Boxes sared with dark blood, dusty display shelves, and old cabinets.
In the still, windless air, the sll of aged paper and the tang of rusted iron mingled together. Red light seeped through the irregularly flickering ceiling fixtures, casting ominous shadows across every file folder.
Soone was circling.
"......"
Thud, thud, thud.
"......"
Thud....
The two feet in black shoes had a neat gait, and the crisp white lab coat was immaculate.
And where a head should have been -- a surveillance cara.
"......"
Inside the pitch-black tal lens, a bloodshot eyeball was embedded.
An iris split into four segnts rotated slowly, each in a different direction. Each ti that gaze swept through the gaps in the cluttered structures, even the dust hiding between stacks of docunts seed to stir as if alive.
Whenever the gaze fell upon the surface of a docunt, the letters writhed like insects and crawled down in lines. The fallen letters rotted and crumbled in an instant, leaving stains like bloodmarks.
"......"
Each ti it stopped in place and surveyed its surroundings, a terrible friction sound echoed from within the tal shell -- the heavy eyeball rolling inside.
At one point, it slowly lifted its gaze upward.
***
"......"
Creak.
The light seeping through the cabinet door's gap trembled faintly. Not a flicker of the fixtures -- the watcher's gaze sweeping through the room.
Yeon-woo cracked his eyes open in the dark.
'Far more revolting in person.'
An eyeball that rotated ceaselessly, without eyelids.
The Archive had noted that the segnted iris gave the illusion of seeing the entire room simultaneously, but the field of vision he confronted in reality was... far too vast to dismiss as illusion.
'Still as obsessive as ever.'
The watcher circled the room slowly, stroking the structures with elongated fingers. The sharp friction of nails scraping across surfaces bored into his ears until they itched.
'It's not a small room, so it will linger quite a while....'
Sure enough, its eyes never stopped. Each place the gaze touched gave the illusion that the air was solidifying. As though congealed light were prying through the gaps to snatch him.
"......"
Yeon-woo closed and opened his eyes slowly. Whether from the stale air, it was difficult to steady his breathing. Dust clinging to his nostrils urged a cough.
Yeon-woo clenched his jaw and gritted his teeth.
'My stomach is still bad.'
The Room 14 monsters inside him were helping, but it was not yet a stage for relief.
'They're buying
ti -- they haven't eliminated the penalty itself.'
At that mont.
"......"
"......"
The watcher stopped directly in front of the cabinet.
The massive eyeball tilted slowly, as if cocking its head. The pupil wavered and the segnted irises clicked against one another.
"......"
Yeon-woo held his breath. The arm cradling Coco tensed almost imperceptibly.
"......"
Thud.
rcifully, it moved on.
"......"
Thud, thud, thud.......
The retreating footsteps brought a cold silence to the room.
"...Ha."
Having confird the watcher was fully gone, Yeon-woo pushed himself out of the cabinet.
'This insane hotel.'
[Pardon?]
'Yes.'
Nothing here was sane.
***
A stomach weighed down as if sothing sat upon it. The Contract penalty, rely delayed, squeezed Yeon-woo's condition without rest. It felt like enduring nausea through a vicious hangover.
Even under such conditions,
"Oh."
Yeon-woo succeeded in finding an ID card.
'So it was here.'
[Yes.]
'Only now the first card.'
A minimum of three ID Cards were needed to enter the Central Control Room.
But to avoid the bad ending and achieve a 'successful clear,' he needed to collect an additional sixteen items including mory Cards and Sealed Records. Nineteen in total.
It ant Yeon-woo had to move without rest.
'A player who enjoys digging into lore would welco this, but now that it's reality and I'm the one running, there's no harder labor. I wish they'd patch the difficulty even now.'
[Hm?]
'It's about ti to accept reality. However deep its worldbuilding, Hoone is a buggy title with poor ga design. It wears a person out.'
What good was a ga if it was not fun?
'In any case, things have gone smoothly so far.'
Yeon-woo picked up a Purification Sample. He had collected four in total. For operational stability, it was ti to use one.
But with syringe in hand, Yeon-woo's hand stopped.
"......"
"......"
"......?"
Coco gazed up at Yeon-woo silently. The intent in that look was clear, yet Yeon-woo only rubbed the back of his neck with a troubled expression.
'Where am I supposed to put this?'
That was the problem.
'Last ti I injected it into the neck.'
[Yes.]
'This is unambiguously reality now.'
[Yes. Pardon?]
Yeon-woo received Coco's 'what's the problem?' stare with a complicated feeling. It might seem absurd to be squeamish after all he had been through, but this was a different matter entirely.
'Injecting the neck is, in realistic terms, extrely dangerous.'
There was a reason gas and movies carried 'do not attempt' warnings.
They jabbed syringes into necks without a thought, but in reality, the neck contained the carotid artery, jugular vein, and a cluster of critical nerves. A misplaced needle could cause massive hemorrhage or shock death.
'Telling
to blindly stab an unknown substance into a site that even specialists approach carefully under ultrasound guidance.'
[Hm?]
'As a forr biotechnology researcher, the instinctive aversion is unavoidable.'
"...??"
'Are you baffled?'
He had jabbed that grotesquely oversized phlebotomy device into his body without hesitation, yet now he was drawing the line at a thin syringe -- he could see how that would look absurd to Coco.
But Yeon-woo had his own grievances.
'Drawing blood out and administering a drug to induce a chemical reaction inside the body are problems of entirely different dinsions. The inner elbow, rich with blood flow, would be far safer....'
[Hello?]
'I am not entirely sure what you an, but to continue -- if this is not covered by ga logic and the drug's effect is nullified, that would also be a disaster. I would rather not beco a person who simply has a needle stuck in his neck for no reason.'
[Hello!]
'I am doing this to stay fine, Coco.'
[Pardon? Yes.]
[Hello...?]
"Hmm."
After a brief internal struggle, Yeon-woo resigned himself and rolled up his shirt sleeve.
'Then again, I've already been ground through a Chainsaw.'
Quibbling over dical ethics and safety at this point might be excessive coyness.
'I will try the arm first. If it has no effect, I will try the neck again. A different injection site should not kill
outright. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.'
And so, after a short clinical trial, Yeon-woo found his answer.
"......"
'Aha, I see.'
The neck was correct after all.
***
Coco stared at Yeon-woo.
"......"
Yeon-woo looked back at Coco.
'Is sothing the matter?'
[.......]
'Is it a matter that interferes with the Central Control Room assault?'
[.......]
[No?]
'Then let us discuss it later.'
[Yes.]
Coco added.
[Yes.]
It seed as though white fabric had brushed past.
***
[A Card of Seasons Carried on the Wind]
***
The snowdrift beneath the castle wall's shade had not stirred.
The boy stamped irritably at the hard, frozen ground. As the heir of this land, he believed beyond doubt that flowers should bloom and ice should lt when he wished it.
"Why is it still winter? Did they not say spring had co?"
At the fierce complaint, ■■ let out a soft laugh.
Her wrinkled hand descended upon the boy's shoulder like a snowflake. Rough like old bark, yet imbued with an endlessly steady strength.
"Spring does not obey your commands."
"......"
"What shall we do with one so young?"
The boy lifted his head as though he could not comprehend.
"I was taught that my authority could divert the streams of mountains."
"Impatient, are you?"
She gazed at the ridgeline and added at her leisure.
"No matter how impatient you grow, how you shout and swing your blade, that snow will only lt when its ti has co. Ti is not under your dominion -- it is a great river within which you must draw breath."
"I...."
"No one can bend ti to their will."
What the boy felt that day was an unfamiliar helplessness.
"Good, you understand well."
"......"
But it was not a humiliating defeat.
The mont he released the force in the fist that had been clenching so hard, he felt it at last -- the faint scent of earth carried in the biting wind. Things growing old, things awaited, and things that finally vanished.
The snow still had not lted, yet the boy was no longer angry.
***
[mory of the Thaw: Banquet of Spring Snow]
[This recipe is already registered in the Archive.]
***
BEEP--
"......"
A short electronic tone, and the door opened.
Yeon-woo stepped cautiously inside, but fortunately no threatening sounds were heard. No server operation noise, no surveillance cara motor hum.
'Is it because this is a server room?'
Contamination climbed at twice the earlier rate. Yeon-woo jabbed another Purification Sample into his neck and passed through the rows of white-coated corpses.
"......"
What he found inside an open drawer was none other than a syringe.
'Not bad.'
The very sa Purification Sample he had just injected into his own neck.
'That makes two samples now.'
[Yes.]
'I would like a card to appear soon.'
An ID Card would be good. A mory Card would also do. Or even a Sealed Record. Any of them were preparation for clearing this place.
'Ah.'
Yeon-woo's gaze stopped at one point. A second ID Card, inserted into a server terminal.
'Of all places....'
[Pardon?]
'It is a card plugged into the terminal.'
[Oh.]
If an item had simply fallen to the floor, he could pick it up and be done. But forcibly pulling a card from a server with an active connection was an entirely different story.
'The mont I pull it, the system will classify it as an unauthorized forced termination and the alarm will sound. Listeners will converge like guided missiles, and if Watchers join the commotion, hiding alone will not resolve it.'
[Yes.]
'And yet it would be a sha to abandon an ID Card I have already found.'
Yeon-woo was on a ti limit. Fortunately, The Guest Without Taste had not yet been drawn to this zone, and any items collected would be preserved even if he left.
'Even if I have to retreat midway, scraping together as much as possible as fast as possible is....'
Just as he was about to reach a conclusion, another object entered his field of vision.
"......"
[mory Card.]
'A mory Card.'
He had already benefited from these several tis.
'About... two tis?'
Was that right? Was it the haze of exhaustion, or the effect of contamination? He noticed his mory flickering sowhat. Yeon-woo looked back at the server terminal.
"......"
He rolled his eyes.
'...There is no reason to play strictly by the book.'
If the ga had beco reality, he should leverage every advantage.
'No need to be picky about thods.'
Here, or there.
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