Chapter 64

The glass doors at the entrance slid open with a soft hiss.

Flyers taped to the metal frame fluttered faintly. Even the sound of the automatic door closing seemed to hold its breath.

The air smelled of paper and ink—clean, familiar, quiet.

Inside, the library was cutely decorated, a shelf with a banner reading Recommended Books of the Month placed near the lobby.

“I’ll start from the top floor.”

Beomjin whispered.

“Then I’ll go from the bottom up.”

Woo-seong nodded and headed for the first-floor counter. Beomjin kept his footsteps silent as he climbed the stairs.

Childlike landscape paintings hung in frames along the stairway walls. Beside them, flyers about community programs were layered thickly.

On the third floor, a sign greeted him:

[General Reading Room]

He opened the door to soft page-turning and hushed breathing.

A modest space, lit evenly by the dull glow of fluorescent bulbs—a greenhouse of silence.

Readers scattered across large desks—an elderly man reading the newspaper, a student in a mask, a worker flipping through a magazine.

Everything appeared ordinary—painfully ordinary—yet something wrong hid beneath it.

His eyes went to the farthest desk.

A thin, frail man sat alone at a wide table, several books open, scribbling frantically.

Beomjin walked past him—and then he heard it.

A heartbeat.

Loud. Rapid.

Thump-thump-thump.

Pure terror—exactly how prey reacted to a predator.

He turned his head toward the sound.

The man had glanced back—eyes wide, pupils shaking, lips drained of color.

“U-UAAAH!”

He shot up from his seat, knocking his chair back. Startled gazes snapped toward them.

The man grabbed his notebook and books—and hurled them at Beomjin.

A fluttering notebook hit his chest. Others bounced off his shoulder.

“Another monster… another monster!!”

He bolted out of the reading room, screaming.

People stared for a moment—then, deciding not to get involved, returned to their own worlds.

Beomjin watched the fleeing direction… but didn’t chase.

If Woo-seong was outside, he wouldn’t lose one panicked man.

More importantly—the notebook wasn’t just doodles.

From the moment he touched it, he felt intent.

Drawings of humanoid rabbits, dogs, deer—short broken sentences, chaotic scrawls— madness, anxiety, and purpose.

Then—

A crash echoed from the hallway followed by a shrill scream:

“Monster! It’s a monster again!?”

The man’s voice.

That told Beomjin enough.

He dashed out of the reading room.

Ahead, Woo-seong was already sprinting up the stairs. Footsteps echoed, growing distant.

They burst through a rattling door—the rooftop.

An open stretch of concrete, metal railings, a water tank—and the city skyline beyond.

“Don’t come any closer!!”

The cornered man shrieked the moment he saw Beomjin—as if the world itself was hunting him.

“No! Why are there so many of you!?”

His trembling hand pulled out a blade—a short, sharp knife, the steel catching a sliver of sunlight.

The scent of blood clung thickly to it.

“…So it is him?”

Woo-seong muttered under his breath.

When Beomjin took a step—the man swung wildly.

“Stay back! I kill and kill and you still come back!”

Tears flew as he screamed. His entire body trembled out of control—legs, arms, even his lips.

“Calm down! We’re not monsters!”

Woo-seong tried—but his voice never reached the man.

“They never stop. Even with my eyes closed. Even with my ears covered. They whisper… and laugh…”

His face twisted into a grotesque grimace.

“I can’t do it anymore… I’m running. I’ll run from crows. From tigers. I refuse to be eaten—”

The knife slipped from his grip.

The metallic clatter hit the ground at the same instant—he turned—and sprinted directly toward the fence.

“Stop!! You’ll die!!”

But reason was a memory.

His mind was already broken—drunk on the delusion of survival.

“I can make it. I can make it… I can…!”

He chanted like a prayer—or a curse.

He reached the fence—and leapt.

Woo-seong lunged like lightning.

His fingers barely caught the man’s ankle—the man’s lower body hanging completely over empty air—gravity pulling.

Woo-seong strained, muscles trembling, teeth clenched—his arms the only thing keeping the man from falling ten meters to certain death.

“Don’t move!”

Beomjin lunged as he shouted.

But half a beat earlier—Woo-seong’s grip slipped.

No. It looked like it slipped.

The man’s ankle slid free from his hand.

His body dropped—cutting through the air.

“Aaaagh!!”

A short scream—then a brutal impact against the concrete courtyard below.

Thud.

A heavy, dull sound that punched the ears.

Beomjin froze and stared over the fence.

The man lay contorted unnaturally, a dark red pool spreading beneath his skull.

An ambulance arrived shortly after.

Paramedics hoisted him onto a stretcher and rushed off.

Meanwhile, Woo-seong finished a calm phone call with Taeryeon—his face unreadable. No shock. No relief.

Too calm.

The moment his hand slipped replayed in Beomjin’s mindagain and again.

His jaw clenched on its own.

Did he lose him… or let go?

No certainty. Only a seed of doubt—buried deep and sharp in his chest.

The next morning, soft sunlight warmed the hospital exterior.

Inside a quiet room, the man lay alone—no family, no visitors.

He wore a hospital gown, oxygen mask over his face—alive only because the machines said so.

Beep… beep…

Sporadic heart monitor rhythms ticked like faint, uncertain footsteps.

Hours earlier, he had screamed with feral terror—now he was silent as a corpse, bandaged arms resting still.

His hands were covered in cuts. Not just his hands—his arms, his torso—riddled with self-inflicted wounds.

He wasn’t Beast-Blooded. And yet—he recognized Tigers and Crows on sight. He killed Beast-Blooded.

“…What did you see…? How? Why?”

He whispered—never expecting an answer.

He stepped out of the room.

A quiet café near the hospital.

Sitting by the window, he opened his bag before his coffee even arrived.

The notebook the man threw. He hadn’t told Woo-seong or Taeryeon he kept it.

He flipped through—slowly, controlled.

Unfamiliar phrases. Animal-headed figures—rabbits, dogs, deer twisted into humanoid shapes. Scribbles soaked with panic and compulsion.

Tiny scrawled sentences—fragmented like broken glass: nonsense in grammar, messy in thought yet ominously deliberate.

Then—one phrase caught his eye:

The white mask devours eyes.
A beast pretends to be human.
The white mask devours ears.
Do not let the monster live.

Crude handwriting, pressed hard into the paper—desperate. Borderline tortured.

Beside it—a drawing. A cluster of rounded shapes like clouds or foliage. Below it—another circle. Inside: a single vertical line.

A symbol?

A map?

A face?

He leaned closer… when his phone rang.

Woo-seong.

“Yes, this is Baek.”

“Where are you? We’ve got a problem.”

His voice, lower than usual, edged with tension.

“I’m near the hospital. What happened?”

“Just get here. The guy from yesterday—his condition’s taken a turn.”

“What? I’ll be right there.”

Beomjin cut the call short and stood up, heart pounding—what on earth was happening?

He tucked the notebook carefully into his bag and sprinted to the hospital.

As he reached the ward door, alarms and shouts of medical staff collided inside.

“Cardiac arrest! Administer epinephrine!”

Thud-thud-thud.

A doctor slammed into timed CPR, and the man on the bed lay limp as a puppet.

There was no sound beyond the oxygen mask. He no longer smelled of life.

“What happened…?” Beomjin asked quietly, moving toward Woo-seong who watched the scene.

Somewhere then, Taeryeon slid into the doorway as if she’d appeared from thin air.

“Where has Agent Baek Beomjin been? You just arrived?” Her gaze drove down like a nail.

“I checked his condition an hour ago and stayed nearby.” Woo-seong answered in a low voice.

“It seems someone entered the room.”

“Any CCTV?” Taeryeon asked.

“We’re checking now, but if someone intended murder, they’d have disabled it.”

“Are you saying he was killed?” Beomjin’s voice trembled with disbelief.

“It’s strange, isn’t it? That while no one was here, he ended up dead.” Taeryeon’s tone was flat; the corner of her mouth twitched almost imperceptibly.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Just asking. It’s curious.”

Her words were clipped, but loaded with suspicion.

“Isn’t the important question not who killed him but why?” Beomjin said, steady.

“That’s true as well.” Woo-seong nodded once, showing no visible emotion at the man’s death.

Beep—

The monitor’s steady tone cut through the hush.

“No cardiac activity.”

The medical team’s hands stilled.

“10:43 a.m. The patient is deceased.”

Electrodes and the oxygen mask were still attached—yet there was nothing to bring back.

“So quiet at last.” Taeryeon glanced toward the door and then at Woo-seong and Beomjin. Her voice carried no gloom, no condolence.

“Next assignment. Bring me the person who killed this man.”

Her heels clicked like a verdict as she strode down the ward; she never looked back.

Beomjin kept silent, but his mind raced.

The notebook.

The scrap-filled notebook the dead man had thrown—covered in indecipherable lines and pictures.

Beomjin was certain the notebook had something to do with the death.

But he didn’t want to reveal that to Taeryeon or Woo-seong just yet.

“What are you doing? Let’s go.” Woo-seong’s voice pulled him back from the sick room.

“All right.” Beomjin nodded.

Cold fingers, a cooling forehead—eyes that never fully closed, as if the man had tried to pass a last message.

They left the man behind. The look in his eyes stayed with Beomjin—an unspoken warning that lingered long after the door had closed.