Retire 505

505 Sun (2)

⁠⁠Hope didn’t stop talking for even a moment.

“I like dolls too.”

The instant Hope said that, Noah Michel—who had been smiling gently, like a doll herself—changed in a flash.

“Shut up.”

The red dust surged, driven by Michel’s fierce voice.

But nothing could intimidate our Alex Hope’s mouth. If anything, he seemed even more determined to provoke her, as if offended.

“Why? Didn’t you want a friend? You don’t have any, do you? I told you so many times to make some friends…”

“……”

“Well, if you’d had any friends, you wouldn’t be here making dolls, would you?”

Hope snickered, continuing to dig at Michel’s nerves.

“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with dolls. I liked dolls when I was little too. Making them is a fine hobby, isn’t it? Much more productive than sulking alone in a dungeon, muttering about how you hate people.”

“Shut up.”

“But this… this doesn’t look very productive. Not pretty, either. Is it the maker’s fault? I think I could make something at least as good as that. What do you think, Noah?”

“……”

The dust moved even more violently. My father, robbed of the spotlight despite being at the front, subtly hid his hands behind his back and signaled to us.

Kim Chaemin caught his signal and glanced at me. I nodded.

It’s foolish to provoke a monster carelessly.

People like me… or our guild members, at our level, usually face monsters we’re seeing for the first time. Even if we’re investigating a dungeon, fighting the monster is a different matter.

You never know what abilities it has, and if you make it angry, who knows what it might do.

“Hey, I know! Want to play dolls together? I could do that for you.”

But it’s all relative. Depending on the monster’s behavior, you have to adjust your strategy on the fly. No one’s going to deal with the monster for you just because you stand back. Sometimes you have to provoke it on purpose, goad it, and force it to make the first move.

We had classified Michel as a monster.

We didn’t know what she was thinking, how she might attack, or even if she was aggressive at all. She could bolt at any moment, or suddenly go mad and set everything on fire. She was a walking time bomb.

Of course, before entering Moby’s dungeon, I’d considered how to deal with Michel. If she really was inside—what would we do?

If you can’t safely defuse a bomb that could go off at any moment, you have to control when it explodes. All you need to do is force Michel’s actions into a single channel.

I told Hope to do what he did best.

‘If Noah Michel looks like she’s about to try something, just annoy her to death.’

There are monsters that get colder when provoked, but from what I’d seen, Noah Michel was anything but cold.

“I’ll make the dolls. Judging by your skills, you’d better leave that to me. Do whatever else you want. What do you want to do?”

Monster or human, it doesn’t matter. When you lose your composure, you miss what’s right in front of you. Whatever her story, Michel was raised like a hothouse flower by the mages of Europe.

I doubt anyone in Michel’s life had ever annoyed her as much as Hope did.

“What should we play?”

“…You.”

“You’re not even calling me ‘fairy’ anymore? Honestly, I liked it when you always called me that. Sometimes I’d drop by just to hear you say it, even if I didn’t have a reason.”

“……”

Hope didn’t give Michel a chance to speak, chattering on relentlessly. Watching, I almost felt sorry for Michel.

It wasn’t that Hope was saying anything particularly clever. He just kept harping on the dolls scattered on the floor.

But each word seemed to hit Michel hard. I wondered if she might burst into tears at any moment. Her face was flushed, her clenched fists trembling. How old was Michel again? Not that young, surely… It really felt like we were bullying some innocent kid, even though the reality was the opposite.

“This Christmas, I’ll make sure to give you a pretty doll…”

“Shut up!”

“Seriously, is that all you know how to say? You need to expand your vocabulary. Want me to recommend some books? Ones at your level.”

Crunch. She was grinding her teeth so hard I could hear it from here.

So much for her dramatic entrance. I couldn’t tell if Michel was less impressive than expected, or if Hope was just that good.

But Michel wasn’t just standing there. The bright red dust was beginning to gather around Hope.

Hmm.

No matter how much she hated Hope, wasn’t she underestimating us a bit too much? I could understand her ignoring me and Han Taekyung, since we were less well-known, but she shouldn’t be ignoring Hong Seokyoung and Kim Chaemin.

The first to move was Noah Michel.

It was the sign we’d been waiting for—that her composure had finally cracked. Hope’s assessment was spot on. If she’d just ignored his teasing, it would have been nothing, but to react like this… She was a child, acting on her feelings.

…Or maybe not.

Maybe Hope had struck right at her weakest point.

“……!”

Noah Michel’s weakness.

Michel clearly knew the structure of the original library well.

The red dust gathering looked, at a glance, like a pool of blood. According to Funes, the library’s dust devoured people. Michel’s dust didn’t eat people, but it did explode.

It was different from the magic Michel usually used.

Just before the dust exploded, while Hope was taunting Michel, we prepared to subdue her.

Even if we treated Michel as a monster, killing her was a last resort. With monsters, no matter how suspicious their actions, there’s no way to communicate—at least, not without someone like Hope or Han Taekyung.

But Michel was still human. Maybe we couldn’t guarantee a conversation, but at least we could try. At the very least, we needed to find out what she was doing in this dungeon, and whether anyone besides Lehmann was helping her.

That was one of the reasons Hope was provoking her. Michel always seemed to talk more when she was angry.

Bang! Bang, bang!

Dodging the explosion wasn’t difficult.

It took time for the dust to gather before it went off. All we had to do was move away from the reddened area.

The magic she’d used in Marseilles was much harder to avoid.

And yet she chose to use this magic…

“Stop it!”

Michel screamed, her voice like a shriek.

“Don’t mess it up, leave it alone, don’t touch it anymore!!”

“This?”

“……”

“Why? It’s not even the real place.”

Hope leapt down from the bookshelf he’d climbed to avoid the explosion.

That confirmed it. The explosion was so weak it barely did any damage—I’d suspected as much.

“These are all just dolls, too.”

“Don’t touch them!!”

Hope nudged a doll with his toe, then smiled sweetly.

“The books, too, right?”

But Michel had weakened her magic to minimize the damage to the dolls and books on the floor.

What was it?

What did this space mean to Michel?

No, it was obvious at a glance what it was. The dungeon known as the library. Dolls in poses that looked more like they’d died trying to escape than resisting.

We’d come in talking about the mage couple who’d died in this dungeon.

This was a recreation of what had happened on the day the dungeon first appeared, twenty years ago.

What I didn’t understand was…

“You hate people, but you’re acting like these humans are precious now? Why?”

Hope had pinpointed it.

Noah Michel might hate people, but she wasn’t incapable of social interaction. Many people had pitied the little girl who lost her family in Mont-Saint-Michel and barely survived.

I half believed that, too, until Hope told me the truth.

What was it Hope had said?

That she’d sacrificed everyone else to survive?

Noah Michel had said it herself. Hope believed her.

‘How could a kid do that? I don’t know. That’s why it’s crazy. Maybe that’s what happens when you become a mage at that age. Oh, I don’t have any grudge against my magic teacher, don’t get me wrong.’

Because it was Michel, I believed it too.

‘You’d have to be that ruthless to pull something like this off.’

My father believed it as well.

‘A mage who hates humanity? It’s possible… especially if that hatred started in Mont-Saint-Michel. Not that I’m defending Michel, though.’

Kim Chaemin agreed.

“I… I, I—”

“Are you feeling guilty all of a sudden?”

I signaled to Hope to keep going. Kim Chaemin was ready to use magic at any moment.

I still felt like we were bullying a naive child… but that didn’t mean I could just do nothing.

Maybe the stories young Noah Michel told really had happened. Well, it was too detailed to be a complete lie. I never thought it was all made up.

I just figured, as Hope said, that she’d abandoned the others at some point.

The idea that the books had taught her magic always seemed too much like a fairy tale.

“…No. No, that’s not it.”

“If it’s not that, then what?”

Now Michel didn’t just sound like a child—she truly looked bewildered, like one.

The situation was becoming more absurd by the minute. The Michel I’d spoken with briefly in Marseilles had seemed her age, if a bit unable to restrain her own delight.

“Noah, Noah is looking for something.”

I frowned.

“So… so I listened to Mom, just like I was told.”

“…Ms. Woo.”

Kim Chaemin moved cautiously closer to me.

Michel smiled brightly.

“Mom and Dad always protect Noah.”

Noah Michel had never seemed this unstable before.

Did Hope get to her too easily? Or was it… the will?

There were too many possibilities about what had really happened in Mont-Saint-Michel. But I had a feeling that neither what Michel told people, nor what she’d told Hope, was the truth.

If she’d really sacrificed the others, she wouldn’t be protecting these poorly made dolls so fiercely.

The red dust gathered toward Michel. Her white skirt fluttered, the dust clinging to it. The hem, now stained red, finally colored her—but not in a good way.

“Ah…”

Michel bowed her head. Her tangled hair fell like a waterfall, fluttering with the dust.

“Mr. Kim!”

The magic gathering behind Michel’s back was ominous. My father called out urgently to Kim Chaemin. Without hesitation, Kim Chaemin cast her spell. The musty air of the library was suddenly filled with the fresh scent of grass. I recognized the unique magic she’d used many times before.

Grass and trees sprouted, roses bloomed. But Kim Chaemin’s magic—

Clang!

—couldn’t reach Noah Michel.

Michel raised her head. Her hand moved gracefully. The gathered magic began to take shape.

My first thought was: the sun.

A sun with no heat, only light. A mass of brightness so intense it couldn’t be looked at directly.

But when the light faded, I was shocked for a different reason.

“…At least now I know what you did with that eyeball.”

A giant eyeball floated behind Michel. It looked like a fish’s eye. Intricate runes were etched into the white, and a lifeless golden iris spun round and round.