The red yarn of Nostalgia wrapped around my neck.

The first thing I felt was clarity.

A sensation where everything was vivid and in its rightful place.

“……”

I blinked.

I could blink.

Eyelids and eyebrows. The world seen through a cornea—crisp, clear…

I looked down at my hand. A human hand, bare and ungloved, with no trace of black rubber.

I opened and closed my bare hand.

Yes.

This is how it used to feel.

This was the sensation I remembered.

The shock faded naturally, leaving only its trace. Familiarity settled in its place.

Natural emotions. Natural senses.

And in that space, a long-forgotten feeling settled in.

Yes. Feeling.

I surely…

Thud.

……

……

I lowered my head.

The bare hand was gone.

What remained was a spiritual hoof and scale, attached to a melting, shapeless mass of flesh…

I forced a glove on.

Forced it in.

Forced it in.

“…Noru?”

Forced it in.

Forced it in.

Done.

Fingers of a human.

Fingers shaped like a human’s appeared.

And between those fingers, I saw it.

The floor.

A single strand of yarn lay there, frayed and worn thin, like it had been stepped on and pulled too many times.

Frizzed. Soiled. Discolored. No longer of any worth.

The yarn had snapped.

“…!”

“Wait…”

It had been a delusion.

Did you really think Nostalgia Kitty would help you? That what you were experiencing now was just contamination? That you had a chance to return to the time when your body and mind were healthy?

Did you believe you could go back to that comfort born of ignorance? That you could gain insight from it, figure out which direction to go, find a way through this world, reset your goals, return to being human, return home, finally—finally make it back?

Is that what you wished for?

Did you believe it was possible?

Did you really?

You made a wish that never should have been made—a wrong wish. And because of it, you realized what you should never have known. You awoke in this grotesque body. You went through this. Spent six months underground, seeing nothing but ghost stories and corpses. Now the fear crashes back.

Wearing Nostalgia Kitty was a mistake.

No effect is ever purely beneficial. You cannot take only the good. You cannot obtain merely the human shape, a body suitable for interaction.

What it means is—

It means that everything I should have felt, had I still been human—

My fear and despair have returned too.

And once experienced, even if the brain and body collapse in an instant like pulp—it doesn’t disappear.

It stays.

I can’t bear it.

……

Smoke rises.

It keeps rising—filling this space, covering everything, leaving no gap to escape. It fills and fills—but it’s not enough…

……

Space.

There’s not enough of it.

“Noru, just—”

I stood up.

The one in the badger mask fell into the dense smoke. I moved him to the bed. Let him rest.

I faced the Guard Captain.

He said nothing. Because his shift was over. He had no obligation, no authority to restrain me.

So instead he said—

“Hey…”

.

“Is there… anything I can do…?”

I opened the isolation room door.

And walked out.

The black smoke flowed out with me, filling the containment corridor.

Red and blue lights flashed.

Just like the sub-basement—Basement Level 13.

[Evacuation alert. High-grade Darkness containment failure. Evacuation alert. High-grade Darkness containment failure. Evacuation alert. High-grade Darkness containment failure…]

The alarm blared in the corridor.

And inside my mind.

You are not allowed to exit the designated zone!
You are not allowed to exit the designated zone!
You are not allowed to exit the designated zone—

You never assigned me a place to stay after working hours.

You only assigned a new task location. You didn’t designate a space for me. Not with your voice, not in writing, not even through implication.

Therefore—

After work hours, I can choose where to rest.

I can go anywhere.

DANG—

I stopped.

But the inability to bear it doesn’t disappear.

Why won’t it go away? Why? Why…?

Ah.

Right.

I kept walking. The distance closed with each step, carried on smoke.

The containment corridor neared its end. The Equipment Vault reception came into view. Most of the Security Team had vacated to arm themselves for the suppression of the escaped entity.

I knew.

I knew there’d be a flaw in their calculations.

Containment Subject (130666) had shown no signs of possessing unrealistically rapid mobility. They assumed it would take at least three times longer to reach the vault.

And so—this disaster.

It could be recorded like that in the report.

“Ah—”

The few remaining Security Team members sank into the smoke.

I took a key from one of their bodies, opened the Equipment Vault.

I kept walking—until I reached the central elevator.

Ding.

The elevator stopped. I stepped in.

I already knew which floor to go to.

–17th floor… That’s where the research staff who scout new Darkness types are, right?

17th floor.

[Doors opening.]

Once, I had visited this place in a different form.

Now the sleek marble and glass office space revealed itself again.

Smoke, once trapped in the elevator, poured outward, pressing down on the office.

[Evacuation alert. High-grade Darkness containment failure. Evacuation alert. High-grade Darkness containment failure. Evacuation alert…]

“AaaaAAAH!”

“Run! Run—!”

Lab coats fled to the emergency exits. One who inhaled the smoke collapsed. Someone began weeping. Another burst into laughter. A third clutched their head and muttered. Someone knelt.

All of them—melting mosaics.

I walked into them.

Until I found what I was looking for.

Toward the office I already knew.

[Research Team 1A]

The clean, spacious room at the far end.

Before they could run.

Before they could hide.

I drew all the smoke spreading through the hallway into one point beneath my feet, then sent it surging upward—flooding the corridor.

I isolated Research Team 1’s office.

With smoke.

……

No one inside can escape now.

Darkness and silence pooled at the corridor’s edge.

From within it, I opened the door.

“Ah.”

Only one person was working the night shift.

[Evacuation alert. High-grade Darkness containment failure…]

Even as the alarms blared, he simply watched the CCTV footage in rapture.

He had been monitoring the path from the isolation room all the way here.

Kwak Jaegang raised his head toward the open door.

A face filled with realization.

“You… no, you.”

…….

 

“So you were Kim Soleum?”

I approach.

“It wasn’t the vessel. You’ve been like this from the start. From the very beg—!”

I grabbed his throat.

The hem of a white lab coat dangled beneath the body suspended in midair.

“Going to kill me? Because you’re angry? Haha…”

Terror and fear filled his eyes—then gave way to delight and curiosity.

“But aren’t you curious?”

……

“I mean, I just… I really don’t know what you are. How you extracted dream-residue. How you move between Darkness and humanity…”

Behind Kwak Jaegang’s glasses, his eyes locked onto mine.

He was smiling.

“In fact… isn’t it possible you don’t know either? ……What you really are?”

……

“You don’t want to be shackled by the company, right? Let me help! Executive Cheong Dallae? Who cares! A researcher should be true to their craft! To origin! To truth! To the pursuit of understanding!”

His voice exploded with madness—certainty and desire bursting forth.

“If you’re trying to find out why you were summoned here, why you’re in that form, I’ll cooperate fully! No—please let me cooperate! I beg you!”

Eyes sparkling with euphoria.

“Dying here wouldn’t be the worst thing, I suppose…! But there’s still too much I want to see, I can’t bear to miss it…”

……

I relaxed my grip.

The neck in my hand dropped to the floor.

“Urgh!”

But Kwak Jaegang didn’t protest. His eyes still shimmered with rapture as he looked up at me.

“Yes! A wise choice…”

I knelt in front of his face.

And, meeting his gaze, I spoke with smoke.

Not interested.

“…!!”

Don’t trust you.

“Wait.”

The smoke drew words.

Untrustworthy Entity

Target for deletion

“…! Hold on.”

His breathing grew ragged.

I issued notice.

Warning 3

Reason: Derogatory speech toward employee
Accumulated Warnings: 3 / Until Disciplinary Action: 0

Black smoke billowed from my gas mask.

It wrapped around Kwak Jaegang’s head.

“Wait—”

He stepped backward.

I didn’t follow. But the smoke did.

It surrounded his face, his features…

The researcher, struggling for air, gagged and wheezed—desperately managing to force out one phrase.

“…Then!”

Flailing behind himself with still-free arms, his fingers slipped several times before finally catching his desk drawer.

Where high-grade twilight-class Darkness was kept in temporary storage.

He fumbled and pulled something out.

“Here, how about using this?”

He extended it toward me, barely managing to hold it up.

…Red thread.

Strikingly similar to the one I had just worn.

The smoke twitched.

But I quelled it, remembering this was not yarn. It was thin and fine.

And had a completely different function.

“If I can’t be trusted, then just… make it so I have to be! That’s what this is for!”

There was only one thing that matched that description.

Red Finger

A Darkness that literally manifests the children’s rhyme:
“Pinky swear, sealed tight—promise with all your might.”

By tying the thread to the pinky and making a single vow, the promise must be kept.

Because breaking it means death.

“The instructions…”

Kwak Jaegang’s lips moved, but before he could speak, I tore open the packaging and yanked his pinky toward me.

He let out a noise—unclear whether it was a laugh or a sob.

“So you… you do know this Darkness.”

There’s nothing I don’t know.

If it has been recorded.

I took the red thread and tied it around Kwak Jaegang’s pinky.

Sweat beading, he smiled.

“I swear. Um… I won’t betray you.”

I looked at him.

Invalid.

Reason: Ambiguous wording

“…I’ll cooperate fully?”

Invalid.

Reason: Ambiguous wording

Slowly, I shifted the smoke.

Attempt Failure Count: 2

Remaining Attempts: 1

Beads of sweat fell from Kwak Jaegang’s face.

“…Then—would you tell me what to swear? I mean, if I mess it up and end up looking suspicious again and die, that’d be kind of bad!”

……

The smoke wrote a sentence.

Suggested Vow:

I will no longer oppose your will in any way.

Kwak Jaegang’s eyes {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} trembled.

He had understood the vast, all-encompassing implications of that sentence.

But his mouth opened.

There were no other options.

“I… will no longer oppose your will in any way.”

Snap.

I pulled the red thread tight.

The pinky it had wrapped around was severed clean.

Blood sprayed.

“Ahahahaha! Ahahahahahaha!!”

Clutching his gushing left hand, Kwak Jaegang laughed as he watched the severed tip of his pinky bounce across the floor.

“Thank you… thank you!”

6 minutes later.

I returned to the isolation room myself.

There was noise outside the door, but it didn’t matter.

Even if the two Security Team members had vanished—so what. That only meant they had returned safely.

I simply thought about this new development.

What the experience of being wrapped in yarn had given back to me.

The fear. The unbearable weight.

…And I reached a conclusion.

I have to know.

Why I exist here in this form.

Who summoned me.

To do that, first—I need to uncover the secrets of this company.

What lies in the basement of the main building.

What Yukhoe Research Lab really was.

And if—after learning all of that—there is still no path forward…

……

Then at that point—I'll give up.

That was the moment I made my decision.

[Now that’s an exciting plan, friend!]

‘……!’

I jolted upright.

…There was something on the bed where I had been lying.

A fuzzy body. Pink, adorable ears. Beady black eyes. A little bow tie around the neck.

And—

[Mr. Noru.]

A call.

‘…Brown?’

[Ah, my friend finally calls me by name. What joy!]

The good friend was there.