42

Chapter 42

After finishing his magnificent meal, Gio tossed sausages to the waterfowl, then returned to the cabin and sought rest. Perhaps because he had eaten so heartily, he was not hungry even when evening arrived.

“Nurungji….”

“Kkururuk?”

“It would be a little much to eat it now. Let’s have nurungji rice tomorrow. It’s delicious.”

“Kkururururuk.”

“……”

Lying in bed, Seo Gio firmly poked Honey, who was lying beside him as usual.

“Kkung.”

“……”

“Kkungkkungkkung.”

“Soft.”

“Kkung!!!”

Honey resisted fiercely, which only made him cuter.

“You harmless little thing.”

Gio thought he could use Honey as a pillow once he grew a little larger.

‘Could I create a material with a similar feel?’

He felt somewhat guilty about sleeping directly on a living waterfowl, so he could make a squishy pillow that was not alive.

Indulging in all sorts of fantasies, Gio blinked.

“……”

He could not fall asleep for the life of him.

“Whew….”

This happened occasionally.

“Is it the artist’s fate?”

“…Kkung?”

Honey responded as if asking, ‘Could you stop talking nonsense and simply go to sleep?’ But that was not so easy.

Gio rubbed his face several times against the fluffy bedding, which felt packed with feathers, then soon rose.

“Honey, Dad is leaving.”

“Kkuruk.”

“How coldhearted.”

Leaving the tired Honey behind, Gio headed to the studio filled with all manner of materials.

“……”

His vicious insomnia had struck because something had suddenly piqued his interest.

“…I’ve become curious about the view outside the company.”

If he chose and imagined a location as precisely as possible, Gio could summon its scenery to mind.

At first, he had assumed it was only his imagination. No matter how he imagined the third floor of the ‘Collectors’ company building, surely it would differ from the actual view there.

Yet as he continued imagining it and gradually completed the painting, Gio realized something.

‘The scenery at a location I imagine is relatively faithful to reality.’

Perhaps it was one of the benefits he had received upon becoming a Portrait.

“Outside is probably….”

Gio murmured,

“Dark in the predawn hours.”

It was not a place he had never seen, and painting somewhere he had already visited once was not difficult. Recalling the view he had seen while standing beside the wall of an alley, Gio moved his brush.

Soon, a Frame appeared in an alley somewhere in Seoul.

“Haaaa….”

On a predawn street, a woman raked her hands through her hair.

“Who am I supposed to leech off now?”

Cha Ara, a woman with short jet-black hair, could not suppress her sigh.

‘As expected, there aren’t many places willing to take an F-rank.’

Even among Awakeners, an F-rank received no better treatment than a Porter.

Cha Ara was F-rank. Her primary Skill was ‘Physical Enhancement.’ She could not even afford to learn any other Skills, and naturally enough, she had no profession. They were the typical stats of a Porter.

“……”

Today, after being expelled from her original team, she sat idly on a bench with nowhere to go.

“…Then again, what use is a Porter with an injured leg?”

She had injured her leg in the dungeon they visited that afternoon.

There were more F-ranks hoping to work as Porters than anyone could use, so there was no reason to hire someone who even walked with a limp.

‘It was nice that the team was made up of relatively decent people.’

They could not be called kind, but it was a team of people with little interest in one another. They ignored Cha Ara, merely an F-rank Porter, as though she were not there, but the team generally treated one another that way.

Even such indifference was one of the virtues of modern people that could not easily be found.

“Though it also meant they fired me easily.”

They had driven Cha Ara away, saying they could no longer employ someone with no practical value.

At least they had paid everything she was owed before throwing her out. Cha Ara stared at the balance displayed on her phone for quite some time.

Altogether, it was roughly five hundred thousand won.

“……”

That was nowhere near enough to pay the rent and buy priest robes for their youngest.

“The rent went up this time too….”

Nngh.

Cha Ara groaned.

“…What am I supposed to do now?”

Looking at the sky as snow began to fall softly, Cha Ara clicked her tongue.

“This is fucking awful.”

It was already cold enough to kill her. Why did it have to snow too?

‘…The terminal will have stopped running long ago. Oppa is home anyway, so the brat should be fine. As long as he isn’t giving his things away like some sucker again.’

Sniffling at the loneliness she felt inside, Cha Ara rose from the bench.

“I need to find somewhere the snow can’t reach me, at least.”

Cha Ara pulled the scarf their youngest had made more tightly around her neck and began walking.

She had originally planned to sleep roughly where she was on the bench, but if it snowed, she might not open her eyes the next morning.

‘It would be nice if I could sleep near a station or an office building.’

Public facilities with heavy foot traffic and the areas around wealthy companies were protected by warming magic.

If she could sleep nearby, she would not need to agonize over where to spend the night. But if she were caught, in the worst case she could be demoted to a fourth-class citizen.

‘My Hunter license let me purchase a few days’ right to stay in the city, but that doesn’t mean I can sleep anywhere I please. It would become a headache if a guard caught me….’

At times like this, she even envied her Oppa, Cha Eunhyuk.

“That man can sleep in his bungeoppang cart, at least.”

If left unattended in the city, someone would steal or remove it. Thus, her Oppa, who sold bungeoppang, always moved his cart back and forth between the provinces and the city as he lived.

“Argh….”

For that very reason, Cha Ara could not expect to sleep in his cart either.

After walking aimlessly for a long time, Cha Ara’s steps carried her into a dark alley.

“……”

…What was that?

‘…A portrait?’

It was a portrait of a man hanging on one wall of the alley.

“…What the hell? That’s creepy….”

The man in the portrait was as handsome as a sculpture or a doll, but before his fine appearance, Cha Ara first felt the desolation of his eyes resting quietly closed.

The somber energy made it seem as though someone had painted a corpse. Cha Ara faltered and moved away.

‘What lunatic hung a painting here?’

It must have been the work of a lunatic with peculiar tastes or a Hunter with some bizarre Skill, so Cha Ara decided not to concern herself. She had not intended to sleep somewhere the snow fell directly upon her anyway.

After walking a little farther, Cha Ara soon found a woman.

“……”

The woman had remained beneath the freezing snow for so long that a soft white layer had already accumulated over her.

Judging by the sight of the woman curled into a ball, Cha Ara could tell she was a fourth-class citizen living illegally in the city.

“……”

“……”

The slender body moved faintly with each breath, so at least she was not dead yet.

‘She’s come rather far out.’

The poor usually lived deeper inside the alleys.

Cha Ara tried to ignore the woman and walk past. After only a few steps, however, she turned back with an extremely uncomfortable expression and stood before her once more.

“……”

Whether asleep or unconscious from the cold, the poor woman showed no sign of coming to her senses despite still breathing. She did not seem to notice Cha Ara standing directly before her.

“…Damn it.”

Cha Ara removed her scarf, lightly wrapped it around the woman’s neck, and hurried away. She faintly heard the woman move, so she quickened her pace even further.

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‘Fuck, this is embarrassing. Fuck, fuck….’

Her bare neck was cold, making Cha Ara feel inexplicably wronged.

“Why the hell did she have to sleep there looking so pitiful…?”

Emotion suddenly surged within her.

The poor woman appeared to be around Cha Ara’s age or even younger. At most, she could not yet have been twenty.

She could not simply walk past someone her own age who looked close to death.

“Damn it. The little brat made that for me… Yisol….”

It was a scarf their youngest had made with great difficulty from fur taken from livestock or Monsters hunted in the village. Their youngest was fairly skilled, so it had been quite a good scarf, one she had used well throughout the winter. Yet she had now stupidly lost it this way.

‘Fuck… I had no right to criticize Oppa or Cha Yisol….’

As Cha Ara trudged down the street, something strange soon entered her sight.

“……”

A portrait of a man.

“…Huh.”

It was the one she had seen earlier.

‘…W-what? I didn’t see it here before. Was I mistaken? Or were there several Frames?’

The Frame was half concealed in shadow, making the face difficult to see, but she immediately knew it was the same portrait she had just encountered.

Goosebumps rose over her skin at the chill, as if she were watching a horror movie.

“Uh, uh….”

Even if she was only F-rank, an Awakener was still an Awakener. She was at least capable of sensing danger instinctively.

“Am I fucked?”

At those vulgar words,

the portrait buried in shadow opened its eyes.

“……”

“……”

The mouth of the portrait, untouched by the darkness, opened gently.

“Pardon my discourtesy.”

An aristocratic manner of speech.

Cha Ara blinked at the profound sense of incongruity.

“……”

The Frame was nowhere to be seen.

“……”

What? Whoa. What?

‘What the hell was that?’

Only belatedly did Cha Ara realize that she had collapsed to the ground.

“…F-fuck….”

Someone save me.

Her hand trembled where it rested on the snow-covered ground. Cha Ara knew, and the world knew, that it was not merely from the cold.

It was nonsense, but she felt that if she did not babble even such nonsense, she would never regain her senses.

“That was insane….”

Cha Ara realized without meaning to,

‘I almost died.’

In truth, the situation had not been that dangerous, but she knew the bizarre portrait she had just seen was an extremely dangerous being.

Who knew whether Cha Ara might have become a corpse if that being had been only slightly less courteous—if it had not felt the need to apologize by saying, ‘Pardon my discourtesy’?

“…Wh-what was that? Seriously, what was it? What did I just see?”

As Cha Ara stammered and tried to gather the strength to leave, her hand caught on something cold and hard.

The small, rigid sensation sent chills to the crown of her head. Unable even to scream, Cha Ara’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly.

“……”

When she felt around again with a trembling hand, a cold pellet soon entered her palm.

She examined it with her frightened heart drawn tight….

“…A-a jewel?”

It was a transparent black jewel.

“…What the hell…?”

This too was something she sensed instinctively.

Cha Ara realized that the portrait she had just seen had given her this gift.

“……”

Before their deaths, her parents had always said that blessings came to those who performed good deeds.

The entire situation felt like a chilling fairy tale.

And here was another person thoroughly chilled.

“Stalking is wrong.”

Gio could not recover from the shock of his own discourtesy.

Painting the predawn alley had been fine. But once he finished, he saw a woman moving inside the Frame. He had merely worried for a moment whether she would be safe alone so late at night.

Before he realized it, however, his gaze continued following her….

“In the end, I stalked her.”

He had observed her without consent.

“She must have been startled.”

Ordinarily, he only watched the inside of the Collectors’ building in silence or traveled through Frames, so he had not known. But this experience taught Gio something with certainty.

‘When I fix my gaze on something that moves, the Frame in reality moves along with it.’

That was how the incident of the living portrait following Cha Ara had occurred.

“I hope my apology was properly conveyed….”

Because he had been staring vacantly at the short-haired woman, he had seen her give her scarf to the poor woman and had watched her become terrified upon seeing his Frame. Gio did not come to his senses until the woman went white and collapsed.

He felt admiration for the woman, who still looked like a high-school student; concern over whether she would be all right alone so late; and remorse for startling her with his discourtesy.

“……”

Those intense emotions were recognized as an item of exchange, and Gio gifted Cha Ara a jewel.

“…?”

No. Wait.

“Would that frighten her even more?”

He had been so appalled by his own discourtesy that he had failed to consider it.

But what high-school student, already terrified of a living portrait, would respond to a silent, abrupt gift with, ‘Wow, a jewel,’ and pick it up?

“Ah….”

He should have given her something like cookies instead.

‘I happen not to have any cookies baked at the moment, so I unconsciously painted her a jewel.’

Perhaps some trivial snack would have frightened her less. Through the Frame, Gio watched wistfully as the short-haired student fled in utter panic.

“My apologies….”

Around then, Gio realized something.

“……”

Does my personality change sometimes?

It was the moment he finally became conscious of himself as ‘Black Cloak.’

(To be continued)