CHAPTER 244: MEMORY SYNCHRONIZATION (6)

PINK HAIR?

Yihun raised an eyebrow when, the next time he saw Bambi, the kid already had pink hair.

He didn’t want to admit it, but the color looked good on the weird child.

I feel bad that I’m calling a kid ’weird,’ but I don’t mean that as an insult— that’s just simply the best way to describe him.

"You have a weird hair color, Yihun Hyung."

Aigoo.

So, this kid also thinks I’m weird— fair enough.

"That’s why I asked the other hyungs to give me a hair color that’s just as weird," Bambi said, touching his hair. "They said this color suits me best."

They’re not wrong.

But Yihun had no intention of getting close to the kid who kept giving him the chills, so he just ignored him.

It was actually hard to do that.

After all, Yihun and the kid were locked up in a white room that looked like a stereotype asylum in movies.

The white walls don’t bother me as much as they did before, though.

Or maybe it didn’t affect him anymore since he had already lost his mind a long time ago?

"Hyung, are you strong?"

"Kid, if I were strong, I wouldn’t be locked up in here."

"Hyung wants to get out of here? But why?"

"This place is a hellhole."

"But I can eat as much food as I want here."

"Good for you then."

"There aren’t many Guides to eat outside, but those two ahjussis don’t fail to provide—"

"What did you say?" Yihun asked in disbelief, turning to Bambi with furrowed brows. "What do you eat outside?"

"Guides," Bambi answered without missing a beat, and then he tilted his head as if he were confused. "You don’t eat Guides?"

What a freaking creepy kid!

***

"YOU DON’T have to see it yourself, Noa-san."

Moon Noa clenched his hands so tightly that his nails dug deep into the skin of his palms.

He wasn’t able to return inside the laboratory in the dormant dungeon because they couldn’t tell what was making him sick there.

Hence, only his colleagues did the investigation.

After an hour, Ryu Sungbin and the others came out of the dungeon.

Apparently, the group found a secret room.

And then they took out the "things" that they discovered in there.

"I have to see it," Moon Noa said weakly, unclenching his hands. To be honest, he was a little scared. But it was something that he had to do. "It’s my duty as an S-Class Guide to protect all the Guides in the world."

Haru, who had been with him ever since he got out of the dungeon that made him sick, let out a long sigh. "As you wish."

And then the ex-Crown Prince escorted him to where the others were.

Ryu Sungbin, Lee Sarang, Jin Sooin, and Matthew all looked pale.

They have seen the worst of humanity, so to see them looking like this...

"Sarang-ssi, I want to see it," Moon Noa said, looking up at the tall ice wall that was ’protecting’ the ’things’ that the group had recovered. "Please remove your ice wall."

Lee Sarang looked hesitant at first.

But when Ryu Sungbin patted the Ice Queen’s back, only then did the ice wall finally collapse.

And Moon Noa almost threw up at the sight that greeted him.

A pile of corpses.

It didn’t stink. Well, it didn’t smell good either. However, it was tolerable.

And it was probably because the corpses were preserved as if they had been frozen.

Actually, the stench was the least of their concerns.

The thing that was truly horrifying was the fact that the pile of corpses were composed of naked children, probably aged thirteen to sixteen.

I can tell that none of them were over eighteen.

Each corpse had a hole in the chest, as if its heart had been ripped out.

Horrible— just plain horrible.

It was obvious by the marks on the children’s bodies that they had been starved and tortured before finally being killed.

Moreover...

"They were all young Guides..."

Moon Noa couldn’t believe it.

There are more Hunters than Guides in this world. That’s exactly why Guides became precious beings after being a mere commodity for years after the apocalypse. We aim to look for more Guides in order to help more Huntes stabilize.

"Noa Hyung, if this is too much for you, you can leave this to us," Ryu Sungbin said worriedly. "We’ll give the children a proper burial."

"Guides are rare, and there are more Hunters than Guides anywhere in the world."

Moon Noa said what he was thinking earlier out loud.

But it must have sounded random to his companions who just looked at him with a dumbfounded look on their faces.

Except for one, though.

"I was thinking the same thing, Noa-san," Haru chimed in politely while looking at the pile of corpses with indifference. "Every government in the world is looking for more Guides since more and more Hunters are losing their minds these days. That’s the case for the Japanese Government as well. So, I’m pretty shocked that we missed a huge number of Guides like this. Especially since we have tools to locate Guides these days."

Moon Noa was glad that Haru said all the things that he wanted to say, too.

It made him realize that he wasn’t overthinking.

That the conclusion that he ended up with wasn’t far-fetched.

"Those children might not be natural Guides," Moon Noa said, shocking his companions except for Haru (who probably arrived in the same conclusion as him). "Whoever owns this stupid laboratory must have forcefully turned those poor children into Guides."

***

YIHUN wanted to throw up.

He thought he had already seen all the bad things he could see as a Guide.

But this one still managed to shake him to his Core.

"What’s wrong, Hyung?" Bambi asked, tilting his head to one side. "Are you not going to eat?"

Yihun clutched his stomach, and then his gaze fell on the floor.

Only the melted wax that came out of Bambi’s body was there...

... and some human flesh.

This creepy child ate those corpses...

***

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