The Black Cloak
If there was one place of supreme importance inside the Collector Guild building, it was Bi Sa-beol’s gallery.
Dangerous, high-strung objects were packed into it, so incidents were frequent. On top of that came the people who coveted those rare works. To prevent casualties, security patrolled the interior no matter how late the hour.
That night, too, was just another ordinary dawn spent walking the corridors.
“Hm?”
White walls.
White lights.
And standing alone in the long, spotless hallway—a man of pure black.
“…….”
He was wrapped from head to toe in a black cloak. His face was invisible.
“…….”
All that could be seen was the black suit beneath the open front of the garment.
“Who are you?”
“…….”
“Excuse me, but please identify yourself.”
The dawn patrol numbered eight men in total throughout the building; floors one through ten were his responsibility. No other guard was assigned to the same floor.
So the black cloak was either a staff member who had stepped into the guild for some late-night errand… or an unknown outsider.
Yet something felt wrong.
“…Please identify yourself.”
It was truly strange. And yet he could not explain exactly what was strange about it.
“…….”
“…….”
An eerie chill crawled over his skin.
…What is this?
The guild building always kept its lights blazing for the sake of patrolling guards and employees working overtime. The corridors were scrubbed clean at all hours, and the pure white marble walls were elegant and beautiful, exactly to Guildmaster Bi Sa-beol’s taste.
So there was nothing to fear. Beneath lighting as bright as midday, shadows existed nowhere—yet that solitary black presence stood out with unnatural force…
“…Who are you?”
It felt as though the thing should not be allowed to exist.
“If you are an outsider, please show me your access pass.”
“…….”
“Why have you come here at this hour? I received no notice from the first floor that any visitor would be arriving. Unauthorized entry into the guild is treated as a serious felony, and…”
“…….”
“…it will be applied unfavorably in any trial… you may experience inconvenience in securing legal counsel, and you may be subdued by force without further process, so please keep that in mind and answer the… question.”
Was it not strange? The tiny wrongness he had first felt was swelling larger by the second.
The longer he observed, the more he saw, the greater the sense of dissonance grew. Then the guard understood.
Why?
Why did he feel that thing should not be allowed to exist?
No—more fundamentally…
Why, looking at a being shaped like a person, was he thinking of it as “that”?
The thought that something was wrong refused to leave his brain. Confusion clung to his entire body and scrambled his mind.
A silent otherness brushed up his spine and slowly tickled his heart. It was as slow and natural as breathing in one’s sleep.
“…….”
“…….”
From beneath the black cloak’s hood—from under fabric so pitch-black it seemed right that nothing should be there at all—a voice emerged.
“Hello.”
“…….”
“I am Seo Ji-oh.”
A voice so clear it seemed to drive itself into the brain, with pronunciation so upright it was impossible not to understand. Before he could even resist, he found himself thinking it was a beautiful voice.
It asked politely:
“What is your name?”
“…….”
“I am curious about your name.”
He could not bring himself to answer that lovely voice.
“Will you speak with me?”
He understood.
“…I…”
This was not human.
“…I… I…”
Not a monster, not an item, not a hallucination.
…What am I supposed to do?
His breath locked as heavily as if he had never possessed a windpipe in the first place.
The Collector Guild was a place where countless incidents occurred, and he was an experienced guard, yet even so he had never faced a presence like this. Something vast and non-human was wearing human skin and mimicking a human being.
If only the imitation had been clumsy, it would have been better. Like the grotesque jointed dolls of spheres he had seen before, or monsters that babbled nonsense with a woefully incomplete understanding of speech.
“…….”
“Sir.”
“…….”
“What is your name?”
But this one—
was perfect.
“I am Seo Ji-oh.”
It looked like a perfect human.
And yet, paradoxically,
he knew it could never be human.
What kind of nonsense is this…
Even though the other party appeared fully human, he was certain it was not. Without any basis whatsoever, he was defining it as neither human, nor monster, nor item, nor hallucination.
Then what in the world was it?
“Can you not hear me?”
“…Why are you asking my name?”
“The basic courtesy of conversation is an exchange of names.”
“…….”
“I am simply observing proper etiquette.”
Etiquette?
He could not understand what was mimicking human manners.
“…Park…”
“…….”
“Park Na-gil.”
He spat out the name as if entranced, yet he felt no sense of his soul being stolen. The black cloak merely looked satisfied.
That, more than anything, was spine-chilling, but he no longer had the strength to show it. His breath kept catching in his throat.
“A pleasure to meet you. I am Seo Ji-oh.”
“…….”
Did the man even realize he had already introduced himself as “Seo Ji-oh” several times?
As if emphasizing that he is a human just like us…
Then the black cloak produced something unexpected.
“I have an access pass.”
“…This is a visitor’s pass.”
“I have been granted permission to tour by Guildmaster Bi Sa-beol of this place.”
“…Is that so.”
At the very least, the guildmaster knew of this thing’s existence.
And he is allowing its actions.
Why on earth?
The guard lifted his head and looked at the black cloak once more.
“…….”
“Is that a sufficient answer?”
“…Of course.”
The voice was thoroughly businesslike.
A voice of formal cadence that seemed to keep a moderate pitch, yet if one listened carefully it seemed to travel between high and low registers.
Even with an access pass, I should still verify basic personal details…
He was clearly hearing a man’s voice, yet the longer time passed the harder it became to guess the thing’s age or gender.
It stood right in front of him and still could not be perceived. All he could see was the pure black cloak and a form that was neither thick nor thin.
“…….”
Inside the shadow of that black cloak, was there truly something shaped like a person?
“Mr. Park Na-gil.”
“…Yes.”
“May I walk around this place?”
“…….”
The guildmaster had given permission.
So as a mere guard he ought to give an affirmative answer, yet the words would not leave his mouth. It felt as ominous as granting a devil leave to bring about calamity.
Before that gloomy, heavy, or perhaps chilly form, the guard managed a difficult nod.
“…Of… course.”
“Thank you.”
“If the guildmaster has permitted it, you may tour as much as you like without issue.”
“I see.”
“…How long do you intend to stay?”
The black cloak answered after two seconds.
“Until the sun rises.”
It was a hair-raising reply.
“…….”
“…I see.”
He felt as if he might vomit.
Why the chills, where exactly the grotesqueness lay, where this indescribable silence came from even while they conversed—he could not understand any of it.
The sensation of his cognitive ability collapsing and his judgment being buried in fog swayed him like motion sickness. It felt as though he stood face-to-face with something he could not endure.
No—in reality I am not enduring it.
It was as burdensome as communing with something he “must not” perceive.
“…….”
“Mr. Park Na-gil.”
Every time it called his name, his spine trembled.
How was he supposed to describe that sensation of his body temperature dropping one degree at a time, that sensation of every blood vessel in his body being seized in someone’s hand?
“Y-yes.”
“Thank you for responding so kindly.”
“…It was my duty.”
“You have a strong sense of responsibility.”
“…….”
“I believe it is something worthy of praise.”
It was strange.
When the black cloak praised him, despite the nausea-inducing terror, he felt a soaring happiness.
Have I gone mad? Or has that thing driven me mad?
Even though the situation was one in which he absolutely should not feel this way, he was moved and felt proud of himself. He could not interpret why he felt this way.
Looking at him, the black cloak held out a hand.
“A gift.”
“…….”
“Please take it.”
The black cloak offered a small envelope neatly wrapped in paper.
An intoxicatingly sweet scent rose from it.
“It is yours.”
That grotesquely businesslike voice somehow felt favorable.
“I have been quite rude.”
“Ah, no.”
“Then I shall see you next time.”
Is it leaving?
That intuition struck him the moment he raised his head, and their eyes—
“…….”
“…….”
—met.
Those eyes.
Eyes.
Pupils.
The iris, the pupil, that round sphere. Inside it. That thing. That round thing. That. That was. Black and white.
The pitch-black thing, the pure-white thing. Was it black? Was it white? Dark or bright. Shadow or light. Death or life. Bond or destiny.
The inside was too deep. Too deep. Too deep. Deep, and frightening, yet the inside was so deep. Deep. He felt the sensation of falling. He was plummeting. Could he escape? Impossible. It would not be possible. That was not an eye. Not a pupil. Not an iris and not a pupil.
No, it was not, it would not be. It must not be. It was clearly not. It was not. No. No, no.
But it wasn’t.
“Mr. Park Na-gil.”
The moment he heard that ruthlessly businesslike voice—
“Good work.”
“…….”
…he was pulled free.
“…….”
For a long while he simply stood there.
Even as the pure black cloak moved, not a single rustle of fabric could be heard, and the bare feet—wearing no shoes—made not even the sound of contact with the smooth floor.
Only the soft scuffling of some tiny creature reached him, which was odd. That black thing could hardly be called a tiny creature…
Soon the sound faded.
“…….”
Only silence remained.
“…Where…”
Where did it go?
The guard moved his feet.
He followed the corridor the black cloak had taken, heading toward the place where the sound had cut off. Before long he reached that “place where the sound had stopped.”
A portrait he had never seen before hung on the corridor wall.
“Ah.”
It was a painting of a man whose face was as still as if he were asleep, set against a forest that framed a peaceful cabin—
yet his stomach churned.
“…….”
He fled with slow steps.
Exactly the same pace as always.
He could not bring himself to touch it. If he were to fulfill a guard’s duty he would of course have to report the unknown work and have it dealt with, but the thought never even rose to the surface. As if entranced, the guard simply left the spot.
And the next day, the portrait was no longer in the same place.
“Did you hear?”
The Collector Guild had always been a place rich in ghost stories.
All of them stemmed from Guildmaster Bi Sa-beol’s collecting mania; because he dragged in so many strange objects, all sorts of incidents kept occurring.
For that reason, employees who had worked at the Collector Guild for more than two years were no longer particularly startled by such tales.
“The Black Cloak?”
“Yeah, there’s a rumor going around lately.”
“One of the guildmaster’s pieces must have caused another accident.”
“I figured as much.”
In a world where most ghost stories could be explained by monsters or items, and in an age when fellow humans were more frightening than ghost stories, the rumors about the “Black Cloak” were nothing more than idle entertainment.
“They say he’s that handsome—I’d like to catch a look.”
“Apparently the cloak makes it hard to see his face.”
“For a piece the guildmaster brought in, he’s pretty shy.”
“As long as it doesn’t cause an accident, who cares. No one’s been hurt, right?”
But as time passed, that light atmosphere gradually grew heavier.
“…….”
“I heard the latest witness took leave.”
“…Is it that scary…?”
“Apparently he was going to quit, but the guildmaster soothed him into just taking vacation instead.”
“If even the guildmaster has to step in, doesn’t that mean the situation is more serious than we thought?”
Ordinarily, ghost stories of this sort were resolved within a week.
After all, the true identity of such tales was usually a monster or item that had slipped out of one of Bi Sa-beol’s pieces, or a mental-type skill triggered by it. In a guild crawling with hunters, failure to resolve the matter would itself have been strange.
Yet that “strange thing” was happening right now.
“Seriously, why can’t they suppress this monster? What are the curators even doing?”
“There’s talk that even they can’t handle it.”
“Then maybe just dump it outside the guild…”
“…….”
“…That was a stupid thing to say.”
The Collector Guild operated a special gallery that could never be replaced by any other place.
Objects so dangerous that the government itself regulated who could enter gathered there from all over the world. Where exactly was one supposed to throw something the Collector Guild could not handle? Another catastrophe would certainly follow.
Until now, every incident had stopped at the level of “ghost story” before becoming such a catastrophe.
“But for it to be this hard to suppress…”
“I’ve also heard they’re not even trying to suppress it.”
“Why? Wouldn’t destroying or sealing it be better?”
“They know they won’t succeed, so they’d rather not upset it…”
“It can get upset? That means it has that level of intelligence… so it has a self?”
“The most credible rumor is that it’s a humanoid monster, so it probably has at least that much of a self.”
“Wow, this is insane. Dragging in a humanoid monster of all things.”
“When was the last humanoid monster even sighted—years ago?”
Not once had Bi Sa-beol ever left a “ghost story” unattended to this degree. He was a man who knew perfectly well how much efficiency rose when his employees felt secure.
And yet the situation had come to this.
“Anyone hurt?”
“Not really…”
And as this state of affairs continued—
“…….”
“…….”
“…Then isn’t it fine?”
The employees began to rationalize it on their own.
“No injuries, no deaths. So why is it even a ghost story?”
“Essentially a ghost story just means a strange tale… so if it’s really only a story, then that makes sense.”
“It was just a story? There are witnesses, so it seems to actually exist, but it’s honestly fascinating.”
“Right?”
This was the guild “Collector.” Every employee of the guild was a collectible personally gathered by the collector Bi Sa-beol.
His realistic, cynical employees gradually calmed themselves of their own accord.
“Eh, it was probably fake.”
“There are people who saw it, though?”
“Then it’s a hallucination skill or something.”
“Maybe.”
“Anyway, they say it isn’t even dangerous, right?”
“Maybe the guildmaster snuck a new employee in without telling us.”
“True, it’s not like we know every single staff member. Hasn’t something similar happened before?”
“There was a quiet employee once who got rumors of being a ghost. Looking at it that way, it’s possible.”
“It’d be nice if they’d just put out a notice in advance for things like this. Don’t you think?”
“The guildmaster’s personality is pretty unique, you know? Let’s all just understand.”
“That’s fair. Wonder when he’ll introduce this new hire…”
Guildmaster Bi Sa-beol was a man who cherished his employees to an extreme degree. If a “ghost story” of this sort was something even he left alone, then it was clearly not a dangerous existence.
Whether it existed or not, whatever its true identity might be—the employees trusted Bi Sa-beol.
“…….”
“…….”
And Bi Sa-beol himself knew that.
“…Did you anticipate this?”
“Who can say?”
The Collector Guild regained its peace.
Even though nothing had been resolved.
(To be continued)