Chapter 241: Ch 241: A Jakdu being brought down
I opened my eyes.
But there was nothing to see.
I tried to move my hands.
But nothing moved.
I was fixed in place, unable to do anything.
At this moment, I understood.
Why the countless sentient beings trapped inside Quota Worship’s box had
been tortured for decades until they died, unable to use any skill or object
they’d had in life.
’I’ve been swallowed.’
I can perform no act at all.
My body right now is clamped tight and sealed inside something.
For the sake of meditation.
Digestive fluid is secreted.
– It’s hell, hell, hell. How can pain be like this? I have realized the horror of
primal pain. Descriptions like ’the saddest memory of my life repeats, it
provokes deep trauma’ are lukewarm and convoluted, mere comfy
exhibitions for the comfortable. I envy them. True pain is of the flesh, the
pain that shatters the mind.
– This pain of scraping skin-film and nerves one layer at a time with a
needle! Pain through the whole body! My viscera, wherever they are. My
stomach, my twisted skin burns. It’s like being trapped in an endlessly
burning hell. My mouth, are they prying it open and pouring digestive fluid
in? No! Thank goodness I don’t have an esophagus. No, it feels like the
esophagus is being bored open...
A sound rings inside my head.
The ascetic’s voice reciting exactly my pain, my distraction, my analysis,
my begging, my screaming.
And...
– dontwannadiewannadiedontwannadiewannadiedontwannadiewannadie
stop!stop!stop!whythough?whyreyoulikethisithurtsithurts!ithurts!!Ireumnim
ihave donesomethingofvalueisaidithurts!ihave donesomethingofvalueplease
savemepleasekillmepleasesavemepleasekillme
– I can’t breathe. I can’t endure the pain. I knew it instinctively, that there is
no way I can withstand this for decades. I think it’s fortunate it was me who
came in, but even imagining how long that thought can hold is terrifying.
My mind won’t even blur. A supernatural disaster like this...
Two other sentient voices.
The voices of others being tortured ring right beside me. Exhibiting us to
one another is precisely what completes this ’Ascetic in the Box’.
As is, we will be helplessly linked as parts of the ascetic within the
digestive fluid, and in the maddening susurrus composed by each other’s
pain, we will suffer for decades.
The digestive fluid acts as a kind of preservative, preventing us from dying
and making us feel pain with a clear mind.
Madness. Terror.
But a mad pain that will not even let you flee into madness!
’Happy Maker...!’
I ached crazily for that item I didn’t have on hand now, but I, I...
’Endure.’
I try to raise my smoke.
No, rather, I turn into smoke outright.
Because smoke is a component of me, I can do it without moving. The
smoke tightly fills what feels like the ascetic’s incubatory sac that has
sealed me.
Even as smoke, the pain does not abate. Every surface, every point of
contact shrieks a death-agony of pain.
Only one difference exists.
’Smoke is a gas.’
Within the smoke, from the very innermost part, I reconstituted just a single
part.
A horn.
And I barely shook it.
Jingle.
The little bell attached on the horn rings clear.
’...Ha!’
The pain does not recede. But my capacity to think and my will have
returned.
’Some, thing.’
Something I can do!
I know there is another human beside the sac that has trussed me so I can’t
budge.
’...S, Slowly.’
For the first time I’m grateful I can’t find my vocal cords, even if I want to
wail.
’This time...’
I draw out a patch of bare skin from beneath the uniform at what
corresponds to almost the surface of the smoke.
My tattoo.
’Inventory...!’
The tattoo touches the bizarre membrane that has sealed me, and I try to
push the membrane itself into the tattoo.
But it won’t work.
’...!’
Every attempt to shove it in only makes the pouch tighter. The volume
contracts by exactly as much as I push into the tattoo, enough to overload
even a body turned to smoke.
’It won’t work.’
And all it does is make more digestive fluid gush out, as if some lubricant
were being secreted!
– Pain! Pain! Even if I turn into black smoke, the pain doesn’t vanish. If
anything, it intensifies.
No physical resistance works. Inside the box, the victim is an accessory in
the ascetic’s stomach. You cannot injure the ascetic!
But I receive the physical pain in full. What an unreasonable, hellish ghost
story.
– No, stop, the digestive fluid, this pain that’s like, no, this pain that’s like
dying, what is this insane pain I never felt even in Daydream, even on the
Tamra-bound train
Then.
– Agent Grapes?
...
...!
– That can’t be. Why? Why Agent Grapes and not the villain? I suppose the
shove was out of resentment toward the Bureau, no, the pain makes the
reason irrelevant. No.
– You’re saying he has to be here for decades feeling this pain? Him too?
The ascetic exhibited mental pain as well.
Agent Bronze’s mental pain.
And mine too.
– I’m used to pain, I can endure it. I, am used to pain, it’s a little better since
I can take another form. Ring the bell within the smoke and, no, it hurts!
Pain! No, I can endu—
At that moment.
– I see! Thoughts linked to pain are heard by the other party. Linked to pain,
pain and...
Agent Bronze realizes it.
And the ascetic’s whisper that had been displaying the pain changed. Faster,
more erratic, as if mirroring its subject’s state.
– I am in pain. Therefore, if I can partly turn to smoke, if I can move even a
little freely within it, I will immediately use the five-colored shoelaces to
escape this pain.
...!!
– Right now. I can’t endure this pain any longer. Tie the laces and walk. All
that matters is satisfying the act of walking! Hurry!
...
And then I remember again.
’Agent Bronze cannot leave even if he has the shoelaces.’
Just as at Looky Mart, when both his legs were severed and he couldn’t use
the five-colored shoelaces, sealed as he is now, he cannot get out.
Only I can leave.
So if I leave.
The others who remain will stay here on display, suffering, in a place they
can never escape.
Together with a new one the box would swallow in my stead.
...
...
– I don’t hear Agent Grapes. Did he get out? Am I the only one taking this
pain? It gives me hope, and yet this wretched pain makes me imagine I’ll
end up cursing at him for escaping alone...
I turned part of the smoke into the shape of a hand.
I bared a patch of skin,
And touched the membrane.
To the ’Ascetic in the Box’.
Erase.
Screams.
The ascetic’s screams, the shock of its narrative being erased, pleading,
prayers lifted to Ireum-nim, the pain of a hymn of fanatic praise completed
through wretched truth and agonizing meditation as its completeness is
helplessly erased, becoming imperfect, losing its mystique.
Is this pain also Ireum-nim’s will?
Did You intend my pain?
If so, then to accept it would be righ—
Nausea rises. No, stop, don’t answer, don’t agree just because you’ve read
it. But there’s not even time to feel sick, soon I won’t be able to answer at
all. My mind is collapsing already collapsed receding into some numb thing
no
The bell! The bell rings. It must ring. The bell’s sound, Kim Soleum
collapses, is restored hold out don’t erase one more only one more only as
much as I can endure
Overwrite.
I take my hand away.
...
...
In time.
According to the newly written contents.
The ’Ascetic in the Box’, unable to withstand the shocks of being forcibly
read, erased, and revised...
Burst.
Ruptures under this ’powerful internal shock’.
Crushing pressure.
And then
the liberation of the penitents.
Burst.
I feel myself, still sealed, being shoved out of the box.
With a strange sound, the ascetic melts. The ghost story of an unopenable
box, which the Quota Worship Sect completed through brutal asceticism
and meditation, collapses.
And mine, too,
Collapses.
The rationality I had barely reclaimed, my identity as a human being, my
humanity, my feelings—
Pulped to mash, leaving only a trace.
Jingle.
The bell’s sound.
I hear it no longer.
Yet I am not sad.
Nor am I tormented or in great pain.
Because that is the attitude of a worker on duty.
I must return to Daydream Inc. to receive a replacement for the damaged
uniform.
– Your uniform has been damaged. Return immediately and stand by.
Your uniform has been damaged. Return immediately and stand by. Your
uniform has been damaged. Return immediately and stand by...
The guidance voice sounds.
The next moment.
I spilled out of the box, together with two figures.
* * *
At some point, Ryu Jaekwan realizes the pain is gone.
Pain beyond the threshold leaves a phantom ache as if it were still there, so
the realization comes late.
And he realizes the voices in his head are gone as well.
He hears neither his own pain, nor the pain of others.
"...!"
He pushed at the slick membrane of digestive mucus encasing him, now
stripped of its uncanny power.
The dead ascetic’s membrane no longer exerted its unreasonable sealing
Authority, and he was able to slice through the giving membrane with a
small pocketknife and crawl out.
Air.
As he drew a breath,
he became aware of two more clumps of membrane beside him.
"...!"
He immediately drove the pocketknife into the one at his side. After a
frantic process of cutting it open, what emerged was...
’Hah.’
A young-looking man with the neat face of a schoolboy in a uniform. A
stranger. Realizing this was the cultist who had been swallowed first,
Bronze hurried his hand to the next membrane.
A larger mass.
This time, with a bit more reason restored, his hands worked more carefully.
From within the hastily stripped membrane emerged—
An employee in black uniform, bristling with countless horns, wearing a
gas mask.
Agent Grapes.
...presumably, a supernatural phenomenon.
"...Agent Grapes."
But there was no response.
Had he lost consciousness?
The gas mask was still on, so he couldn’t be sure, but the yellow, lantern-
like glow that had been in the eyes was gone, so he guessed as much.
Agent Bronze carefully took Agent Grapes by the shoulders and lifted him
up. Still no reaction.
Only a shard-like fragment, like broken jade, slipped out from the mass of
horns on his head. Agent Bronze grabbed it as well and stowed it for now.
’What else... can I do?’
It was hard to string thoughts together. In truth, his head was still foggy.
’...What was it I heard?’
The ascetic’s voice, which had ceaselessly whispered the penitents’ pain
inside his head, had definitely said something strange just before...
Something bizarre and horrible, yet about the truth...
’Ugh.’
Ryu Jaekwan grimaced and pressed his brow.
Listening too closely to a supernatural disaster’s whisper, or chewing over
its contents, was a bad sign.
’...Contamination?’
But there were more urgent matters to handle right now. Agent Grapes’
condition, and...
’...Agent Choi!’
With a jolt, as if doused in cold water, he sprang to his feet.
A quick scan of the surroundings showed the space exactly as it had been
before the box swallowed them.
The box sat open, blood-smeared hands dangling over the edge to the floor,
and...
No one was there.
The desolate underground bunker held no trace of people.
Instead, the bunker door had been ripped completely off.
"...!"
And from outside came an enormous crash.
But the agent recognized a familiar sound within it.
The ringing of a bell.
’That’s...’
The sound of a jakdu being brought down.
Ryu Jaekwan hoisted Agent Grapes and sprinted outside.