The teacher asked again in an absolutely calm voice.

[Why do you think so?]

Dad, who had lowered his eyes, looked up.

And, staring intently at the camera, he said:

[Because I think that if Tie weren’t here, I could live much more peacefully.]

...More peacefully?

Her body felt as if it had been paralysed.

Tie couldn’t take her eyes off the screen.

Dad spoke again.

[And money, too. To be honest, if it weren’t for Tie, I don’t think I’d have to work so hard.]

Tie took a short breath and then exhaled sharply.

Her throat burned as if she’d accidentally inhaled air from a restroom that had just been liberally sprayed with disinfectant.

[Because of that girl, the boy from apartment 106 suffered more than he should have.]

And at that moment something clicked softly behind her.

She turned around.

On the monitor on the desk another video was playing.

‘Grandma...?’

The person who appeared on the second screen was the grandmother from apartment 107.

To Tie she had basically been like a mother.

[She’s been naughty and sly since she was little.]

[Tie?]

[Oh don’t be silly. Because of her, the boy from apartment 106 didn’t have a single peaceful day. He ran after that child all the time and ruined his health.]

“...Lies.”

Tie’s lips trembled.

She staggered back and moved away from the tablet and monitor.

Grandma... Dad...

They couldn’t say such things.

But the video continued.

[It always irritated me when Tie asked for things. The situation is this, and she asks for toys or sweets — as if that matters now.]

[Tie really is such a dim child.]

[Well, she’s a child. But then I realised. Apparently I won’t be able to love Tie properly.]

“Fake!”

Tie screamed without meaning to.

She knew she should be quiet.

She knew all this was a lie within the subspace.

But the more her father’s and grandmother’s words continued, the harder it became to breathe and the hotter her face burned.

“Fake! My dad wouldn’t say that! My dad would never...!”

[If you think about it, we ended up here because of Tie.]

But after the next words she could no longer keep screaming.

[If Tie hadn’t been there that day, it wouldn’t have come to this.]

Along with her father’s voice something from her memory flashed through her mind.

The dream she had the day her father was lost at the Pearlcity port.

That dream was so vivid it had remained in her memory ever since.

‘You want to hurt the mistress?!’

‘Mistress, please, always be well. And laugh more often with the squad leader.’

People dying under the unrelenting onslaught of magical creatures.

People who still tried to protect Tie, even though she had been a baby.

It had been a dream.

But too vivid to be easily forgotten.

‘It’s okay, Tie. It’s okay.’

Recalling her father from the last moment in that dream, Tie pressed her lips together hard.

She had already suspected.

That maybe it wasn’t just a dream, but something they had truly endured before coming to Korea.

[...If Tie hadn’t been there that day.]

And now.

The father on the screen was saying her suspicions were right.

Cold ran through her hands, up to her chest, her throat and her face.

[If I had been ordered not to “protect” Tie, but to “abandon” her.]

Her father’s gaze slid aside.

To where Tie was standing.

[Then I wouldn’t have ended up in such a place and suffered here, wouldn’t have borne all of this alone. Maybe I would have lived peacefully.]

Tie’s frozen lips moved.

A faint voice escaped her throat.

“Fake... fake.”

She should have guessed.

From the moment the subspace had started to look like Cheonnogu.

“Everything’s fake...”

She should have understood when Krazar showed her her own neighborhood and the kindergarten.

Then she would not have hesitated over that stupid phony video letter.

[So that seems to be it after all.]

Hearing the continuing voice, Tie retreated step by step.

Berugon spoke.

Krazar showed a person the thing he feared most.

Many people had died ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) because they could not withstand it.

When she first heard that she thought it strange.

She knew Krazar was powerful.

But could it be that only one person could overcome it?

What madness was he showing?

But now she seemed to understand.

[That’s why the child’s mother didn’t raise him and left him to me.]

Her legs went weak.

Those words hurt.

They did more than wound her heart — they felt as if someone were tearing it into pieces with scissors.

[She knew Astie would be a burden. That she would only drag them down. That she would be a stone on their neck and ruin her parents’ lives.]

Tie staggered and grabbed the wall.

At that moment the sound of the front door opening came from behind.

“King of the Dead...”

Berugon heard Tie’s voice and entered the kindergarten.

Her reason whispered.

‘Run.’

But her body didn’t move.

What it meant to be consumed by fear.

From the crack of the teachers’ room door something slowly crept.

Red mist.

And behind it, tottering, came Berugon.

Tie stood with her eyes wide like a rabbit before a predator.

“Astie! What are you doing!”

Astie snapped back to herself.

She turned her head.

And saw — Lucarion shot out of her kindergarten backpack.

Lucarion flapped his wings in the air.

“Wake up!”

Lucarion knocked the monitor off the desk that was showing the grandmother from apartment 107.

Then he grabbed the tablet and hurled it at the wall.

The screen cracked and the video went out.

A sob escaped Tie’s mouth.

“K-Kkamani...!”

The tears she had held back for so long began to fall one by one.

But Lucarion was firm.

“Not now! Cry later! We don’t have time!”

Tie quickly shut her mouth.

And hurriedly wiped her eyes.

“I’ll try to stop the mist, and you take the core from him first! I feel concentrated magical power inside!”

Tie nodded and hastily turned toward Berugon.

And immediately opened her mouth in astonishment.

‘...A real zombie?’

When the chase began he had not looked like that.

It seemed that while he had wandered the streets searching for Tie, trash bags, discarded ropes and even a badminton net had become tangled around his ankles.

“Faster! If you can’t take the magic stone — at least run!”

Lucarion shouted again.

He was already emitting a blinding white light toward the red mist.

“A, algeso...!”

Tie swallowed and first stepped back.

Then she overturned the stool the tablet had been on and pushed the stack of boxes by the wall with all her might.

She ran for the large office desk.

Seeing Tie move away, Berugon distorted his face.

“King of the Dead! Come here at once!”

But Tie grabbed everything she could find and kept piling it up near the fallen boxes.

A teacher’s office chair.

A small bookcase.

A vacuum cleaner.

Even a clothes dryer.

When she had piled it all up, a small barricade rose up between Berugon and Tie.

‘What now?’

Her head was working at full capacity.

Berugon looked even less sane than before and staggered more and more.

‘But he’s still an adult.’

She wouldn’t be able to take the core by half measures.

Only by fully immobilising him.

‘Bind him...?’

Tie’s gaze slid down to Berugon’s ankles.

More precisely — to the trash bags, ropes and badminton net wrapped around them.

The child’s eyes lit up.

‘There it is!’

Berugon’s legs weren’t free.

What if she finally deprived them of movement?

At that moment the vacuum cleaner she had just toppled came into view.