TCWGRF 11

With a confident sensation transmitted to his fingertips holding the wire, a smile of elation spread across his lips. When he turned the doorknob to the right, click, the locked door opened.

The smell of dust that made his throat raw spread from the crack in the door. It must be because of the old documents. Isaac quickly entered and closed the door before he could be discovered by others.

‘I’ll just look for a moment and then leave. Before Vincent wakes up.’

At last, the final guest, who did not even know he was invited to the new chief commissioner’s banquet, had joined. A naive guest, at that, puffed up with futile hope.

*

Isaac, who had entered the records archive after some twists and turns, was deeply bewildered by the space, which was larger than he had imagined.

The room was packed with bookshelves, fitting its purpose, and all sorts of documents were stored in boxes of the same shape and size, making it impossible to gauge where to even begin looking.

Still, if he checked them one by one starting from the entrance, he thought he might be able to at least read the writing on the outside of the boxes, even if he could not grasp the details.

A faint light seeped through the cracks in the window, but it was not enough to make out the letters. Isaac lit the old lamp he had brought in, just in case, and shone it closer.

‘…History, …List?’

All he could see were records of the old city’s appearance, its history of changes, a list of past chief commissioners of public security, and so on. They were records of no interest or use to him right now.

‘There isn’t much time.’

Before Vincent, asleep in the corner of the hallway, woke up, or before someone, finding the silence suspicious, went looking for the absent patrol member, he had to obtain even the smallest clue about Asel.

‘Deceased, list, unidentified, rebel, outsider….’

Isaac, earnestly murmuring to himself the things he was looking for, scanned the words written by the person in charge for classification and moved deeper and deeper inside.

At the entrance were records concerning the entire city, and as he went further, there were records categorized by district. He thought he would soon be able to find the box containing records of the deceased.

‘Is this the end?’

However, the result was different from his expectations. It seemed there were no records of the deceased or of individuals here. A gray wall where the bookshelves no longer continued marked the end of the records archive.

‘What’s that?’

A new hope appeared before the lost Isaac. At the very end of the wall, there was a small, red-painted door, completely out of place in this colorless space, blocked by a desk covered with a white cloth.

There was a keyhole on the doorknob that was barely visible, but it seemed to be such a simple mechanism, as if attached for mere formality, that he thought he could easily pick it with a single thin wire, just as he had when entering this place.

‘What should I do.’

He might have missed a box labeled ‘Deceased’ while passing by in a hurry, or Vincent might have woken up and be looking for him. The right thing to do was to go back to the entrance now. But Isaac’s feet and gaze would not budge from the red door.

Could it be that this door, which did not lose its color even under the cheap, flickering lamplight that could not withstand the slightest movement, was the gateway to where Asel was?

The fact that there was an additional door could mean that important things were classified separately.

A strong suspicion that the records he had been hoping for were not here but inside the red door prevented Isaac from leaving.

“Hee hee.”

While he hesitated for a moment, the sound of a flirtatious laugh and the presence of two people came from outside.

Surely they aren’t coming here. Oh no, did I lock the door?

Unfortunately, a thief is someone who comes to steal something by opening a locked door, not someone who kindly locks up.

Before the flustered Isaac could find a place to hide, creak, the door to the records archive swung wide open, and a man and a woman poured in.

“This isn’t so bad.”

“The obvious gets boring quickly.”

In his haste, Isaac first blew out the lamp and then covered his mouth to hide even the sound of his own breathing. Next, he crawled on all fours under the desk, the only place to hide there.

The room was dark, and there was a cloth hanging down to the floor from the desk, so wouldn’t it be okay?

“Aah, good.”

The purpose of a man and a woman seeking a secluded place at this late hour was surely not to chat or to finish up public duties they had not completed during the day.

There were no more conversations made up of long sentences. Starting with the wet sound of mucous membranes touching, it was followed by the moan of an unknown woman and the sound of rough thrusting against the bookshelves lining the walls for support.

“Ah.”

Unable to bear the weight of two people, the man, who became thoroughly annoyed by the creaking, precariously swaying bookshelf, grabbed the woman’s wrist and went in search of a place with a solid wall.

Inside the records archive, the woman, leaning against a cold but un-collapsible wall, stuck her buttocks far out and let out a heated breath, urging her partner on.

“Hurry…!”

As the man’s foot moved one step forward, the heel of the shoe the woman was wearing lifted slightly, and the hem of her dress, which had flowed down from above, caught on her ankle.

And soon, a regular squelching sound was heard. The chilly room, which had felt devoid of any warmth, heated up in an instant with the heat emitted by the two people.

The man and woman, engrossed in their act, were probably completely unaware, but in that space, there was another young man hiding under the desk, watching everything. A young man who was praying that the couple’s tryst would end quickly, and that no one outside had noticed his absence.

“Ah, ngh.”

“……”

“Haaahng!”

The man in the white uniform seemed tireless. He pounded away at a steady pace until the woman was nearly fainting while letting out screams.

Had he ever seen the sexual act of others from this close? To be precise, it was correct to say that he had never felt anything other than disgust or displeasure upon seeing someone’s copulation.

The man and woman at close range made Isaac experience what carnal love, which he had not known until now, was. All he could see were their lower bodies, and all he could hear were faint moans and the occasional rough, panting exhales. But for some reason, it made his lower abdomen feel bloated and itchy.

The pale light that passed through the dust-streaked window seeped into the dizzyingly high, bright red shoes. They happened to be the same color as the door next to him that Isaac had been curious about.

“St-stop. No. Do it more. More!”

The owner of the shoes repeatedly begged the man in the white uniform to save her, then to kill her. Whatever she demanded, there was no change in the man’s movements.

Thump, thump. Seeing how he made his partner shed tears in the pain of pleasure, the man’s identity was closer to a destroyer than a savior.

The man’s incessant, driving movements, the woman’s broken gasps scattering in the air, intertwined with the dim light, putting the sole spectator in a difficult position.

Isaac had to wiggle his toes trapped in shoes much larger than his size and try to ignore the signal from his own member, which was becoming embarrassingly uncomfortable even in this crisis.

He suddenly felt as if tiny but fiercely stinging ants were crawling up from the tips of his toes, up his shins, to his center, and the man’s shoes looked like pitch-black, vicious ants, causing his body to tremble slightly.

Then, thump. Isaac’s head, trying to crouch deeper into the darkness, hit the underside of the desk, creating a small noise. The movements of the man and woman, who had been enjoying themselves oblivious to the world, stopped, and their gazes shot toward one spot. The woman, with an anxious voice, turned to her partner and hastily gathered the dress that had slipped down to her ankles.

“What was that sound?”

“It seems there’s a rat in here.”

The man’s hard, shiny shoes got closer and closer to Isaac.

The clumsy thief was truly a rat in a trap. If they were to lift the cloth like this, or even put a hand underneath to see what was there, he would be discovered without a doubt.

If that happened, there would be no room for escape. Even in that moment, he thought of excuses like the door was actually open, or he came in out of curiosity, or he was on an errand for someone and hid in surprise at the sound of people, but for what reason would a mere patrol member enter a locked records archive?

The moment he was caught, he would be dragged away and meet a death more cruel than he had imagined. It would be a chance to experience firsthand how much of what the rebel misters chattered about was true, and how much was bluff.

Please, please, please. He was scared of dying. If he died, he could do nothing. Not finding Asel, not holding hands and leaving the city to find a home just for the two of them, …and not asking for his forgiveness.

He struggled to hold back the rough breaths that kept escaping and his body froze stiff. He only rolled his eyes from side to side, praying to nameless gods to please let him get through this crisis safely.

“…Shall we go back?”

Had his prayer been answered? The man, who had been standing still, turned his steps in the opposite direction and suddenly suggested to the woman that they leave.

“What was it?”

“Nothing. And rats do actually come in and out of here.”

“Oh, my goodness….”

“Since it’s a rat, it wouldn’t dare to blab about seeing us.”

Clomp, clomp, and click-clack. The two overlapping sets of footsteps receded and disappeared out the door.

“Huuuh….”

Only then could Isaac exhale the breath he had been holding in his lungs and crawl out from under the desk.

The beads of sweat that had formed on his forehead had trickled down to the tip of his chin, dripping onto the floor, and his creaking heart was fluttering as if it would leap out of its place, but the relief of having overcome a major crisis made him temporarily forget the situation he was in.

‘Ah… right.’

Isaac, who had been standing blankly, replaying the scenes he had witnessed, finally remembered the original purpose for which he had entered this room. To check the list of recent deaths and see if there was anyone similar to Asel.

But too much time had passed. Outside, Vincent might have woken up and be looking for him, or the man and woman from before might have reported the lazy patrol member who was nowhere to be seen, or the fact that the records archive door was open.

‘How do I get out.’

Standing in front of the door, Isaac could not rashly turn the doorknob and could only listen intently toward the hallway. He intended to open the door and leave when it was quiet.

About ten minutes passed. The only things he could hear were the beating of his own heart and his ragged breath from tension. Now was the time.

Creaaak, the door opened after a long while. In his hasty scan, there was no one around. He would quickly go to his partner, wake him up, and make up a story that there had been suspicious people. That some guests invited to the inauguration, seeking a special place to enjoy a tryst, had come to the third floor, but he could not stop them because they seemed like important people.

“…!”

However, things did not go as he had planned. Before he could go find Vincent or completely leave the front of the records archive, a familiar face approached and snatched his wrist.

“Shh.”

The person, who urged silence by placing an index finger to his lips, dragged Isaac as he was toward the space at the end of the corridor, which still seemed devoid of any human presence.

Inauguration Ceremony (4)

The new chief commissioner of public security’s plausible inauguration ceremony came to a lame conclusion thanks to Beres, who quickly became dead drunk, and Gideon, who left early citing his health.

As soon as Samuel, who had returned after spending a private moment with a woman, entered the banquet hall, the guests offered light greetings and rushed to leave.

It was a shabby inauguration ceremony that received little attention compared to his predecessors’, but the initial objective was achieved. As expected, it was thanks to the fact that there were some from the patrol who had deserted their posts or shown suspicious movements.

Even before the siren announcing the lifting of the curfew rang out, a report on the events that had occurred just a few hours ago was being made swiftly in the chief commissioner of public security’s office.

“A total of five people deserted their posts.”

The one reporting was not an officer in a stiff uniform, but one of the patrol members dressed in shabby clothes. He touched the tip of his right hand to the side of his eyebrow and then removed it in a sharp salute, and then fluently recited the situation of the previous night without any hesitation.