Chapter 79
[ Like a snake's tongue. ]
The demon evaluated Jinseong thus.
Lee Serin's lips moved as if to refute Gremory's merciless words, but perhaps recalling Jinseong's recent behavior, she couldn't bring herself to say anything and could only remain silent.
[ His skill in mesmerizing people is extraordinary. In the Middle Ages, it would have been all or nothing. ]
Gremory recalled the era when witch hunts were rampant.
The time when women were called witches and men were called children of Satan, and had to prove their innocence while tied to poles.
[ If there had been someone using such rhetoric back then, they would have either been tied to a pole as a child of Satan, or been tying others to poles as children of Satan. ]
It was pretty much an insult.
But Lee Serin didn't argue against those words either.
Rather, recalling how Jinseong had skillfully seduced Ella and changed his speech to manipulate the Grand Witch, she just slightly puffed her cheeks. But her annoyance was short-lived. She became curious about what Jinseong had been doing in Japan to suddenly become so good at talking.
Lee Serin glanced at the demon and then quickly turned her gaze away.
Where she turned her gaze was towards Ella, sitting near the sleeping Lee Arin.
She was looking with worried eyes at Lee Arin, who was snoring after her acrobatics.
Lee Serin was about to speak to her but then closed her mouth.
What was the point of talking when they weren’t even close?
How much time passed in this silence?
Lee Arin, who had been snoring loudly, suddenly opened her eyes.
"Rabbit!"
Lee Arin, who had been calling out Ella's nickname until Jinseong put her to sleep, sat up abruptly while howling "rabbit" as soon as she woke up. Then, as she turned her body to get off the bed, her eyes met Ella's, who was looking at her with wide eyes.
"Rabbit?"
Lee Arin asked Ella, who was making eye contact with her, with multiple meanings.
She couldn't understand what was going on.
Why are you here when I seem to have fallen asleep while being nagged?
Are you okay?
Why are you here?
What happened?
But instead of answering those questions, Ella hugged Lee Arin tightly and said:
"I was worried!"
Lee Arin was flustered when Ella suddenly hugged her and spoke with a voice tinged with moisture, but soon she could roughly understand the situation by seeing Lee Serin explaining the situation through gestures from across her.
Arin gently patted Ella's back.
It was a truly heartwarming scene.
"Anyway, I'm glad you’re safe, Rabbit!"
Lee Arin smiled brightly and grabbed her hand.
Ella tried to pull her hand away but hesitated, then looked at her smiling face and sighed deeply.
"I'm only letting you hold it this once."
So she was about to go out of the room, led by Lee Arin while her hand was held, and.
"Huh?"
She made a dumbfounded expression at seeing the silver flames.
"What, what is this?"
Lee Arin, who had naturally tried to take Ella outside, was also startled and had to stop in her tracks.
Silver flames.
Flames that looked as if they might be formed by melting mercury into vapor and then changing that vapor into the form of flames.
The flames were burning while swaying their bodies here and there like heat haze, and despite having no fuel, they were burning from the floor up to the ceiling. They looked like metal seaweed swaying in ocean currents, or like thin silver caterpillars dancing while wriggling their bodies.
The flames were strangely translucent, allowing a vague view of what was outside the door.
There was a paper with writing on it outside the door, and Lee Arin barely managed to read the blurred and shaky letters one by one.
"Ab...so...lute...ly...don't...leave...Bro...ther..."
Lee Arin, as if not believing what she had just said, read the text again with wide eyes.
"Absolutely don't go out. Brother."
Don't leave.
From where?
Where I am now?
Where am I now?
Lee Arin raised numerous questions in her mind.
And then she realized.
That she had been trapped in this room.
Trapped by none other than her brother.
"This can't be!"
Lee Arin shouted as if unable to accept reality.
"This crazy brother!"
Being trapped in a room was a terrible thing.
She got antsy if she couldn't run around freely outside, and now that was completely forbidden.
How could she accept this?
Lee Arin leaped to the bed like lightning, took out her smartphone, and immediately called Jinseong.
Riiing.
Whether Jinseong was deliberately not answering or not, only the connection tone kept coming.
But she didn't give up and sent Jinseong a text message asking him to let her out immediately, but.
『 Just endure until your guardian comes. 』
The only response was a cold text message.
Lee Arin despaired at the fact that she had to endure what was essentially confinement in a room that was cramped by her standards.
* * *
"Oh my? The monster spawn is trying to pull something~?"
The fortune-teller gritted his teeth as things started to get difficult.
In front of him, dozens of mirrors were attached to the wall.
Each mirror showed a different scene, with some mirrors showing hotel corridors, and in front of some rooms, an unnaturally enormous amount of parcels were piled up.
That's right.
The fortune-teller was peeking into the hotel through the mirrors.
The mirrors at the top showed the scenery around a hotel.
The mirrors in the middle showed the house where Ella had been staying until recently.
The mirrors at the bottom showed the interior of the hotel.
He was monitoring the hotel through the mirrors, as if watching CCTV.
Moreover, the image quality was no different from seeing with the naked eye.
The clarity became more distinct towards the bottom, so that while the topmost mirrors could only show license plates of passing cars on the road, the bottommost mirrors could even show the pores of passing people, small letters on placed parcels, and tiny symbols the size of fingernails.
"That's also a headache."
"Sigh. To think it's related to the Grand Witch. I wonder what kind of guy he is."
"The only good thing is that it's that nasty old hag? Hehe."
The piled parcels, which looked like they might be a composite image, were stacked almost to the ceiling with a bit of exaggeration, and occupied the space leaving just enough room for one person to barely pass through the corridor. And each box had a flower pattern drawn on it, which was a famous pattern in Germany.
It was a pattern used by a certain Grand Witch who liked to show off, was full of vanity, and had a nasty personality.
"It's the first time I've seen someone receiving gifts from that Grand Witch."
"Ha, looking at it, the skin he's wearing is pretty! Could he have played the role of a gigolo?"
"Oh my! Even gigolos are human. How could a monster imitating a human do such a thing?"
The fortune-teller muttered like that, as if mocking Jinseong.
But their faces were tinged with annoyance.
It was because of the scene visible in another mirror.
"By the way."
"Isn't that a flame barrier? Looks like magic?"
"Hahaha! That's not magic! It's fire-based sorcery!"
"I don't think so."
"It is!"
"Did he give it metallic properties?"
"It seems like he reversed the symbolism of metal?"
"Metal has properties of shining and mesmerizing others, but that doesn't."
"Far from mesmerizing, it repels and blocks."
"It doesn't shine so it can't be used as a mirror."
"It distorts and reflects the back, so it doesn't have the properties of a mirror either."
"It seems he set it up to block us and the pretty ones too?"
"Looks like an artifact."
"I'm telling you it's sorcery, not magic?"
"Ha, who cares if it's sorcery or magic! It's obvious he's pulled some trick either way!"
"It looks like magic though?"
The fortune-tellers appearing in numerous mirrors chattered noisily.
The noise was so loud it was reminiscent of a marketplace.
"Shut up, you bastards!"
The fortune-teller with his arms on the desk harshly spoke to his other chattering selves. And hearing those words, the numerous fortune-tellers reflected in the mirrors nodded their heads as if understanding and slowly disappeared.
"You think I can't take it just because of that?"
In the room covered with mirrors, the fortune-teller muttered as if spitting out the words.
His lips, which were being thoroughly chewed, were full of red and black scabs, and blood tears were streaming down from his two eyes as blood vessels burst from overusing sorcery. Moreover, despite slathering on skin-friendly cosmetics, his hands were extremely rough, and his nails were shriveled and uneven with black vertical lines.
A clear danger signal.
A warning that there would be aftereffects if he used more sorcery.
"It's smart to prevent them from leaving the room. But you think I can't take it because of that? Huh?"
There was no way sorcery for watching other places through mirrors could be without cost.
Moreover, with dozens of such sorceries, the fortune-teller was essentially wearing away his life recklessly.
But he didn't care.
Because he desperately wanted to catch Ella and accumulate good karma.
Because he wanted to become a hero.
* * *
But when things started to go wrong, they tended to keep going wrong.
No matter how much time passed, there was absolutely no opening to be seen.
The room with the pretty one and the potential sacrifice was tightly sealed by silver flames preventing those inside from going out, and the pretty one who had been making a fuss as if about to leave at any moment wasn't even approaching the door, perhaps absorbed in the game console Jinseong had brought.
"Our pretty ones. Pre-tty o-nes!"
Bang!
The fortune-teller, as if overcome with rage, shouted while slamming his fist on the desk.
He looked just like a person seized by madness.
"Why does no one! Even that worthless girl! Huh? Why don't they try to come ouuuut! Break out and come ouuut!"
The fortune-teller threw a tantrum like a hysterical old woman. He threw everything on the desk here and there, banged on the desk, and shook the chair, losing control of his body and giving in to anger.
Moreover, as it got worse, he started to hyperventilate, his face turned pale blue, and he barely regained his normal breathing by putting a plastic bag over his mouth.
The fortune-teller in the mirror, who had been quietly watching this scene, spoke up.
"Let's switch."
"Haa, haa."
At that voice mixed with concern, the fortune-teller glanced at the mirror, then placed his hand on his chest to regulate his breathing before answering.
"Alright. Whew---oooo. If I keep this body any longer, I might collapse."
The fortune-teller, still slightly unsteady perhaps from dizziness, approached the mirror attached to the wall and leaned his body forward. Then he slowly extended his arm as if to interlock fingers with his reflection.
Crash.
Eventually, the mirror rotated in place and fell to the floor, shattering into pieces, and the fortune-teller quietly looked at the shattered mirror pieces before roughly kicking them into a corner. Then he roughly scratched his head and sat on the desk.
"Daaamn it."
Ptui.
He spat out the blood flowing from his gums.
An unpleasant taste like licking iron filings lingered on his tongue, but he didn't care and took out a cigarette from the drawer and put it in his mouth. Then he took out a Zippo lighter, lit it, and took a big drag.
Inhale.
Whoosh-
The fortune-teller felt his body becoming languid from the cigarette smoke that filled his mouth, flowed down his throat, swept through his lungs, and came out again. At the same time, his brain, which had been extremely excited due to anger until just now, began to calm down, and his eyes, which had been periodically complaining of pain as if about to pop out, also started to return to normal.
The intraocular pressure that had risen beyond imagination subsided, and the blood tears that had been flowing as if about to make his face a bloody mess suddenly stopped. And his lips, which had been covered with scabs, became clean again.
When his face reflected in the mirror returned to a somewhat human appearance, the fortune-teller took the cigarette out of his mouth and brought it to his arm.
Sizzle.
And he started to grind it into his arm as if putting out a cigarette.
It should have been a painful act, but the fortune-teller's expression was extremely solemn.
Just like the expression of someone receiving arm-burning for ordination, or a devout person who didn't mind their arm burning instead of a candle wick and getting burned by the burning incense, his expression was truly solemn and serious.
The mark the fortune-teller ground made moved and wriggled, creating a picture that looked like the side profile of a beautiful woman. The drawn woman turned her head as if alive to face the fortune-teller directly, and as if frowning, two small lines were drawn where her forehead would be, then it shattered and disappeared.
The picture, which disappeared by decomposing into ash like dandelion seeds flying away with a breath, circled around the fortune-teller and healed his wounds. His eyes with burst blood vessels, his gums that were tearing and collapsing in real-time, the burn marks on his arm where he had ground the cigarette, the numerous red spots created by burst capillaries.
All of it disappeared.
When the fortune-teller confirmed that his body had recovered, he flicked the lit cigarette with his finger.
Then he fiddled with the cursed objects placed beside him.
"Just take one step out of the room."
He muttered like a hunter waiting for prey to fall into a trap.
Unlike before when he was full of anger and irritation, he watched the mirrors with deeply sunken eyes.
Waiting continuously for the targets to open the door.
Cross the threshold.
And come out.
He kept staring like a hunter aiming a gun barrel.