Seoul Object Story
Chapter 313: The Ash-gray Girl (5)

The Ash-gray Girl was dreaming.

A memory faded to ash, just like her hair.

In that dream, she had become a slightly younger girl.

The shouts of her father and mother echoed throughout the house.

“It’s because you’re always out drinking that we’ve ended up like this!”

To her mother’s scream, her father responded with an even louder voice.

“You say I’m just drinking? It’s because you keep squandering money that I’m like this!”

Frightened by her parents’ endless fighting, the girl curled up in a corner of the room.

Tears rolled down her cheeks, but the girl couldn’t move or make a sound.

It felt as if the whole world was crumbling down.

‘Mom, Dad…’

This dream was a memory that left an indelible scar in the Ash-gray Girl’s heart.

It should have been a memory etched in her mind, impossible to forget…

Strangely, the Ash-gray Girl had completely forgotten this memory.

Her parents, always fighting for all sorts of reasons.

Her brother, who hardly ever came home.

And then…

“It’s okay. It’ll be alright.”

That’s when it happened.

The Ash-gray Girl’s older sister approached her silently and embraced her tightly.

The girl’s frozen heart began to melt little by little in the warm body temperature and cozy scent.

“Everything will be okay.”

As her sister whispered, tears rolled down from the girl’s eyes.

Somehow it felt like her sister was saying it to herself, but it was a truly warm word that comforted the girl.

Pat pat.

And in the dream, her sister slowly patted the girl’s head.

“…”

With that, the Ash-gray Girl woke up from her dream.

Pat pat.

When she looked up, the Yellow Reaper was patting her head with a worried expression.

The Yellow Reaper, meeting her gaze, smiled with its still awkward expression.

Somehow.

It made her laugh.

A newly built luxury apartment complex on the outskirts of Songpa District.

On a sunny afternoon, the Golden Reapers were walking thump thump towards that apartment complex.

To the Golden Reapers, this place felt strange, with humans and Objects all mixed up.

“Look over here!”

When the Golden Reaper turned its head at the cheerful voice, it saw people gathered at the flower bed at the entrance of the complex.

Flowers of various colors showed off their hues, painting a rainbow.

And past that flower bed, straight rows of street trees formed a green tunnel leading into the complex.

Under the shade of the trees, a curved walkway stretched out.

Around the walkway, well-trimmed lawns and benches provided a leisurely resting space for humans.

At the end of the walkway was a small pond.

A fountain created a spray of water over the clear surface, and water lilies planted around the pond showed off their serene beauty.

On the path surrounding the pond, families leisurely strolled, chatting, looking peaceful.

If only it were really like that…

The Golden Reapers looked at the seemingly happy humans with slightly gloomy expressions.

And the Golden Reaper slightly furrowed its brow and began to fill its eyes with firewood.

So when it became expressionless as if angry, the truth of this city began to appear.

A flower bed full of trash with no flowers or grass at all.

A street lined with bare wire frames instead of trees.

A polluted pond emitting a foul odor.

And human-shaped Objects that looked like plaster haphazardly stuck on wire frames.

Among the people walking through this apartment ruin, many such Objects were mixed in.

The appearance of those Objects was vaguely similar to humans, making them quite unsettling.

But no matter how hard they looked, these Objects didn’t give off a ‘harmful’ feeling.

Rather, they seemed to be slightly leaking positive human emotions.

Something similar to firewood, yet different.

Though completely different from Mini Reapers, they clearly appeared to be Objects that moved using human positive emotions as fuel.

‘Then? Beneficial Objects?’

If they made humans happy through mental contamination and fed on the leaking emotions, they surely wouldn’t be harmful like themselves.

But for some reason, these Objects made the Golden Reapers feel uncomfortable.

That’s why this apartment complex had recently been put on the agenda of the Golden Reaper Grand Council.

[No matter how you look at it, it’s not harmful, so we won’t destroy it.]

[But it feels unpleasant somehow, so we won’t approach it.]

The conclusion of the Golden Reaper Grand Council was to leave it alone.

‘Damn it! Let’s just wipe them out since they’re unpleasant!’

The Orange Reaper’s extreme proposal as a guest participant seemed to gain quite a bit of support, but was rejected.

It received particularly strong support from the White A-gwis and Black Reapers, but most of the voting rights belonged to the Golden Reapers.

Decisively, an opinion from one Golden Reaper garnered sympathy from many Golden Reapers.

The opinion was that ‘Mom’ doesn’t go to kill quiet Objects, suggesting there must be a reason for such behavior.

Of course, the Orange Reaper insisted, ‘Mom just does that because it’s bothersome!’, but couldn’t sway the hearts of the Golden Reapers who loved Mom.

There were White A-gwis who tried to illegally occupy the grand council hall, unable to accept the voting results, but they were all led away by the Red Reapers.

Thus, that apartment complex became a place Golden Reapers rarely visited, but now Golden Reapers were gathering in swarms.

‘Dangerous?’

‘Creepy!’

The reason they gathered was because of the James Research Institute employees who had sneaked into the complex in large numbers.

The James Research Institute employees had started sneaking into the complex in various disguises since yesterday, and their Attachment Reapers had asked the bored Golden Reapers for help.

‘I feel like my Attachment Human might be in danger!’

‘Something feels uneasy!’

So wherever there was a James Research Institute employee, at least 5 Golden Reapers were always walking around thump thump.

The James Research Institute employees, disguised as local residents, seemed to be meticulously photographing the interior of the apartment complex or searching for something using even ethereal cameras.

Their stealthy movements made them look like Golden Reapers playing hide-and-seek.

But to the Golden Reapers, it looked strange.

The institute employees were too conspicuous!

It was like humans trying to hide among plaster dolls without eyes, nose, or mouth, and naked.

Late afternoon, in the courtyard of the Sehee Research Institute.

I was leisurely spending time looking up at the sky.

‘There are fewer Golden Reapers than usual today.’

Normally, when I lay down idling in the courtyard, Golden Reapers would cling to me in droves, but today their numbers had significantly decreased.

I vaguely remembered them saying something about going to protect James Research Institute employees.

During the Association Doll incident, we had swept away almost all Objects in Seoul, could there be anything dangerous left?

As I was munching on cookies diligently brought by the Mini Reapers, I heard a sorrowful voice.

“Kyuhinghing.”

When I turned to look, there was a White A-gwi impaled on a skewer.

Its limbs were burnt black and gone, and its whole body was covered in marks of revolution.

Come to think of it, there was a White A-gwi spouting nonsense about giving voting rights to White A-gwis not long ago, could this be that one?

Eating cookies with the White A-gwi’s cries as background music made them twice as delicious.

Hehe.

As I was spending time like that, the Mini Reapers started to become noisy.

‘Cute!’

‘Little sibling!’

When I took my eyes off the White A-gwi and looked towards the commotion, I saw a Green Reaper floating around.

It was a Green Reaper wearing what looked like a grass cloak full of flowers.

“Miing!”

It looked somewhat like a ghost covered in cloth, and also a bit like the Giant Moss Ball I saw at the station.

To me, it looked like an uncomfortable poncho raincoat I’d never want to wear, but the Mini Reapers seemed to think differently.

‘Me too!’

‘Me too!’

The Golden Reapers were clamoring, jumping up and down, asking to be dressed in that stuffy grass thing.

Receiving the fervent will of the Mini Reapers, the Green Reaper made a short, loud ‘Ming!’ sound.

“Ming!”

Then grass started growing wildly from the ground, beginning to surround the Mini Reapers one by one.

‘Waaah!’

The Mini Reapers then started running around wildly, exuding extremely happy emotions.

They ran here and there, covered in grass cloaks, bumping into each other and rolling around because they couldn’t see well.

With everyone like that, it felt like an untimely Halloween.

Late in the evening, the Ash-gray Girl lay down on the floor as if collapsing.

‘So tired…’

The runaway Ash-gray Girl no longer went to school and was just hiding in the Yellow Reaper’s hideout, but she felt several times more tired than when she was attending school.

Even though she no longer felt hungry, perhaps because she realized she was an Object.

As the girl collapsed on the floor poked the Yellow Reaper’s cheeks repeatedly to express her dissatisfaction, the Yellow Reaper just laughed ‘Huhihi’.

‘Too much!’

The reason the Ash-gray Girl was so exhausted was all because of the Yellow Reaper.

Instead of going to school, the Yellow Reaper had called a Mini Reaper to teach her.

And what appeared was the Purple Reaper she had only seen in internet photos!

That Purple Reaper made glasses out of shadows and really started teaching.

Weren’t Mini Reapers supposed to not understand human language and have slightly lower intelligence than humans?

The Purple Reaper felt like it was teaching several times better than school teachers.

And so, the Ash-gray Girl, more tired than usual, fell asleep in an instant.

As she fell asleep, the Ash-gray Girl had this thought.

‘Surely the Yellow Reaper isn’t keeping me busy so I can’t think of other things…’

But the girl couldn’t put a period to that question and fell asleep in an instant.

The Ash-gray Girl was having a strange dream.

A dream of walking through an empty apartment complex late at night.

Like the one she had before, it wasn’t a past memory, but a completely unfamiliar dream.

In the dream, she was walking steadily through a neatly decorated apartment.

Without turning her gaze at all, just looking straight ahead, step by step.

‘Was there a place like this in the apartment complex?’

She kept walking without hesitation through a place so unfamiliar it made her think this.

The place she arrived at was somewhere that existed in the girl’s memory.

A large empty lot in the center of the apartment complex.

The only empty space in an apartment complex where everything was beautifully decorated.

But in that empty lot, there was a building that didn’t exist in the girl’s memory.

Step by step.

As she entered that building, she saw a field full of pure white sand.

Fine sand emitting a white light.

And a space that looked hundreds of times larger than it did from the outside.

That field was full of holes dug in the ground.

Rectangular holes that looked like they were dug to put coffins in.

The girl in the dream didn’t hesitate even in such a strange space, and kept walking.

Crunch crunch.

A sound like stepping on sand.

The girl in the dream, who seemed like she would keep walking endlessly without stopping, suddenly felt an eerie sensation and stopped.

Feeling a chill down her spine, she turned her head to see a bony hand suddenly emerging from the darkness.

The bloodless, pale hand looked as if only bones remained, and it firmly grasped the girl’s ankle in a strangely twisted form.

Just as the terrified girl was about to scream, she nearly stopped breathing when she recognized the owner of the hand from the hole.

It was her brother.

Her brother’s face was covered in white sand, and his lips were parched.

The words he barely managed to utter through those lips were pleas for help.

The sight was so horrifying that the girl woke up with a start.

Even after waking from the dream, the girl panted for a while.

Even though she no longer needed to breathe.

Her hands trembled, and it felt as if her now non-existent heart was beating madly.

‘It’s real, it’s really our brother.’

For some reason, she was certain that the brother she saw in the dream was real.

The girl sat up abruptly.

‘I need to go save him quickly.’

And she had this certainty.

That if she went there, everything would return to ‘normal’.

The Ash-gray Girl began preparing to leave the hideout with trembling hands.

At that moment, the Yellow Reaper climbed onto the shoulder of the girl preparing to leave.

‘You’ll come with me?’

To the Ash-gray Girl’s will, the Yellow Reaper answered by nodding its head slightly.