The darkest moment in the day was the twilight before dawn.
The entire world was covered in such darkness.
But Ahmuge soon came to know. That the most terrifying thing about this place was not the blinding darkness but the suffocating silence that dominated this enormous land.
Within the eternal darkness and utter silence, Ahmuge intentionally raised her voice to speak.
“And this is…?”
Without doing so, she was afraid that she would be swept away, swallowed by the void and leaving nothing behind.
“Isn’t it obvious? It’s his dream.”
A familiar voice came from behind.
Ahmuge was so glad to hear something and turned around.
And behind her was an unbelievably adorable little girl looking up at her with round eyes.
‘This face? Could it be the Goddess? No, she’s far too young to be the Goddess.’
Seeing Ahmuge’s shocked look, Bertelgia gave a smug grin as she pointed at herself with her thumb and proclaimed proudly.
“I am the book you were hugging. This is my original form. Well, I understand how shocked you must be to see how beautiful I am. Queen bee isn’t a title just anyone can get after all.”
Ahmuge realized now that this must be the book that had guided her into this world.
‘What’s wrong with her. Acting so smug in this situation.’
Ahmuge stood still, processing information. So Bertelgia reached out to grab Ahmuge’s hand and looked around the desolation with a frown, putting crease on her soft features.
“There’s no time to be spaced out. We have to quickly get that guy out of here. Or the world will end.”
It was a calm and presence of mind difficult to believe a girl of that stature to possess.
Even Ahmuge who had struggled through and overcome all sorts of hellish nightmares was stunned and uncertain as to what to do when faced with such absolute void and emptiness.
Bertelgia maintained her grip on Ahmuge’s hands as she dragged her forward.
“Where are you going?”
Ahmuge asked in a quiet voice while allowing herself to be led forward by Bertelgia.
“Anywhere else!”
Bertelgia hadn’t the faintest idea where to go.
“Anywhere’s better than here, no?”
Bertelgia recklessly moved forward.
She had no idea what she should be doing and for what reason or where to go. But she moved forward with just the conviction that she had to do something – anything, to struggle and to not give up. Anything other than to stay still and do nothing.
After an indeterminant amount of walking, Bertelgia noticed some ruins off in the distance in the dark.
“Over there! There’s something there!”
They picked up their pace.
The two of them arrived in front of a house of sorts.
The house was more familiar to Ahmuge instead of Bertelgia.
‘An old 2 story western style house?’[1]
The house had the appearance of a house typical not of this other world, but of the original world Ahmuge had come from in korea.
“Hmm. What a strange house. I’ve never seen anything like it. It doesn’t seem to have any merit other than looking somewhat sturdy. What a strange building.”
Bertelgia shared her perspective on the house.
“This is a house from another world. A very old one at that.”
Ahmuge answered as she glanced over at the name plate next to the front gates.
She couldn’t read the Hanja(Chinese) characters, so she only recognized that the last name was Kim.
‘House of Kim John doe. I guess this might be Sungchul’s former residence.’
Ahmuge walked up to the gates and pushed open the gates.
Clack.
The gates were firmly locked.
She felt stuck. In this dream world, Ahmuge was no different from any other typical woman. She was unable to phase through the walls or jump the fence like she used to.
While Ahmuge was at a loss, she noticed something that raised her spirits.
It was a doorbell.
She, while Bertelgia watched on with wide sparkly eyes, pressed the button of the door bell.
Pew~ pew~ pew~
An embarassingly old fashined electronic bell rang.
“Uwah!”
Bertelgia shouted out in surprise.
“What was that?”
“That’s called a door bell.”
“A door bell? How does it work? Magic? Alchemy?”
“It uses a technique from our world.”
While they were conversing, the door made a clanking sound. It was now open.
That meant someone was home.
‘Sungchul must be inside here.’
Ahmuge quickly entered the now-opened gates.
A very small and narrow concrete court yard revealed itself.
The courtyard had a messy arrangement of a washbasin made of red tiles, a faucet connected directly to piping emerging out of a ground with an attached cut hose, and various miscellaneous items like rusted old bench press.
Bertelgia noticed something rather familiar among all this. It was a rubber ducky made of cheap synthetic resins.
“Did an orc make this? What a terrible quality.”
Ahmuge stood at the center of the courtyard and took a look around at the house.
‘90s? No, this looks like a house straight out of the 80s.’
Ahmuge and Bertelgia walked past the courtyard and stood before the main doors of the house itself.
Thankfully, the front doors were unlocked.
Once the doors were pushed open, the two guests were greeted by old musky smell and faded interiors.
There was a human form in the small and narrow hallway.
It was a shadow of a human being.
The moment Bertelgia saw this, she instantly recognized that this was Sungchul Kim she was so desperately searching for.
She walked forward towards the shadow while waving her hand and speaking in a bright cheery voice.
“Oy, fella! What are you doing there? You shouldn’t have gone so far back in age!”
The shadow heard Bertelgia and turned its head.
And when Bertelgia and Ahmuge saw its face, they both froze up.
Where the face should have been on the boy was nothing. The faceless form only glanced at the uninvited guests before walking into a room in the narrow hallway.
“What should we do?”
Ahmuge asked, sounding like she was already done with the place.
“Chase after it, what else?”
Bertelgia grit her teeth and walked forward.
Bertelgia arrived at the doorway before turning around and glaring at Ahmuge who stood far away.
“What are you doing, not following already?”
“There’s no reason for me to go, is there.”
“No, you definitely have to come too!”
Ahmuge let out a sigh at Bertelgia’s insistent attitude before standing before the door by Bertelgia’s side.
‘What meaning is there for us to do this?’
While Ahmuge was lost in thought, Bertelgia grabbed the door handle and opened the door.
Creee-
The inside was just an ordinary living room.
It was just, the various knickknacks present in the room were from previous generations and far older than anything Ahmuge was used to.
‘A CRT television? Looks like something that belongs in a museum.’
Ahmuge soon discovered a small figure of a faceless boy crouched before the TV and staring at the broad cast.
What could he be watching?
Ahmuge became curious and turned her attention to the TV Screen.
Playing on the Analogue screen of this CRT television was a news broadcast. It was a tragic report of a traffic accident involving a married couple whose car slipped off the road due to rain and both died.
But this news replayed on repeat endlessly. There was no other content on the TV.
The news reporter who repeatedly relayed the news of someone else’s death and the view of this small faceless boy watching without moving or reacting gave Ahmuge the chills.
‘What a terrible place this is.’
Ahmuge wanted to quickly get out of this place. She felt like staying here would somehow infect her with some kind of nightmare as well.
“Hey. Living book.”
Ahmuge was just about to speak.
“Shh!”
Bertelgia used her finger to press against her lips as she used her other hand to stop Ahmuge.
The faceless boy stood up after watching the news. Where could he be going?
The boy passed by Bertelgia and Ahmuge to the hallway.
Bertelgia and Ahmuge exchanged nods before following the boy.
Outside the door was a different scenery entirely.
It was a scene of a funeral.
While the place where the picture of the deceased and the incense was burning was quiet and dreary, the mortuary facing the picture was quite lively, with some even laughing boisterously without restraint.
It was a completely opposing atmosphere.
The faceless boy was sitting all alone by the picture of the deceased, watching the people drinking and conversing jovially at the mortuary.
The faceless monsters suddenly stopped speaking with one another and simultaneously came walking towards the boy.
The uncomfortable shadows they cast reached the boy’s feet.
The boy stood up and tried to escape from them.
Bertelgia grabbed Ahmuge’s arm and began to run.
“Quickly!”
Behind, the monsters with long shadows chased slowly after the boy.
Even while running, Ahmuge was able to hear the bone chilling voices of the monsters chasing them.
“Hey Sungchul. Come live with uncle. Uncle will take good care of you.”
“No way. You should come to aunt’s house. Our little Sungchul loves the Tonkatsu I make, don’t you?”
It was voices filled with nothing but malice and greed.
Ahmuge felt chills going down her spine.
‘What the hell. Just what kind of life did he live?’
Outside the funeral home, the environment changed once more.
It was a worn down school.
A gathering of school boys with short cut hair were surrounding the now-much taller faceless boy.
“You motherless fatherless garbage!”
“Get out of our class!”
The boys were shouting unspeakable slurs and insults at him. The disrespect was beyond intolerable.
Bertelgia watched the boys’ transformlation with a cold slightly closed eyes.
From within the boy who listened to all this abuse with his head down, a bright red flame began to burn.
An inferno born of despair and hatred.
This unnerving flames born of the heart quickly spread throughout the boy’s body and completely enveloped his entire being.
The boy burning in inferno waved his hands, which caused the other boys to evaporate, and at the same time, the scene at the school changed once more.
The environment was now an interior of a factory full of industrial machines. Rusty metallic smell singed the nose.
And even there, the faceless boy continued to quietly operate a press machine whilst still burning in flames.
A few people approached him with their hands in their pockets.
“I found something that might make good money. Could you lend me some? We’re friends, right? We’ve known each other for quite a while now. Please help me out, won’t you, hmm?”
The man who had been begging with a servile voice suddenly became covered in white flames before turning to ash and disintegrating.
The remaining flames became absorbed by the young boy, causing the fire around the boy to grow ever larger.
Similar people showed up one by one and disintegrated, adding to the flames.
All of them were using morals or bond to demand something of the boy.
Bertelgia watched this repeat again and again as she thought to herself.
‘He’s showing us. What kind of life he lived.’
And as she had known all along, the identity of the boy was Sungchul.
For the man who had lived his whole life having his hatred fanned by others, what awaited him was a predictable tragedy.
The lifespan of a candle is determined by the length of the string at the core.
No matter how much wax a candle has, if it were to run out of the string which is supposed to endure the heat of the flames, the flames cannot continue to burn.
The faceless boy’s life ended suddenly.
At the end of his life, he lost everything in a lavish red-light district and died alone in isolation, lost in the masses.
That was the life Sungchul had lived before being transmigrated to the Other World.
“…How bleak.”
It was Ahmuge’s brief assessment.
She had seen many a tragedies from the Summoning Palace, but she had never seen anyone be so utterly pushed to isolation and die such a miserably wretched death.
‘He had been betrayed, abandoned many times over and over again.’
Bertelgia felt like she could begin to understand a bit more about him now.
About why Sungchul felt more like a mechanical being like a golem rather than a human being.
Once again, a narrow hallway appeared before Ahmuge and Bertelgia.
Unlike before, this hallway extended forward endlessly.
The two followed the hallway without a word.
There were many doors on either side.
Bertelgia opened one just to check.
Beyond the door was an arena.
Sungchul was injured from head to toe as multiple enemies approached him while grinning visciously, as tens of thousands of onlookers where demanding his death.
Bertelgia quickly closed the door. Though it was not her own memory, she could feel vividly.
Sungchul’s terror, despair, and absolute sense of isolation.
“······.”
“…”
But immediately after closing the door, Bertelgia looked rather resolute.
Bertelgia walked forward briskly without hesitation, and Ahmuge had no choice but to hurry along to catch up.
Narrow hallway of many doors.
This place was a storage place of what little Memory Sungchul had.
And there were almost no good memories.
And even those few exceptions ended in betrayals.
In the cleanest and newest looking door, Bertelgia saw a faceless man watching Ryze Himerr and Craiya enjoying their happy family life without a word.
The faceless man noticed Bertelgia and turned around. Though he couldn’t speak, he seemed to be saying the following.
[For what reason have I been living?]
In the endless sense of nihilism, the man finally succumbed to the white flames and turned to ashes.
A miserable, wreched, pitiful memories.
But for that reason, Bertelgia became even more determined.
‘You’ve managed to endure it all this time. Despite being trapped in these terrible memories.’
Bertelgia balled up her tiny fists.
Her heart overflowed with the desire to save this man of grave misfortune and misery.
Even this seemingly endless hallway came to an end.
But at the end of the hallway, Bertelgia noticed a door that was clearly distinct from all other doors until this point.
This door was locked behind many chains and padlocks.
What could it be hiding?
This was the first time Bertelgia found a door that was inaccessible in this long hallway.
Though Bertelgia was greatly curious about the secrets of this door, she heard noises coming from further down the hallway.
And the voices she heard was difficult to ignore indeed.
Note: This is 1960s style, really old and only poor people live in this type of housing.
3 more chapters are out!