Plin Ch 4.3

“Chief… What is all this, why…”

“Keep your eyes open. We need to get out of here. Something seems to be wrong.”

Thibeau lowered his head and whispered in Plin’s ear.

<It doesn’t seem like it’s just reporters.>

Startled, Plin opened his eyes wide and looked around. Now that Thibeau said it was strange, everything really seemed strange. Even if Hugo had publicly revealed Plin’s existence, he was just a celebrity’s lover at best. It was strange that there was so much competition for coverage.

And the people around him were strangely violent for reporters or ordinary citizens.

“Chief, can we get out of here?”

“Stay close to me for now.”

It was time for the security guards to notice the commotion, no matter how far away they were, but there was no sign of them. Thibeau let out a frustrated sigh at the constantly detected danger signals.

People were becoming more and more violent. Even if one of the hands reaching out to Plin put a knife to his body or grabbed his shoulder and dragged him away, it would be difficult to easily identify the suspect.

“Ugh, let go!”

As soon as he imagined a possible dangerous situation, it happened. One of the countless hands grabbed Plin and pulled him. Plin tried to pull his body back and not be dragged away, and he grabbed Thibeau’s arm, and Thibeau also wrapped himself around Plin and tried to cut off the ferocious hand.

“Kkuuk…!”

“Chief! W-what to do.”

He thought he saw a cold silver flash in the darkness. In an instant, Thibeau bent down and covered his lower right chest with his hand. Plin saw dark red blood gushing between his fingers, and he lost his grip on Thibeau in the dizziness of his own blood draining from his body.

It happened in the blink of an eye. Thibeau disappeared from Plin’s sight. Like falling into a sandpit of an antlion, he was helplessly sucked in and captured. The people who had been standing around Plin narrowed the circle. They were no longer pretending to be curious citizens, and they weren’t holding up their cell phones or anything like that.

“That… w-why are you doing this?”

“We just want to take some pictures of you.”

Someone in the group spoke nonchalantly. He couldn’t understand the words spoken by some of the group, as they were in a foreign language. The way they looked down at him with their oily eyes was disgusting.

Someone snatched Plin. No matter how hard he tried to keep his feet on the ground, he was lifted up by the pushing of dozens of hands. This time, no one stopped those hands, and Plin was pushed along.

Plin racked his brain for a way to escape this human net, but he couldn’t see any way out.

His vision swayed. Suddenly, there was a car with its door wide open in front of him. To Plin’s eyes, it looked like the gaping maw of a carnivorous animal. Plin was carried along by people’s hands like a piece of luggage. Now he was going to be put in that car.

His lips trembled in fear. Just then.

“Argh…!”

“W-What is that?”

Whoosh. From afar, a huge black banner-like thing split the crowd. People shied away, trying to avoid touching the strange object, and cautiously backed away. Was it an optical illusion?

“Hurry up and put him in, start the car!”

Plin tried to grab onto the car with all his might to avoid getting inside, but they kicked his back and roughly pried his hands off the frame. However, as soon as his hands were removed, Plin grabbed the car body again. He felt his fingernails tearing, but if he got into that car here, it was over.

Then he heard a strange sound coming from somewhere.

Sssss, the black curtain, growing longer and longer, charged forward like a large bat’s wing. Wrapped in a skeletal frame, it seemed to know exactly where it was going. It was as if it were attached to an arrow, with terrifying speed.

The people who couldn’t avoid the black curtain in time were thrown to the ground, colliding with it. They grabbed their stomachs and groaned as if their ribs were broken.

Thud! The bones of the black curtain were embedded in the car’s frame. Surprisingly, the car body, made of steel plate, crumpled like a can of Coke.

“Ah…”

Startled by the impact, Plin instinctively covered his head with both arms, then mustered up the courage to open his eyes.

Creeeak.

The black membrane, wrapped in a fan-like frame of bones, scratched and bent the car’s body, wrapping around Plin as if to shield him, then tensed up again with elasticity. The motion was light, as if dusting off dirt, but the people who were hit by the membrane were thrown far away, and the car was overturned.

Plin stood there, bewildered and hesitant. All he could see was an opaque black membrane. He lightly touched the black membrane with his fingertips. It was a texture he had never felt before. It was hard yet elastic, and smooth…

“Excuse me for a moment.”

He couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from. It was clear that it was Hugo’s voice. Shamelessly, it was the voice he had been thinking of constantly.

“Executive Director…”

The black curtain was laid out like a carpet at Plin’s feet as if telling him to get on. Plin whimpered and carefully placed both feet on it. As soon as he did, the black curtain, that is, the dragonewt’s wing, suddenly sprang up.

Plin rolled around on the curtain. How long had he been rolling? He landed on a familiar place, Hugo’s back. Only his wings were partially transformed, and Hugo’s back was tattered, with holes in his ash-gray sweatshirt.

“Hold on to my neck.”

Shaped like he was being carried, Plin put his hands around the familiar man’s neck. He was relieved to tears. As soon as he buried his face in his hot neck, the incline became steep. He held onto his neck even tighter, lest he slip.

A vibration that resonated through every bone in his body started, and then he felt a sense of floating. The wind skimmed over his wings. It was a flow of lift that defied gravity, something he had never experienced before.

Plin was still trembling, not yet recovered from his fear. He didn’t have the time to look around and see what was happening.

He only realized that the surrounding environment was changing rapidly, that he heard the sound of trees falling with a crash, and that the murmuring of people continued for a while and then it became quiet.

Plin occasionally looked at his shoulder blades, where he could feel the pulsing of his muscles. What had ripped through his back and sprouted were huge, streamlined wings that covered the air in black.

“Plin!”

“…It wasn’t me.”

“What? I can’t hear you well because of the wind!”

Plin silently hugged his neck tighter. Even though he hadn’t meant to, he had received a bugging device from Ethan after trading sausages, and for a moment he had even considered how to attach it to the executive director’s office. He wasn’t completely innocent, but he still didn’t want to be misunderstood by him.

“Listen carefully, Plin. I’m going to fully transform now. It’s a bit of a balancing act. If you can’t hold onto my neck, grab my horns! Got it?”

“Got it!”

As soon as he answered, his body surged and swayed. With a whoosh, whoosh sound, a sleek, huge, and long dragon’s tail emerged from the sky, as if doing the butterfly stroke. It was a marvelously large black dragon, easily over thirty meters long.

Meanwhile, the sportswear that Hugo was wearing was scattered in pieces in the sky. Plin, who was clinging to his neck, felt Hugo’s skin, which had suddenly become covered in hard scales. Plin squirmed and climbed up, grabbing his winding horns that he had seen before.

He had never been on an airplane in his life, but now he was flying in the sky. Plin’s platinum blonde hair fluttered in the wind.

He suddenly felt a tingling sensation in his feet. Plin, seized by a vague sense of fear, wanted to transform into a full fox like the executive director, but if he did, he would lose his grip on the dragon’s horns because of his blunt hands.

“You’re doing great, darling!”

“……”

“Were you scared? Your tail is all puffed up!”

“……”

Plin finally looked around. It was night, but his vision was completely white. He realized he was flying through the clouds because his hands kept slipping, and his large ears were muffled as if they were completely blocked by cotton.

“Executive Director! I’m scared! What if I fall? It’s damp. My hands are slippery!”

Plin said, shaking his dandelion-seed-like tail. He shouted with all his might, expanding his diaphragm, just in case he couldn’t hear him.

“Ah, so cute! I’ll catch you even if you fall, but I’ll fly lower.”

With the same casual tone, but with a larger resonating voice, he shouted cheerfully. The dragonewt began to descend with a gentle slope, as if to accommodate Plin. His tail undulated in the night sky.

Gradually, the landmark buildings of Forest City, which lit up the city even in the dark evening, appeared like matchboxes. He could see The Scope building, and the news agency building in front of it. Plin used to run around between those buildings.

As Plin had been, Hugo flew over the buildings without hesitation.

It was so familiar, but the cityscape seen from the top of the sky was unfamiliar. At first, he thought the tears were physiological because the wind was making his eyes cold. Plin hugged his horns tightly and shed tears, overcome with an unknown elation.