Waiting For Your Reincarnation Chapter 62

Yeon-Young fiddled with her bracelet.

 

Even if she wanted to activate the emergency teleport now, the holographic glow might be a problem.

 

She held her breath and prayed that Inuri would overtake her.

 

As he closed the distance between them, Inuri suddenly stopped running.

 

Yeon-young didn’t know what he heard, but he suddenly ran in the opposite direction, away from the farmland.

 

Left alone in the farmland, Yeon-young stood frozen, not knowing what to do.

 

She quickly regained her composure and turned on her comm.

 

“Special team, Kim Yeon-young, found near the coordinates of the missing phantom, requesting assistance.”

 

Yeon-Young’s voice was automatically recorded, the center would send additional personnel as soon as they found her.

 

She stiffened and headed for the city. She had to tell Veronica what had happened.

 

Yeon-young went straight to the square in the center of town.

 

The city looked a little different than usual. Yeon-young scratched her head as she looked at the foggy landscape.

 

It was strange that even though it was broad daylight, she hadn’t encountered any of the local spirits.

 

It was like entering another parallel world.

 

As Yeon-young was about to enter the square, she caught a glimpse of Inuri in the distance.

 

He was approaching the broken clock tower in the middle of the plaza.

 

After checking his surroundings, Inuri placed his hand on the clock’s column and time started ticking again.

 

The second hand moved, then the minute hand, then the hour hand, and finally a secret door opened.

 

Above the door, she recognized the strange geometric pattern she’d seen in the forest.

 

“Hmph.”

 

Inuri stepped through the secret door with familiar steps, and as his body disappeared into the clock tower, the door disappeared without a trace.

 

Yeon-young rubbed her eyes and crept closer to the clock tower.

 

She put her hand on the clock tower just like Inuri had done, but the door didn’t move.

 

“Is there a special device? What is it?”

 

Yeon-young remembered Ryu Won’s words that no one uses the clock tower because it’s broken.

 

She suppressed her curiosity and moved further away from the clock tower.

 

Now was the time to take the step Saeri had mentioned.

 

As she slowly backed away, looking ahead, someone grabbed her arms.

 

“……!”

 

She struggled, her breathing getting heavier as a black cloth obscured her vision.

 

“No.”

 

Tears gathered in the corners of Yeon-young’s eyes and slid down her face.

 

Ryu Won’s deep voice echoed in her head, warning her not to go alone, and soon she was completely unconscious.

 

“Ugh…”

 

A moment later, Yeon-young woke up with a sharp pain in the back of her head.

 

She opened her eyes to find her limbs bound by something slimy.

 

It looked flexible, like a liquid monster, but in reality it was hard to move.

 

“Where am I?”

 

Yeon-young was chained in the middle of a room with no light.

 

Every time she inhaled and exhaled, the air was cloudy, and a cough escaped.

 

The air was dusty, like nothing she’d ever smelled in her life in Tanato.

 

Being kidnapped in the middle of the city took her by surprise.

 

She rubbed her hands, tied behind her by the slime, up and down as best she could.

 

The bracelet bumped against the back of her hand as she tried to teleport away, but it didn’t work.

 

“Maybe the signal’s gone out again.”

 

Fear slowly began to creep through her body.

 

She blinked several times, trying to adjust her eyes to the darkness.

 

Hiss—

 

As she shook violently to clear the phlegm, the wooden chair gave way and fell to the side.

 

Yeon-young squeezed her eyes shut, expecting to hit her face on the floor when the chair fell.

 

Instead, her face felt wet, fluffy, and warm.

 

“Mmmm…”

 

The familiar screams that followed brought color to Yeon-young’s face.

 

“Guys, is that you?”

 

“Ming…”

 

Her voice sounded strained, unlike the one in the Iris Forest, but the Slys listened and answered.

 

One by one, the Slys said, they disappeared. It seemed that they were being held captive there.

 

As Yeon-Young’s voice echoed through the building, the other Slys swarmed over her, clinging to her body.

 

Her body shook slightly as they continued to crawl around her arms and legs.

 

A helpless feeling of being unable to do anything enveloped her entire body.

 

She pressed her forehead to the ground and racked her brain for a way out.

 

She must have been like that for a while when she suddenly felt a lightness around her arms and legs.

 

“Guys?”

 

Yeon-Young stared at her free hand in surprise.

 

In the darkness, Sly’s body shook intermittently.

 

Upon closer inspection, they were eating away at the strange goo that had stuck to her body.

 

No matter how she moved, the goo clung to her like a sticky substance and wouldn’t come off, but with a few movements of the Slys, it melted away.

 

Yeon-young scrambled to her feet, feeling lighter.

 

Then a glass vial fell from her uniform pocket to the floor.

 

“This?”

 

It was the Sly powder potion that Jaeho had given her to drink when she needed healing.

 

The liquid glowed brightly, as if a fluorescent light had been placed inside the vial.

 

It allowed Yeon-young to see a bit of the inside, though not much.

 

As she carefully peered inside, she covered her mouth with one hand.

 

She thought it was just her and the Slys being held in a darkened room, but it wasn’t.

 

The Slys was lying haphazardly on the floor, not a foot in sight.

 

“This is crazy.”

 

To the naked eye, all the Slys were in bad shape, having lost their unique glow.

 

She picked up the vial and walked forward, avoiding the Slys.

 

The interior was much larger than Yeon-young had imagined, with countless discs crumbling beneath her feet.

 

Some of them were blackened from the loss of light.

 

Her hand tightened around the phial.

 

CLANG!

 

Without looking, she hit her head on a large metal cage.

 

“Ouch.”

 

As soon as Yeon-young hit the cage, she heard an animal scream from inside.

 

Hearing the sound, she quickly shone her light into the cage and saw the figure of the phantom, half of his body burned and melted by something.

 

At the sight of the light, he became agitated and reached out of the cage and grabbed Yeon-Young’s wrist.

 

She felt a burning sensation in her wrist.

 

In his memory, he was a spirit with beautiful lavender hair that attracted attention.

 

He was strapped to an operating table, his limbs bound with slime, and beside him a man in a black robe with an obscure face was watching him.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

“Saving the world.”

 

The man in the black robe grabbed a receptacle and a thin syringe from another table.

 

Inside the container was a tiny piece of snuff, like a piece of toilet paper.

 

The man stuck the syringe into the piece of snuff, drew out the sticky black liquid, and injected it into the man’s arm as he lay on the operating table.

 

The man writhed in pain and then blacked out completely.

 

Back in reality, Yeon-young stumbled backwards when she saw the man in the cage, completely lifeless.

 

The lost souls, the souls trapped inside.

 

It all made sense how they had ended up like that.

 

Disgust rose from the depths of her chest.

 

“I should save them.”

 

“Is there…is there anyone there?”

 

“What?”

 

“Are you trapped?”

 

While Yeon-young concentrated on reading more of the man’s memories, a polite voice came from somewhere.

 

Recognizing the presence of the voice, she shone her light in the direction of the sound.

 

The cages were connected, side by side.

 

It was hard to tell, but most of the phantoms behind bars were black.

 

“Over here.”

 

Yeon-young brought the glass bottle to where she heard the voice.

 

Inside the cage, a phantom with pale pink eyes as delicate as cherry blossoms was staring back at her.

 

They had hollow under-eyes, but they were still clear and full of life.

 

“Are you okay?”

 

Yeon-young looked at the woman’s blackened left arm and took a sharp breath.

 

The illegal experiment had already been done.

 

The woman’s eyes scanned Yeon-young’s entire body as she hurriedly approached the cage.

 

“Hurry up and run away.”

 

“What?”

 

“The snarling hasn’t happened yet, has it? Hide between the slats and take your chances. Avoid that man. If you can get out of here alive, there’s hope…ugh.”

 

The more she spoke, the more the pain seemed to creep in, and she grabbed her left arm and swallowed a groan.

 

Yeon-young gripped the bars with her hands.

 

“Are you okay? Who is that man? Is there any way we can get out of here together?”

 

“There’s no time, he’ll be back soon.”

 

The woman shivered uncomfortably, scanning her surroundings and moving further and further away so as not to harm Yeon-young.

 

Her feet never left the still-conscious phantom.

 

She rubbed her hands over her uniform coat.

 

That’s when the liquid from Sly’s powder caught her eye.