After finishing the hearty meal, Geo threw sausages to the water birds and returned to the cabin to rest. Perhaps because he had eaten a lot, he wasn’t hungry even in the evening.

“Nurungji….”

“Gulp?”

“It’s a bit hard to eat now, but let’s make nurungji rice tomorrow. It’ll be delicious.”

“Kururururuk.”

“…….”

Sergio, lying on the bed, poked Honey, who was lying next to him, as expected.

“Kung.”

“…….”

“Kung kung kung.”

“It’s fluffy.”

“Kung!!!”

Honey resisted fiercely, but that was even cuter.

“This harmless guy.”

He thought he could use him as a pillow if he grew a little bigger.

‘Can’t we make something with a similar feel?’

Since he felt a little bad about laying down a living water bird, he made a soft pillow that wasn’t alive.

Geo blinked his eyes while fantasizing about this and that.

“…….”

He couldn’t sleep at all.

“Whew….”

Sometimes, he would do this.

“Is this the fate of an artist?”

“…Kung?”

Honey’s reaction was as if to say, ‘Why don’t you stop talking nonsense and just sleep?’, but it wasn’t easy.

Geo rubbed his face a few times against the soft blanket that felt like it was full of feathers, then got up.

“Honey, Dad’s leaving.”

“Crunch.”

“You’re a tough guy.”

Leaving Honey exhausted, he headed to a workshop filled with all sorts of materials.

“…….”

His severe insomnia was due to his sudden interest in something.

“…I became curious about the scenery outside the company.”

If he could pinpoint the exact location and imagine it, Geo could picture the scenery there.

At first, he thought it was just his imagination. Even if he imagined what the third floor of the ‘Collection Company’ would look like, it wouldn’t be any different from the actual scenery there.

However, as he continued to imagine and gradually completed the painting, Geo was able to realize at some point.

‘The scenery of the location I imagine is relatively similar to reality.’

He thought that it might be one of the benefits of being a portrait.

“The outside is probably….”

Geo muttered.

“It must be dark dawn.”

It wasn’t a place he had never seen before, and it wasn’t difficult to draw a place he had already seen once. Geo stood on the wall of an alley and stroked his brush, recalling the scenery he had seen.

Soon, a picture frame appeared in an alley in Seoul.

“Haaah….”

In the streets at dawn, a woman ruffled her hair.

“Where else should I cling to?”

The short-haired woman, Cha Ara, couldn’t hold back her sigh.

‘As expected, there’s no place that accepts F-class.’

Even if they’re Awakened, F-classes aren’t treated better than porters.

Cha Ara’s rank is F. Her main skill is ‘Body Enhancement.’ She didn’t have the means to learn any other skills, and naturally, she didn’t have a job. She had the typical status of a porter.

“…….”

Today, after being released from her original team, she was sitting on the bench helplessly.

“…Well, where would you use a porter with a leg injury?”

It was because she injured her leg in the dungeon she visited in the afternoon.

There were plenty of F-classes who wanted to be used as porters, so there was no reason to hire someone who limped.

‘It was nice that only pretty decent people gathered together.’

They weren’t friendly, but they were a team of people who didn’t care much about each other. They ignored Cha Ara, who was just a F-class porter, as if she didn’t exist, but the team itself had a tendency to treat each other like that.

That kind of indifference was one of the virtues of modern people that is hard to find.

“It was that easy to get fired.”

Cha Ara, who was useless, was kicked out, saying that they couldn’t hire her anymore.

It was fortunate that they got all the money they were owed and kicked her out. Cha Ara looked at the account balance on her phone for a long time.

It was about 500,000 won all together.

“…….”

It’s not enough to pay the monthly rent and buy the youngest a priest’s robe.

“The monthly rent went up this time….”

Ugh.

Cha Ara groaned.

“…What am I going to do, now?”

Cha Ara clicked her tongue as she looked at the sky where snow was starting to fall.

“It’s like a dog.”

It’s already freezing, so why is it snowing?

‘… The terminal must have been shut down a long time ago. Since my brother is still at home anyway, the youngest one should be fine. As long as he doesn’t share his stuff like a fool somewhere else, that’s fine.’

Cha Ara sniffed at the loneliness inside her and got up from the bench.

“We have to find a place where it doesn’t snow.”

Cha Ara tied the scarf that the youngest had made herself tighter and moved her feet.

Originally, she had planned to just take a nap on the bench, but if it snowed, she might not be able to open her eyes the next morning.

‘It would be nice if I could sleep near the station or the company building.’

Public facilities where many people pass by or companies where people make money were covered with a warming spell.

If she could sleep nearby, she wouldn’t have to worry about where to sleep, but if she got caught, she could be demoted to a 4th-class citizen at worst.

‘I got my hunter’s permit to stay in the city for a few days, but that doesn’t mean I can sleep anywhere. If I get caught by the security guard, it’ll be a headache…’

At times like this, she envied her older brother, Cha Eun-hyeok.

“That guy can sleep in a bungeoppang cart.”

If she left it in the city, someone would steal it or tear it down, so her older brother, who sold bungeoppang, always moved his cart from the countryside to the city.

“Ah….”

That’s why Cha Ara couldn’t expect to sleep in his cart either.

After walking aimlessly for a while, Cha Ara’s footsteps reached a dark alley.

“…….”

… What is that?

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‘… Portrait?’

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

“…What is it, creepy….”

The man in the portrait was handsome, like a sculpture or a doll, but before his handsome appearance, the stillness of his eyes quietly closing hit my skin.

Cha Ara hesitated and left the place, feeling the gloomy atmosphere as if someone’s corpse had been drawn.

‘Some crazy guy hung the picture here.’

It must have been the work of some crazy guy with a unique taste or a hunter with strange skills, so Cha Ara decided not to pay much attention. She had no intention of falling asleep here anyway, where the snow was falling straight down.

Cha Ara walked a little further and soon found a woman.

“…….”

She had been hit by the cold snow for so long that white snow had already piled up on top of her.

Judging from the woman’s behavior, who was curled up like a ball, she could tell that she was a 4th-class citizen living illegally in the city.

“…….”

“…….”

The thin body that seemed to be breathing was still shaking, but it wasn’t dead yet.

‘It’s pretty far out.’

Usually, the poor lived in deeper alleys.

Cha Ara, who was trying to ignore the poor and pass by, stood in front of the poor again after walking a few steps with a very uncomfortable expression.

“…….”

The poor man was either asleep or passed out from the cold, but he didn’t come to his senses even though he was breathing. He didn’t [N O V E L I G H T] seem to notice Cha Ara right in front of him.

“…Ah.”

Cha Ara took off her scarf, wrapped it lightly around the poor man’s neck, and quickly left. She could faintly hear the sound of the poor man moving, so her pace became even faster.

‘Fuck, you’re so annoying. F**k, f**k…’

Cha Ara felt aggrieved because her cold neck was cold.

“Why are you sleeping so pitifully and making a fuss…!”

I felt sad for no reason.

The poor man looked about my age or even younger. So no matter how old he was, he couldn’t have been 20.

I couldn’t just pass by a friend who was sleeping looking like he was going to die.

“Miss, the youngest kid knitted it for me… Youngest kid….”

It was a scarf that was knitted with difficulty using fur from livestock or monsters caught in the village. The youngest kid’s skills weren’t bad, so it was a pretty good scarf. I had been wearing it well this winter, but I lost it so stupidly.

‘Fuck… I shouldn’t have said anything to Oppa or Chae Sol…’

As Cha Ara was walking along the road, something strange caught her eye.

“…….”

A portrait of a man.

“…Uh.”

I saw it earlier.

‘… What, what is it? I didn’t see it here. Did I see it wrong? Or were there multiple frames?

The frame was half-hidden in the shadows, so I couldn’t see the face clearly, but I could tell right away that it was the same portrait I had just seen.

For some reason, it was so creepy, like watching a horror movie, that it gave me goosebumps.

“Uh, uh….”

No matter how F-class it is, an Awakened is an Awakened. It’s enough to feel instinctive danger.

“Am I okay?”

At those shallow words.

The portrait buried in the shadows opened its eyes.

“…….”

“…….”

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The mouth of the portrait, not covered in darkness, opened softly.

“Excuse me.”

An aristocratic tone.

Chaara blinked in a terrible sense of discomfort.

“…….”

The frame was nowhere to be seen.

“…….”

What, wow, what.

‘What is it.’

Cha Ara realized belatedly that she had collapsed.

“…Shit, shit….”

Save me.

Her hands on the snow-covered ground trembled. Cha Ara knew and the world knew that it wasn’t simply because of the cold.

It was nonsense, but she felt that if she didn’t say something like this, she wouldn’t be able to come to her senses.

“Crazy….”

Cha Ara realized this without realizing it.

‘I almost fell over.’

In fact, it wasn’t that dangerous, but she knew that the strange portrait she had just seen was a very dangerous being.

If that being had been just a little less polite, not feeling the need to apologize, who knows if Cha Ara would have turned into a corpse?

“…What, what is it. Seriously, what is it. What did I see?”

Cha Ara’s hand, which was struggling to get away, caught something cold and hard.

Chaara, who felt goosebumps all the way to the tip of her head at the small and hard feeling, couldn't even scream and just opened her mouth.

"……."

As she groped her hand again, shivering, a cold grain soon entered her hand.

She examined it with a very nervous heart... .

"...See, a jewel?"

It was a black and transparent jewel.

“…What is it….”

This was also something she felt instinctively.

Cha-Ara realized that this was a gift from the portrait she had just seen.

“…….”

Before her parents died, they always told her that if she did good deeds, good fortune would come.

This whole situation was like a creepy fairy tale.

And here was another person who was creepy.

“Stalking is bad.”

Geo couldn’t come to his senses because of his own rudeness.

It was good that he had drawn the alley at dawn. However, after drawing the picture, he saw a woman moving inside the frame, and he was only briefly worried that it might be dangerous at this late hour.

Before he knew it, Geo’s gaze kept following him… .

“In the end, he was stalking.”

He ended up observing the other person without their consent.

“You must have been surprised.”

Usually, I just quietly looked at the building inside the collection store, or I moved around through the frame, so I didn’t know. However, through this opportunity, Geo finally found out.

‘When I fix my gaze on something that moves, the frame in reality moves as well.’

That was the story of the living, moving portrait incident that followed Cha Ara.

“I hope the meaning of the apology is conveyed well….”

Since I was just blankly looking at the short-haired woman, I could see her handing her scarf to the poor and even her frightened face when she saw my frame. Geo came to his senses only when the woman turned pale and collapsed.

A special feeling toward the woman who seemed to be a high school student, a worry about whether she was okay alone at this late hour, and an apology for startling her with my rudeness.

“…….”

These deep feelings were recognized as a trade item, and Geo gave Cha Ara a jewel as a gift.

“……?”

No, wait.

“Are you scared?”

I was so shocked by my rudeness that I couldn’t think of anything.

But if you were to give a gift to a high school student who was already scared by a living portrait, who would say, “Wow, it’s a jewel” and pick it up?

“Ah….”

I should have given him something like a cookie instead.

“I guess I drew a jewel without realizing it because I didn’t have any cookies baked right now.”

If I had given him a worthless snack, it might have scared him less. Geo vaguely saw the back of the short-haired student running away in panic through the frame.

“I’m sorry….”

At that point, Geo realized.

“…….”

Do I sometimes change my personality?

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