Chapter 22

Thud-.

Ms. Saya fell backward.

At the same time, Boribori’s tail bristled and her nose wrinkled.

“Tembel…!”

She slapped the back of my hand with her tail, clearly angry at me. That word probably meant something like ‘You fool!’ or ‘You idiot!’

“…Nesikha!”

Now Boribori was circling around Ms. Saya, who lay face-down on the floor. Her expression was filled with obvious worry and concern. Does Boribori like pretty women?

“Cough, cough-.”

Ms. Saya kept coughing. I snapped back to my senses.

“Oh no! I’m so sorry for grabbing you so suddenly! I thought you shouldn’t get hit by that rain!”

Because I had yanked her by the scruff of the neck, a clear red mark had formed on Ms. Saya’s porcelain-white neck.

I felt terrible guilt, but at the same time, everything was baffling. What on earth is going on here?

What is that red rain, and why are the women going insane? And Ms. Saya came here to resolve this? I had so many questions, but there was no time.

“I’m thirstyyyy!”
“Where is it!”

The women who had been hit by the red rain noticed our commotion. Their red eyes gleamed brightly. In that instant, my hair stood on end, and I thought I had to escape this place no matter what.

“Ms. Saya! I know it’s hard to breathe, but bear with it!”

I took off my tracksuit and wrapped it around her head like a hijab. Seeing the lining inside, Ms. Saya’s lips moved slightly.

“Cooking foil?”

“The men seem to be fine even if they get hit by that rain, so you need this more than I do right now!”

We had to avoid those women quickly. The problem was that Ms. Saya’s ankle was swollen red.

“Did you get hurt when you fell earlier?”

“Probably.”

“Ms. Saya, I’m going to be a bit forward!”

I scooped Ms. Saya up in my arms. Thanks to my experience carrying heavy ingredients while working as an intern, I had no trouble with the weight. I’ve been doing home workouts while taking protein supplements, after all.

“Here I go! Don’t open your mouth, or you might bite your tongue!”

Swoosh-.

The red rain pounded mercilessly against my shoulders and head. The taste that seeped into my nose and mouth was sour and unpleasant.

This really tastes like wine.

“Hurry up and close the door! Hurry!”
“The door! Close the door!”

Then I spotted the wine cellar. It was a cave carved out of the mountain, and inside, men were struggling to shut a heavy door.

We’d better take shelter there. I ran frantically with that thought, but of course, the door shut just before I could reach it.

Boom-!

“Hey! Open the door! The door! We haven’t gotten in yet!”

Bang, bang, bang-.

I kept pounding on the door.

“You bastards! Open the door!”

But from inside, all I could hear was the sound of them arguing among themselves.

-Hey! We told you to open the door!
-Are you crazy? If we open the door now, those women will get in too!

I looked back. The women with reddened eyes were charging at us on all fours like beasts. In twenty seconds, no, ten seconds, they’d catch us.

Tsk, if it’s come to this, there’s no other choice.

I pulled a pair of red work gloves from my pocket and put them on. Then, as I lightly touched the door with them, I heard the lock click open from the inside.

‘It worked after all!’

These are work gloves with the Opening magic circle drawn on the palms in permanent marker. I made them based on the tools used by the Flame Alchemist in that alchemist manga.

The effect is to open whatever it touches. I’d hoped I’d never have to use them, but in the end, it came to this.

“Are you all insane? How could you close the door when people were still outside!”

I shouted at everyone as I hurried inside the wine cave.

Their faces were splattered with liquids indistinguishable from blood or wine, and they stared at me with frozen expressions. Anyone could see at a glance how startled and terrified they were.

“Cut the crap and close the door! The door!”
“The door! Close the door! Now!”

Some of them shouted. I too could feel the presence of the women approaching from behind, so I quickly shut the door and drew the Sealing magic circle on it using the red liquid on my fingers.

Click-.

We should be safe for at least twelve hours now.

#

“Out of nowhere, this crimson rain starts falling, and then my wife bites my neck! Ugh, look at this. The flesh is all torn. If it had been a little deeper, I would’ve….”

“What the hell is going on! Did they put drugs in that sprayed wine or something? Huh? Who’s responsible!”

People always say men are quiet types. That’s not true at all. Once they fall into panic, they chatter away noisily like larks.

Around twenty men. With that many people all talking at once, the cave echoed loudly, and it was absolutely maddening.

“Does anyone have phone service right now!”

At that moment, someone clapped their hands to draw the men’s attention. It was a man wearing glasses, his face and body covered in red liquid, looking just like a serial killer. Of course, every man here looked like that, and I probably did too.

Everyone looked at their phones. Me too. But there was no Wi-Fi signal, and we were out of the service area. An older man in hiking clothes spoke up.

“Ugh, what is this? My phone is a satellite phone. Does it not work inside a cave?”

Since this is an artificially carved cave for storing wine, the signal doesn’t reach—everyone seemed to think that, but I thought differently.

In Wogijagi’s basement, and in Chairman Kim Manchun’s refrigerator, phones didn’t work either. It’s just my guess, but the phones are probably failing here for a similar reason.

This place is Gyeryusan Mountain, yet at the same time, it’s no longer Gyeryusan Mountain.

“Um… teacher. Why did the women turn out like that? My wife suddenly became like a different person… I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.”

“M-my girlfriend too…”
“Mommy…”

“I’m not entirely sure what’s going on either…”

The man with glasses, who had somehow become ‘teacher,’ fell silent. He didn’t seem to have a clue what was happening either.

I too looked at the little boy calling for his mom and fell into thought. What was it that Boribori said? And Ms. Saya…

“They are Bacchantes.”

At that moment, Ms. Saya lifted herself up. When she pulled the tracksuit away, revealing her face, everyone gasped.

Part of it was because she was a stunning beauty, but…

“A-a woman!”
“A woman!”
“It’s a woman!”

They were lines you’d never expect even from soldiers who hadn’t seen a woman’s shadow in over a year. And their voices were filled with tension and terror.

“Ugh, a woman! Why!”
“Ahh! A woman!? Why!?”
“W-we should subdue her before she goes crazy!”
“That’s right! There’s only o-one of her!”
“Let’s surround her and beat her down!”

It didn’t sound like a conversation between sane people at all.

In a dark, gloomy cave where even phones had become useless, the men seemed to have regressed to something primitive, just as their fathers’ fathers had in ancient times. But this situation wasn’t pleasant for me either, so I stepped forward.

“The woman here is different! She’s fine!”

“How do you know!”
“F-first, get her away from the d-door! If that woman opens the door, we’re all…”

While I was wondering what to do, Ms. Saya pulled out a single strand of her hair.

“Tifar.”

It was an unfamiliar word. But the strange thing was that her hair moved like a living snake and attached itself to the angry middle-aged man’s body. Swish, swish-.

Then it stitched up the wound on his neck, the one torn by his wife’s bite, sewing it shut about five times.

“Tifar.”

Ms. Saya pulled out a few more strands of her hair. They automatically stitched up the wounds on the arms and legs of the injured men. Shishishik-.

“Ugh, what the hell is this!”
“What!”

The men were startled like primitive people discovering fire. They froze at this unbelievable situation, and I was just as surprised.

“So Ms. Saya is a magician too.”

“I thought you knew. Marina Entertainment only deals with magicians as clients.”

Honestly, I didn’t know. But even if I had, I doubt it would have changed anything.

Ms. Saya spoke to the now-quietened men.

“They are Bacchantes. The women outside.”

“Bacchantes, you say… Are you referring to the Maenades?”

The man with glasses, who had become ‘teacher,’ asked with a trembling voice. As everyone’s gaze turned to him, he answered as if to explain himself.

“I’m an oenophile… a wine enthusiast. I’ve studied the origins of wine.”

The teacher then began a brief explanation. In ancient Greece, there was a god named Dionysus, and there was a group of women who followed him. Those women were called Maenades or Bacchantes.

“They are women who go wild under the influence of wine. They’re also famous for killing Orpheus and creating the Lyra constellation. Just like the women outside, they went mad…”

The wine enthusiast took off his glasses and wiped the lenses. His hands were trembling violently as he cleaned them.

At that moment, Ms. Saya spoke in a voice so low only I could hear.

“There’s a magician behind this incident. They probably possess a special ‘magical tool’ as well. A magician alone would find it difficult to pull off something this large.”

A magician behind it all? This situation isn’t caused by ghosts or anomalies, but by a ‘magician’?

A magician becomes a dangerous calamity in and of themselves. A magician becomes an enemy of other magicians. The magicians I’ve met—Choi Janggun, Noona Jo Sena, Yu Gain—they had their rough edges, but they never turned their blades against each other.

“…Why would a magician do something like this?”

“To achieve their own goals, I suppose. And it seems they’ve realized I’m here to stop them. So they rushed this plan into motion.”

Goals. I felt my wet body grow cold. To pull off something like this for a goal… What kind of species are ‘magicians,’ really?

The man whose neck had been stitched up asked.

“Miss, what happened to my wife? Will she be able to return to normal? Our daughter’s wedding is coming up soon…”

“…Mom! My mom is outside! Mom!”

Can the women who went mad return to normal? At that question, Ms. Saya seemed to fall into thought, expressionless. When she didn’t answer, the men grew even more restless.

“I… I don’t believe it. It’s drugs, it’s drugs. We’re all just hallucinating. Ahhh…”

“I promised Mina I’d marry her… I worked up the courage to bring her here today… I even prepared a ring to propose today…”

Some of the men began to cry. Faced with their beloved partners and families becoming crazed women, they were terrified and worried.

Meanwhile, I was forming a hypothesis.

I have the ‘Change’ magic circle. Its effect is none other than ‘the magic that turns wine into water.’

What if I draw several of those on sticky notes and stick them onto the women’s bodies?

Thud, thud-!

A banging sound came from outside the door. There was still no time to think.

“Everyone, listen up.”