Erase.
Screams.
The ascetic’s screams, the shock of its narrative being erased, pleading, prayers lifted to Ireum-nim, the pain of a hymn of fanatic praise completed through wretched truth and agonizing ditation as its completeness is helplessly erased, becoming imperfect, losing its mystique.
Is this pain also Ireum-nim’s will?
Did You intend my pain?
If so, then to accept it would be righ—
Nausea rises. No, stop, don’t answer, don’t agree just because you’ve read it. But there’s not even ti to feel sick, soon I won’t be able to answer at all. My mind is collapsing already collapsed receding into so numb thing no
The bell! The bell rings. It must ring. The bell’s sound, Kim Soleum collapses, is restored hold out don’t erase one more only one more only as much as I can endure
Overwrite.
I take my hand away.
……
……
In ti.
According to the newly written contents.
The ‘Ascetic in the Box’, unable to withstand the shocks of being forcibly read, erased, and revised…
Burst.
Ruptures under this ‘powerful internal shock’.
Crushing pressure.
And then
the liberation of the penitents.
Burst.
I feel myself, still sealed, being shoved out of the box.
With a strange sound, the ascetic lts. The ghost story of an unopenable box, which the Quota Worship Sect completed through brutal asceticism and ditation, collapses.
And mine, too,
Collapses.
The rationality I had barely reclaid, my identity as a human being, my humanity, my feelings—
Pulped to mash, leaving only a trace.
Jingle.
The bell’s sound.
I hear it no longer.
Yet I am not sad.
Nor am I tornted or in great pain.
Because that is the attitude of a worker on duty.
I must return to Daydream Inc. to receive a replacent for the damaged uniform.
– Your uniform has been damaged. Return imdiately and stand by. Your uniform has been damaged. Return imdiately and stand by. Your uniform has been damaged. Return imdiately and stand by…
The guidance voice sounds.
The next mont.
I spilled out of the box, together with two figures.
* * *
At so point, Ryu Jaekwan realizes the pain is gone.
Pain beyond the threshold leaves a phantom ache as if it were still there, so the realization cos late.
And he realizes the voices in his head are gone as well.
He hears neither his own pain, nor the pain of others.
“……!”
He pushed at the slick mbrane of digestive mucus encasing him, now stripped of its uncanny power.
The dead ascetic’s mbrane no longer exerted its unreasonable sealing Authority, and he was able to slice through the giving mbrane with a small pocketknife and crawl out.
Air.
As he drew a breath,
he beca aware of two more clumps of mbrane beside him.
“…!”
He imdiately drove the pocketknife into the one at his side. After a frantic process of cutting it open, what erged was…
‘Hah.’
A young-looking man with the neat face of a schoolboy in a uniform. A stranger. Realizing this was the cultist who had been swallowed first, Bronze hurried his hand to the next mbrane.
A larger mass.
This ti, with a bit more reason restored, his hands worked more carefully. From within the hastily stripped mbrane erged—
An employee in black uniform, bristling with countless horns, wearing a gas mask.
Agent Grapes.
…presumably, a supernatural phenonon.
“……Agent Grapes.”
But there was no response.
Had he lost consciousness?
The gas mask was still on, so he couldn’t be sure, but the yellow, lantern-like glow that had been in the eyes was gone, so he guessed as much.
Agent Bronze carefully took Agent Grapes by the shoulders and lifted him up. Still no reaction.
Only a shard-like fragnt, like broken jade, slipped out from the mass of horns on his head. Agent Bronze grabbed it as well and stowed it for now.
‘What else… can I do?’
It was hard to string thoughts together. In truth, his head was still foggy.
‘…What was it I heard?’
The ascetic’s voice, which had ceaselessly whispered the penitents’ pain inside his head, had definitely said sothing strange just before… Sothing bizarre and horrible, yet about the truth…
‘Ugh.’
Ryu Jaekwan grimaced and pressed his brow.
Listening too closely to a supernatural disaster’s whisper, or chewing over its contents, was a bad sign.
‘…Contamination?’
But there were more urgent matters to handle right now. Agent Grapes’ condition, and…
‘…Agent Choi!’
With a jolt, as if doused in cold water, he sprang to his feet.
A quick scan of the surroundings showed the space exactly as it had been before the box swallowed them.
The box sat open, blood-sared hands dangling over the edge to the floor, and…
No one was there.
The desolate underground bunker held no trace of people.
Instead, the bunker door had been ripped completely off.
“……!”
And from outside ca an enormous crash.
But the agent recognized a familiar sound within it.
The ringing of a bell.
‘That’s…’
The sound of a jakdu being brought down.
Ryu Jaekwan hoisted Agent Grapes and sprinted outside.
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