Seoul Object Story
Chapter 311: The Ash-gray Girl (3)

Late afternoon at the Yellow Reaper’s hideout.

The Ash-gray Girl opened her mouth with an anxious expression.

“You know, lately really strange things keep happening to me.”

The Yellow Reaper, who was making dolls in a corner of the hideout, turned its head at the Ash-gray Girl’s words.

“Yesterday, I ate a candy my brother gave me, but it was so sour that I spat it out, and it was a writhing mass of cockroaches. It really gave me the creeps, but when I looked again a little later, it was just an ordinary candy.”

“And this morning when I went to school, the building looked like ruins. I was so surprised that I rubbed my eyes and looked again, and it was the ‘usual’ building.”

The girl mentioned a few other strange occurrences as well.

It was about hallucinations that appeared for less than a second, as if something was overlaid on her vision.

“Am I going crazy? Or is it Object mental contamination?”

Hearing those words, the Yellow Reaper closed its eyes tightly and shook its head vigorously, expressing strong disagreement.

It was as if it was saying, ‘You’re not crazy!’

“Thank you. Strangely, I couldn’t tell anyone about this. I feel like everything will crumble the moment I speak.”

The Ash-gray Girl knew the rumor that Mini Reapers couldn’t properly understand human speech, but somehow the Yellow Reaper seemed to understand.

“Still, I’m scared. The hallucinations are appearing more and more frequently.”

The Ash-gray Girl hugged her knees tightly and lowered her head, turning pale.

As the girl became anxious, the Yellow Reaper didn’t know what to do.

It seemed not to know how to comfort her or how to approach her.

In the midst of this, the Yellow Reaper spotted a doll outfit in the corner and put it on.

Wearing the Golden Reaper doll outfit, the Yellow Reaper put on a bright smile like the Golden Reaper and charged towards the Ash-gray Girl.

Bonk!

Perhaps because it ran too energetically, the Yellow Reaper couldn’t stop properly and bumped into the Ash-gray Girl’s feet, rolling over.

Seeing this, the Ash-gray Girl let out a small laugh.

The doll outfit with button eyes that looked strange.

Moreover, the Yellow Reaper, which had been so passive, was now desperately trying to comfort her in such a ridiculous doll outfit.

The girl picked up the Yellow Reaper in the doll outfit, poked it with her finger, and said,

“Can you actually see with this? With button eyes?”

The Ash-gray Girl said this while letting out a small laugh, as if air was escaping.

But the Yellow Reaper was so surprised by the girl’s words that its mouth opened wide.

‘The doll outfit didn’t work!’

The Yellow Reaper played with the Ash-gray Girl, whose mood had improved, by changing into various doll outfits.

A Blue Reaper using magic.

A Red Reaper breathing fire.

Even a Purple Reaper moving shadows.

The Yellow Reaper showcased various Reaper doll outfits like this.

And as time passed, when the sun had moved a bit closer to the horizon.

“I should go now. See you tomorrow.”

The Ash-gray Girl, with her back to the sun, said goodbye to the Yellow Reaper.

At that moment, the Yellow Reaper held out a doll it had been making for the Ash-gray Girl.

Button eyes, ash-gray hair, and a worn and tattered school uniform.

It was a palm-sized Ash-gray Girl doll that the Yellow Reaper had made based on the Ash-gray Girl.

“Wow, did you make a doll for me? Thank you.”

The Ash-gray Girl received the doll with a bright smile.

“You really made it well. Our school uniform is pretty but really complicated and fancy, and this is exactly the same!”

Saying this, the Ash-gray Girl hugged the doll preciously and slowly walked away, while the Yellow Reaper watched her disappearing figure endlessly.

In the courtyard of the Sehee Research Institute, full of lush grass and mini animals.

A tiny Cretaceous period had settled in that courtyard.

Inside, surrounded by adorable fences made of marshmallows, tiny Tyrannosauruses were gathered in swarms.

Chubby Tyranno.

Feathered Tyranno.

Quadrupedal Tyranno.

Lipped Tyranno.

Red-hot high-temperature Tyranno.

It was a mini Tyranno zoo where every imaginable Tyranno lived and breathed.

These were a kind of Tyranno miniatures created by the Green Reaper to make the true Tyrannosaurus that I would acknowledge.

If there wasn’t a real one among those many Tyrannos, I’d have to ask the Yellow Reaper to make a real Tyranno doll outfit.

After all, the Yellow Reaper’s doll outfits were powerful enough to fool me.

Fortunately, with over 30 types of Tyrannos, the real Tyranno I wanted was among them.

But the Green Reaper didn’t seem to like the real Tyranno.

“Ming ming…”

‘It’s not special…’

I pulled on the Green Reaper’s leaves for talking nonsense.

“Miing!”

Leaving the Green Reaper to start making Tyrannos, I turned my gaze and saw Mini Reapers gathered.

The Mini Reapers were swarming around a single red candy I had brought.

At that moment, a Golden Reaper jumped down from its attached human’s palm with a confident expression.

‘Challenger!’

‘So brave!’

As the Golden Reaper seemed about to eat the candy, the surrounding Mini Reapers started clapping and admiring.

But contrary to that bold appearance, the Golden Reaper’s challenge ended miserably.

‘Kyaang!’

The Golden Reaper lightly touched its tongue to the red candy, then scrunched up its face and quickly ran back to its attached human.

The Golden Reaper that had returned to its attached human’s palm sprawled out as if severely injured.

Sticking out its tongue with a ‘bleh’, it looked so cute that the attached human was poking the Golden Reaper’s soft tongue with their finger.

Well, that candy is too sour.

There’s a high chance it might be discontinued.

Should I stock up on a bunch before that happens and use them for pranks?

As I was having such constructive thoughts for the future, I spotted the culprits who had caused this challenge.

It was the White Hungry Ghost and the Black Reaper.

It was a very rare combination, but those guys were constantly licking the red candy they held in their arms.

As soon as they licked the candy, the faces of the Black Reaper and White Hungry Ghost started to contract.

And soon their faces returned to normal, and they licked again.

Judging by their faces scrunching up, that candy must be extremely sour for them too, but it was a bit surprising that they kept sitting and eating it.

I would never eat that…

The Ash-gray Girl was suffering from an endless sense of discomfort.

‘Something’s wrong.’

Whether walking through school, walking on the streets, or lying on her bed, the strange feeling wouldn’t go away.

Something was clearly wrong, but she couldn’t tell what it was.

Even the doll given by the Yellow Reaper felt strange.

The only thing that wasn’t strange was the Yellow Reaper.

-

Eating in the school cafeteria, the rice grains seemed to wriggle like insects.

‘…’

As always, she closed her eyes tightly and opened them, and the rice was ordinary rice.

But her appetite had disappeared, so she threw it all away.

-

Walking down the corridor, the floor tiles beneath her feet were disappearing one by one as if they had lost their teeth.

She quickly ran into the classroom, and the corridor was no different from usual.

Even though it was clearly no different from usual, the positions of the holed tiles remained vividly in her mind.

The girl clutched the pocket containing the doll given by the Yellow Reaper and repeated to herself.

‘I’m okay.’

‘It’ll be okay.’

-

On a day off from school.

When she went out to meet the Yellow Reaper, everyone was wearing strange clothes.

Clothes so old and tattered they couldn’t even be used as rags.

The Ash-gray Girl hugged the doll given by the Yellow Reaper tightly and squeezed her eyes shut.

But when she opened her eyes, the doll was wearing old and tattered clothes.

The girl was so startled that she threw the doll away.

As soon as she threw it, everything was ‘as usual’.

The girl apologized as she picked up the doll.

‘I’m sorry.’

-

Dinner time.

When she opened the door to call her brother, she saw him lying in the room.

He looked like a corpse.

It seemed like he wasn’t breathing.

When she opened her eyes again, her brother was lying on the bed as usual.

‘Have I gone crazy?’

The Ash-gray Girl missed the Yellow Reaper so much.

-

The Ash-gray Girl was walking towards school with a pale expression.

‘I’m okay. I’m okay.’

She clutched the small doll in her pocket and muttered as if reciting a spell.

When someone called out to the Ash-gray Girl, she turned around with a forced smile.

But what was there wasn’t a friend, but an Object.

“Eek.”

A monster made to look human by weaving together rough wires and covering them with white clay.

‘Why do these things only happen to me!’

The girl felt like she was about to cry, so she squeezed her eyes shut.

And she opened her eyes, but nothing had changed.

Objects here.

Objects there.

Objects everywhere.

At that moment, the Object opened its mouth with a ‘kigik kigik’ sound as if speaking, but the girl couldn’t understand what it was saying.

The girl turned even paler, threw down her schoolbag, and started running.

She ran so urgently that she felt like she was going to die from being out of breath, but soon she wasn’t out of breath anymore.

When she looked down at her hand, she saw a hand as white as stone.

One leg that had been moving fine no longer moved properly and dragged along.

So the girl stopped walking.

The Ash-gray Girl looked down at her body blankly.

The school uniform she had really liked and found pretty was old and tattered.

When she moved her fingers, white stone powder fluttered down.

She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

‘Ha, hahaha.’

She thought everything except herself was strange…

But even at this moment, only one worry remained in the girl’s heart.

‘I was an Object.’

‘What if the Yellow Reaper hates me?’