MBOMEN 06

Episode 6. What Should Not Be Seen (6)
2023.12.06.

—Laila.
—Laila Chrislard.
—Open your eyes.

Laila gasped urgently, as if she had just been pulled out of the water. Air filled her lungs that had been tightly squeezed, and her face, which had been numb, slowly began to move.

As she panted and turned her head, she saw Eustar’s face. He was leaning against an old tree stump, having laid Laila down on the soft grass. He looked slightly tired but his expression was calm.

“You’ve woken up.”

“…Did I faint?”

Eustar smiled gently and nodded. A small fly rested on his softly curved knuckles.

“It seems this is your first time with ‘overlaying’.”

Laila frowned.

“Is that possession?”

“Similar, but a bit different. Possession is when a ghost borrows a medium’s body. They can speak in the medium’s voice, and the medium can exhibit unusual abilities due to the influence of the spirit. For example… what happens if you stab a perfectly possessed medium with a knife?”

Laila, blinking while lying down, sighed.

“If perfect possession were possible, stabbing the medium wouldn’t cause any harm, right? Even though the body is the medium’s, the control belongs to the spirit.”

Eustar laughed.

“That’s right. That’s possession. But ‘overlaying’ isn’t exactly possession. It’s more like peeking into the core memories of a spirit. Depending on the method and the level of cooperation, it’s like either sneaking a look at a secret diary or reading a public notice posted in the square.”

After some thought, Laila said:

“So that’s why I was able to see what happened to the child named Vin. That was ‘overlaying’.”

“Correct. It’s usually quite shocking at first.”

Feeling dizzy, Laila sat up.

“What happened then? About the sync. And the ghost…”

“Oh, that was handled. The sync also disappeared cleanly.”

His words, ‘handled,’ unnerved her strangely. Laila recalled the ghost of the young boy that was being pulled into Eustar’s hand. It was stretched unnaturally long, and seemed to be in pain. It was crying out…

Suddenly, memories of the forest came back. Even then, Eustar had extinguished the children’s ghosts without blinking. And he fed them to something.

Eustar stood up.

“Thanks to you, it was resolved smoothly. Thank you, Laila.”

At that moment, Laila saw a faint wisp of dark smoke drifting beyond his shoulder. But when she blinked, the smoke had completely vanished.

It must have been a trick of the light in the darkness, she thought. Maybe destroying that orb was some kind of illusion or a ridiculous magical tool…

“Now, Laila. Get up. I’ll take you home.”

Laila looked at the hand he extended before her. The gloves he’d been wearing were gone, revealing bare hands, and her eyes caught on a strange ring on his middle finger.

A sapphire cut into an octagon, or maybe another gemstone? It looked somewhat asymmetrical, but strangely attracted her.

“That ring…”

At her words, Eustar raised his right hand.

“This one?”

“What kind of ring is it?”

Just as Eustar was about to answer, Laila suddenly stopped in her tracks. Her red eyes glowed even more brightly, intensely.

It was a bad omen.

“Laila!”

Eustar urgently chased after her as she started running down the forest path. Her short hair, falling to her shoulders, flailed wildly.

Her house was burning.

Black smoke rose like a nightmare, licking the ominous night of Rizikus with fiery red tongues.

Laila ran without caring that her cheek was scratched by branches. She stopped at the sound of a collapsing pillar.

“There she is!”

One of the villagers surrounding her burning house glared at Laila and shouted.

Only then did she realize that all the people of Rizikus had come to burn down her home. She saw them holding pitchforks, sickles, and sharp-edged plows…

To kill me, Laila thought.

Their faces, streaked with soot, were licked by the red glow. Faces as red as blood. Laila recalled a story her mother had told her. “Demons have faces like fire.”

“You witch! Give me back my child!”

“Burn her alive!”

Stones flew. None hit Laila, but the villagers’ hostility was fierce.

They seemed ready to throw her into the flames at any moment. And if she screamed in pain, they would dance to that music…

“What is this madness!”

At Eustar’s shout, the angry gazes of the villagers turned to him. Some still raised their sickles threateningly at Laila, but others hesitated slightly.

“That witch killed the children!”

A man with a red face thrust a pitchfork toward Laila as if to stab her. Eustar stood protectively in front of her, smiling faintly.

“That’s a misunderstanding. Laila did not kill the children.”

“Shut up with your nonsense! If it’s not that witch, then who did it? You’re in cahoots with the witch! A demon consorting with a witch!”

Laila tried to step forward, but Eustar gently stopped her with a subtle movement to avoid attracting attention.

“Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not a demon, just an ordinary human.”

“Bullshit!”

The man picked up a fist-sized stone. Before he could throw it, thick, coarse vines suddenly sprouted from the ground at his feet.

“W-what is this! Ah!”

His hand wrapped in vines trembled and the stone dropped. The villagers, terrified, tightened their grip on their farming tools and pointed fingers at Laila.

“She’s a witch! She did this!”

“Burn her right now!”

At that moment, Laila, standing behind Eustar, shouted in frustration.

“I didn’t do it!”

Eustar said:

“She’s right. That was me just now. Don’t worry, it’s not demonic magic. It’s just one of the magical tools used to capture monsters.”

The quiet and isolated people of Rizikus were ignorant of monsters and magical tools. They vaguely understood the concepts but could not imagine such things truly existing.

While the villagers hesitated, Laila’s house burned relentlessly.

The rafters collapsed, and the roof was completely gone. Laila suddenly thought of her mother’s chair — so old that it creaked just by sitting on it.

Her mother said she gave birth to Laila there, and died there too. That chair must have burned too. The old bed, the cradle that might have been centuries old, the dried herbs, and a few books…

Eustar said:

“The children who died in this village—your children—did not die because of Laila. It was the ghosts of the sync. You created those ghosts. The dead child, Vin—you all know who that is.”

Murmurs spread among the crowd. Someone screamed, another staggered as if about to faint. Tommy’s father, holding a sharp sickle, shouted tearfully.

“What nonsense are you spouting! If you want to die too, I’ll burn you with that witch!”

He stomped forward, swinging the sickle through the air. The sound of the blade cutting through the air and the crunch of his worn leather boots trampling dirt echoed.

I can’t stand this anymore, Laila thought. I can’t hold it in…

The pain she thought was gone bit deep somewhere inside her body. It felt like a snake bite, and Laila screamed.

“Your son killed Vin!”

The man, about to swing the sickle at Eustar, suddenly froze like stone. Some people gasped, and the embers that had reduced Laila’s house to ashes began to spread to the trees and grass, as if seeking a new victim.

The man, gritting his teeth and glaring, said:

“W-what is that dirty witch saying? What about my son? How dare she accuse my son!”

Laila raised her red eyes and glared at him.

“You know better than anyone it’s not an accusation. When Tommy found Vin’s body, he told you everything. You hid it to cover up and discarded the two bodies like rotten meat. And you all kept silent, even though you knew! While the wild beasts devoured them alive, you struggled to deny that your own child killed a person!”

The once fierce faces of the villagers turned pale. Those who knew the truth, those who didn’t… The confusion spreading among them made Laila feel like vomiting.

Creak. The sound of the last standing wall collapsing. Flames flickered over Laila’s face. Her glaring eyes looked ready to curse.

“Get out of here, now. If you don’t all leave, I will throw you into these flames. I’m a witch, and I have the power to do that.”

Someone stepped back. Like a signal, the people screamed and scattered.

Even Tommy’s father, who tried to charge with a sickle, fled the forest first. Soon, only the burned-down house and licking flames remained before the two.

Laila stared emptily at her burned home. She never loved it, but it was everything to her. It had been her whole world from birth until now.

“Come with me, Laila.”

At Eustar’s words, Laila let out a hollow laugh.

“Where? I can’t live properly anywhere. You know that, because of my hair and eyes.”

“I told you. Your eyes are beautiful and special. I need your eyes. Help me.”

He extended his right hand. At that moment, Laila felt a strange sense of déjà vu again. An impulse to follow his words, a firm feeling of not wanting to refuse pierced her like a sharp nail.

Without answering, Laila cautiously took his hand.

The lukewarm warmth held her firmly.