed there in the first place. All signs of her—the blood she had spilled, the red stains where she had spat, even the torn clothing—were all gone.
And the Singularity that had tightly wrapped Park Jin-soo like a rolled-up kimchi rice didn’t exist anymore either. The puppet that had wriggled underneath it was gone as well.
At the place where the Singularity and Lime once were, only Park Jin-soo lay sprawled on the ground, his aged body stretched to its limits, his face pinched and wrinkled.
What happened here?
Lee Sang-yong felt a pounding sensation in his head as he pressed his temples. He started to replay the events leading up to the blinding light.
Ah… Could it be?
Did my wish come true, erasing everything?
Lee Sang-yong felt a shiver run down his spine. The idea that a single word of his could make both humans and the Singularity vanish without a trace filled him with an eerie sense of omnipotence.
At the moment, his reasons for coming here didn’t matter to him. In a way, his goal was half-achieved. He had seen Lime, though he wasn’t able to achieve much beyond that—it didn’t matter.
This is their punishment for reducing me to this state, he thought as he swallowed his regret and approached Park Jin-soo, who still couldn’t get up.
Still, why are we still here? Don’t you get expelled when you make a wish?
…Did something go wrong?
I don’t know.
Could this old man know something and is hiding it?
Wobbling, he approached Park Jin-soo and shook him awake.
“Until when do you plan to lie there? And why are we still here?”
Or rather, he wasn’t trying to wake him up so much as he was raising his voice to resolve his own doubts.
For someone who had practically died and come back to life, notions of politeness had long since gone out of the window. Whatever scraps of rationality he had left forced him to speak somewhat politely, but kicking him lightly was nothing if not rude.
Due to his rudeness, Park Jin-soo regained consciousness, letting out a gasp as he looked around. He then asked with puzzlement written all over his face,
“Why are we… not outside?”
Though there were some locals looking down at the floor around them, to him, ‘they’ weren’t people.
When Park Jin-soo voiced his confusion, Lee Sang-yong mentioned that he had made a wish. But Park Jin-soo, a thief of Lime’s deductions, pointed out the strange detail.
“…Didn’t I hear that your wish was answered before you finished speaking? Wasn’t that it?”
“Yeah, that’s true. That’s exactly what happened.”
“Hmm…”
And then he mulled it over.
If the words hadn’t finished, the wish had not been properly received.
That meant that before this thug could make a wish, someone else must have wished first…
Who could it be?
Park Jin-soo recalled the situation. Being bound, he had no physical actions to take, but the memory of the situation was crystal clear.
To the best of his recollection, the only person who could have spoken was Lee Sang-yong. The Singularity that had bound him didn’t speak, and Lee Yoo-jin had lost consciousness.
In the midst of his unanswered questions, something came to Park Jin-soo’s mind.
The doll’s hand stuck to the jar despite being broken.
…Could it be?
Was it possible to make a wish without using one’s voice?
This time, it was Park Jin-soo who felt a shiver run down his spine. If the derivative entity within the doll had made the wish, that would explain why they were the only ones left here—
“Wh, What is that!”
His endless train of thought was interrupted by Lee Sang-yong’s loud voice. Feeling his thoughts disrupted, Park Jin-soo turned to him and found that Lee Sang-yong had shouted a similar exclamation.
Clomp, clomp.
In his eyes, the locals were now approaching him and Lee Sang-yong. Those who had been looking down at the floor now raised their heads, stared at them blankly, and slowly approached. Their eyeless gazes made them seem like lifeless dolls rather than living beings.
The issue didn’t stop there.
As Lee Sang-yong and Park Jin-soo shrank back from the inexplicable pressure, more locals began to come from other directions, almost surrounding them.
It was painfully obvious what was about to happen as they surrounded them in a formation that resembled an encirclement.
Though Lee Sang-yong had previously swung punches and done terrible things to them, these eerily staring figures made him afraid—he had, after all, been severely beaten just moments before.
Park Jin-soo, equally unnerved by the unsettling atmosphere, shouted as he looked around for the jar, his last hope.
“Hey, the jar! If we can find the jar, we might have a chance!”
“There’s no jar, you old man!”
Giving in to his temper, Lee Sang-yong retorted loudly but kept scanning the surroundings for the jar.
Of course, there was none to be found.
By the time they had reached the altar where the jar had once been, the number of approaching locals (?) had grown uncontrollably. They couldn’t even tell which ones had previously beaten Lee Sang-yong.
The two men were forced back towards the altar and grew increasingly overwhelmed by the overwhelming numbers closing in.
When the situation became dire, it was Lee Sang-yong who acted first. Realizing roughly what these figures wanted, he pushed Park Jin-soo into their midst, whispering to himself that it was for his own survival.
Thud! Park Jin-soo, unable to control his trembling legs, stumbled and fell into the crowd of locals.
“Mi, mi—what the hecckk! Ah, aaa!”
“Fk… What the hell is that?”
Thinking this might be their escape route, Lee Sang-yong turned pale as he watched Park Jin-soo get swallowed into the crowd.
The body of Park Jin-soo, held by the locals, was slowly… slowly dissolving.
It was horrifying to watch a human body melt away as if deliberately prolonging the pain. It slowly broke the resolve of Lee Sang-yong, who had been preparing to fight his way out with clenched fists.
“Aah! Aaaah! Kk, kkrrkk…”
Park Jin-soo’s agonizing cries didn’t help.
The once brilliant intellect that had prodded Lime’s insides not long ago was now reduced to a puddle of wetness.
But it didn’t stop there.
The pool of melted remains began to bubble, and something slowly began to rise up out of it.
This was the moment Park Jin-soo’s unanswered question about what happened to those sacrificed was finally resolved.
But whether the man who observed this would remain the same was something no one could tell.
“…What the fk.”
As Lee Sang-yong’s voice, laced with terror, echoed, the newly risen local joined the crowd and…
…slowly, steadily stepped towards Lee Sang-yong.
“Did it fail again today?”
“It’s still the same.”
“Hmm… At least we have Electric Scent here. Without her, we would have had to take turns sitting here.”
“…Exactly.”
Han Seori exhaled lightly, and Kim Cheon-soo awkwardly chuckled as he nodded.
If it had to fall on someone in such a situation, Kim Cheon-soo would likely have endured the most hardship. Thus, a sigh of relief escaped him despite the situation.
Anyway, it had been a considerable amount of time since Lime had been pulled into the Singularity.
Though there was no way to know the situation inside from the outside, Han Seori and the group were prepared to respond no matter who came out.
They couldn’t risk moving the location, but with Electric Scent’s help, they had everything ready to suppress anything that appeared from within.
If not for her, the situation would have been far more complex and difficult.
Han Seori thought that they should thank Electric Scent once this was all over. She popped a snack Kim Cheon-soo had brought over into her mouth—it was her favorite handmade potato chips.
Chewing on them, Han Seori felt a pang of sadness.
‘…I wonder if Lime is eating properly…’
Was she being mistreated inside?
…If I had gone in with her, maybe I wouldn’t feel so uneasy.
Of course, worrying about Lime felt a bit absurd. Given her overwhelming power compared to everyone here, even if they had entered together, the possibility of being helpful was slim.
Still, worry was worry.
And yet, all they could do was wait, which made her restless.
Just then,
“The Singularity is beginning to vibrate.”
Seated upright before the screen, Hwang Bo-yul spoke quietly. Her voice drew the worried Han Seori and the relieved Kim Cheon-soo into looking at the screen.
Indeed, as she had said, the Singularity where Lime had entered was trembling.
…Who will come out?
Surely, they didn’t enter without any preparation.
Is Lime fine?
Han Seori clasped her hands and gazed earnestly at the screen, praying that Lime would be all right.
The tremors grew stronger, then…
“Eh?”
“Hm?”
“…?”
A giant hand emerged from within the Singularity. It wasn’t a human hand but appeared to be a part of a puppet.
The hand seemed unnaturally large.
“Uh… Is it growing bigger?”
“It’s not growing; it’s coming out…”
As Han Seori mumbled,
The giant puppet hand didn’t stop at being just a hand. Like a protagonist emerging from a storybook, it slowly began to reveal a much larger figure.
It was a puppet of some kind, one that felt oddly familiar.
