Seoul Object Story
Chapter 338: Orb of Wishes (2)

Sunlight poured down on Sinchon Station Plaza.

A girl took a seat among the rows of chairs lined up there.

She was a girl whose short-cropped hair accentuated her features.

While the sight of people bustling about under the hot sun seemed peaceful, the girl’s heart was not.

The short-haired girl had come to Seodaemun-gu following the words of a suspicious man she met in a dream.

The man’s words that a ‘festival’ would soon begin kept echoing in her mind.

But no matter how much she looked around, she couldn’t see anything special.

There were no signs of the ‘Object’ she was searching for.

“Haah…”

A sigh escaped her lips out of frustration.

At that moment, she suddenly recalled the rules of the ‘festival’ the man in her dream had told her.

‘If you eat or possess an orb, you can participate in the festival.’

‘If you take all of someone else’s orbs, you’re the winner of the festival.’

‘You must not tell others about the festival.’

They were simple rules that were easy to remember.

But with just those rules, it wasn’t clear what she was supposed to do.

Just as she was about to get up from her seat, the short-haired girl’s phone began to ring.

When she checked, it was a familiar number she’d been seeing often lately.

It was the detective in charge of the recent ‘Cognitive Ability Loss Incident’.

“Hello? Detective?”

As the girl answered the phone like that, a slightly flustered voice came through.

[Ah, good thing you could answer. I wanted to ask you about some investigation results we just uncovered. Do you have a moment?]

“Yes, that’s fine.”

[It seems your sister visited Seongbuk-gu about 3 months ago. Have you heard anything about why?]

Just as the girl was about to answer the detective’s question, all sounds began to feel increasingly distant.

[Some victims have records of visiting Seongbuk-gu at different times, you see.]

[You don’t know? Well, if you remember anything, please let me know.]

Moreover, even though the girl hadn’t said anything, the detective was speaking as if he had heard a response.

And when the call ended, an alien landscape greeted the girl.

A sky filled with a checkerboard pattern.

A fog that devoured all sunlight, making it impossible to see even a foot ahead.

As if the fog swallowed sound as well as light, her hearing grew increasingly muffled.

In that moment, the short-haired girl instinctively knew.

That the ‘festival’ had begun.

Deep within the Mini Reaper Garden, in the Golden Reaper Grand Conference Hall.

That place which had always been full of Golden Reapers now had a significant, hard-to-ignore proportion of Black Reapers.

Almost 5:5!

Of course, the total number of Golden Reapers was incomparably larger, but since Golden Reapers often wandered outside, the ratio had become like this.

Naturally, the ever-cheerful Golden Reapers didn’t seem to mind the increase in Black Reapers.

‘New siblings!’

‘So many siblings!’

Especially, there seemed to be many more of the Black Reapers Mom had brought in bulk this time compared to the existing ones.

Om nom nom.

‘This is delicious!’

‘Who keeps biting!’

Kyuhinghing.

Amidst the commotion of nibbling on tasty snacks and playing pranks on each other, the Golden Reaper conference began.

The most attention-grabbing and fiercely debated topic was <What snack should we eat during break time?>.

That topic sparked an intense voting battle.

It was a showdown between the ‘Gray Reaper Pudding’ that Golden Reapers loved most and the ‘Sehee Institute Chocolate Cookies’ that Black Reapers favored.

Though it seemed the Golden Reapers would win due to their slightly larger numbers, the Black Reapers emerged victorious thanks to support from Mini Reapers of other colors.

A victory by just a few votes!

‘Ah!’

‘The pudding lost!’

Though they lost the vote, the Golden Reapers didn’t seem to mind much.

At one point, a Ghost Reaper popped up shouting ‘Black Pudding!’, but most Mini Reapers didn’t know what that was, so there wasn’t much reaction.

Perhaps because of this, the Ghost Reaper ate its black pudding with a slightly dejected expression, muttering ‘Blood sausage…’.

Beside it, a Green Reaper was quietly munching on mint chocolate pudding.

Amidst the ongoing meeting, a surprise motion was tabled: <Give White Hungry Ghosts voting rights too!>.

It was something radical White Hungry Ghosts attempted every time, but since it happened often, the Mini Reapers’ reaction was muted.

Kyuhinghing.

The anguished cries of White Hungry Ghosts being dragged away by Red Reapers failed to reach the Mini Reapers.

As the conference hall grew chaotic with the White Hungry Ghost incident, the moderator paused the meeting and declared a break.

And so the break time began.

The Golden Reapers giggled excitedly, looking forward to snack time.

Though slightly disappointed that ‘Sehee Institute Chocolate Cookies’ had been chosen, they were still excited, thinking it was quite a tasty snack.

After all, the moist and sweet ‘Sehee Institute Chocolate Cookies’ were quite popular, even if not as much as Gray Reaper Pudding.

After a little while, tiny White Hungry Ghosts entered the conference hall in droves, carrying cookies on their backs.

‘Cookies!’

The Golden Reapers received cookies as big as their bodies for their share and smiled happily.

However, the moment they took a bite, the smiles vanished from the Golden Reapers’ faces.

‘Hard… so hard…’

The cookies they received this time were a hard version that emphasized the chewing texture.

It was the kind of ‘Sehee Institute Chocolate Cookies’ that Golden Reapers didn’t often enjoy.

Of course, Golden Reapers would happily eat such cookies if humans gave them, but there was a world of difference between what humans gave and what Mini Reapers ate among themselves!

This snack seemed to suit the Black Reapers’ taste.

Unlike Golden Reapers who preferred soft and extremely sweet snacks, Black Reapers tended to like snacks with strong textures.

‘Oh no…’

‘Is it because we lost the vote?’

‘Is that why we got these cookies?’

Sad-faced Golden Reapers appeared all over the conference hall.

The Golden Reapers now fully realized the meaning of the vote results.

The era when everything always went their way in votes had come to an end.

Hinghing.

Deep within the Mini Reaper Garden.

I was sleeping on warm marshmallows with hot chocolate flowing underneath.

‘Mmm.’

Amidst that, feeling the surroundings grow a bit noisy, I turned my gaze to find Black Reapers gathered all around me.

Om nom nom.

The Black Reapers were piling up snacks like mountains as if trying to eat all the cookies in Sehee Institute, and nibbling away at them.

These newly acquired children seemed to have quite strong appetites.

Did the ghost of someone who starved to death possess them?

Besides the Black Reapers eating snacks, there were many others around me behaving strangely.

Some melted and clumped together, then transformed into Black Hungry Ghost Demons like in the ‘Tower of the End’ and wandered around.

Others cut white marshmallows into brick shapes and stacked them neatly around me.

They all seemed to be newly arrived Black Reapers.

I couldn’t distinguish individual Black Reapers, but Black Reapers had never behaved like this before!

Looking closely, a giant Black Hungry Ghost Demon was carrying white marshmallow bricks, which the Black Reapers received and stacked carefully around me.

What on earth are they doing?

Suddenly curious, I opened my eyes.

‘Ah!’

‘Mom woke up!’

The Black Reapers were startled and began to make a fuss.

They scurried over to my body and exuded their will.

‘Mom shouldn’t wake up!’

‘?’

When I asked why on earth they were doing this, they replied that they were building something for Mom.

‘What kind of building is it?’

‘A temple!’

That was their answer.

Hmm, I suppose I am rather divine.

Hehe.

Hearing that, I looked more closely and it did have a religious building feel to it.

But the entrance was Mini Reaper sized, so once completed, it would be a structure I couldn’t exit.

Is it a building I’d have to leave uncomfortably by ghostification?

‘But I won’t be able to get out like this?’

When I asked that, the Black Reaper tilted its head and exuded its will.

‘Because it’s a tomb?’

‘!’

Aaagh, the Black Reaper is being unfilial again.

I kicked down the bricks to collapse the building and bit the Black Reapers who had been carrying the bricks.

‘Waaah!’

‘Mom is bullying us!’

‘Mom’s house was always a tomb!’

Streets bleached white by fog.

Tok. Tok.

The short-haired girl was slowly advancing through the fog, listening to her muffled footsteps as sound was swallowed up.

‘There’s not a single person.’

Apart from the checkerboard pattern in the sky and the fog, it was the same street she had been looking at until just now, but no people were visible.

Moreover, that wasn’t the only strange thing.

Water that didn’t flow.

Birds frozen in mid-air.

Clock hands that didn’t move.

As if a slice of reality’s time had been put on display, everything on the foggy street was at a standstill.

Thud.

As she carefully made her way down such a street, she felt a heavy vibration that the fog couldn’t completely swallow.

Though it gave her an uneasy feeling, the short-haired girl gritted her teeth and slowly began to advance towards the sound.

‘Sis, just wait a little longer. I’ll definitely bring you back.’

She had a wish she had to fulfill, after all.

At the end of her journey through the fog.

Two horrifically shaped monsters were engaged in a fierce battle.

One was a blood-soaked monster.

A twin sawblade monster with its arms cut off at the elbows and saws attached.

The other was a bipedal reptilian monster covered in green scales.

An alligator monster that used its tail like a spear in place of arms.

Those terrifying monsters were fighting to kill each other, and the moment she saw them, the girl was so shocked she immediately turned and fled.

Into the fog that devoured light and sound.

The girl, who had been fleeing in panic, hid her body in a narrow gap between buildings and hugged her knees.

‘I was tricked by the man in my dream.’

‘He didn’t tell me the orbs would be such horrible things.’

The girl could intuitively understand.

Those monsters were ‘those who had eaten the orbs’.

And the ‘festival’ the man spoke of was becoming monsters and stealing each other’s orbs.

The girl bowed her head deeply and softly sobbed.

‘Sis, what should I do? What am I supposed to do?’

Somehow, she felt that the moment she ate that orb, everything would be over.

The girl wanted to throw away the terrible orb right then, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

It was the only lifeline to save her sister, after all.

‘Should I eat it?’

‘I don’t want to eat it.’

As she agonized like that over and over, a strange thought suddenly occurred to her.

I can’t hear the fighting sounds anymore.

‘…’

At that moment, she heard the sound of metal scraping against asphalt.

Screech. Screech.

The girl slowly raised her head, her face deathly pale.

In the fog, she could faintly see the silhouette of a monster dragging its sawblade hands, approaching her.