A modest hotel room. Irene slowly painted as she gazed at the sprawling cityscape beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass wall. Black paint moved boldly across the canvas.
“Mmmph! Mmmph!”
For her, painting was like a window to communicate with the world. A passage that broke down the boundary between the reality she created as an artist and her own inner world. Either could be made real, either could be dismissed as fantasy—her sole lifelong companion.
Unable to recognize faces, Irene had no choice but to evaluate others solely through inspiration. An ordinary person might have considered this a terrible misfortune, but Irene took pride in her prosopagnosia.
After all, in creative work, personal judgment of another's appearance is nothing but poison.
A painter must always act according to her own inspiration and philosophy. She must not be seduced by popular notions of beauty. Only by pursuing her own beauty can she become a truly great artist. Irene achieved this through her disability.
So how could she possibly hate it? She ought to love it instead.
“Mmmmmph!!”
Love was an indispensable emotion for an artist.
Irene loved her own worldview. She loved the ideal that everything in this world was composed of pictures, that connecting lines with paint made it reality. She cherished the erosion of reality born at her fingertips as the most beautiful and pure creation.
She also loved reality. The Earth overflowing with endless inspiration, humans, paint, animals, buildings, soil, the sea, mountains. She loved all of it. And so she wished to overlay her own world upon them.
Thus her magic was born.
The pinnacle of art, created after killing her parents, turning their corpses into artwork, being caught displaying it to a passing mage, and then becoming the deeply impressed mage’s disciple.
How could she not love that? How could she hate it? How could anyone call it unclean and revile it?
She did not accept criticism. She ignored condemnation. She bowed her head to praise, and rewarded applause with a kiss.
Ever since she first painted, and affixed her parents’ blood and organs to the canvas, she had lived that way.
Now was no exception.
“Mmmmmph!”
“Ah, so noisy.”
Slap.
Irene reacted to the voice from behind. She hung her brush on the palette she held, then made an incision in the abdomen of the corpse lying beside her with a knife. The belly skin split open, hot blood spilling out.
The organs of the already dead body held no warmth. Regardless, Irene pulled out an organ, cut a cross-section, and collected the overflowing blood into a bucket.
It was not collected for some special ritual.
Simply paint. Art material. Nothing more, nothing less.
Irene added a powder she had brought into the bucket of blood. The blood immediately thickened like paint. She squeezed the paint into her palette with a dropper, then stood and approached another bound woman.
The woman’s underarm tendons, Achilles tendons, and knee cartilage had been severed, rendering her unable to move properly, but she was still wriggling, trying somehow to escape.
It looked like watching a caterpillar. Irene followed the crawling woman with slow steps, then grabbed her by the hair and dragged her back.
“Mmmmph!!”
“Shh. Quiet. Someone outside might hear. I can’t use barrier magic.”
“Mmmmph! Mmph! Gack!”
“Ah, you can’t understand. I still haven’t learned Korean, you see... I’m sorry?”
“Urrghk!”
“Shh. You understand this much gesture, right?”
Irene brought her index finger to her lips. It was the universally recognized sign for “shut up,” but instead of closing her mouth, the woman struggled even more. Eventually, Irene let out a deep sigh and fumbled over the woman’s face with her empty hand.
“Eyes... Ah, here they are.”
“Mmph?!”
“It’ll hurt. Bear with it?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. Irene pressed down firmly with her fingers on the round, jelly-like eyeball she could feel.
“Mmmmmph?!”
The woman convulsed. But all she could manage was a slight twitch of her pelvis and elbows—not even resistance. Irene hummed a lullaby as she pressed down harder with both hands, as if to crush the eyeball.
Nanourisma.
One of the traditional lullabies of Greece. Irene had no talent for singing, but her mother had sung it often when she was young, so she still remembered it to some extent. She closed her eyes, rocking the slightly protruding cornea up and down, pressing firmly.
“Urrrgh!”
She felt the seizure beneath her hands, but paid it no mind. Irene traced her memories, humming the lullaby to the end, until she felt the woman’s eyeball finally give way with a soft crushing sensation, and the song stopped.
...Squelch.
A sticky, transparent liquid mixed with blood oozed onto the tip of her thumb that had crushed the eye. Ignoring the convulsing woman, Irene tilted her head as she looked down at her finger.
“Hmm... Transparent fluid, not white, so it probably won’t turn pink when mixed with blood.”
“Mmph...! Mmmph...!”
“Isn’t it strange? The white of the human eye is white, but when you crush it, it doesn’t release white. Only blood flows.”
“Urrr...! D-disappear...!”
“The human body is designed quite oddly, don’t you think?”
With those final words, Irene shoved the hot poker sealing the woman’s mouth even deeper, and fixed it firmly in place. Breathing would be difficult now, so she’d no longer be able to even make muffled groans. Irene looked down at the woman thrashing in pain from her crushed eyes with a benevolent gaze, and flashed a bright smile.
“Wait. I’ll make you pretty soon.”
Swoosh.
She stood and approached the easel holding the canvas. She picked up the palette, dipped her brush into the blood-made paint, and completed the picture.
A painting of a faceless girl stuffed on a building rooftop, endlessly spilling blood. All around, spectators filled the scene, their clapping forming an orchestra that inscribed notes into the air.
“Hmm... Not a masterpiece, but for a piece drawn without much inspiration, it came out decently.”
She wasn’t particularly satisfied, but for a painting created without receiving inspiration, it had turned out well enough. She stared silently at the face of the girl in the painting, colored in red, then picked up the canvas and approached the convulsing woman. She adjusted the canvas so that it lay parallel to the woman’s face.
...Gurgle.
After a moment, the paint on the canvas moved on its own, and the girl’s face formed itself. It was eerily similar to the eyeless woman’s face.
“Completed.”
Beaming, Irene hung the canvas back on the easel and drew a magic circle in pencil on the back of the painting.
Instantly, the convulsing woman vanished without a trace.
“......”
There was no incantation. The sacrifice had already been offered. The protagonist was prepared. The painting had been completed long ago.
The exhibition hall for displaying it was reality, and the audience was the public. The magic activated the moment the circle was drawn.
“Ahhh...”
Irene set the canvas down and let out a gasp of admiration at the “artwork” that had appeared on the rooftop of the building opposite, beyond the glass wall.
Like Jesus crucified on the cross.
A naked girl hung like a fruit upon a blooming tree. Where her eyes should have been, only empty sockets remained, and where her mouth should have been, only a gaping hole. Half of the facial features that composed a human face were missing.
Her ribs had pierced through her back skin and spread wide like short wings. From her vertically split upper body, blood gushed out as if a faucet had been shattered. Her heart, forming a perfect heart-shape, pulsed rapidly and pumped vigorously.
“Heh heh.”
Enraptured by the “artwork,” the people standing where it was displayed fled uncontrollably.
In the empty space they left behind, applause echoed from the void, and musical notes rose into the air. Seated in a rocking chair, Irene watched the scene while pressing her foot down on the head of the fallen sacrifice.
“See? That’s what art is. Isn’t it beautiful?”
No answer came. That was only natural—it was already a corpse.
But recognizing a human face with her foot was a rather enjoyable pastime in itself, so she hummed as she randomly crushed the corpse’s face beneath her heel.
Then, suddenly, her eyes fell on the smartphone on the table.
“......”
Come to think of it, Walter had definitely told her to contact Marianne once she entered Korea. But all she got was a switched-off message when she called, and no contact came at all... There was simply no way to rendezvous.
Well, she wasn’t too concerned. Even if they met, they wouldn’t be able to communicate, and it wouldn’t be any help anyway. She’d prefer it if things stayed exactly as they were—dead quiet. That would be better.
‘I might get a sudden call later, but for now... Hmm. I’ll focus on diverting the management bureau’s attention.’
With that thought, Irene admired her work once more.
“Haa...”
No matter how many times she saw it, it was a beautiful sight.
*
“I’m sorry, but there’s no way to contact Irene. I lost my phone and everything else in the mirror world.”
“What.”
“It couldn’t be helped. I was too busy fighting this huge... dog? Fish? Whatever it was. And actually, my phone was probably already smashed from the first impact. The force was enough to forcibly dispel all the spells on my dress, so there’s no way the phone survived intact.”
“......”
That was true enough that he couldn’t refute it. The Cyclist’s methods had been excessively brutal, after all.
Of course, he didn’t blame himself. If he’d held back, he wouldn’t have been able to brainwash Marianne like this. So there was no need to regret the past now. It was just a bit disappointing.
‘If only I had a way to contact her, I could just ambush her and take her head. Tsk, how annoying.’
It couldn’t be helped. Now, the only option was to live as unobtrusively as possible.
That didn’t mean he would stop using magic. It meant he’d maintain his daily life as much as possible while lying low to avoid other variables.
With luck, it might even be possible to track her down by scent from her paintings at the museum and then trace it back. Waiting quietly for that time wouldn’t be a bad plan.
“...Fine, I understand. Now get some rest. I’ll rest too.”
After organizing his thoughts, Ian left her and went into his room.
As he lay down on the bed, a drowsy wave of fatigue washed over him. It was only natural, since he’d been moving since the crack of dawn.
It wasn’t exactly an ideal time to sleep, but taking a nap seemed like a good idea to refresh his mind.
‘First, I’ll meet with the management bureau tomorrow and talk, then decide on the next steps. Laplace will help if it’s them. Or I could just subtly ask Kim Yul.’
There were more options regarding Irene than expected. Though, one option—letting her live and sending her back—did not exist among them.
As long as she was after the Outer God’s grimoires, if he let her go, she’d inevitably return. So brainwashed or not, he planned to just kill her. There was no need to leave behind future trouble.
No matter who it was, he had no intention of letting anyone who touched the grimoires get away with it.
[Bzzt.]
[Bzzt! Vrrr!]
[V-vrr...!]
Moved by Ian’s resolve, the grimoires vibrated fiercely. Ian watched them quietly, then let out a soft chuckle and spread his arms.
“Come here. Let’s sleep together.”
Swoosh!
The three grimoires threw themselves into his embrace without an ounce of hesitation.