The sounds I heard were passing through a nothingness to which they had never belonged.
My eardrum trembled.
All the walls I had built to protect myself from evil collapsed to the ground.
Countless smiling faces flashing before my eyes—exhausted, scrawny people and bloodstains woven together—it was like a cosmic dream. Faced with that dream, I surrendered myself to fate.
Death was dancing at the nape of my neck.
Yes, while blood was draining from my back, my nape throbbed. As if a bandage had been ripped off and whatever was inside had been taken from atop my spine. What followed was a pain far more difficult to endure, far more shattering.
No one entering here may carry sharp or piercing objects—the sentence echoed endlessly in my mind.
The confident words of the secretary who had helped me when I applied to the system scattered through the clouds of my thoughts, clustering like mist. Thinking clearly was nearly impossible. But the music… I could hear the music.
I should have collapsed to the ground right then.
So why, even though my knees were trembling uncontrollably, did they refuse to give in and let me fall?
Why was my consciousness as free as crystal-clear seawater?
Slowly, knowing I would collapse, I turned around—and with time itself, everything froze. Gasping, I reached behind me to check. I waited for that wet liquid to cling to my fingers. In vain. I tried again. I wanted to fall. Even if this was death, I needed to know it was a real one. That didn't happen either.
Mist was staring into my eyes with a line of thoughts arranged beneath those gazes I could never surpass. He wasn't giving up. We were both playing this gamble, unaware that we had already shown each other our cards.
When I carefully looked at my trembling fingers, I couldn't see any blood at all.
This… felt like the only thing left behind from that horrific nightmare I had seen.
"Y-you just now…" I stammered, completely beside myself. As he continued to stare blankly, I tried to shake off the grip of the pain squeezing my abdomen. My deep breaths weren't enough to calm me. "Something touched my back…" I tried to explain. But that thing hadn't merely touched my back—it had savagely torn through my skin and entered me.
Mist asked, like someone who knew nothing of what I was saying, "What?" His eyes narrowed.
"Aren't you listening to me? Something went into my back…" I said paranoically, burning with the desire to find a mirror to show him my back.
An imaginary hand seemed to have pulled out the stabbed knife; the deep gash on my back bled as if it would never close.
"Where did that come from?" he asked calmly.
I could feel the sweat trickling from my temples.
"Do you think I've lost my mind?" I roared. That harsh outburst only made his gaze lock onto my face even tighter. "You stabbed me…" I said. My eyes filled involuntarily, heavy with tears. As the indifferent expression on his face faded, I repeated weakly: "I was just stabbed…"
"What nonsense are you talking about?" he said disinterestedly. "What kind of logic is that?"
"Logic? There is no logic… Look… My back… There's a deep wound there. Why isn't it bleeding?"
My words were meant for myself—and they would stay that way.
"I'm going back," he said, repeating his earlier words. He continued with the passion of someone who didn't need to be understood: "Because there is no turning back from this path."
If he could make that decision before I did, he must have known something. But what?
"Wait," I said, laughing nervously. "Are you really going to chase after some idea you made up in your head? What do you even know?"
He looked at me as if to say, what do you know?
He was right.
"Fine," he said, exhaling sharply. "What do you know about intuition?"
"Intuition destroys people…" I murmured.
After all, it was an intuition that had brought me to the system.
"But sometimes it forgives," he said softly.
"What does that mean?"
Avoiding my gaze after my sudden outburst, he confessed, "I don't trust the words that man said."
He was talking about Mert.
"Why, for example?" I asked, as if I had any reason left to trust anyone.
"For example, an intuition…" he continued. "I can't prove it to you…"
"But you proved it to yourself somehow," I pushed.
My words were harsh, but they couldn't pierce his armor.
His eyes almost began to shine. I slowly felt the distance between us widen. Both physically and spiritually, I withdrew into myself once more.
"I didn't prove it…" he insisted. We were here as two victims who wouldn't believe a single word from one another. "I believed in myself… Think about it. Why does the group always hang out on the other side? Why don't they come over here to find food? Are we idiots?"
"We don't know them yet," I said sharply.
For some reason, that made him hesitate.
When I looked toward the point where silence grew heavy, I felt a tremor run from my head down to my toes. I couldn't turn my head in that direction. Mist's eyes were also fixed on a distant point in the emptiness behind me.
It was as if his face were a mirror reflecting mine. A mirror in which I kept seeing my own ruin…
Before I could even ask what was happening, I found myself staring at the trembling holo-screen. I wanted to turn around, to look into that darkness where rhythmic footsteps were coming from. My sense of time and space had long been shaken. One reflex, one backward turn, would have been enough to look.
Mist's gaze in that direction was reason enough never to turn back. His brows were deeply furrowed, and he stood like someone locked onto a target.
"W-what happened?" I asked, trembling.
The moment I stuttered and turned around, my hands began to shake.
A real silhouette stood before me, as if someone had leapt out of the hologram.
As I understood at first glance, it was the blonde woman who was the assistant to the group leader.
Why was she coming from the opposite direction?
Or was the city following a circular path?
Like—no matter how long you run after starting somewhere, you always end up in the same place?
Abandoning these absurd thoughts, I focused on the task at hand. Without averting her gaze, the woman walked toward us with rhythmic steps and, sensing my suspicious stare, quickened her pace, closing the distance between us.
Mist's one remaining raised eyebrow turned into a deep crease forming at the center of his forehead.
The woman closed the distance with her frail body and murmured, "Now you have a reason to join the group."
I was taken aback by the blunt, harsh sentence delivered so plainly.
"Don't you understand?" the woman said coolly. She, too, had an irritated air. "The group leader wants to meet you now."
"B-but… Why me? Why now?"
(I hope the hatred in my eyes is visible.)
Apparently, I had spoken aloud what I thought was only in my head.
"One person from our group is gone."
Ah. She never said normal things.
Her dictionary and mine were different.
Remembering the severed arm in the locker, I struggled not to retch.
"W-what happened?" she asked, as if she had felt my nausea in her own stomach through a cable.
She ignored my question. In fact, my entire existence… I realized. "Follow me. If you join," she said with unnecessary politeness, "I can give you food and water."
Food and water?
How could I say no to the thing I wanted most right now?