episode_0170

People I met in the past keep coming up.

Rebecca Rolf is blonde. Before I went in. Or after I went in. Her skin is not pale white, but shiny white.

“What a cute girl. Who is she?”

“That’s foreign news.”

Before Rebecca could answer her question, Hukkeshni, who had been sitting behind her, answered.

“Reporters from other countries?”

“You know but you pretend not to know.”

I remember that the relationship between the grumbling Hulkessuni and Rebecca, who giggled at the sight of her, was pretty bad towards the end.

It’s a very strange sight.

Rebecca came closer to me. She was taller than me. Although she was on the small side, Rebecca was almost a full-grown adult by the standards of the first world.

And then we come closer to each other, nose to nose, and we lock eyes. This one looks a little more real. Since I left, Rebecca has been walking around with no warmth or light on her body.

“You are not lost. You are not ignorant of your goal, and you are not hesitating.”

Is this person really that good at seeing people? Or did he just pull out a memory from my head and call it up?

As I was worried, can the witch extract memories and read them?

I don’t know. So, we have to move on.

At least we can go to the castle over there. The tall white castle that can be seen far away from the square where I am now.

“Do you have the key?”

Rebecca looked at me and asked me a question out of context. There’s only one key I got from this.

It’s strange that fantasy has context. I took out the key that was in my pocket.

“That crying king gave it to you? What a cruel and merciless king.”

“He didn’t cry.”

He was the king who cried. But I didn’t see him crying. When I turned around to leave, he wasn’t crying at all.

“The King can only cry when there is no audience. But it’s really strange. Who would have thought he would hand over the keys so easily.”

Rebecca looked back. Hukkeshni still had his back turned, so all she could see was his back.

Instead of doing anything special, Rebecca grabbed the air.

Crackle

Then a heavy bunch of keys appeared. She examined them one by one, then grabbed one, covered her mouth with her index finger, and quietly handed it to me.

“If the King permits, I have nothing to say. Now, if you go that way, you can get out of this place.”

The shape is the same as the key I received from Tisha. However, unlike the key with the word “Despair” written on it, there are only scratch marks on the top. The embossed letters were scratched off. What could it be?

As I held the key with such questions in mind, Rebecca pointed to the place where the headquarters of the Church of Hope for the Future once stood.

It means go.

I said hello to Rebecca and looked at Hukkeshni. She was still looking back. So I just left her and started walking again.

I open the door to the building on one side of the square and go inside. But what I see in front of me is not the inside of a building, but a long passage surrounded by dirt.

As soon as you enter, the door closes and you hear a clicking sound. This means you can’t go back. If you keep going straight ahead in the hallway, you’ll find another door.

It’s not a wooden door, but an iron door. There was no door of this shape in the underground temple. I grab the door and open it, and this time, a desolate rocky desert in the middle of the night with stars pouring down comes into view.

When you go outside, there is only a door left standing in a wide open space. It means that the front and the back are empty. It seems like a door that leads nowhere.

Considering what’s happened so far, there must be someone here too. I looked around.

And I found that someone. Well, rather than someone, it would be more correct to say that it was someone.

There’s a corpse of a woman whose head has been replaced by a giant lock. I tried pushing in the key that says “despair” to see if it would fit.

But it doesn’t go back.

The same thing happens if you put in a key with the name erased.

I looked around, but I couldn’t find a key that could fit in here. I searched through her arms, but I couldn’t find anything that looked like it. I took off her top to see if I could see something on her body, but all I could see was a pure white body that I didn’t remember shining like my own. I couldn’t tell anything.

I searched my pockets but couldn’t find anything, so I just threw it away and headed back to my destination. Even in this rocky desert, I could see the white castle rising in the distance.

As I was walking along the trail I used to run frequently, I saw a steam locomotive.

It’s not a train that moves on marbles or something, it’s a real steam locomotive. It’s a train that’s even loaded with coal at the back.

It’s standing in an open field. And there’s a long railroad track running in front of it.

This is what I meant by “get on board”. I entered a shabby train station made of stones laid on the ground next to the train.

There’s no one at the station. There’s only a platform without even a chair. I got on the train there.

As we go inside, we see a person. A man dressed in Second World clothing is standing in front of the stairs leading up to the carriage.

He’s a man I know, but I’ve never met him in person.

Eunjae.

When I got on it, it didn’t talk to me. Instead, it pulled out a sword and pointed it at me. And then it swung.

No, I tried to swing it.

The blade stopped just short of my hair, as if he couldn’t cut me.

He glared at me, put the knife away, and pointed with his hand not at the cabin but at the locomotive. As far as I know, there is a coal pit at the back, so I have to go around to get to the engine room.

But this is a fantasy.

As soon as I opened the door toward the locomotive, the engine room appeared.

It’s not a proper engine room. There’s a huge lump of iron that’s welded tightly into place where the coal pit should be.

There’s a keyhole in the middle of that lump of iron. If I open it, the train can depart, right?

Hoping it would work this time, I took out my key, inserted it, and turned it.

Then the sound of a car engine starting is heard and the train begins to move slowly.

It’s a real mess here.

It’s really strange how the train is still but the surrounding environment changes rapidly. When you ride a normal vehicle, you feel like you’re being pushed due to inertia, but there’s no such feeling at all.

Even the background is pushed back, and the pure white castle in the distance doesn’t seem to get any closer.

Since this is a dream world, it wouldn’t be strange if the background actually moved backwards.

And then the background, which had been moving quickly, turned pitch black as if it had entered a tunnel, and a rainforest and a wetland appeared.

As expected.

It’s the second world.

Soon the background completely stopped. I think it was a scene showing the train stopped. I turned around. There was no exit door here. So I went back to the carriage.

I opened the door. But I don’t see Eunjae. Instead, the knife that was pointed at me earlier is stuck in the doorway, and there’s a key hanging there.

This key is embossed with the word “anger.”

When I pick it up and go down, I see a very familiar place. The road leading up to the village of Cheonmasingyo. If you go up, you will find Cheonmasingyo, and if you turn left and go straight, you will find the house where I used to live.

I headed towards the house.

No, I was trying to head towards it.

The building I often saw in the second world is blocking the road. As expected, the entrance is boarded up and nailed down, preventing entry. It used to be an empty hill, but there is a building there that shouldn’t be there.

Go your way, that’s what it says.

I walked up the hillside city, with its huge buildings perched on cliffs and towering rock formations.

It was a broken building in the original world, but it’s intact here. If I continue like this, will I be able to meet Cheonma?

Thinking that way, I went into the building. When you open the door and go in, you have to cross a bridge with a cliff below, but the room appears right away.

When you go inside, there are two people inside.

And in the middle of it all, there’s a Go board. When the man holding the black stone puts it down, the man holding the white stone puts it down. But the Go board is strange.

It’s not Go on a grid, but on a board filled with curves like a kaleidoscope. Go? Well, since it’s played with black and white stones, it’s called Go.

The people playing Baduk are a young man and a middle-aged man.

I have never met him in person, but I know him from memory.

The Primordial Heavenly Being and the Great Gon.

This is what they looked like when they were young, or when they were still human.

“You are a guest.”

The guy just turns his eyes and looks at me.

Anyway, everyone here is fake. They just appear as fakes that look similar to you and point out the way without any dialogue. It will be the same this time.

“You should call me the owner.”

The original Heavenly Lord answered like this.

“A guest. When has that ever stood on its own two feet?”

At Daegon’s question, the eyes of the Primordial Heavenly Lord narrow.

“Then. Unlike you.”

It’s weird.

It’s too meaningful to just pass over as meaningless talk. Daegon’s expression turned sour.

“Unlucky guy. So what did the guest come here to do?”

In response to Daegon’s question, I pointed to the white castle in the distance.

“Heading there.”

Daegon and Wonsicheonjon both look down at the Go board without even looking at me. There is no answer. I was about to move, thinking that it was difficult to answer, but Daegon opened his mouth again.

“It would be better not to go.”

“In other words, it means you have to go.”

The one who received Daegon’s words was none other than the Primordial Heavenly Lord. Unlike Daegon, he kept his gaze fixed on the Go board and continued speaking.

“There is no target in that castle that the owner must attack.”

“When a customer leaves, that’s it.”

According to the original Heavenly Lord, there are no witches up there.

According to Daegon, I can go out whenever I want.

Daegon’s words are right. Just like every time, if you press reality, you can easily leave this world. It’s not that it might happen, but I was sure of it.

But there is a bit of a problem with the words of the original Heavenly Lord.

“There’s no witch up there?”

At those words, Daegon and Wonsicheonjon both burst into laughter. After laughing for a long time as if they had heard a funny joke, Daegon and Wonsicheonjon turned their gazes toward me.

“There are no witches except for the guests.”

“That’s the owner’s last name.”

Then, his eyes are slightly turned behind him instead of towards me.

“A man named Nietzsche said, If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. If you follow a guest, be careful.”

“The master is a greedy man. He works endlessly to get his hands on shiny things. But he never hides the most important things.”

This isn’t advice for me.

In other words, the witch is following me. It seems like they are saying opposite things, but in the end, she is trying to get in my way.

“Where is the door?”

At my question, the two men took a deep breath, stood up from their seats, and moved the Go board aside.

There’s a deep pit underneath.

I stand before them. I know for sure that they both hate me. But I’m also sure that they won’t bother me.

What if I get fooled?

If you get fooled, you can just do it again.

“They’re both gone, right?”

Then suddenly, I thought it was strange, so I asked them a question.

“It’s fake to the customers.”

Daegon answered without expression.

“Aren’t you saying you’re the owner?”

The original Heavenly Lord smiled and told him to think about the meaning.

So I realized that he had no intention of giving me a proper answer, so I jumped into the hole.