Ch.77077 – The Butterfly in the Chrysalis Dies Once

# 077 – The Butterfly in the Chrysalis Dies Once

Standing behind the headless torso, I grabbed its side and lifted it up. Hong Yeri’s body struggled violently, using all its strength to break free from me.

Struggle, struggle, struggle, struggle—

“Whoa!”

Is a resisting woman such a troublesome and powerful being?

I don’t understand how a headless body can have so much strength.

Maybe I was just weak.

Should I start doing strength training too?

Until now, I’d been pushing physically demanding tasks onto Yang Juhui, but the problem was that when I faced difficulties alone, I couldn’t get help from anyone.

If this situation resolves well, I should start exercising.

But now that I’ve decided to exercise, I don’t know how or where to begin.

Should I ask Yang Juhui or Bong Jiyeon?

Yang Juhui said she learned taekwondo as a child, and Bong Jiyeon was such a promising sprinter until middle school that she was considered an Olympic prospect.

Both of them would definitely know several times more than me about physical activities.

With these positive thoughts, I continued walking.

A status window appeared before me.

『The item has been placed at the entrance.』

『15 steps northeast.』

『13 steps northeast.』

『5 steps east.』

『1 step east.』

“This elevator seems to be the exit.”

“This? How can you tell?”

Hong Miri, the twin sister, frowned at the elevator.

I could feel various emotions swirling in her eyes like a whirlpool—doubt, fear, tension, and anticipation.

Although I had already secured a promise from Ms. Hong Miri that she would never harm me, I still felt a little scared.

I imagined that if I didn’t provide a plausible explanation, the mentally unstable Hong Miri might pounce on me, strangle me, or beat me up.

It wasn’t an unreasonable concern.

Wouldn’t it be more strange and abnormal if someone who had lived in this bizarre place for a full ten years with only their head remaining was actually normal?

“I can see things that others can’t. That’s how I know this elevator is the escape route. Trust me.”

We boarded the elevator and pressed the button.

Whirr—

The elevator activated.

Ding—

After a slight vibration, the elevator stopped and the doors opened.

The third-floor corridor of the building where Ms. Hong Miri’s office was located appeared.

Fearing the elevator might change its mind and close its doors, I quickly jumped out into the corridor.

“Phew!”

My pounding heart finally calmed down.

Now I felt alive!

“See! It’s real, right? We really made it out!”

I turned around to look at Ms. Hong Miri.

But unlike her earlier determination to escape the deathly fourth floor, she hesitated to step into the corridor.

Hong Miri slowly extended her hand out of the elevator first.

“Outside…”

Her outstretched fingers swept through the corridor air as if trying to catch floating flower petals.

After about 30 seconds, as if making a big decision, Hong Miri forcefully extended her red high heel.

Click.

The sound of the high heel echoed clearly and distinctly in the quiet corridor.

With that clear sound, there was no time to fall into emotional feelings as another step followed.

Click.

Hong Miri had now completely exited the elevator and was standing firmly on her two legs in the corridor. I asked her:

“How does it feel?”

“…Huh.”

Thud.

Hong Miri collapsed onto the floor.

“I… I really got out.”

Then she covered her face with both palms and began to shake her shoulders.

I could tell she was crying bitterly.

It was sudden and bewildering, but it also felt natural.

A woman who had been unfairly imprisoned for ten years had found freedom and been released.

As a mere first-year high school student, I couldn’t imagine how that would feel.

“I got out. I… It was this easy… But… my life is already ruined. Ten years! The ten years that should have been my most beautiful and brilliant will never come back!”

While escaping was good, the reality of a ten-year gap in her life was starting to sink in.

“…To think I’m already twenty-seven when I didn’t even graduate high school.”

I’d heard that men spending roughly two years in the military was considered a huge waste of life. If that extended to ten years, it was certainly not an exaggeration to say her life had been ruined.

Flutter—

Between her sobbing hands, face, and nape, the butterfly birthmark flew about very freely.

Hearing the woman’s sobbing made me a bit scared, and I felt I should say something, so I carefully selected words from my mind and cautiously spoke them.

“Ms. Hong. When a caterpillar is inside a chrysalis, it completely dissolves into a state that’s neither alive nor dead.”

“…”

“Only caterpillars with enough courage to cut their own flesh and bones and completely destroy themselves can become butterflies that beautifully fly through the sky.”

“Butterfly…?”

Peek.

Swollen eyes peeked through the gaps between her fingers.

I wondered if I had overstepped by saying something presumptuous, but since I’d already started, I decided to finish my thought properly.

“Butterflies are confined in their chrysalis for quite a long time, but no one calls that time useless or meaningless. Similarly, you’ve now broken out of your cocoon and become a butterfly. Now you can fly freely wherever you want.”

“…Are you trying to comfort me right now?”

“Yes. You seemed so sad…”

I was worried that Ms. Hong Miri, with her emotions all mixed up and confused, might suddenly exclaim, “Actually, all my promises were lies, and I’m going to eat you!” and go berserk.

Soon, Ms. Hong Miri spoke.

“You said your name was Ha Yeongwon, right?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t have a girlfriend, do you?”

“What? Me?”

“Women sometimes cry even when they’re not sad. To be honest, I’m happy to leave that terrible corridor. I’m also sad. It’s just… that’s how it is. You really don’t understand women’s hearts.”

So a woman’s heart is such a troublesome thing.

I lost out by worrying and trying to comfort her.

As I was thinking that people sometimes suffer when they offer clumsy kindness, Hong Miri wiped her eyes with her fingers and laughed, “Hahaha—”

“Butterfly. Yes. I like that. It was an awkward comfort, but it feels like you’ve soothed my heart. I was being immature. Rather than regretting what I’ve lost, I should be happy about what I’ve newly gained.”

A butterfly doesn’t regret the time it spent curled up in a chrysalis.

A butterfly must shed everything.

Only then can it flutter its silky soft wings with a light heart and fly through the sky.

# # #

“Should I put this here?”

In Ms. Hong Miri’s office.

I laid Hong Yeri’s struggling body on the folding bed in the office and securely tied her hands and feet to the posts with cable ties.

Struggle, struggle, struggle—

The body that had been struggling so much became docile once firmly tied.

It was still fascinating to look at.

“It’s amazing that it’s alive without a head. But what are you planning to do with this?”

I wondered why she had asked me to bring this body out.

This would make for a viral MiTube video.

As I was thinking this, Ms. Hong Miri said:

“I thought it would be good to keep it, so I brought it out, but looking at it now, it seems like it’s just taking up space. Yeongwon, you can take it if you want.”

“What?”

I was taken aback.

What would I do with this? Where would I use it?

“Why? Don’t you like it? You could use it as a punching bag when you’re angry.”

Squeeze—

Ms. Hong Miri pinched the white thigh of the body.

The body struggled in response.

It seems it can still feel pain even without a head.

“Or you could do naughty things that you couldn’t tell others about. Boys your age get excited just seeing a woman in a skirt, don’t they? That’s how the 17-year-olds I remember were.”

“…No, no matter what, it’s a headless body.”

I looked toward the head.

Hong Yeri’s head was placed on the desk, still glaring at me and Hong Miri.

Her mouth was moving as if she wanted to say something.

Swish—

Ms. Hong Miri covered Hong Yeri’s head with a woman’s undergarment that had fallen nearby.

She seemed to want to hide that face.

Anyway.

We successfully escaped via the elevator and successfully subdued Hong Yeri, whom I had mistaken for Hong Miri.

What we gained was the resolution of the elevator urban legend.

And the package I obtained by ordering from the shop window.

『Suspicious Pink Lipstick: A suspicious lipstick made with very suspicious ingredients. Makes you feel good when applied. Doesn’t come off easily and lasts long.』

I acquired the lipstick.

It was a very suspicious lipstick from the name alone.

It’s a women’s item.

It seemed useless to a manly guy like me.

So after thinking about what to do with it, I decided to gift it to Ms. Hong Miri to celebrate her return to society.

“Ms. Hong. They say this lipstick makes you feel good when you use it.”

“You said you got that lipstick with your mysterious ability, right? And it’s thanks to that mysterious ability that we could escape from the elevator? That’s really fascinating. I’ve never heard of such things.”

“Really?”

“Seeing and hearing things others can’t. If Kwon Oseong had seen you, he would have shown interest in you to the point of losing interest in me. I’ve never seen someone with such high aptitude to become a Watcher like you.”

Aptitude for a Watcher.

I suddenly became curious.

And Ms. Hong Miri seemed knowledgeable enough to answer my questions, just like a real teacher.

“What exactly is a Watcher?”

“You don’t know? I thought you would. Maybe I expected too much.”

Ms. Hong Miri looked at me with slightly narrowed eyes, as if a bit disappointed.

I was a man.

This kind of treatment naturally made me bristle.

“Well, I actually do know something. It means someone who sees ghosts, right? A person who watches. In English, it would be something like ‘watcher,’ right?”

“No. You really don’t know. Ah… how should I explain this? My mind has been stiff for so long, I’m not sure if I can explain it well… Um. You’re a high school student, right? Have you heard of Plato?”

“Yes. To some extent.”

“Do you know Plato’s Allegory of the Cave? It’s about prisoners who have been chained in a dark cave for a long time, thinking the shadows cast on the cave wall by torches are the real world, until they are freed.”

Is she talking about that difficult Theory of Forms?

As I frowned, Ms. Hong Miri added:

“Imagine a person who has only seen the shadow of a rabbit on the cave wall and thinks that’s a real rabbit. If they were freed from their chains and went outside the cave to see a rabbit under the sunlight, how do you think they would feel?”

“Hmm… Happy…? Amazed…? Or maybe they’d feel betrayed to learn that what they knew was just a shadow…?”

“Wrong. The correct answer is ‘it’s too bright.’ For someone who has been imprisoned in a dark cave their whole life, suddenly going outside where the sun shines would normally make them unable to open their eyes or even go blind because it’s too bright.”

“Ah…”

Now that I heard it, it made sense.

Though it also felt like wordplay.

“So they need to train to gradually get used to the light so they can adapt to the brightness and see the ‘essence.’ And after such training, the prisoner can become a Watcher who sees the real rabbit.”

“…So, what exactly is a Watcher? Someone who sees rabbits?”

“It means people who see the truth. This truth varies depending on the case. Some call it the afterlife that exists after death. It could be ghosts. Some call it nightmares.”

“Hmm…”

“The orphanage director, Kwon Oseong, wanted to create Watchers who could see this truth. He wanted to find the path to truth and gain something. And the method of creating a Watcher is… similar to a chrysalis.”

“A chrysalis?”

“You said it yourself. The caterpillar in the chrysalis becomes neither dead nor alive. That’s the state they create. They place a person at the boundary between death and life. By instilling some kind of eeriness in the body.”

By eeriness, she probably meant ghosts.

Suddenly, I could recall Hong Yeri becoming a ghost in the nightmare who devoured children.

Hong Yeri was both human and the red mask.

If that was the result of intentional surgery or experiments to create a Watcher?

It was an explanation that made sense in many ways.

“But they say some people are naturally born with the ability to clearly see things under the bright sunlight without having to stand at that boundary. Kwon Oseong called such people Heroes.”

“Heroes?”

“Yes. People who can bravely leap toward the truth of their own will. They said Watchers should aim to become such Heroes as their ultimate goal. Heroes can freely enter places like… a night school or something. I don’t know much about that story.”

Ms. Hong Miri said she didn’t know, but I felt like I understood in many ways.

Heroes must refer to people who have the means to voluntarily enter the nightmare corridor.

Watchers are people like Hong Yeri who can see the truth but can’t enter the corridor on their own.

Broadly speaking, could I, as the Game Master, also be considered a Hero?

…Are there more people like me?

While I was lost in thought, Hong Miri applied the pink lipstick I had given her to her lips.

“How does it look?”

To be honest, her lipstick application skills were clumsy.

Although she was 27 years old, Hong Miri’s age had actually stopped at 17 when her neck was cut.

She must have been unskilled with makeup at 17.

Well, among high school students, only delinquents like Yang Juhui or Bong Jiyeon are proficient with makeup.

“It looks good.”

But not wanting to upset her, I gave a vague compliment.

Hong Miri frowned in response.

“You’re lying, aren’t you? I hate liars the most. In that sense, this teacher needs to punish you. Come here!”

Swoop!

Hong Miri approached me, grabbed me, and planted a kiss—smack—on my cheek.

My face grew hot as my cheek tingled.

Hong Miri said:

“I don’t know what I did with this body, so I can’t say for certain, but that was definitely my first kiss. Yeongwon. You saved me. You are my benefactor.”