The quiet corridor of Hanbit Library.
The Security Captain stood with his head quietly lowered.
His gaze was fixed on his own hands.
As if recalling how, just moments ago, he had raised that black, bizarre forepaw-shaped contamination to subdue the wolf leader.
…Or as if reflecting on his own state just before that attack, when he had bitten through his tongue and partially loosened his restraints.
“……”
I had become one by accepting as my own everything I had experienced in Hanbit Library after being split into Golden, Grape, and Roe Deer.
Then could it be that the Security Captain had as well…?
“Mm….”
“…!”
The Security Captain opened his mouth.
And then….
“So this is what it’s like.”
A quiet voice.
Without thinking, I called out,
“Wolf Leader?”
He raised his head.
Then he turned to me and spoke again….
“Um… I’d rather…… you didn’t call me that…. It gets confusing too…….”
Ah.
Limbs hanging without strength, eyes drained of energy.
The Security Captain was still the same.
“Haven’t the two of you become one again?”
“Mm….”
The Security Captain seemed to be choosing his words.
“If we put it… in terms of a book……. Even if I know that page is in me…. you still can’t read a page that’s had ink spilled on it… or been crumpled… the way it was at first…….”
“……”
“Because it was this library’s… power… that restored that page…….”
…For J3, who already barely remembered his pre-contamination self, his time as the wolf leader had been a kind of damaged…