Chapter 42

After finishing a killer meal, Jio tossed sausages to the waterbirds, then returned to the cabin to rest.

Maybe because he had eaten so heartily, he still was not hungry even by evening.

"Scorched rice..."

GURGLE?

"It's a bit much to eat right now, so let's make scorched-rice porridge tomorrow."

"It's delicious."

GURRRRRGLE.

"..."

Lying in bed, Seo Jio poked Honey, who was lying beside him as usual.

THUMP.

"..."

THUMP THUMP THUMP.

"You're soft."

THUMP!!!

Honey resisted fiercely, but that only made him cuter.

"You harmless little thing."

Jio thought that if Honey grew just a little bigger, he could use him as a pillow.

'Could I make a substance with a similar feel?'

He felt a little bad sleeping on top of a living waterbird, so he would make a squishy pillow that was not alive.

Indulging in all sorts of fantasies, Jio blinked.

"..."

He could not fucking sleep.

"Phew..."

Sometimes this happened.

"Is this the fate of an artist?"

... THUMP?

Honey reacted as if to say, "Can you not talk nonsense and just go to sleep?" but it was not that easy.

Jio rubbed his face several times against the soft blanket, which felt packed full of feathers, then soon got up.

"Honey, Dad's going."

GURGLE.

"You cold-hearted thing."

Leaving tired Honey behind, he headed to the workshop filled with all kinds of materials.

"..."

In this way, his terrible insomnia came from suddenly becoming interested in something.

"... I got curious about the scenery outside the company."

If he chose a location as accurately as possible and imagined it, Jio could picture the scenery there.

At first, he thought it was only his imagination.

After all, no matter how he imagined what the third floor of the Collector company looked like, it would be different from the actual scene.

But as he continued that imagination and gradually completed the painting, at some point Jio realized something.

'The scenery of the location I imagine is relatively close to reality.'

He wondered if this was one of the benefits he had received from becoming a portrait.

"Outside is probably..."

Jio murmured.

"...a dark dawn."

It was not a place he had never seen at all, and painting a place he had already seen once was not difficult.

Recalling the scene he had seen while standing against the wall of an alley, Jio moved his brush.

And soon, a single frame appeared in an alley somewhere in Seoul.

* * *

"Haaa..."

On the street at dawn, a woman raked through her hair.

"Where am I supposed to leech off of now?"

Cha A-ra, a woman with a jet-black bob, could not hold back her sigh.

'As expected, there aren't many places willing to take an F-class Hunter.'

Even if one was Awakened, an F-class Hunter was treated as nothing more than a porter.

Cha A-ra's rank was F.

Her main skill was "Body Enhancement."

She did not even have the circumstances to learn any other skills, and, naturally enough, she had no profession.

It was the typical status of a porter.

"..."

Today, after being kicked out of her original team, she had been sitting idly on a bench.

"... Well, where would they use a porter with an injured leg?"

It was because she had injured her leg in the dungeon she visited that afternoon.

There were more than enough F-ranks who wanted to be used as porters, so there was no reason to hire someone who even walked with a limp.

'It was nice because they were all fairly decent people.'

They were not exactly kind, but they were a team made up of people who had little interest in one another.

They did ignore Cha A-ra, who was only an F-class porter, as if she did not exist, but that team in itself tended to be like that toward everyone.

That sort of indifference was also one of the virtues of modern people that was not easy to find.

"Though that's why I got cut so easily."

Cha A-ra, who no longer had any use value, was thrown out with the statement that they could no longer employ her.

It was fortunate, at least, that she had received everything she was owed before being kicked out.

Cha A-ra stared for a long while at the amount in the account displayed on her phone.

Altogether, it was roughly five hundred thousand won.

"..."

It was nowhere near enough to pay rent and buy the youngest his priest's robe.

"The rent went up this time too..."

Ngh.

Cha A-ra let out a groan.

"... What do I do now?"

Looking at the sky, where snow had begun to fall softly, Cha A-ra clicked her tongue.

"This is fucking bullshit."

She was already freezing to death, so why did it have to snow too?

'... The terminal must have stopped running ages ago.'

'Anyway, since oppa is still home, the youngest should be fine.'

'As long as he's not off somewhere giving away his own stuff like a pushover again.'

Sniffling at the loneliness that rose inside her, Cha A-ra got up from the bench.

"I need to find somewhere the snow won't hit me, at least."

Cha A-ra tied the scarf the youngest had made himself more tightly around her neck and moved her feet.

Originally, she had planned to fall asleep on the bench somehow, but if it snowed too, she might not open her eyes the next morning.

'It would be nice if I could sleep near a station building or an office building.'

Public facilities where many people passed by, or the areas around companies that made decent money, had heat-retention magic cast on them.

If she could sleep near there, she would not have to worry about where to sleep rough like this, but if she got caught, in the worst case, she could be demoted to a Grade 4 citizen.

'I used my Hunter license to get a permit to stay in the city for a few days, but that doesn't mean I can sleep rough anywhere I want.'

'If I get caught by security, things will get troublesome...'

At times like this, she envied her older brother Cha Eun-hyuk.

"That man can at least sleep in his fish-shaped bread cart."

If left in the city as is, someone would steal it or have it removed, so her older brother, who sold fish-shaped bread, always lived while moving his cart from the provinces to the city.

"Ugh..."

For that reason, Cha A-ra herself could not expect to sleep in his cart either.

After walking aimlessly for a long time, Cha A-ra's steps reached a dark alley.

"..."

... What was that?

'... A portrait?'

It was a portrait of some man hanging on one side of the alley wall.

"... What the hell, that's creepy..."

The man in the portrait was handsome like a sculpture or a doll, but more than his fine features, the first thing that touched her skin was the stillness of his quietly closed eyes.

At the gloomy aura, as if someone had painted a corpse, Cha A-ra faltered and left the spot.

'What kind of lunatic hung a painting here?'

It must have been the work of some lunatic with a peculiar taste or a Hunter with a bizarre skill, so Cha A-ra decided not to pay it any mind.

In any case, she had no intention of sleeping in this place where the snow fell directly.

After walking a little farther, Cha A-ra soon found a woman.

"..."

The woman had been exposed to the cold snow for who knew how long, and white snow had already piled softly over her.

Judging from the woman's appearance as she curled up like a ball, Cha A-ra could tell she was a Grade 4 citizen living illegally in the city.

"..."

"..."

Her thin body rose and fell faintly as if she was breathing, so she was not dead yet.

'She's come pretty far out.'

Normally, the poor lived deeper in the alleys.

Cha A-ra tried to ignore the poor woman and pass by, but after taking only a few steps, her face turned extremely uncomfortable and she stood in front of the poor woman again.

"..."

Whether she was asleep or had passed out from the cold, the poor woman was breathing, but she did not regain consciousness.

Even though Cha A-ra was right in front of her, she showed no sign of noticing.

"... Shit."

Cha A-ra took off her scarf, lightly wrapped it around the poor woman's neck, and left the spot at a brisk pace.

When she faintly heard the poor woman move, her steps grew even faster.

'Fuck, this is embarrassing.'

'Fuck, fuck...'

Her bare neck was cold, so Cha A-ra somehow felt wronged.

"Why the hell is she sleeping so pitifully like that...!"

She got choked up for no reason.

The poor woman looked about her age, or even younger.

Then, no matter how old she was, she would not be twenty yet.

Someone who could have been her friend was sleeping as if she might die any moment, and Cha A-ra could not just walk past her.

"Ah, shit, the little bastard knitted that for me... Youngest..."

It was a scarf he had struggled to knit from the wool that came from livestock or monsters caught in their village.

The youngest bastard's skills were not bad, so it was a fairly decent scarf, and she had been using it well this winter, but now she had stupidly lost it like this.

'Fuck... I shouldn't have said anything to oppa or Cha I-sol...'

As Cha A-ra trudged down the road, something strange soon entered her eyes.

"..."

A portrait of a man.

"... Uh."

It was the one she had seen earlier.

'... Wh-what is this?'

'I didn't see it here.'

'Did I see wrong?'

'Or were there several frames?'

The frame was half-covered in shadow, so the face was not clearly visible, but she could tell at once that it was the same being as the portrait she had just seen.

For some reason, goosebumps rose on her skin with a chill like she had watched a horror movie.

"Uh, u-uh..."

No matter how F-class she was, an Awakened was still an Awakened.

She could feel instinctive danger.

"Am I fucked?"

At those vulgar words.

The portrait buried in shadow opened its eyes.

"..."

"..."

The mouth of the portrait, no longer hidden by darkness, opened gently.

"My apologies."

An aristocratic tone.

At the terrible sense of wrongness, Cha A-ra blinked.

"..."

The frame was nowhere to be seen.

"..."

What, whoa, what.

'What was that?'

Cha A-ra belatedly realized that she had sunk to the ground.

"... F-fuck..."

Somebody help me.

The hand she had planted on the snow-covered ground trembled.

Cha A-ra knew, and the whole world knew, that this was not simply because of the cold.

It was nonsense, but deep down, if she did not spout even this sort of nonsense, she felt like she would not be able to come to her senses.

"Insane..."

Cha A-ra realized without meaning to.

'I almost died.'

In truth, it was not a situation quite that dangerous, but she knew that the bizarre portrait she had just seen was an extremely dangerous being.

If that being had been only a little less polite, so little that it felt no need to apologize by saying, "My apologies," who knew whether Cha A-ra would have become a corpse.

"... Wh-what is it?"

"What is it, seriously?"

"What did I see?"

As Cha A-ra stammered and forced strength into her body to leave this place, something cold and hard caught against her hand.

At the small, hard sensation, goosebumps rose all the way to the crown of Cha A-ra's head, and she could not even scream as her mouth opened and closed soundlessly.

"..."

When she fumbled again with trembling hands, a cold little pellet soon entered her grasp.

When she looked at it with her heart completely shriveled in fear...

"... A j-jewel?"

It was a jewel of a black and transparent color.

"... What is this..."

This, too, was something she felt instinctively.

Cha A-ra realized that this was a gift from the portrait she had just seen.

"..."

Before they died, her parents had always said that good fortune came when you did good deeds.

This whole situation was like a creepy fairy tale.

* * *

And here was one more person who had been creeped out.

"Stalking is a bad thing."

Jio could not come to his senses because of his own rudeness.

Painting the alley at dawn had been fine.

However, once he had painted it, he saw a woman moving inside the frame, and he had only worried for a moment whether she might be in danger so late at dawn.

Because of that, without Jio himself realizing it, his gaze kept following her...

"And in the end, I stalked her."

He had ended up observing another person without consent.

"She must have been startled."

Usually, he only quietly looked at the inside of the Collector building, or else moved around through frames, so he had not known.

But through this opportunity, Jio learned for certain.

'If I fix my gaze on something moving, the frame in reality moves along with it.'

That was the sequence of events behind the incident of the living portrait that had followed Cha A-ra.

"I hope my apology came across properly..."

Because he had been staring blankly only at the bob-haired woman, he had seen both the sight of her handing her scarf to the poor woman and the sight of her becoming terrified after seeing his frame.

Only when the woman turned white and collapsed in a heap did Jio come to his senses.

His admiration for a woman who looked to be only about high-school age, his worry over whether she would be all right alone at this late hour, and his guilt at having startled her with his own rudeness.

"..."

Those deep emotions were recognized as a single item of trade, and Jio gifted Cha A-ra a jewel.

"...?"

No, wait.

"Wouldn't that scare her more?"

Because he had been so disgusted by his own rudeness that he had lost his head, he had not thought of it.

But if he suddenly gave a silent gift to a high-school student who was already terrified of a living portrait, who in the world would pick it up thinking, "Wow, a jewel"?

"Ah..."

He should have given her something like cookies instead.

'Of all times, I didn't have any cookies baked right now, so without realizing it, I ended up drawing her a jewel.'

If he had given her some trivial snack instead, perhaps he might have scared her less.

Jio gazed wistfully through the frame at the back of the bob-haired student as she fled in a panic.

"I'm sorry..."

Around then, Jio realized something.

"..."

Do I sometimes change personalities?

It was the moment he finally gained self-awareness as Black Cloak.