Ch.203Futri’s Stage (7)

# 203. Futri’s Stage (7)

“Miss. I will take your blood.”

My heart sank at Lesar’s words. I thought I had avoided all the landmines and carefully chosen only the right answers that suited his taste, but was something lacking, or had I made some small mistake?

Everything went dark before my eyes. I wasn’t with the raid team members; I was alone. And this wasn’t even my original body, but Snow White’s. If he decided to kill me, I was in no position to resist.

I hadn’t given up, but it was a situation no different from having given up.

I tensed my body to make one final act of resistance.

But… Lesar remained still.

“Miss. I said I would take your blood, not your heart.”

“…What?”

Was this like saying “I drank alcohol but didn’t drive drunk” or something?

I almost blurted out “What nonsense is that?” but managed to swallow my words. The situation wasn’t bad, considering his dagger wasn’t immediately plunging into my body.

“The Queen is not a fool; rather, she is capable and even cunning. I’m saying we don’t know what arrangements she might have made for this box, which looks like an ordinary box, albeit an elegant one.”

“T-Then.”

“I will substitute a pig’s heart, but first, I intend to smear your blood on the patterns and inside of this box.”

The development wasn’t exactly the same, but from what Lesar was saying, I had succeeded in persuading him!

I wasn’t sure why the scenario had diverged slightly, but as long as I reached Seoul, it didn’t matter which road I took. I nodded quickly, afraid Lesar might change his mind.

But this fucking Lesar bastard seemed determined to toy with my emotions, as he suddenly drew his dagger and walked deliberately toward me.

“Wait a moment!”

“Miss. I need to apply the blood.”

“H-How much?”

I had been thinking he would prick my fingertip with something like a needle and apply just a few drops, so I was starting to relax. But when a dagger much longer and thicker than a needle was suddenly right in front of my body, I couldn’t help but start trembling uncontrollably.

“I’ll need enough to cover this pattern, at least.”

“…Hic.”

“And I should draw blood from as close to the heart as possible.”

Lesar, as if there would be no further compromise, firmly gripped my shoulder and placed the tip of his dagger near my heart. The sharp, cold sensation, the terror that even the slightest pressure would pierce through my skin and heart in an instant, overwhelmed me.

“I won’t ask you to trust me. But now that things have gone awry due to a mistake, this is the only way for you and me to coexist. Do you understand?”

“Yes, yes, yes…”

“It may be hard to trust me, but trust my skill. Now, clench your teeth and cover your mouth with your hands.”

Lesar, you crazy bastard with no backing down…!

I couldn’t resist the flow that had developed so rapidly. I had climbed onto a tiger’s back while hesitating, and now I couldn’t get off. I squeezed my eyes shut, gritted my teeth, and covered my mouth with both hands as Lesar instructed.

“…!”

The dagger pierced my chest. The blood flowing down felt surreal. It wasn’t painful enough to make me faint, but the visual of a dagger stuck in my chest was itself an enormous shock. My limbs trembled. I wanted to pull out the dagger and run away immediately.

But Lesar was holding my body firmly, and with his other hand holding the box, he pressed it against my half-naked upper body.

‘Fuck fuck fuck.’

The heart pattern drawn on the box was not small, and just when it seemed to be fully soaked, he said we needed to fill the inside of the box as well, requiring me to bleed for quite a while longer.

Click-

I had decided it was better to empty my mind completely and was spacing out when I heard the sound of the box closing.

“I’m going to apply a cloth with medicine effective for stopping bleeding. It will sting a lot, so please bear with it.”

Before I could respond, drained as I was, Lesar quickly pulled out the dagger and covered the wound with a white cloth coated with something. The pain that followed made the sting of applying red medicine to a cut seem like ‘nothing’ in comparison.

My body struggled involuntarily, but I was still firmly held by Lesar.

My mental state was being shredded in a different way now.

“This is not the end.”

“…What?”

“For now, we can deceive the Queen. But the Queen has various tools and power. Eventually, she will discover that this heart is a pig’s heart and that you are still alive.”

My shredded mental state began to mend itself. The fact that Lesar said those words was proof that I had successfully navigated through Lesar’s part!

Still, I continued acting until the end, not letting my guard down.

“S-So? What should I d-do?”

“You must flee. Far away.”

I got it! That line that leads to meeting the seven dwarfs!

“Where on earth should I go? I have no money, no acquaintances…”

“The same goes for me. Besides, I cannot help you any further. If the tail is long, traces remain, and if traces remain, one is eventually caught.”

Lesar looked at me for a moment, then helped me put on my nearly removed clothes before straightening up. His presence seemed to fill the small house.

“Rather than hiding in the city, it would be better to leave the city altogether.”

With those words, Lesar vanished.

‘I succeeded. I succeeded…!’

I was happy that the persuasion route had worked, I should have been happy… but my body felt drained of strength. I now needed to find the house of the seven dwarfs somewhere in the forest outside the city within the time limit, but for now, I just wanted to stay still.

So I leaned against the wall, slumped down, and forced a laugh as I imagined my raid team members transformed into the seven dwarfs.

Even to myself, I looked quite pitiful.

**

The atmosphere of the seven dwarfs during the second mutual hearing was much more solemn and serious than before. The “memories of sexual acts” that had occurred in the Tower had first revealed embarrassing aspects, which tended to obscure and blur other emotions, but this time was different.

They had become more vigilant after the failure of the first attempt, this wasn’t about extracting explicit memories like sexual acts, and there was urgency because if they delayed too much, they might miss their connection with Snow White.

So, based on the questionnaire agreed upon by all seven, they wrote much more carefully and meticulously than during the first attempt, and to overcome this obstacle, they set aside embarrassment and other uncomfortable feelings.

Had their efforts been in vain?

The disapproving gazes of the seven dwarfs, or rather six dwarfs, were directed at one individual.

“This is a bit unfair.”

“What’s unfair about it? Last time there was at least some reason to feel wronged, but this time your answers are clearly different, and not just from one person’s.”

The dwarf who claimed to be Seong-hyun had given answers that were clearly different from the other six dwarfs.

As if revealing the results of the test, most of his answers were plausible, convincing, and ambiguous statements. It was a moment that confirmed the unpleasant voyeur’s range was limited to within the Tower, and the fake was created based on that voyeurism.

“Seong-hyun, or rather, fake, we didn’t just strictly compare with your answers. We compared our answers with each other too. From the beginning, the questions were based on information all seven of us shared, so if one person forgot or misunderstood something, it would be immediately obvious.”

“Come on, that’s too harsh… People can forget things, can’t they?”

“You? You who remembered all those strategies and climbed up from the first floor?”

The dwarf claiming to be Su-bin’s words were even colder. In her mind, the fake was already confirmed, so that dwarf wasn’t Schrödinger’s half-Seong-hyun, but simply a fake.

There was no need to be friendly.

“And if you weren’t confident, you should have objected when we were deciding on the questions. You stayed quiet then, and now you’re saying you might have forgotten?”

“…”

“Yes, people can forget. If it was just one thing, I could understand. But your answers differ from ours in more than one place. How will you explain that?”

“…”

“You can’t explain it. Because you don’t know anything to begin with. You don’t know the original that you should remember. So it seems you inevitably pieced together answers from the conversations we’ve had in the Tower, trying to make them sound plausible… Even a job application isn’t written like that. Oh, I guess you wouldn’t know what a job application is.”

You are a fake created by Futri.

The declaration from the dwarf claiming to be Su-bin pierced the dwarf claiming to be Seong-hyun like a cold dagger.

By now, he had fallen silent, and the other six surrounded him. The dwarf claiming to be Su-bin, as if to conclude, pointed at the dwarf claiming to be Seong-hyun and shouted:

“Without fun or emotion, you dared to imitate my lover and taint his memories and reminiscences, you fake bastard. Die here.”