The Price

Quiver.

Ma Hana grabbed her trembling right arm with her left and approached Yu Seha.

She placed her hand on his chest.
A texture like a desiccated old tree.
Not a hint of warmth.
Most tellingly, Yu Seha’s heart did not beat.

Not that his pulse had slowed,
or that his breathing had become shallow.
It was literally stopped.

In one word…
Death,
itself.

Ma Hana stared at the darkly dead Yu Seha and shook her head.

“Ah, ah, ah…”

A discordant chorus of inarticulate death cries.
Ma Hana felt her breath grow ragged.
It was as if her insides were being turned inside out.
It felt like someone had ripped out her brain, spun it around, and shoved it back into her skull.

“…M, ah, ah?”

Ma Hana’s pupils trembled.
Her gaze flickered left and right, unable to settle.
Through unfocused eyes, the room’s scenes drifted in and out.
It was a panic reaction caused by overwhelming shock.

“Ah, m, ah, ah, ah…”

Ma Hana could not continue speaking.
Deep within her,
a bloodred scream that could not be put into words surged.

One step back,
and another.
She shook her head as if to deny it.

With a thud, her hips hit a chair.
She placed her hands on the desk.
A pink letter lay beneath her palm.

A handwritten letter reading ‘To Peng Jin-ah…’.
Ma Hana didn’t even take it out of the envelope.

Instead she tore it in half.
She extended the sharp claws typical of her cat-people lineage,
and shredded it to pieces like dust.

It was unmistakably ominous at a glance,
a suicide note likely filled with the same old content.
Ma Hana refused to accept it.

‘No.’

No.
It can’t be.
Seha…
Did Yu Seha sense his death and leave something like this?

No.
No.
No!!!

“…”

Ma Hana stood frozen like a pillar of grief.
Suddenly she bent her knees.

With a smack, her knees hit the hard floor and scraped, bleeding.

Ma Hana was a Hunter, an Awakened.
Even at baseline she was a high-end B-rank powerhouse.
A body strengthened by constant mastery and the demonic energy she exuded kept her superhuman.

But now Ma Hana’s demonic energy drained away as soon as it formed.
For an Awakened, the most important thing was the balance of the mind’s image.
With that balance utterly broken, Ma Hana had become as weak as a civilian.

“M, u…ah…”

Ma Hana crawled.
She groped and crawled with trembling limbs and climbed back onto the bed.

She intentionally lay down with her back turned, refusing to look at Yu Seha.

One minute later, after the damp pooled blood had stained her pajamas red, she mustered the courage to look back.

She held onto the hope that this was a dream.
But the moment she saw Yu Seha’s cold form, that hope shattered.

“Se, Seha…”
“…”

Only then could Ma Hana shed tears.
Tears streamed relentlessly.
Before she knew it, both hands clutched his shoulders and shook him.

“Seha, please, please, please!”
“…”

Was she too strong?
The flimsy protective suit he wore ripped from top to bottom with a ripping sound.

Beneath it was an equally desiccated, mummy-like body.

It looked as if it had been dead for decades.
From the gaunt, tree-like frame blood continuously spurted.

“…”

Ma Hana sensed it.
This could not be undone.
This was the Price.

It was the deed So Hang-woo, the Sword Ghost, had paid in his human body to protect them from the catastrophe he had brought about.

Yes.
This was a transaction in the truest sense.

Ma Hana stared down at Yu Seha with a hollow expression.
She lowered her head and pressed a kiss to his cheek, where only bare bones showed.

“…”

Ma Hana lifted Yu Seha’s arm.
She nestled into the chill embrace and clung to his side.

“I’m sorry, Seha…”

Ma Hana regretted it.
The sense of déjà vu and eerie unease she’d felt just hours before.
She should not have ignored them.

She knew full well.
That her leaving wouldn’t have stopped Seha from ending up like this…

Yu Seha likely knew that too, which was why he said nothing special.
Still, she should not have left him alone.

How cold and lonely he must have been.
How much he must have hurt.
How hard it must have been to change so sadly, all alone.

“…”

No.
No.
No, it’s not.

It’s unnecessary to single out this time.
Come to think of it, Seha had always been that way.

When they first met at the Gate and set out together,
When they took the promotion test and met the Class Hunter,
When they encountered the Twin-Head Troll transformed into a demon stone,
When everyone was threatened by the Fallen Dragon Remnant, the Sea Dragon,
and even later during the Academy invasion…

He was always lonely and struggling.
He always faced crises head-on and fought them alone.

She felt so sorry for him.

“…”

Ma Hana laid her head on Yu Seha’s gaunt chest.

She knew rationally.
She should immediately wake them and
contact people to gather help.

Hunters like Ju Yae-young,
or Chairman Su Ok-bin,

Unlike someone useless like herself, those competent, impressive people might have a way.

“…”

Still, Ma Hana chose not to move.
She didn’t want to anymore.
She hated it.

She didn’t want to leave his side for a single second.
She would no longer leave him alone.

“…Seha.”

I love you.

“…Don’t worry.”

I’ll be there soon too…

“I’ll follow you.”

A calm resolve.
Ma Hana closed her eyes.

Her fingers had swollen from the constant flow of blood for quite some time.

Twitch!

Ma Hana’s keen senses detected a suspicious sound.
She sprang up and lowered her gaze.

Swoosh!!!

The pooled blood on the floor began slowly crawling up along Seha’s toes.

“M, mua?!”

No way, no way…
Now that blood was
trying to consume even Seha’s body!

Ma Hana erupted with greenish-yellow rage.
A savagery burst forth that nearly made her lose reason.

Immediately, something even she did not recognize flowed out of her body.

It resembled demonic energy that demonic thralls might use,
but it was essentially a completely different force that began to surge fiercely.

Crack, crunch!

The slender, delicate back of Ma Hana’s hand thickened,
transforming into something like a beast’s.

A bear? A lion?
A forepaw of some unknown creature sprouted.
Just as she was about to tear the clotted mass of blood apart with it.

Srrip.

“…Meow?!”

Someone placed a hand on her shoulder.
She turned to see, to her surprise, the familiar spirit that always accompanied her.

“Uh, Mom?”
“…”

Still silent as ever,
Ma Hana was startled by the spirit’s first-ever motion.

Meanwhile, the clotted blood flowing over Yu Seha began to expand in area.
Ma Hana muttered as she watched.

“…Bandage?”

If one had to put a name to it, it looked like a blood bandage.
A blood-wrapped bandage wound perfectly from toes to head.
After a moment it gathered as if the wrap weren’t enough and formed a complete shape.

Could this form be…

“…a cocoon?”

A round “blood cocoon” like something a silkworm might make.
Yu Seha’s body inside began to melt into a pulp.

Ma Hana was struck with shock.

One of his fingers melted and fell into the cocoon.
Scalp that seemed to be part of his hair tumbled down, emitting a foul scream.

“Se, Seha! No!”

Ma Hana frantically tore the blood cocoon open.
If she’d been slightly more rational, she would have made a different judgment.
But Ma Hana had no mental strength left to coldly assess the situation.

The more she tore, the more blood erupted like a fountain, widening its reach and strengthening the cocoon.

Soon Ma Hana herself was wrapped in the blood bandage,
and she was bound so that she could no longer move her hands.

“Mua, muaaa!!!”

Ma Hana struggled wildly.
The Yu Seha she had seen inside was gone, replaced by something melted into a dough-like mass.

She turned her head.
She cried out to the spirit with its hand on her shoulder as if begging.

“Please, please, Mom help me. Please!”

Ma Hana begged.
She prayed that however it went for her, he would be saved.
But the spirit still said nothing.

“Seha, Seha…”

Ma Hana wept.

A minute later, wrapped by the blood cocoon, which had grown to fill the room, she fell into a deep sleep without realizing it.

A few hours later.
Ma Hana was brought back to consciousness by the chirping of birds at her ear.

Sunlight streamed through the window,
and she realized morning had come.

“Muaa!”

She looked around the room.
Veins of blood webbed from floor to ceiling.
And right beside her, a cocoon had hardened like stone.

“Mua, mwaang!”

Ma Hana tore the blood strands binding her limbs with her hands.
They were elastic but not very strong, and she ripped them apart quickly.

“…Huh.”

Perhaps because she’d slept for several hours, whatever had happened.
Ma Hana regained her composure,
and slowly stood before the cocoon.
She pressed her ear to it.

Using the cat-people’s superior hearing at full power.
She heard rustling sounds and a heartbeat from inside.

“Seha!”

Ma Hana tore the cocoon open in a frenzy.
Unlike at night, it no longer reproduced and broke apart obediently.
Her hand soon reached inside, and she forcefully pulled it open to both sides.

Splay!

Warm heat billowed out from the fully split cocoon.

She swept her hand to blow away the heat and called to the one inside, Yu Seha.

“Seha, Seha!”

She checked the contents.

Ma Hana gaped in dumbfoundedness.

Blinking, she couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing.

“M, mwaang?”

She tilted her head,
and then, realizing its identity, was horrified.
She fell backward and let out a loud scream, ‘M, mwaaaaa!’

A scream loud enough to shake the entire officetel.
Ten seconds later, Ju Na-young and Moon Bora, hair still limp from sleep, burst into the room having heard the sound.

“Ma Hana!”
“Hana! What’s going on… what the… are you insane… what the hell is all this!?”

They were horrified by the sight and hurried to stand beside Ma Hana.

They followed the tip of her pointing finger toward the cocoon,
and naturally shifted their gazes,

“Yo, Yong, Yongaaa?!”
“Hoo, hungeeaaah!!?”

They were as shocked as Ma Hana.