Seoul Object Story
Chapter 315: The Ash-gray Girl (7)

The deserted beach where the Yellow Reaper and the plaster doll had vanished.

Silence descended upon the beach, burning white like the sun, with no one left moving.

Only ‘The Ancient One’ stood alone.

[Finally!]

Overwhelmed by the joy of seeing results after truly long ages, ‘The Ancient One’ was swept away by elation.

[It really took a long time.]

The Ancient One looked down at his blackened hands, recalling the countless years he had let slip by.

A world stained black.

A land full of black fluid, resembling but entirely different from a god.

After wandering for thousands of years, when he finally discovered the path to reach a god, the world was already on the brink of destruction.

Just as he had figured out the way to become a god, facing annihilation.

Was it truly impossible for humans to become gods after all?

Just as he was about to give up with such thoughts, a new world opened up.

It was truly the guidance of fate.

Crunch, crunch.

Lost in thought, the Ancient One slowly walked across the beach and began to look down into a pit.

After that, things were simpler than expected.

In the destroyed world, the hardest ingredient to obtain was ‘humans’, but this new world had humans as plentiful as cockroaches.

‘So humans in a world untouched by Outer Gods flourish to this extent.’

There were two things he paid the most attention to.

First was the Outer God whispering with a red voice.

Second was the ‘god’ called the ‘Gray Reaper’ in this world.

To avoid hearing the Outer God’s voice, he did not give up being human.

And all the ‘dolls’ that the Ancient One handled were merely human terminals.

To avoid being detected by the Gray Reaper and its minions, he imitated a ‘grimoire’ that had thrived in the dying world.

‘Never kill humans.’

To avoid being detected by the Gray Reaper and its minions, he never killed humans no matter what.

They were sensitive to human deaths, after all.

Humans who needed to disappear from society were processed as accidental deaths with fake corpses, then accommodated on the beach.

After collecting numerous humans that way, he succeeded in obtaining ‘power’ from humans.

But looking at the dried humans buried in the beach, the Ancient One let out a regretful voice.

[Though I used countless people, I still couldn’t reach a form like a god’s.]

No matter what he did, he couldn’t reach power like a god’s, a proper ‘fuel’.

Only by burying humans in the beach and squeezing them could he obtain a similar power.

‘Only by obtaining and researching God’s Kin can I finally reach godhood.’

Indeed, the power of gods could not be achieved through human cognition, only through imitation.

So the Ancient One executed a dangerous but necessary final plan.

The so-called ‘Yellow Reaper Capture Plan’.

It was a plan to lure and capture the Yellow Reaper, which rarely interacted with other Mini Reapers.

Now that he had obtained the Yellow Reaper, the final puzzle piece towards godhood was in place.

The time had come to obtain true ‘fuel’.

However, the Ancient One prioritized leaving this place over research.

Although the disguise was perfect, there was no telling when the Gray Reaper might appear.

He couldn’t ignore the possibility of problems that might arise.

Using the Yellow Reaper to reach godhood would come after ensuring safety.

The Ancient One spread both hands and slowly began to return the beach into himself.

Slowly, so that no one would notice.

Beep beep-

The clear cry of a bird heard in the early dawn.

The ash-gray girl slowly opened her eyes to that sound.

“Yawn.”

As the girl opened her eyes with a sleepy yawn, the familiar room came into view.

She was sure she had gone to bed on time last night, but strangely, drowsiness was overwhelming her.

Shaking her head vigorously to shake off the sleepiness, the ash-gray girl slowly walked to the window.

And the ash-gray girl reached for the handle of the window.

But at that moment, she felt something soft at her fingertips.

Puzzled, she looked down at her hand and saw a small object grasped in it.

“What is this…?”

She examined it closely with curious eyes.

In her hand was a small girl doll wearing old, shabby clothes.

The doll’s appearance was like looking at her own reflection in a mirror.

The ash-gray girl was captivated by a strangely familiar feeling.

It felt as if she had discovered an incredibly precious treasure.

As the girl stared blankly at the doll, her eyes suddenly reddened.

A part of her heart ached sharply.

“A doll… modeled after me?”

Holding the small doll tightly, the girl murmured quietly.

At that moment, the girl screamed at the intense pain that filled her head.

Unable to bear it, the girl’s body went limp and collapsed to the floor.

Even as she fell, the girl did not let go of the doll.

The strange warmth transmitted from the doll in her hand felt as if it was offering comfort.

As if trying to find the thread of mysterious memories hidden in the doll, the girl desperately clung to that small warmth.

Warm sunlight was pouring down on the girl’s face.

Mmm…

The ash-gray girl tried to cover the sunlight with her palm, then sat up with a start.

“School!”

In the room where the late morning sun was shining, the ash-gray girl felt a hand gently stroking her hair.

“Rest a bit more lying down.”

Turning her gaze, she saw her sister smiling kindly.

“Sister?”

The ash-gray girl strangely felt a sense of discomfort from her ‘sister’s’ appearance.

Her sister was saying various things about how she had suddenly collapsed and scared her, but the ash-gray girl simply couldn’t focus.

It was because strange fragments of memory were surfacing.

A sad emotion.

The acrid smell of incense.

A rectangular frame.

And her sister’s brightly smiling face inside the frame.

Feeling as if it was a memory that should never be realized, the girl shook her head vigorously to scatter the memories.

“No, I’m getting up.”

The girl slowly pushed away the blanket and got up.

At that moment, as she lowered her gaze, she noticed a small object firmly grasped in her right hand.

It was a girl doll with ash-gray hair.

The doll she had forgotten until seeing it again with her eyes.

The doll that had somehow disappeared to the far reaches of her memory.

‘No. I don’t want to remember.’

Her voice trembled as if gripped by fear.

The girl tried to pry the doll from her hand with trembling fingers.

But no matter how much strength she used, her fingers wouldn’t budge.

Rather, they seemed to tighten even more.

A desperate feeling that she must never let go transmitted from her fingertips.

‘Sister…’

At that moment, the girl’s mind became tangled like a complex skein of thread.

Her vision blurred, and her ears became muffled.

Trembling all over from the unbearable pain, the girl soon went limp.

Even in the fleeting moment as consciousness faded, the girl’s hand remained tightly clenched.

As if she could never let go of the key to the memories residing in the doll.

The girl opened her eyes.

It seemed she had dreamed a very sad dream.

A dream with sad crying and a picture frame.

The sound of wind could be heard as if there was a hole in the wall.

The ash-gray girl realized the truth.

The girl felt like she was about to lose her mind.

‘…’

No, the girl wanted to lose her mind.

‘I’m sorry, sister.’

The plaster doll that opened its eyes again apologized softly in its heart and got up from the bed that was now just a skeleton.

The plaster doll took one step forward of its own will.

Then the connection to whatever was maintaining the plaster doll’s body was severed.

But disregarding that, it took another step forward.

Its left arm completely crumbled.

The ‘fake house’ revealed its bare skeleton.

It took another step forward.

The right leg that had been supporting its body collapsed.

The ‘fake family’ revealed its true form.

Lying face down on the floor, it crawled bit by bit.

The ‘fake self’ revealed its true form.

And half of its face crumbled and fell to the floor.

It doesn’t hurt.

‘I have to go.’

‘I have to save my friend.’

The plaster doll slowly moved forward of its own will.

It kept moving forward.

The ‘Search for the Yellow Reaper’ to retrieve a toy had developed into an incident.

‘The Yellow Reaper has disappeared.’

No matter how much I searched, I couldn’t sense the Yellow Reaper.

Even though my ability to sense Mini Reapers encompassed the entire Earth.

I asked around the Mini Reapers and even discovered the Yellow Reaper’s secret hideout, but the Yellow Reaper wasn’t there either.

The only clues left in the hideout were odds and ends imbued with powerful mental contamination.

And the very suspicious apartment complex where those odds and ends were found.

Buildings with exposed skeletons.

Black dust swirling in the air.

And plaster dolls wandering inside.

It was a place that could appear in a horror movie, enough to make one jump in fright if visited at night.

‘So you decided to just leave such a suspicious place alone?’

Filled with anger, I was exuding my will while chewing on a Golden Reaper I had stuffed in my mouth.

‘No!’

‘Waaah!’

As I stomped into the apartment complex while punishing the Golden Reapers like that, a strange plaster doll was slowly crawling towards me.

That plaster doll’s face was completely gone, and even its left arm had fallen off from the shoulder in a miserable state.

Moreover, both feet were also gone, but despite that, the plaster doll didn’t stop and desperately crawled forward.

The other plaster dolls didn’t even notice its presence.

The plaster doll spotted me and painfully raised its right hand.

In that hand was a well-made doll with ash-gray hair, tightly grasped.

That doll was emanating the aura of the Yellow Reaper.

I slowly approached and bent down towards the fallen plaster doll.

Then a faint will leaked from the plaster doll.

‘I finally found it.’

Joy and relief as if having traveled a long journey for a long time were evident.

Slowly, but with difficulty, the plaster doll stretched out its arm and held out the doll.

As I took the doll, it exhaled a will like a deep sigh.

‘It’s all over now…’

It felt peaceful, as if having completed its final mission.

And at that moment, the plaster doll’s body began to crumble.

It scattered and disappeared piece by piece, like a sand castle collapsing.

Like ashes scattering in the wind, it melted into the air.

‘…’

I stared blankly at that for a while, then looked down at the doll with ash-gray hair.

A seemingly ordinary doll that didn’t appear to be an Object at first glance.

From that doll, I could sense a connection so small and faint that it would be impossible to feel unless connected to me as an Object.

That faint connection stretched out to one of the countless spatial rifts.

‘So that’s where you were.’

With a fierce smile, I tore through space right there.