Promise
Chapter - 43
“…Sir? Are you okay?” Moreira asked, unable to hide his curiosity.
From his perspective, he could see with his own eyes that Zavi’s body was intact, no wounds, his expression blank—yet he was passing straight through the bedroom wall, exiting and re-entering repeatedly.
However, from Zavi’s perspective, he had never passed through any wall at all. He was simply walking normally on the second floor, as if their existences were like oil and water, occupying the same space, yet never mixing.
Moreira’s eyes widened as his lips trembled. “I don’t understand… how can he do that…” he muttered with a faint smile, already accustomed to witnessing strange and wondrous things.
Meanwhile, Zavi stopped walking, leaned against the stair railing, and his thoughts suddenly froze, unable to function.
“I don’t understand… I don’t understand… I don’t understand. Damn it!” he shouted in frustration, then glanced toward the open bedroom door. “How long is that guy going to sleep?” he muttered to himself, irritated after trying countless ways to wake Moreira—with no success.
He took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled, trying to relax his mind. Once he felt his body and thoughts grow lighter, he straightened up, walked down the stairs, and decided to leave the apartment to get some fresh air.
The door opened slowly but surely. As he extended his arm again, instead of getting what he expected, Zavi felt as though he were falling into a dark, silent abyss.
Huh!? He felt—felt as if his body were bound by something. With every breath he took, his mind questioned itself: what is happening to my body?
Just as that thought crossed his mind, misfortune struck again. From behind, his body was blasted away, flung out of the house like a leaf carried by a violent gust of wind.
Bang—the door slammed shut violently, as if someone had deliberately pushed it.
Startled, his brain failed to process what had just happened. He turned around, blue eyes welling with tears.
Various forms of ghosts—too many to count—appeared out of nowhere the moment the apartment evaporated like water boiling without turning off the stove, replaced entirely by their arrival.
“Who is that human?”
“How did he get in here?”
“Is this our new toy, given by the ‘Oldest Ghost King’?”
Strange, horrifying murmurs echoed from every direction. Zavi felt his eardrums on the verge of bursting, dizziness overwhelming him as cold sweat soaked his face.
The situation had completely changed. What had once been the apartment courtyard was now a boundless, undefined world, surrounded by thick gray fog that prevented him from seeing anything ahead.
The voices of those ghosts were capable of killing millions—no, hundreds of millions—of humans with just a word or two. Unable to withstand the immense mental pressure, his consciousness slowly faded, and his body collapsed as if half-dead.
Yet after losing consciousness, Zavi suddenly woke again, hearing the voices once more half-dead again, repeating over and over until he could no longer count how many times it happened.
His mental state, his psyche, his emotions, everything was broken. He didn’t know what to do, couldn’t escape this place, and all he could do was sob helplessly, begging for help.
Meanwhile, on the second floor of the apartment, Moreira stood still, watching Zavi’s movements—which had not changed at all.
“He really can’t hear me? Are we in different worlds?” he muttered to himself, contemplating other possibilities related to the phenomenon.
After a brief moment of thought—and having found a definite answer, convinced he had once dismissed this before—Moreira quickly approached. Then he witnessed Zavi’s body stop on its own, sit down, and collapse flat on the hallway floor beside his room.
Zavi’s pocket watch slipped partially out of his shirt pocket. That made Moreira hesitate, thinking twice about picking it up, convinced that if he carried it outside the apartment, Zavi would awaken.
Second, he wasn’t certain what might happen if he touched the watch. He could feel a whitish-gray spiritual energy surrounding it, making his shoulders tremble and sending chills down his spine.
“…”
He remained silent, then glanced back to make sure the window was still open. He took a deep breath—each inhale placing his heart between anxiety and the looming sense of death.
Moreira slowly exhaled as he extended his hand. He gave a small nod, then ran forward, grabbed the watch with his right hand, spun around, and rushed toward the bedroom window.
The watch flew into the air, pulled down by gravity, landing in the middle of the stone-paved road.
“What is this!? Ahh—hhhhhh!” Moreira screamed as the whitish-gray aura instantly crawled over his entire body, seeping into his pores and stabbing deep into his bones.
The white aura then slowly flowed back out of Moreira’s body, as if trying to retrieve something within him, forming a wolf—slightly transparent, without flesh, without blood, only a gray aura enveloping its entire form.
The wolf lowered its head briefly as Moreira was flung backward. Turning around, it leapt out the window toward the watch lying on the stone road.
When a clawed hand, wrapped in whitish-gray aura, touched the watch, the wolf’s body evaporated and was sucked into it, as if pulled in by a vacuum.
Upstairs, inside the room, Moreira stood still, trying to locate the wolf.
“Gone? But what is this?” His pupils widened as he stared at his index finger, watching the whitish-gray aura flow through the window toward the watch lying outside on the road.
He nodded. The thought of pulling his finger crossed his mind. A cynical smile appeared clearly on his face.
With one swift motion, Moreira yanked his hand backward, imagining he was pulling a thread from its spool.
“Good…”
The watch shot back, flying through the window at bullet-like speed, passing right beside him before burying itself into the bedroom wall, leaving a sizable crack behind.
“Ah—what do I do now?” he muttered in panic, realizing that if he stayed here… “Damn it! I don’t have enough money to pay for this.”
After panic and resignation washed over his thoughts, he turned around, deciding to observe the whitish-gray aura flowing from the tip of his index finger.
He bent down, picked up the watch, and examined it, checking if it was any different from other watches. Finding nothing unusual, his curiosity shifted to the design inside, and his mind urged him to open the cover.
“Should I just try it? There’s no harm, right?”
After muttering to himself, he decided to open it—and then—the whitish-gray aura burst forth, forming a pale wolf, while Zavi’s body, which had been lying beside the room, was pulled toward that anchor—the wolf.
“Huh!? I can’t believe his body came here on its own!” Cold sweat began to soak Moreira’s face.
What kind of ability did Sir Copling actually choose? It’s completely different from the Transmitter ability I wanted before.
After thinking for a moment, he unconsciously swallowed to hide his nervousness. Was this strange sensation caused by the apartment itself, isolated as it was? Or was it simply the sharp, unsettling feeling piercing his shoulder because he was worried about his friend—the source of all this?
He didn’t know. But one thing he was certain of—anyone who sought to master supernatural abilities would be attacked by something mysterious and unseen, assaulting their psyche, as if they were not permitted to possess such power.
Ugh… my head suddenly hurts like this! Where is Esvalen right now? It feels like she already knows what’s happening and is just letting it be. So that’s how you do things. Moreira bent forward and gently patted Zavi’s shoulder, trying to wake him.
“Ahh!” Zavi shouted in shock, as if his consciousness had been violently slammed back into his body.
Immediately after waking—whether from sleep or from a long, horrific nightmare that felt like it had lasted thousands of years—he sat upright. His soul felt cracked, his mind empty, his heart hollow. Those sensations were the first to greet him upon regaining consciousness.
Tears pooled beneath his eyelids, swelling before spilling down his rough cheeks.
His mouth opened slightly, as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t. All he could do was stare at Moreira, who stared back at him with eyes filled with disbelief.
“Sir?? What actually happened?” Moreira asked, waving his hand right in front of Zavi’s face.
He saw Zavi staring blankly ahead, his gaze empty—as if he had lost his reason to keep living.
“Damn it… Hey, what about our cooperation? Are you going to break your promise? Or were all your words just nonsense, and deep down you’re satisfied because you took advantage of me?” Moreira’s voice was hoarse, rising and echoing through the room. “Answer me…!!”
At the same moment, a faint sound came from behind them. The bedroom door closed on its own, without any gust of wind. Moreira felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, but he didn’t have time to turn around.
Meanwhile, just outside the room, Esvalen stood still. Her hand was still resting on the doorknob she had just released, her expression remaining cold as the sounds from inside the room slowly faded.
