Chapter 172
A message flew to Yoonseul's phone.
[I'm coming over. Gangnam-gu, Seolleung-ro 221, Building 21x, Unit 13xx.]
The fact that it came from an unknown number made it even more suspicious.
It wasn't some kind of voice-phishing scam, nor was it a prank by someone she knew.
Suspicion soon turned into fear.
[(Photo).jpg]
[Hello.]
It was a photo of the front door to Yoonseul's home.
Her heart dropped. She immediately climbed out of the capsule and ran into the living room.
Bang—!
A man was pounding on the metal door with all his strength, rage infused into his fists.
“These guys too... Those guys too...”
Bang—!
“Aaaaaaaah!”
On the other side of the door, Yoonseul trembled as memories of the nightmare she'd experienced before resurfaced.
Bang—!
It wasn't a door that could be easily broken down by human strength alone.
But the seams gradually began to split apart, and as the chill air outside touched Yoonseul's thighs, the terror was on the verge of becoming real.
“Do you know why I'm doing this?”
A shrill voice like fingernails scraping a chalkboard stabbed into Yoonseul's ears. It carried aura too. Perhaps even emotion.
With a sob that was almost a scream, she barely managed to answer.
“Hic... I-I don't know! Why are you doing this? Huuuh...”
That was obviously not the answer the man wanted. Reflecting his intensified rage, the door groaned even louder.
“How can you not know?! You of all people!”
Bang!
“Aaaaaah! C-call... call the police... quickly...”
Boom!
The sound was different.
The door had been completely smashed to pieces.
When Yoonseul's eyes met the man's, she dropped her phone and bolted for her room.
She locked it twice, three times, then collapsed with her back against the door.
“Huu... ngh... ah... Who are you? Please don't do this... Please...”
“Open this door. I said open it, you xxx!”
“Th-this is an anti-mana door...! So go away! Please, just go away! Waaah...”
Back when her paranoia had reached its peak, Yoonseul had treated the walls and bedroom door with anti-mana wards; she had never imagined they would help in a situation like this.
The momentary relief made her burst into tears again.
This was on an entirely different level from the malice she'd occasionally encountered online.
This was someone who had tracked down her home address and deliberately come there to hurt her in person.
The malice emanating from him was like a pain that set her entire body ablaze.
“Rika.”
Yoonseul's eyes flew open at the man's mutter.
“Hayan, Rani, Yuju, and Chena.”
The names he recited belonged to the members of the girl group Envy.
And the very first was a name that had never even existed in the group.
“You're Rika. Kariri.”
“No...”
“How could you!”
The man shouted at the top of his lungs.
Yoonseul reflexively lowered her head upon hearing his shout from beyond the door.
Her clasped hands trembled faintly against her head.
“How can you... Chena's dead... and you're perfectly fine? Are you enjoying life?”
He was spouting incomprehensible things.
Yoonseul felt the air around her growing hot.
“Chena died because of you, Rika. And in the middle of all that, you went to Desire Land to play around? Like you were making a mockery of Chena? You think that's funny... Huh? You think it's funny!”
“Aaaaaah! Go away! Please, just go away! W-what does that have to do with me now?!”
“Chena's next schedule was Desire Land. You knew that. How could you do that as a fan...?”
“I-I don't... I d-don't know anything about that! I don't know... Sob...”
Yoonseul didn't understand even half of what the man was saying.
How would she know anything about some next schedule or whatever?
It was true that Yoonseul personally admired Chena, but Chena had ignored her attempts to contact her for more than four years.
“Ow, hot!”
Startled by the pain of her back burning, Yoonseul jumped to her feet.
The bedroom door was gradually heating to a bright red. Waves of heat rolled off it.
It wasn't her imagination that the air was actually heating up.
“How can this...?”
“You'd better open the door while I'm still asking nicely. Did you think I couldn't break through?”
“W-what are you going to do if I open it?! What are you planning to do to me?! Are you going to kill me?”
“Kill you? Fine, let's all just die today!”
[3rd Circle Cast: Coefficient of Thermal Expansion Control]
Due to the magic the man used, the door hinges creaked and fell away.
The space between the door and the wall grew narrower, and cracks gradually began to appear in the wall.
Whether the door broke first or the wall did,
it was obvious that the unidentified man would get inside.
If she'd known this would happen, she should've called the police first—or at least not dropped her phone—or, better yet, gotten into the capsule and asked her teammates for help before the anti-mana system kicked in.
‘Idiot... I'm such an idiot...’
Yoonseul hated herself for becoming this helpless.
“Sob... ngh... Help me... Please, someone help me... I'm sorry, I really am...”
“Open the xx door, you murderous bastard!”
Mana seeped in through the seams that hadn't been treated with anti-mana wards.
In the end, Yoonseul's last thread of reason snapped, and she screamed.
“Stop... stop right now! If you keep doing this, I-I'll jump from here... Huh? I said I'll jump!”
“Go ahead and jump, you cowardly bastard!”
“Sob, ngh... Fuuuck... You think I can't do it...!”
Yoonseul's eyes turned toward the balcony.
Eyes squeezed shut, she opened the window.
A cold wind rushed into the room, seeming to try to dissuade her.
“Hah... Why... why... Huuuh... I don't want to die... Somebody, please save me... Please...”
* * *
“It's 221 Seolleung-ro, Building 21x, Unit 13xx, Gangnam-gu. Yes. It's an emergency, so please come quickly!”
After hanging up with the police, she contacted Professor Cheon too, just in case.
There was no harm in having more safety measures in place.
It was only a five-to-ten-minute drive to Kariri's house.
She immediately hailed a taxi and headed for the apartment complex where Yoonseul lived.
Fortunately, she remembered the address exactly—one that Kariri had seemingly let slip as a joke in the past.
It was fortunate, but it was still too soon to relax.
As soon as she got out of the car, she wrapped her ears in aura and took in every sound around her.
For now, she headed toward the apartment building directly ahead of the main entrance.
‘Where's the entrance?’
It was just as she was looking around.
“%$^%$ ^&%^&$^&!”
A scream came from the children's playground.
She hurried her steps and headed straight there.
Three or four children had gathered, all craning their heads upward.
Following their gazes, she saw a girl clinging precariously to the railing, swaying in the wind.
“Seol Yoonseul...!”
There was no time to wonder how she'd ended up hanging there.
Every time a strong gust blew, Yoonseul's frail body was violently shaken.
[Cast: Constructive Interference]
“Seol Yoonseul! Can you hold on?!”
No answer came back.
No—more importantly, it seemed there was someone else in the house.
Besides her screams, a man's voice could be heard too.
Could the actual stalker have made it into the house?
If so, the situation was far more serious.
Rather than hoping Yoonseul could hold on, she had to find a way to rescue her right now.
“Kyaaah!”
Maybe her foot had slipped; now she was supporting her weight with only her arms.
Think.
Since the ground was asphalt, a magic to alter the coefficient of elasticity would be meaningless anyway.
Besides, if she fell from a height of over 30 meters, her speed would reach 90 km/h.
That was too fast to guarantee safety with ordinary magic, and she couldn't cast a defensive spell around Yoonseul because there was no way to fix the coordinates properly.
A net... It'd be nice if she had something like a net.
“Kyaaah!”
The moment I heard Seol Yoonseul scream, I had no choice but to cast every spell at my disposal.
The fact that terminal velocity was 90 km/h also meant, conversely, that the fall would take less than three seconds.
I thrust both hands forward and focused on my calculations.
[Transmutation: Reidemeister Transformation]
With my left hand, I drew a transmutation array that would determine the shape of the net.
Declaring three runic words simultaneously, I rapidly completed the magic circle with my other hand.
[Sutra (4), Psyche (7), Bestial (14)]
The Arabesque Knot, used to bind sinners or monsters.
Among them, “Metal” magic was primarily meant for things that flew at high speed.
Tens of millions of golden threads spread across the sky, weaving themselves into a dense net.
Rather than making it wide, I made it narrow, dense, and thick. I could forcibly increase its size with a mass cast.
I slightly rotated my left wrist outward, increasing the number of intersections in the net compared to before.
At the same time, I moved my right arm to hold the net in readiness directly below Yoonseul's landing point.
[Mass Cast: Arabesque Knot – Metal (金)]
“Seol Yoonseul! It's okay, jump!”
As soon as I said it, flames surged up just above the railing where she had been standing.
An explosion? No. Judging by the mana flow, that was definitely fire magic.
Her hand slipped loose from the railing, and her body began plunging toward the ground at a vicious speed.
“Aaaaaaaah!”
When someone falls, it doesn't look like slow motion in a movie.
Before her scream had even ended, I wrapped her body in the net I'd made with magic.
In the blink of an eye, Yoonseul reached the ground. I lowered her to the floor and dispelled the Arabesque Knot.
“Yoonseul! Seol Yoonseul, are you okay? Wake up!”
Yoonseul's body hung limp, as though she had used up all her strength.
I patted her cheeks several times, but there was no sign she would wake. The same was true when I infused her with aura.
Her palms bore burn marks, and some of her hair had been scorched black.
[Quick Cast: Diagnosis]
I was out of time, so I used a simplified diagnostic spell, but there were no major external injuries visible at a glance.
Yoonseul's eyes gradually opened, revealing pitch-black pupils.
“Are you conscious? Are you okay? Does anything else hurt?”
If there was an injured area, I needed to treat it as quickly as possible, starting there.
“Huuuh... Who... NoName...?”
“Quickly. There's no time, Seol Yoonseul.”
The culprit would still be inside the apartment.
Breaking into someone's home in broad daylight and using fire magic made him, for all intents and purposes, an attempted murderer.
And he might flee at any moment.
“Sob... ngh... waaah...”
“Seol Yoonseul, quickly... If anything hurts—”
“W-what... Why are your hands so small...! You... hic... Are you Name? You really are Name...?”
“Let's assume you're okay for now. Who's in the house? Is it a stalker? Or someone you know?”
With tears obscuring her vision, Yoonseul shook her head violently.
So it was a stalker.
I called over the children who had been standing behind us, merely staring.
“Kids. Yes, all of you. Come here, quickly.”
At my beckoning, one hesitantly came over, and the others came rushing over after him. Most were young elementary-school boys.
“Look after this big sister until the police arrive. Got it?”
Hadn't the police arrived yet?
I left Yoonseul with the children for now and entered the apartment.
I might as well take a look at the face of the bastard who'd pulled off this insane stunt.