Holy Idol [EN]: Chapter 230

< 230. Frog Eggs Floating on the Ground >

“Gods are neither good nor evil.”

Hwan Shin recalled Daeju’s words as he lifted his coffee cup. Labrum, holding a newspaper upside down across from him, asked,

[Why are you laughing? Why are you laughing? Why are you laughing?]

“I was reminded of someone’s words.”

[Who? Who is it? Who is it?]

“You’ve seen them too.”

[One or two? No. Tell me properly.]

Hwan Shin took a sip of his coffee and set the cup down.

Clink.

But the moment the porcelain touched the table, a sound like a rushing waterfall suddenly erupted outside, as if triggered by a switch.

“!”

Startled by the deafening roar, Hwan Shin turned his head in surprise. His eyes widened even further.

A massive torrent of water was rushing past outside the window. It was faster and more powerful than the sound suggested.

[Oh. This is fun. This is fun.]

Instead of being surprised, Labrum trembled and chuckled as he watched, a joyful voice flowing from his faceless visage.

Hwan Shin sat quietly on the sofa, waiting for the wave to pass. As he grew accustomed to it, he noticed strange things contained within the rapid stream.

After a while, when the wave and his startled heart had calmed down, Hwan Shin raised the corners of his mouth, straightened his posture, and smiled.

“It seems I’m on the right side this time as well.”

* * *

Not far from there, the team leaders of the Nakru Seoul team were gathered in a rented conference room, discussing the recent anomalies.

“The number of Saints isn’t increasing, but the number of monsters is. Does that make sense?”

“It doesn’t align with the established rules [of the Saint/monster ecosystem].”

“…What’s the possibility of those rules being broken?”

“If they were easily broken, they wouldn’t be rules.”

“Could someone be artificially causing this…?”

“Who?”

“A Saint, perhaps.”

“Are you stupid? A Saint is just a Saint, not a god.”

“Of course, but what I mean is—”

Just as their endless conversation was repeating like a broken record, the team leaders heard an enormous sound nearby, like a waterfall passing right next to them.

Startled, the Nakru team leaders almost simultaneously drew their weapons and aimed in all directions. The sounds of metal clashing rang out and then disappeared at once. But nothing happened, and the roar continued.

Realizing that they weren’t supposed to aim at their surroundings, the Nakru members, still gripping their weapons, rushed towards the source of the sound. However, because the curtains were drawn, they couldn’t see out the window as Hwan Shin had.

Only after Gu Se-ji, the leader of Seoul Team A, yanked the curtains aside as if tearing them down, did the team leaders simultaneously gasp.

“Damn it.”

“What the hell…?”

“Is this crazy?”

“Is this real?”

A stream of water containing strange things was passing through the air at high speed.

* * *

At that moment.

In the area where Rembrary was, the bizarre phenomenon had just ended.

As the surroundings quieted down, Rembrary released the hand that had been shielding Shin Jo-woon and withdrew his divine power.

Shin Jo-woon, who had been inadvertently pressed down, stared at Rembrary strangely.

“You…”

But as he was about to say something to Rembrary, he noticed that Rembrary’s eyes had turned red, and he closed his mouth.

This had happened before. But at that time, it was fleeting, so he thought he had seen it wrong and let it go. This time, however, the red eyes were so vivid and persistent that he couldn’t dismiss it as a mistake.

“Your eyes?”

The moment Shin Jo-woon asked, Rembrary’s red eyes glanced at him. Red, but not scary, rather a flamboyant color. Just like Rembrary himself.

“What about my eyes?”

However, as soon as Rembrary asked the question, the color returned to its previous neat black.

“They were changing.”

“My eyes?”

“Red and then black.”

“Are they now?”

Rembrary took out his phone, turned on the camera, and checked his face. Shin Jo-woon watched him and suddenly felt like he had snapped back to reality, and he chuckled lightly.

“They’re not now, though?”

“Oh. They were for a moment. Now they’re black again.”

Rembrary put his phone back in his pocket and looked around.

“This place is intact. Relatively.”

The cracks that had appeared everywhere disappeared cleanly as soon as those things had left. The eyes that had been staring at them from behind the cracks were also gone.

“It seems like something came in here.”

Shin Jo-woon, thinking that the strange phenomenon was more important than Rembrary’s eyes, put his curiosity aside and thoroughly examined the surroundings.

“You call this intact?”

However, Shin Jo-woon soon realized that Rembrary’s words were absurd and retorted in disbelief. Unlike Rembrary’s claim that it was intact, the room was a mess.

The once-clean walls had traces of cracks, and broken pieces of concrete were rolling on the floor. The desk had flown away and was nowhere to be seen, and someone’s phone was smashed and embedded in the sofa.

The once-pristine guest sofa was also completely torn. The person who had been at the counter was now gone.

“It’s a disaster.”

“No. It’s better than it was before.”

“This is? It was fine before, wasn’t it?”

Shin Jo-woon, who hadn’t seen the cracks, didn’t understand what Rembrary was talking about. Rembrary didn’t bother to explain and just agreed with Shin Jo-woon.

“You’re right, Shin Jo-woon.”

“What about Daeju?”

“He’s not here.”

“Where did he go—”

“I don’t know. I was with you the whole time.”

Since that was true, Shin Jo-woon didn’t ask further but took out his own phone to call someone. He wanted to ask the butler if it was only happening here or elsewhere as well.

“…It’s not working.”

But when the call wouldn’t go through, he ended up putting his phone back in his pocket.

Meanwhile, Rembrary looked for Daeju and opened every door nearby. But there was no sign of Daeju, nor even any trace of people in this place anymore.

“Yu-han sunbae [senior colleague/mentor].”

Then, Rembrary belatedly remembered why he had come here and ran his hand over his forehead.

‘Well. Daeju wasn’t lying about Yu-han sunbae.’

Daeju had said that giving the brush to Im Yu-han was the last he knew of his whereabouts, and that was the truth. Rembrary decided that Im Yu-han wasn’t here and suggested to Shin Jo-woon.

“It doesn’t seem like Daeju or sunbae are here. Shall we go out? I’m worried about whether it’s okay outside.”

“Let’s.”

The two of them didn’t say anything while going outside. They were both equally dazed, wondering how to interpret this situation and what was going on. The situation was so absurd that it was hard to even bring it up.

Shin Jo-woon walked down the long hallway and, after a long while, was able to ask Rembrary a question.

“How did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Earlier. When you did something, those strange things didn’t come near us.”

“I just did it.”

“Is an entertainment Saint really a Saint? His actions aren’t very Saint-like.”

Before opening the last door at the end of the hallway, Rembrary turned to look at Shin Jo-woon.

His eyes were so calm even in this situation that Shin Jo-woon felt a chill for a moment.

“I don’t know what happened in the past, or what kind of Saint you know, Shin Jo-woon.”

“?”

“But get rid of the idea that Saints are good people.”

“!”

“Saints love God, not people.”

After speaking, Rembrary opened the door and went out. Startled by his meaningful words, Shin Jo-woon heard Rembrary grumbling this time.

“This is a mess. I wouldn’t want to walk around if it’s like this outside too.”

* * *

Rembrary’s words were true.

The room labeled ‘Staff Only’ was one thing, but once they went outside, the once-neat and tidy interior of the cafe was even more of a mess.

The tables and chairs were overturned haphazardly, and the once-bright lights were half-broken, flickering with a buzzing sound.

Spilled coffee and juices were splattered on the floor, and five laptops that hadn’t been collected were visible.

Phones, bags, and wallets were also dropped, and even shoes were rolling around, vividly showing how urgently people had fled.

There was only one person left. Someone who had fainted.

The person didn’t seem to be seriously injured on the surface, but there were several shoe prints on their back, as if they had been trampled by the fleeing people.

Rembrary approached the person, placed his hand on their head, and sent divine power, just in case.

“Healing? Like you did to Tae-ri?”

“Yes.”

Shin Jo-woon watched the scene with troubled eyes. The way he said that Saints don’t love people. The way he was disturbingly calm and composed in a situation where the world might have turned upside down. The strange technique that prevented strange things from even approaching. The eyes that had momentarily turned red.

All of this felt cold and suspicious.

But the actions of shielding him first, and immediately healing the injured person upon discovery, were in line with the common image of a Saint.

Because of this, Shin Jo-woon became more and more confused the more he saw Rembrary. What was this? What kind of person was he?

“?”

At that moment. His eyes suddenly throbbed. Shin Jo-woon frowned and touched his eyes, feeling a momentary ache as if the blood vessels inside his eyes were being pulled.

Rembrary, who had been trying to call 119 [emergency services number in South Korea], noticed Shin Jo-woon’s actions and asked.

“What’s wrong? Does it hurt? Should I heal you?”

“No.”

The pain was brief, and he was fine now. Shin Jo-woon shook his head, lowered his hand, and asked.

“The phone? Is it working?”

“It’s still not working.”

Rembrary took care of Shin Jo-woon, who kept hesitating, and went outside the cafe.

“Let’s go out.”

However, the outside, which had seemed fine at first glance from inside the cafe, was just as much of a mess as usual when they came out and looked closely.

“It seems like they passed through here too.”

“They must have flown into the sky. Those things.”

“Why do you think so?”

“There are no broken parts on the road. And the cars haven’t flown away either. But the signs that are about 3 stories high, the protruding signs, are almost all dented. And…”

Shin Jo-woon’s eyes stopped on the strange things floating on the road.

There wasn’t a single person on the road. But large frog eggs were floating about 30cm above the ground.

When Rembrary went closer and leaned his face towards them, Shin Jo-woon pulled on his hoodie strings to stop him.

“Don’t do that. What do you know what that is?”

“There’s something inside.”

Shin Jo-woon, still holding Rembrary’s hood, peered intently inside. As Rembrary said, something wrapped in a black membrane was wriggling inside. But it was impossible to know what it was.

* * *

“Hey, where have you been? Are you okay? It’s crazy outside right now?”

When Rembrary returned to the dorm, Keshi, holding a frying pan, was standing in front of the entrance and asked as he lowered it.

“What’s that? Were you going to hit me with that?”

Rembrary stared at the frying pan in bewilderment.

“What the hell else could I do! It was so scary! There was nothing else I could use as a weapon!”

Hye-gyeol answered while crying.

“A weapon?”

“Hyung [older brother/male friend], don’t you feel scared? Where are you wandering around in the middle of all this?”

When Rembrary asked calmly, Hye-gyeol and Keshi, as well as Jung Seo, who came out of his room after hearing Rembrary’s voice, stared at him in disbelief.

“You didn’t see it?”

< 230. Frog Eggs Floating on the Ground > End