Chapter 42

The Painter Who Draws Dungeons - Episode 42

After finishing an awesome meal, Gio tossed sausages to the waterfowl, then returned to the cabin and asked for some rest.

Maybe because he’d eaten so much, even when evening came he wasn’t hungry.

“Nurungji...”

“Ggururuk?”

“Not right now, but tomorrow let’s make nurungji rice.

It’s tasty.”

“Ggururururuk.”

“...”

Lying on the bed, Seo Gio, as always, poked Honey, who was lying beside him.

“Kung.”

“...”

“Kungkungkung.”

“Soft.”

“Kung!!!”

Honey resisted fiercely, but that only made him cuter.

“This harmless little guy.”

He thought that if it grew a bit more, he could use it as a pillow.

‘Could I make something with a similar feel.’

Because he felt a bit sorry to sleep with a living waterfowl under him, he would make a squishy pillow that wasn’t alive.

Lost in this and that daydream, Gio blinked.

“...”

He couldn’t sleep for the life of him.

“Hoo...”

Sometimes it was like this.

“An artist’s fate, I suppose.”

“...Kung?”

Honey reacted as if to say, ‘Can you stop talking nonsense and just sleep,’ but it wasn’t that easy.

After rubbing his face against the fluffy blanket where he could feel it was full of feathers a few times, Gio soon got up.

“Honey, Dad’s going.”

“Gguruk.”

“Heartless little guy.”

Leaving behind the tired Honey, he headed to the studio filled with all kinds of ingredients.

“...”

His brutal insomnia like this was because, all of a sudden, something had piqued his interest.

“...I got curious about the scenery outside the company.”

If he set as accurate a location as possible and imagined it, Gio could recall the scenery of that place.

At first he thought it was only his imagination. Even if he imagined what the 3rd floor of the ‘collectors’ company looked like, how could it be the same as the actual view there?

But as he continued that imagining and completed the picture little by little, at some point Gio could realize it.

‘The scenery of the location I imagine is relatively similar to reality.’

He thought it might be one of the benefits he received from becoming a portrait.

“Outside is probably...”

Gio muttered.

“It’s probably dark dawn.”

It wasn’t a place he’d never seen at all, and drawing a place he’d already seen once wasn’t difficult.

Recalling the scene he’d seen while standing against the wall of an alley, Gio moved his brush.

And soon, a single frame appeared in some alley in Seoul.

* * *

“Haaah...”

In the dawn street, a woman raked through her hair.

“Where do I have to latch onto again.”

Cha Ara, a woman with short, jet-black hair, couldn’t hold back her sigh.

‘As expected, there’s nowhere that takes F-ranks easily.’

Even if you’re awakened, an F-rank isn’t treated as more than a porter.

Cha Ara’s rank was F.

Her main skill was ‘Physical Enhancement.’

She wasn’t in a position to learn any other skills, and, as naturally as natural can be, she had no profession.

It was the typical porter status.

“...”

Today, after being expelled from her original team, she’d been sitting uselessly on a bench.

“...Yeah, I mean, where would you use a porter with an injured leg.”

It was because she’d gotten a leg injury in the dungeon she’d visited in the afternoon.

There were more than enough F-ranks who wanted to be used as porters, so there was no reason to hire someone who even limped.

‘It was nice because it was a pretty decent group.’

It was a team of people gathered together who, even if they weren’t kind, didn’t have much interest in each other.

They ignored Cha Ara, an F-rank porter, as if she didn’t exist, but the team itself tended to be like that toward one another.

Even that indifference was one of the modern virtues that wasn’t easy to find.

“But I got cut that easily, too.”

They kicked her out, saying they couldn’t hire Cha Ara anymore since she had no value to use.

At least it was a relief that she was kicked out after being settled for everything she was owed.

Cha Ara stared for a long time at the amount in the account on her phone.

All together, about 500,000 won.

“...”

This was nowhere near enough to pay rent and buy the youngest’s priest robes.

“This time, rent went up...”

Nngh.

Cha Ara groaned.

“...What do I do now.”

Looking up at the sky where snow was beginning to fall softly, Cha Ara clicked her tongue.

“Dogshit.”

It was already cold enough to die—why was it snowing too?

‘...The terminal’s been cut off for a while now.

Anyway, Oppa’s home, so the youngest should be fine.

As long as he isn’t going around being a sucker and handing out his stuff again, that’s enough.’

Sniffling at the loneliness rising inside, Cha Ara stood from the bench.

“I need to find somewhere I won’t even get snowed on.”

Cha Ara tightened the scarf her youngest had made even more and moved her feet.

Originally, she’d been thinking of just falling asleep on the bench, but if it was snowing too, she might not be able to open her eyes the next morning.

‘It’d be nice if I could sleep near a station or an office building.’

Public facilities where lots of people passed, or areas around companies that made decent money, had warming magic.

If she could sleep near there, she wouldn’t have to worry about a place to sleep like this, but if she got caught wrong, at worst she could be demoted to a Grade 4 citizen.

‘Even if I bought a few days of city-stay rights with a hunter ID, that doesn’t mean I can just sleep anywhere.

If I get caught by security, it’ll be a headache...’

At times like this, she even envied her older brother, Cha Eunhyuk.

“That guy can sleep in the bungeoppang cart if he wants.”

Because if it was left in the city, someone would steal it or haul it away, her older brother, who sold bungeoppang, always lived by moving his cart from the provinces into the city.

“Agh...”

Because of that, Cha Ara couldn’t even expect to sleep in his cart.

After wandering aimlessly for a long while, Cha Ara’s steps reached a dark alley.

“...”

...What is that.

‘...A portrait?’

It was a portrait of some man hanging on one side of the alley wall.

“...What, creepy...”

The man in the portrait was handsome like a sculpture or a doll, but more than that fine face, what hit her skin first was the stillness of his quietly closed eyes.

At the gloomy air, like someone had painted a corpse, Cha Ara hesitated and left.

‘What kind of crazy bastard hung a painting here.’

It would be the work of some crazy bastard with an odd taste, or a hunter with some bizarre skill, so Cha Ara decided not to bother.

In the first place, she had no intention of sleeping in this place where snow was falling straight down.

After walking a little more, Cha Ara soon found a woman.

“...”

It was already piled with white snow, as if she’d been taking the cold snow for a long time.

Looking at the woman’s appearance as she curled into a ball, Cha Ara could tell she was a Grade 4 citizen, living illegally in the city.

“...”

“...”

Her thin body was moving faintly as if she was breathing, so she wasn’t dead yet.

‘She’s pretty far out.’

Usually the poor live deeper in the alley.

Cha Ara was about to ignore the poor woman and pass by, but after only a few steps, she made a very uncomfortable face and stood in front of her again.

“...”

Whether she was asleep or had fainted from the cold, even though she was breathing, the poor woman couldn’t come to her senses.

She didn’t seem to notice Cha Ara right in front of her.

“...Ah, fuck.”

Cha Ara took off her own scarf, lightly wrapped it around the poor woman’s neck, and left at a quick pace.

Hearing the faint sound of the poor woman moving, her pace sped up even more.

‘Fuck, embarrassing.

Fuck, fuck...’

With her bare neck cold, Cha Ara felt unfair for some reason.

“Why the hell are you sleeping like you’re pathetic...!”

She got choked up for no reason.

The poor woman looked about her age, or even younger.

Then no matter how old she was, she wouldn’t even be twenty.

When someone who could be your friend was sleeping like they were about to die, she couldn’t pass by.

“Ah, fuck, it was something the youngest knitted... youngest, aaah...”

It was a scarf he’d knitted with difficulty using fur from livestock or monsters caught in the village.

The youngest’s skill wasn’t bad, so it was a pretty decent scarf, and she’d been using it well this winter, but she’d lost it in such a stupid way.

‘Fuck... I shouldn’t have said that to Oppa or Cha Isol...’

As Cha Ara trudged along, something strange soon came into her sight.

“...”

A portrait of a man.

“...Huh.”

The one she saw earlier.

‘...W-what?

I didn’t see it here.

Did I see it wrong?

No, did it have multiple frames?’

The frame was half hidden by shadow so she couldn’t see the face well, but she could immediately tell it was the same portrait she’d just seen.

Goosebumps rose at a chilling feeling like she’d watched a horror movie.

“Huh, huh...”

Even if she was only F-rank, an awakened person is still an awakened person.

She could at least feel instinctive danger.

“Am I fucked?”

At that vulgar word.

The portrait buried in shadow opened its eyes.

“...”

“...”

The mouth of the portrait, no longer hidden by darkness, opened softly.

“Pardon me.”

An aristocratic tone.

As Cha Ara blinked at the intense dissonance.

“...”

The frame could not be seen anywhere.

“...”

What, wow, what.

‘What the hell.’

Only then did Cha Ara realize belatedly that she had collapsed.

“...F-fuck...”

Save me.

Her hand that had braced against the snow-covered ground trembled.

Cha Ara knew, and the world knew, that it wasn’t simply because of the cold.

It was nonsense, but deep down, it felt like if she didn’t spout even this kind of nonsense, she wouldn’t be able to come to her senses.

“Crazy...”

Cha Ara realized without meaning to.

‘I almost died.’

In truth it wasn’t that dangerous a situation, but she knew that the bizarre portrait she’d just seen was an extremely dangerous existence.

If that existence had been even a little less polite, to the point it didn’t feel any need to apologize with “Pardon me,” who knew if Cha Ara would have become a corpse.

“...W-what is it.

Really, what is it.

What did I see.”

As Cha Ara fumbled and tried to put strength into her body to leave, her hand caught on something cold and hard.

At the small, hard sensation, chills ran up to the top of her head, and Cha Ara couldn’t even scream—she only worked her mouth soundlessly.

“...”

When she groped again with trembling hands, soon a cold pellet came into her hand.

When she examined it with a heart shriveled to its limit...

“...A, a jewel?”

It was a jewel of black, transparent light.

“...What the hell...”

This too was something she felt instinctively.

Cha Ara realized that this was a gift given by the portrait she’d just seen.

“...”

Her parents, before they died, always said that if you do good things, blessings will come.

This whole situation felt like a chilling fairy tale.

* * *

And there was one more person who’d become chilled.

“Stalking is a bad thing.”

Gio couldn’t come to his senses from his own rudeness.

Drawing the dawn alley was fine.

But after he drew it, he could see some woman moving inside the frame, and he’d only worried briefly whether she might be in danger this late at dawn.

And so, without realizing it, his gaze kept sticking to her...

“In the end, I stalked her.”

He observed her without consent.

“She must have been startled.”

Normally, he only quietly stared at the inside of the collectors’ building, or moved around through frames, so he hadn’t realized.

But with this chance, Gio learned for sure.

‘If I fix my gaze on something moving, the frame in reality moves along with it.’

That was how the incident of the living portrait that followed Cha Ara came about.

“I hope my apology was conveyed well...”

Because he’d been blankly staring only at the short-haired woman, he could even see her handing her scarf to the poor woman and then being frightened by his frame.

Only when the woman turned white and collapsed did Gio come to his senses.

A commendable feeling toward the woman who still looked about high school age, a worried feeling about whether she was okay alone this late, and guilt over having startled her with his own rudeness.

“...”

This deep emotion was recognized as a trade good, and Gio gifted Cha Ara a jewel.

“...?”

No, wait a second.

“Did I just make her more scared?”

Because he’d been too out of it from being shaken by his own rudeness, he hadn’t thought of it.

But if you give a silent gift out of nowhere to a high-school girl who’s already terrified of a living portrait, who would pick it up thinking, ‘Wow, a jewel’?

“Ah...”

He should have given something like cookies instead.

‘But right now I don’t have any cookies baked, so without realizing it, I ended up drawing a jewel.’

If he’d given a silly snack instead, it might have frightened her less.

Gio gazed faintly at the back of the short-haired student fleeing in utter panic beyond the frame.

“I’m sorry...”

At that point, Gio realized.

“...”

Do I sometimes change personalities?

It was the point at which he finally gained self-awareness as the “black cloak.”

Fantasy, modern,