Chapter 42

After finishing a fantastic meal, I tossed some sausages to the water birds and returned to the cabin to rest.

Perhaps because I'd had such a big meal, I wasn't hungry even when evening came.

"Nurungji…."

"Kururuk?"

"It's a bit much to eat now, so let's make nurungji rice tomorrow. It's delicious."

"Kururururuk."

"……."

Lying on the bed, I poked Honey, who was, as always, lying beside me.

"Kkung."

"……."

"Kkungkkungkkung."

"You're soft."

"Kkung!!!"

Honey protested vehemently, but that was even cuter.

"You harmless little thing."

I thought I could use it as a pillow if it got just a little bigger.

'Couldn't I try making a substance with a similar feel?'

Since I felt a bit sorry about sleeping on a living water bird, I'd make a non-living, squishy pillow.

Lost in such idle thoughts, I blinked.

"……."

I just couldn't fall asleep.

"Hoo…."

It was like this sometimes.

"Is this the fate of an artist?"

"…Kkung?"

Honey's reaction seemed to say, 'Can't you just stop talking nonsense and go to sleep,' but it wasn't that easy.

I rubbed my face a few times against the fluffy duvet, which I could feel was stuffed with feathers, before getting out of bed.

"Honey, Daddy's leaving."

"Kkuruk."

"You heartless thing."

Leaving the tired Honey behind, I headed to the workshop, which was full of all sorts of materials.

"……."

My terrible insomnia, like this, was the result of a sudden spark of interest in something.

"…I've become curious about the scenery outside the company."

If I decided on a location as precisely as possible and imagined it, I could recall the scenery of that place.

At first, I thought it was just my imagination.

No matter how I imagined the third floor of 'The Collectors' company, wouldn't it be different from the actual scene?

But as I continued to imagine and gradually completed the painting, at some point, I came to a realization.

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

I suspected it might be one of the benefits I received from becoming a portrait.

"The outside is probably…."

I muttered.

"It seems like it will be a dark dawn."

It wasn't a place I hadn't seen at all, and painting a place I'd already seen once wasn't difficult.

I recalled the scene I had witnessed while standing on the wall of an alley and moved my brush.

And just like that, a picture frame appeared in an alley somewhere in Seoul.

***

"Haaa…."

In the streets at dawn, a woman ran her hands through her hair.

"Where do I have to leech off of now."

The woman with the jet-black bob, Cha Ara, couldn't hold back a sigh.

'As expected, there's nowhere that readily accepts an F-Class.'

Even as an Awakener, an F-Class is treated as nothing more than a porter.

Cha Ara's grade was F. Her main skill was 'Body Enhancement'.

Other than that, she couldn't even afford to learn any other skills, and naturally, she had no job. It was the typical status of a porter.

"……."

Today, after being kicked out of her original team, she was 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 in the afternoon.

There was an overflow of F-Classes wanting to work as porters, so there was no reason to hire someone who limped.

'It was nice because it was a group of rather decent people.'

It was a team of people who, while not exactly kind, weren't very interested in each other.

They ignored Cha Ara, a mere F-Class porter, as if she didn't exist, but the team itself had a strong tendency to be that way with each other.

That kind of indifference was one of the virtues of modern people that was hard to find.

"But I was cut just as easily."

They kicked her out, saying they could no longer employ Cha Ara, who had no use value.

It was a relief that she had at least received all her pay before being kicked out.

Cha Ara stared at the account balance displayed on her phone for a long time.

All together, it was about 500,000 won.

"……."

This was far from enough to pay the rent and buy the youngest's priestly robes.

"The rent went up this time…."

Cha Ara let out a groan.

"…What do I do now?"

Looking at the sky as snow began to fall softly, Cha Ara clicked her tongue.

"This sucks."

It's already freezing to death, so why does it have to snow?

'…The terminal probably closed a long time ago. Anyway, my older brother is at home, so the youngest one should be fine. As long as he's not off somewhere sharing his things like a pushover.'

Sniffling from an inner sense of loneliness, Cha Ara got up from the bench.

"I have to find a place where I won't get snowed on."

Cha Ara tightened the scarf her youngest brother had made himself and started walking.

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

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

Public facilities with a lot of foot traffic or areas around companies that made a decent amount of money had warming magic cast on them.

If she could sleep nearby, she wouldn't have to worry about finding a place to sleep rough, but if she got caught, in the worst-case scenario, she could be demoted to a 4th-class citizen.

'I bought a temporary city residency permit for a few days with my Hunter license, but that doesn't mean I can sleep rough anywhere. It would be a pain if I got caught by the guards….'

At times like these, she was envious of her older brother, Cha Eun-hyeok.

"That guy can at least sleep in his fish-shaped pastry handcart."

Because if he left it in the city, someone would steal or dismantle it, her older brother, who sold fish-shaped pastry, always lived by moving his handcart from the province to the city.

"Agh…."

Therefore, Cha Ara herself couldn't expect to be able to sleep in his handcart.

After walking aimlessly for a while, Cha Ara's footsteps reached a dark alley.

"……."

…What is that?

'…A portrait?'

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

"…What the, this is creepy…."

The man in the portrait was as handsome as a sculpture or a doll, but more than his good looks, the stillness of him with his eyes quietly closed touched her skin.

With a gloomy aura, as if it were a drawing of someone's corpse, Cha Ara faltered and moved away from the spot.

'What kind of madman hung a picture here.'

It was likely the work of a madman with peculiar tastes or a Hunter with a strange skill, so Cha Ara decided not to pay it any mind.

She had no intention of sleeping here where the snow was falling directly on her anyway.

Walking a little further, Cha Ara soon discovered a woman.

"……."

A fine layer of white snow had already piled up on her, showing how long she had been out in the cold snow.

Seeing the woman's appearance, curled up like a ball, she could tell she was a 4th-class citizen living illegally in the city.

"……."

"……."

Her thin body was heaving as if she were breathing, so she wasn't dead yet.

'She's come out quite far.'

Usually, the poor lived in deeper alleys.

Cha Ara, who was about to ignore the poor woman and pass by, didn't get more than a few steps before turning back with a very uncomfortable expression and standing in front of her again.

"……."

Whether she was asleep or had fainted from the cold, the poor woman was breathing but had not regained consciousness.

She seemed unaware that Cha Ara was right in front of her.

"…Aish."

Cha Ara took off her own scarf, wrapped it lightly around the woman's neck, and walked away quickly.

She faintly heard the woman move, which made her walk even faster.

'Fuck, this is embarrassing. Fuck, fuck….'

Her bare neck was cold, and Cha Ara felt somehow wronged.

"Why the hell is she sleeping so pitifully…!"

She teared up for no reason.

The poor woman's age looked similar to hers or even younger.

Then, at most, she couldn't have been 20 years old.

Someone her own age was sleeping as if they were about to die, and she couldn't just pass by.

"Ah, damn it, the youngest one knitted that for me… My dear youngest…."

It was a scarf painstakingly knitted from the fur of livestock or monsters caught in the village.

Her youngest sibling's skills weren't bad, so it was a pretty decent scarf, and she had been using it well this winter, but now she had lost it foolishly like this.

'Fuck… I shouldn't have said anything to my brother or Cha Isold….'

As Cha Ara trudged down the street, something strange soon caught her eye.

"……."

The portrait of a man.

"…Huh."

I saw that earlier.

'…What, what is this? I didn't see it here. Did I see it wrong? Or were there multiple frames?'

The frame was half-hidden in shadow so the face wasn't clearly visible, but she could immediately tell it was the same portrait she had just seen.

For some reason, she got goosebumps, a chilling feeling like she had watched a horror movie.

"Uh, uh uh…."

No matter if she was F-Class, an Awakener was an Awakener.

She was capable of sensing instinctual danger.

"Am I fucked?"

At those vulgar words.

The portrait, which had been buried in the shadows, opened its eyes.

"……."

"……."

The portrait's mouth, unobscured by the darkness, opened smoothly.

"My apologies."

A noble tone.

As Cha Ara blinked at the terrible sense of dissonance.

"……."

The picture frame was nowhere to be seen.

"……."

What, wha, what.

'What the hell.'

Cha Ara belatedly realized she had collapsed to the ground.

"…Sh, shit…."

Somebody help me.

The hand she placed on the snow-covered ground was trembling.

Cha Ara knew, and the world knew, that this wasn't simply because of the cold.

It was nonsense, but deep down, she felt she wouldn't be able to keep her sanity if she didn't spout such nonsense.

"Crazy…."

Cha Ara realized it without knowing.

'I was about to die.'

In truth, the situation wasn't that dangerous, but she knew that the bizarre portrait Cha Ara had just seen was a very dangerous entity.

If that entity had been just a little less polite, to the point of not feeling the need to apologize with 'My apologies,' who knows if Cha Ara would have become a corpse.

"…Wha, what is it? Really what is it? What did I just see?"

As Cha Ara fumbled, putting strength into her body to leave this place, her hand brushed against something cold and hard.

The small, hard sensation gave Cha Ara goosebumps all over, and she couldn't even scream, her mouth just gaped open.

"……."

Trembling, she fumbled with her hand again, and soon a cold grain came into her hand.

Examining it with a terrified heart….

"…A, a gem?"

It was a gem of a black, transparent color.

"…What is this…."

This, too, was something she felt instinctively.

Cha Ara realized that this was a gift from the portrait she had just seen.

"……."

Before they died, her parents always said that good fortune comes to those who do good deeds.

This whole situation felt like a gruesome fairy tale.

***

And here was another person who felt gruesome.

"Stalking is a bad thing to do."

I couldn't come to my senses over my own rudeness.

Painting the dawn alley was fine.

It was just that after I painted it, I saw a woman moving inside the frame and I was briefly worried if she would be in danger this late at dawn.

Because of that, my gaze unconsciously kept following her….

"In the end, I was stalking her."

I ended up observing someone without their consent.

"She must have been surprised."

Normally, I would just be quietly looking at the buildings inside The Collectors, or moving around through frames, so I didn't know. But this opportunity made it clear to me.

'If I fix my gaze on something that moves, the real-world picture frame moves with it.'

That was the story behind the living, moving portrait that followed Cha Ara.

"I hope the meaning of my apology was conveyed well…."

Because I was blankly watching only the bob-haired woman, I was able to see her giving her scarf to the poor woman and her terrified reaction to my frame.

It wasn't until the woman went pale and collapsed that I came to my senses.

A sense of pride for the woman who looked to be about high school age, a worried feeling about whether she was okay alone at this late hour and also an apologetic feeling for startling her with my rudeness.

"……."

These deep emotions were recognized as a single trade item and I gifted a gem to Cha Ara.

"……?"

No, wait a minute.

"Would she be more scared?"

I couldn't think straight, appalled by my own rudeness.

But if you suddenly give a gift without a word to a high school student who is already terrified of a living, moving portrait, who would pick it up and say, 'Wow, a gem'?

"Ah…."

I should have given her something like a cookie instead.

'Of all things, I didn't have any baked cookies right now, so I ended up drawing a gem without thinking.'

If I had given her a trivial snack, she might have been less scared. I vaguely watched the back of the bob-haired student fleeing in terror beyond the frame.

"I'm sorry…."

Around that point, I realized.

"……."

Do I, sometimes, have a personality change?

It was the moment I finally became aware of myself as 'The Black Cape.'

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