The people I met in the past keep appearing.
Rebecca Rolf is blonde. Before I entered—or after I had entered and left—her skin wasn’t a pale white but a glossy white.
“Such a cute young lady. Who are you?”
“That’s Waisin.”
Before I could answer Rebecca’s question, Hyukkesuni, sitting nearby with her back turned, answered instead.
“A reporter from another country?”
“You’re pretending not to know, huh?”
Rebecca chuckled, watching Hyukkesuni grumble. I remember their relationship being pretty bad toward the end.
It was a very strange sight.
Rebecca approached me. She was taller than me. While small in stature, Rebecca was almost fully grown by the standards of the first world.
She came so close that our noses almost touched, and our gazes met. This felt a bit more real. Since I left, Rebecca had been wandering without warmth, let alone light.
“You’re not lost. You don’t seem to be uncertain about your goal, and you have no hesitation.”
Has she always been so observant? Or is she just pulling out my memories and reading them?
I was worried, could the witch really extract and read memories?
I don’t know. So, I decided to move forward.
At least if I head toward the castle over there, it should be fine. The white castle towering far away in the square where I stood.
“Do you have a key?”
Rebecca asked an out-of-place question while looking at me. I only had one key I had obtained here.
It’s strange that the illusion has a context. I took the key from my pocket.
“Did that crying king give it to you? He’s a cruel and merciless king.”
“He didn’t cry.”
It was King Tisha. But I had never seen him cry. Not even when I turned around as I was leaving, did he shed a tear.
“A king can only cry when there’s no audience. It’s truly strange. I never expected he would casually hand over the key.”
Rebecca turned around. Hyukkesuni still had her back to us, only her back visible.
Instead of doing anything special, Rebecca grabbed at the air.
Clink.
A heavy bunch of keys appeared. She inspected each key before picking one up, pointing to her mouth with her index finger, and silently handed it to me.
“If the king gave permission, I have nothing to say. Now, if you go over there, you can leave this place.”
The key looked similar to the one I had received from Tisha. But unlike the key with "Despair" written on it, this one had only scratch marks on it. The engraved letters were scratched out. What did it say?
As I wondered about this, Rebecca pointed toward where the Future Hope Church once stood.
She was telling me to go that way.
I nodded and said goodbye to Rebecca and looked at Hyukkesuni. She was still facing away. I left her and moved on.
I opened the door to a building on one side of the square and went inside. But what I saw wasn’t the inside of the building; it was a long corridor surrounded by earth.
As soon as I entered, the door slammed shut behind me with a loud click. It meant I couldn’t go back. Walking down the corridor, I came to another door.
This wasn’t a wooden door but a metal one. There were no such doors in the underground shrine. I grabbed the door and opened it, and I was greeted with the sight of a desolate rocky desert under a night sky, with stars pouring down.
When I stepped outside, the large courtyard only had a doorframe standing there. Both the front and back were empty. It was a door leading nowhere.
Thinking back on what had happened, there must be someone here. I looked around.
And I found that someone—or rather, I should say, it was someone who used to be someone.
A woman’s corpse had its head replaced by a massive lock. I wondered if the key went into this lock, so I pushed the key marked “Despair” into it.
But it didn’t turn.
Even when I inserted the key with its name erased, nothing happened.
Looking around, I couldn’t find any key that would fit here. I rummaged through my pockets but didn’t find anything useful. I even considered checking the corpse’s body, but all I found was a glowing, memory-less, pure white body. There was nothing to learn from it.
After searching my pockets again and finding nothing, I gave up and decided to move on, heading toward my destination. Even from {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} this rocky desert, the white castle in the distance was still visible.
As I walked along a path I used to frequent, I saw a steam locomotive.
It wasn’t a train moved by magic stones or something similar, but a real steam-powered train. It was fully loaded with coal and standing in the middle of the empty plain.
And in front of it, the tracks stretched on.
This was asking me to board, right? I entered the shabby train station built on the ground next to the train.
There was no one at the station. There weren’t even any seats, just a platform. I boarded the train.
Once inside, I saw a man in the second world’s attire standing in front of the stairs to the passenger car.
I recognized him. But it was also someone I had never met in person.
Eunjae.
Even when I boarded, he didn’t speak to me. Instead, he drew his sword and pointed it at me. Then, he swung it.
No, he tried to swing it.
It was as if he couldn’t strike me. The blade stopped just a hair’s breadth away from my hair.
He glared at me, then sheathed his sword and pointed to the engine, not the passenger car. I knew that to get to the engine, I’d have to go around, since the coal was in the back.
But this is an illusion.
When I opened the door toward the engine, the engine room appeared immediately.
It wasn’t a proper engine room. The place where coal should go was instead filled with a massive iron chunk welded tightly in place.
In the center of the iron chunk, there was a keyhole. If I open this, the train should start, right?
Hoping this time it would work, I took out the key, inserted it, and turned it.
There was the sound of a car engine starting, and the train slowly began to move.
This is really chaotic.
The train is stationary, but the surrounding scenery is quickly changing. Normally, when you’re on a vehicle, you’d feel the inertia, but I didn’t feel anything at all.
Even though the background was being pushed back, the white castle in the distance never seemed to get closer.
Since this is a dream-like world, it wouldn’t be strange for the background to move away.
And as the quickly moving background became darker like we entered a tunnel, a jungle and wetlands appeared.
As expected.
It’s the second world.
Soon, the background completely stopped. I guess it’s the visual effect of the train halting. I turned around. There was no way out here. So, I went back to the passenger car.
I opened the door. But Eunjae was nowhere to be found. Instead, a sword, the one he had aimed at me, was stuck in the entrance, with a key hanging from it.
This key had the word “Anger” engraved on it.
I took it and stepped off the train. The place before me was very familiar. The road leading up to the Heavenly Demon Church village. If I go up, the Heavenly Demon Church is there, and if I turn left and continue, my house is there.
I headed for my house.
No, I tried to head there.
In the second world, a building I had seen often blocked the road. As expected, the entrance was nailed shut with planks. It had once been an empty hill, but now, there was a building that shouldn’t be there.
It’s telling me to go this way.
I followed the hill toward the city set up along it. A massive building stood atop the cliffs and rocky peaks.
It had been a broken building in the real world, but here, it was intact. Could I meet the Heavenly Demon if I go this way?
I thought about it as I entered the building. When I opened the door, I was supposed to cross a bridge that had a cliff below, but instead, I found a room.
Inside, there were two people.
And in the middle of them, a Go board. The merman, who had taken a black stone, put it down, and the man, who had taken a white stone, placed his stone down. But the Go board was strange.
Instead of a grid, the board was filled with curved lines like a kaleidoscope. Go? Well, since it was black and white stones, I’ll call it Go.
The ones playing were a young man and a merman.
I’d never met them directly, but I knew them from memory.
Wonsicheonjon and Daegon.
They were how they looked when they were young or still human.
“A guest, I see.”
The merman turned his eyes and stared at me.
After all, everyone here was fake. A fake who just resembled the real ones, giving directions without any real conversation. This time was no different.
“You should call me the master.”
Wonsicheonjon answered.
“You’re a guest, aren’t you? When was it that thing stood on its own?”
Daegon’s question made Wonsicheonjon narrow his eyes.
“Well. Unlike you.”
It’s strange.
It’s too significant to be dismissed as meaningless chatter. Daegon’s expression turned sour.
“Annoying bastard. So, why did the guest come here?”
At Daegon’s question, I pointed to the white castle in the distance.
“I’m heading there.”
Both Wonsicheonjon and Daegon were staring at the Go board, not giving me a glance. They didn’t answer. Wondering if it was because it was hard to answer, I was about to move when Daegon spoke again.
“You’d better not go.”
“If you put it another way, it means I must go.”
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Daegon’s words were answered by none other than Wonsicheonjon. Unlike Daegon, he continued speaking, keeping his eyes fixed on the Go board.
“There’s no one to target in that castle.”
“The guest just has to leave, right?”
According to Wonsicheonjon, there’s no witch up there.
According to Daegon, I can leave anytime.
Daegon is right. As usual, I can press down on reality and easily leave this world. I wasn’t just guessing, I was certain of it.
But Wonsicheonjon’s words raised some concerns.
“No witch up there?”
At his words, both Daegon and Wonsicheonjon burst out laughing. It seemed like they found it to be an amusing joke. After laughing for a while, they turned their gaze toward me.
“Except for the guest, there’s no witch.”
“That’s the master’s castle.”
Then their eyes slightly shifted behind me.
“Nietzsche said. If you stare into the abyss for too long, the abyss also stares back at you. Be careful if the guest is followed.”
“The master is a greedy person. To obtain something shining, they work endlessly. But they don’t hide the most important things.”
Their advice wasn’t for me.
In other words, the witch is following me. It seems contradictory, but ultimately, they’re trying to stop me.
“Where’s the door?”
At my question, both of them sighed deeply and stood up. Then, they moved the Go board aside.
Under it, there was a deep pit.
I stood before it. Both of them clearly didn’t like me. But I was sure they wouldn’t stop me.
If I’m deceived?
Then I can just do it again afterward.
“Both of them disappeared, right?”
I suddenly asked, realizing something was odd.
“The guest is fake.”
Daegon answered with no expression.
“They call it the master.”
Wonsicheonjon smiled, as if asking me to think about the meaning.
I realized they weren’t going to answer properly and jumped into the pit.