Red nostalgic yarn wraps around my neck.
The first sensation is clarity.
Everything feels vivid and in place.
"..."
1 blinked.
2 could blink.
Eyelids, eyelashes, and vision through the cornea—everything is clear.
I looked down at my hand. A bare human hand, no black rubber, no covering.
I clenched and opened it.
Yes.
This is how it originally felt.
This was the sensation.
The shock fades naturally, leaving only its trace.
What remains is familiarity.
Natural emotions and senses.
And with them, forgotten feelings resurface.
Yes. A feeling.
1 definitely—this…
Thud.
...
...
2 looked down. No hand.
Only a divine hoof and scales attached to an amorphous, melting chunk of flesh. Forcibly, I put on the gloves.
3 shoved them on.
Forced them in.
"…Noru?"
Shoved them in.
Finally.
A human hand.
Fingers resembling those of a human appear.
And between them, I see it.
The floor.
A worn-out piece of yarn lies there.
Frayed, dirty, discolored, now worthless—
The yarn is broken.
"…!"
"Wait…."
It was an illusion.
Did I think the Nostalgia Kitty would help me?
That what I was experiencing was just contamination?
That I could return to the days when my body and mind were healthy?
Did I believe I could go back to the comforting ignorance?
That from it, I could find direction, overcome the world, reset my goals, return to humanity, return home?
Did I wish for that?
Did I think it possible?
Really?
By wishing for something so absurd, a wrong wish, I ended up realizing things I never needed to know—awakened in this grotesque body, reliving the horror of six months spent alone underground with only horror stories and corpses.
Wearing the Nostalgia Kitty was a mistake.
You can't just absorb the good effects. You can't just take a human form and maintain a functional body.
What this means is—
The emotions I should have felt, if I were human, return to me.
My fear and despair come back.
And once experienced, they never vanish, even if your brain and body collapse into mush.
They stay.
I can't endure this.
...
Smoke rises.
It continues to rise, filling the entire space, leaving no room to escape.
Space—
There isn't enough.
"Noru, wait…"
I got up.
Someone wearing a badger mask falls into the smoke. I lift him onto a bed to rest.
I meet the security chief.
He says nothing.
Because his work hours are over, and he has no duty or authority to control me now. So then I—
"Um…."
"…Is there anything I can… do for you?"
I opened the isolation room door.
I walk out.
The black smoke seeps out and fills the hallway.
Red and blue emergency lights flash.
Like in Basement Level 13 of the annex.
[Evacuation alert. High-grade darkness containment failure. Evacuation alert. High-grade darkness containment failure…]
The alarm blares in the hallway.
And in my head.
You are not allowed to leave the designated area! You are not allowed to leave the designated area!
They never assigned me a space to be in after work hours.
They only gave me a new post—no space of my own, no verbal, written, or even implied designation.
Therefore,
I can choose where to rest after work hours.
I can go anywhere.
Tap, tap, tap, tap—
I stop.
But the feeling of being unable to endure—it hasn't left. Why won't it leave? Why…?
Ah.
Right.
I keep moving forward. The smoke shortens the distance.
The isolation hallway is nearly over. The equipment storage front lies ahead.
The security team, having left their posts to arm themselves for suppressing the escaped entity, left only a few guards behind.
I know this.
I know they miscalculated.
That they assumed the containment subject (130666) couldn't move so unrealistically fast.
They expected it would take three times longer to reach the storage room.
This will be described as a disaster caused by such misjudgment.
"Ah…."
One of the remaining security staff sinks into the smoke.
From one of their bodies, I find a key, open the storage room, and step out.
I keep walking—until I reach the central elevator.
Ding.
The elevator stops. I get on.
The floor I need is already decided.
"The 17th floor… That's where the researchers who study new types of darkness are, right?"
17th Floor.
[The door is opening.]
The once pristine space of glass and marble reappears—the same one I visited before under a different form.
The smoke that filled the elevator pours into the office space, pressing down on it.
[Evacuation alert. High-grade darkness containment failure…]
"AAAHHH!"
"Run! Run…!"
People in lab coats flee to the emergency exits. Someone collapses from inhaling the smoke. Others cry, scream, laugh hysterically, grab their heads and mumble. Some fall to their knees and bow.
All of them—melting, blurry mosaics.
I walk right into the middle of them.
Until I find what I came for.
Toward a room I already knew well.
[Research Team 1 – A]
At the far end, a clean, spacious office.
Before they could run.
Before they could hide.
I draw in the smoke that had spread across the hallway and let it pool at my feet. I send it upward, letting it flood the entire corridor.
In this way, I isolate Research Team 1's office—
with smoke.
...
No one inside can escape now.
Darkness and silence collect at the edge of the hallway.
Within it, I open the door.
"Ah."
Only one person was working the night shift.
[Evacuation alert. High-grade darkness containment failure…]
Even with the blaring alarms, he kept scanning the CCTV footage with enchanted eyes.
From the isolation ward, all the way through the hallway I passed, he'd been watching the cameras.
Gwak Jekang.
He lifts his head toward the open door.
The look of someone who just realized something.
"You… No, wait—"
...
"You were Kim Soleum all along?"
I approach him.
"You weren't just a vessel. You were like that from the very beg—!" I grabbed his neck.
His white lab coat hangs beneath him as he's lifted into the air.
"You're going to kill me? Out of anger? Haha…"
Terror and fear fill his eyes—then, suddenly, delight and curiosity bloom.
"But… don't you want to know?"
...
"I really don't understand what you are. How did you extract dreams? How are you switching between darkness and being human…?"
Behind his glasses, Gwak Jekang's eyes meet mine.
He's smiling.
"Actually… maybe you don't even know yourself. ...What you really are."
...
"You don't want to be tied down to this company, right? I can help you! Executive Cheong Dalrae? Who cares. A researcher should do what researchers do! We should seek the origin! The truth! Understanding!"
His voice is soaked with madness. His certainty and yearning erupt out of him.
"If you're trying to figure out why you were summoned here, why you take this form—then I'll fully cooperate! No, I beg you—please let me cooperate!"
Those dazzled eyes.
"Even if I die here, I wouldn't mind…! But I have to see it—I just have to, or I'll go insane…"
...
I loosen my grip.
His neck drops to the floor.
"Ghhk!"
But Gwak Jekang doesn't complain. He just stares at me with eyes bright with euphoria.
"Yes! A wise choice—"
I crouch down in front of him.
I look him in the eye and speak through the smoke.
Nope.
"…!!"
I don't believe you.
"Hey."
The smoke forms letters in the air:
Untrustworthy: Subject for deletion
"…! Wait."
His breathing grows ragged.
I issue a notice.
Warning 3
Reason: Derogatory remarks toward a worker
Accumulated Warnings: 3 / Disciplinary action imminent Smoke rises from the black gas mask—
Wrapping around Gwak Jekang's head.
"Hold on,"
He staggers backward.
I don't follow.
But the smoke does.
It swirls around, covering his facial features…
As he begins to choke—coughing, wheezing, gasping desperately—he manages to spit out a sentence:
"…Then!"
His still-free hand reaches behind him, fumbling. His fingers slip multiple times before finally grabbing the handle of his drawer.
The temporary storage for a Dusk-class Darkness object. He gropes around inside—then pulls something out. "This—if you use this… what do you think?" He barely manages to hold it up toward me.
…A red thread.
It looks very similar to the one I just used.
The smoke trembles.
But I recall that it's not yarn—it's thin, delicate.
And I calm it.
Then, I realize—
Its purpose is entirely different.
"If we make it so that betrayal is impossible—so that trust becomes inevitable—won't that be enough?"
There's only one Darkness object that fits that description:
Red Finger
A Darkness entity that literally fulfills the children's rhyme:
"Pinky swear, lock it tight, if you lie, you die tonight."
When you make a promise and loop the red thread around your pinky finger, the oath will be fulfilled.
Because if you break it—you die.
"The usage is…"
Gwak Jekang's lips move faintly—but before he can finish explaining, I unwrap the packaging and tug his pinky toward me.
He lets out a noise—unclear whether it's a laugh or a sob.
"Ah… so you know this Darkness too."
There is nothing I don't know.
At least, nothing that has been documented.
I take the red thread.
And tie it around his pinky finger.
Gwak Jekang laughs through cold sweat.
"I swear… Um… I swear I won't betray you."
I look at him.
Invalid.
Reason: Vague
"…I'll fully cooperate with you?"
Invalid.
Reason: Vague
Slowly, I change the smoke's shape.
Failed Attempts: 2
Attempts Remaining: 1
Sweat drips down Gwak Jekang's face.
"…Then—could you tell me what I should swear? I'd rather not guess wrong and look suspicious and get myself killed…"
...
The smoke writes a sentence:
Proposal:
"I will not go against your will from now on."
His eyes tremble.
He realizes the weight of the phrase—its sweeping, total authority.
But he opens his mouth.
Because he has no other choice.
"I… I will not go against your will from now on…" Snip.
I pull the red thread tight.
The tip of Gwak Jekang's pinky finger—where the thread was wrapped—gets sliced off.
Blood spurts.
"Ahahahahaha! Ahahahahaha!!"
As he watches his severed fingertip roll across the floor, clutching his bleeding hand, he laughs. "Thank you… thank you!"
6 minutes later.
I return to the isolation room myself.
There's noise outside the door—but it doesn't matter.
Even if two members of the security team are missing—it's fine.
That just means they returned safely.
What matters now is the thoughts in my head—
What the yarn wrapped around me gave back.
About the fear…
About the unbearable sensations…
And finally, I came to a conclusion:
"I have to find out."
Why I exist in this form.
Who exactly summoned me.
To do that, first—I have to uncover the secrets of this company.
What's in the main building's lower levels?
What exactly was the YuGwae Research Institute?
And… even if, after learning all that, there's still no way out—
...
Then I'll give up.
That was the moment I made up my mind.
[Now that sounds like an exciting plan, my friend!] '...!'
I sat up.
There was something on the bed where I had been lying alone.
A fluffy body.
Pink, lovable ears. Black eyes. A bowtie around the neck.
And—
[Noru,]
A voice calling me.
'…Brown?'
[Ah, my friend finally calls my name. I'm so glad!]
A good friend was there.
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Author's note: There are no more chapters translated so this is the last one for now. See yall soon 😉