That day, it had rained, strangely.
A day when she had been so frightened, trembling violently at home.
A quiet, yet turbulent day.
That day, Han Yeon-woo whimpered, looking around, and asked.
"Where are you…? Dad, Mom… I'm scared."
Whimpering, she searched for her parents.
They were nowhere to be seen.
Only the house, unlike its usual self, came into her view.
'This place is….'
Watching that scene, Yeon-woo opened her eyes and gazed at her past self.
The empty lobby of the quiet mansion.
A little girl lay sprawled there, crying.
'…….'
It was her childhood self, infinitely frail.
Her weak past self, who had yet to learn swordsmanship or marksmanship.
'…Did I get eaten? By a monster?'
Thinking it might be her life flashing before her eyes, Yeon-woo muttered so and looked around.
But nothing came into view.
Only the empty lobby.
Nothing but that exact spot.
It was so vivid that it seemed nothing like a dream.
"…I have to find them."
'…!!'
"I have to find Mom and Dad…."
The young Yeon-woo staggered to her feet.
At the sight of herself like that, Yeon-woo flinched.
She had to stop her.
'No… don't, stop…!!'
But reaching out did nothing to stop her.
The child rose from her spot and began to run.
Toward the dark hallway.
Yeon-woo wept at the fact that she couldn't stop the child.
'Ah…….'
She would see something terrible.
The very nightmare that still tormented her.
She couldn't muster the courage to follow.
She was gradually losing strength.
Devoured by something.
* * *
In front of the music room.
My senior gripped my hand tightly and refused to let go.
Something was strange. My senior was strange.
"…Senior?"
"……."
There was no answer.
The hand-holding itself had been strange from the start.
Then, slowly—very slowly—the sound of a piano drifted toward her.
"Hey, you know."
"…!!"
The senior's form began to distort.
The face blurred, black liquid oozing out in squirming trails.
The voice was still the senior's voice.
"Hic…!"
A hiccup slipped out.
This wasn't the senior.
Something imitating the senior she knew, yet was not.
"Do I, ahh, ahhh, still, look like a senior?"
From the empty music room, a singing voice slowly began to drift out.
Simultaneously, the monster's mouth tore wide open.
From within burst the senior's face, plastered in black liquid.
The monster's eyes, clumsily imitating the senior, curved like crescent moons.
"You're having, a good dream. Inside me, mo-mother, that is."
The monster's speech slurred as its disguise unraveled.
Because of that, a sensation even more horrifying spread through my body.
I had to run.
My legs wouldn't obey.
The left eye marked with an X began to throb like mad.
"Hah… hah……."
Clutching my eye, I somehow managed to fix my trembling gaze on the monster.
The sound of the out-of-tune piano only made my head spin.
How could it play when there was no performer?
'Could it be that everyone had actually fallen prey to this monster?'
The performer and the guard had been nothing but puppets or avatars, and I wondered if this monster was truly the main body.
'If you want to live, run.'
My mother's last words.
I had to survive.
To keep my promise with my mother.
To delay meeting her for as long as possible.
So I rammed into the music room door and began to run like mad.
-Bang!!!!
"…!!"
"Save me…!!"
While screaming for help.
* * *
After that, I ran like mad.
I didn't want to look back.
"…Run away, run away, run away, run away…!!!"
Whispering that to myself, I ran frantically.
The hallway seemed endless.
I desperately needed a place to hide.
"Kihihit!!"
The voice grew louder with every step.
It felt like running on a treadmill set to maximum speed.
My legs gradually weakened; my mind grew hazy.
"Hah… huck…!!"
Even as I stumbled several times, I ran frantically.
I headed for Class 3 of the first year, practically leaping down the central staircase, then ran toward my own classroom.
I had a vague idea of what had happened.
'Chalk…!! Everyone was dead in our classroom……. But I didn't see the chalk…!!'
In other words, it meant our homeroom teacher had been a monster.
Since when?
Since when exactly?
When counseling me?
Or during the field trip with the children?
I didn't know the reason.
From the out-of-tune piano flowed a melody that should have been beautiful.
Growing frantic, faster and faster.
I thought as I listened.
Could I be seeing an illusion right now?
'If you want to live, run.'
As if responding to my mother's voice once more, I ran.
The pounding footsteps continued relentlessly behind me.
The lights flickered, and cold sweat poured endlessly down my whole body.
Even amidst all that, the piano music was beautiful to the point of nausea.
In all that chaos, my feet didn't stop.
Only, they slowed.
"Gotcha!"
Finally, the distorted senior's voice rang out beside me.
"Keuhk!?"
Simultaneously, an intense pain shot through my right side.
"Hah… ha-euk?!"
I crashed sprawling to the floor with a crash, gasping frantically.
Blood welled up, spilling out.
"No… I have to… put it back in."
Excruciating pain flooded in with every movement.
I gritted my teeth in resistance.
And the monster approached, looking as though it were enjoying the sight of me.
"You're a rat in a jar."
My body writhed frantically.
The senior's expression was ominous.
I whimpered as I was lifted by that senior's hand.
The monster had torn open its own chest and pulled out only the senior's upper body, wearing it like its own.
"Dis…gusting."
"Wh-what's, uh, uh, the big deal."
Countless human voices echoed simultaneously.
Stripped of the upper body, the monster was rendered speechless.
At the sight of it, I vomited blood on the spot.
I was dying.
Dying again.
"Hah… hah… I don't… want to die…."
I didn't want to die, so why was death always waiting for me?
Could I survive if I died now?
What… would become of me?
Dying was scary.
A terrible experience I never wanted to endure again.
A pain I never wanted to become accustomed to.
To offset it even slightly, I squeezed my eyes shut.
* * *
What would be the cruelest act in this world?
For some reason, Yeon-woo felt she knew the answer.
"Ah… aah…!!!"
The young Yeon-woo screamed, covering her mouth.
Before her lay her mother's upper body, clinging to life as if on the verge of death.
Her mother, who seemed like she would die soon.
The young Yeon-woo embraced her mother's face.
"Mo…m… Mommy!!!"
'…….'
Yeon-woo had known.
That her past self would see this.
And that seeing this scene would leave her overwhelmed by helplessness.
'…If I grew powerless, were you trying to completely take over my body?'
There were such monsters.
Monsters that would seize a person's body once they were completely overcome by helplessness, steal their memories, and blend in among ordinary people.
And in Yeon-woo's case, it had been her father.
The man she had believed to be her father had at some point become a monster and killed her mother.
There was no escaping from inside the house.
Amidst it all, her mother whispered to Yeon-woo.
"Yeon-woo… he-help…."
She had expected her to tell her to run.
But the words that spilled from her mother's lips were not to run.
"Help me."
"…!!"
"…Will you… ki… kill me?"
She was in a state of endless agony, unable to die at the hands of the monster.
She understood now, but the past Yeon-woo had questioned it.
"…Why."
Why would she ask her own daughter to do something so cruel?
Why hadn't she told her to run?
'Why… did you make me meet him then?'
Her father, in such a hideous form.
No, something that wasn't her father.
The young Yeon-woo raised her head.
She locked eyes with her father—who was crunching away at her mother's legs.
And Yeon-woo, observing that scene, muttered expressionlessly.
'…You've succeeded, monster. You succeeded in making me helpless… You struck at my greatest trauma… A wise choice.'
But there were people in this world who lived because of it.
"You didn't know what came next, and that's why you can't have my body…!!"
At last, Yeon-woo's voice rang out clearly.
Yeon-woo embraced her younger self.
Then swung her knife at her father—no, the monster.
'I'm sorry… Dad.'
In that moment, a sound like shattering glass rang out—the barrier breaking.
"Kiyaaaaak!!!! Kuaaak! Kuhuk!!"
She returned safely to the reality where the distorted monster lay dying.
In her hand.
"Se…nior,"
"…You held on well."
Together with Sion, who was rasping laboriously, a hole torn in her stomach.
The monster, turning to liquid, was absorbed into the floor.
Yeon-woo sighed as she watched it, then turned to Sion expressionlessly.
She looked to be in agony.
"Are you… a human?"
She asked that entity for its true identity.
"Are you truly human?" At that, the monster, its left pupil torn into an X, nodded.
"At… least, I think so…."
"……."
After a moment of thought, Yeon-woo drew her knife and continued.
"Then you should at least apologize, right."
"…What?"
"Sorry. I'll make you comfortable, so sleep for a bit and wake up."
"…!!"
-Swhack!!!
With a sharp sound, the head of Sion—who had endured so desperately—fell to the ground.