Chapter 404
The sticker was gone from my neck.
Liquid flowed from the hole beneath it.
“…….”
I looked down at the liquid coating my hand.
Sticky vermilion.
Exactly the same as….
What the workers had turned into inside their boxes after passing through that process.
And the name of that process was….
RAW MATERIAL CHECK
So.
This was the raw material of this body.
And right now, it was leaking out…!
“…!!”
I tried to put the sticker back on.
But it wouldn’t adhere properly.
I grabbed my neck through the sticker with my hand, forcibly plugging the hole.
And then.
And then….
…the words on the crumpled sticker I had absentmindedly read a moment ago flashed through my mind.
mark
My eyes met Assistant Manager Jin Nasol’s.
Cold sweat ran down my skin.
“Don’t… remove your sticker.”
“…….”
Assistant Manager Jin Nasol was also pressing one hand against her collarbone.
Her sticker had already lost most of its adhesive strength.
And the expression on her face was probably identical to mine.
Emptiness.
And panic.
“So,”
“…….”
“We’re one of those things too.”
Whiiiiiiir—
Neatly standardized boxes moved along the operating conveyor belt beside us.
The workers inside.
Packaged bodies.
Recyclable products with a one-hundred-day use-by period.
“…If they were going to make us again anyway, it would’ve been more efficient to remove pain too.”
Assistant Manager Jin Nasol spoke without even frowning.
“Though I suppose if convenient expectations like that actually worked, it wouldn’t be a Darkness.”
“…….”
“Anyway…. Yeah.”
Her voice was terrifyingly calm.
“Jin Nasol is already dead, and I’m something newly manufactured.”
Whiiiiiiir—
“And now, if I take my hand off this sticker, the raw material will leak out and I’ll collapse.”
“…….”
“And that machine is going to spit out a freshly made…