Eustar felt his way forward along the damp, dark soil with his fingertips. He seemed to be swallowed deeper and deeper into the darkness.
Laila desperately followed behind him, not wanting to lose sight of him, but the further they went into the forest, the stronger her urge became to run away.
Hugging herself with both arms, Laila said in a small voice:
“This place… gives me a bad feeling.”
Fear seeped through her usually calm voice. However, Eustar nodded as if this was to be expected, his expression unchanged.
“It’s probably because there’s a Sink nearby. If you’re not used to the energy emitted by a Sink, you’ll feel fear. But you mustn’t be consumed by it. Laila, you’re especially susceptible to the Sink’s influence. Your eyes and ears… and your witch’s blood, all of it is sweet prey for the Sink. Like a fig dripping with honey, you might say.”
Just as a chilling shudder ran up Laila’s spine, Eustar’s movements stopped. Extremely tense, Laila couldn’t help but react sensitively to even his slightest gestures.
“What’s wrong? Is something there?”
After a moment of silence, Eustar straightened up and said:
“A child died around here, and so did the mother.”
Then he looked around the pitch-black forest without a speck of light and turned to face Laila.
“Tell me if you see anything, Laila.”
“See? I can’t see anything. It’s too dark, I can barely make out your face…”
It was at that moment that ‘it’ appeared.
At first, Laila couldn’t quite understand what was happening. She only knew she wanted to get away from this place.
Although one of Eustar’s arms was protecting her, even his presence wasn’t enough to reassure her now. Her heart pounded wildly. A loud warning screamed in her head, telling her to flee immediately.
It was a hole. Like the powder Eustar had scattered earlier, it was pitch black, as if another layer of darkness had been added on top of the darkness. It was so black that even its edges were clearly visible.
Laila instinctively knew that this hole had no bottom. The realization of this and the movement of Laila’s feet towards the hole happened almost simultaneously. The warning sound in her head had already stopped.
“Laila! Snap out of it! Don’t empathize with the Sink!”
Empathize? What is he talking about? And who is this man anyway?
That’s so sad, Laila thought. There’s someone so sad… inside there. As she kept repeating such thoughts, she even began to feel sorry for them. She felt like she should go in there and help whoever it was…
—Laila Kristrad.
Suddenly, Laila shuddered as if stabbed by a knife and opened her eyes wide.
She couldn’t tell whose voice she had just heard. It sounded like Eustar’s voice, but it was as if someone else had borrowed his mouth to call her… No, not someone. It was ‘something’.
It clearly wasn’t human.
Laila, having barely regained her senses, turned her head to look at Eustar.
“Is that… the Sink?”
He nodded, pulling Laila a bit closer towards himself.
“The Sink is both a ‘phenomenon’ and a living thing.”
“You’re saying that thing is alive?”
“It’s not a being with blood and flesh like humans, dogs, or cats… but conceptually, it’s definitely a living entity. So you must not empathize with it. I told you, didn’t I? To the Sink, you’re like a fig dripping with honey. It will do anything to swallow you. So don’t feel any emotion towards it.”
“It’s not something I can control. Without realizing it…”
Eustar smiled softly. It was a smile meant to reassure her.
“I know. Everyone reacts that way when encountering a Sink without any protection. But remember what I said. As long as I’m by your side, nothing can harm you. That applies not just to the villagers, but to the ‘Sink’ as well. Now, Laila. It’s time for your eyes. Look carefully. What do you see?”
Laila didn’t want to look back again, but she realized that Eustar’s hand was gently controlling her somehow. And once again, she wondered.
Why doesn’t it feel unpleasant?
Then, a figure mixed with ash and white colors caught Laila’s eye.
It was a child.
The boy was sitting with his legs stretched out near the Sink’s pit. Several marble-like objects were rolling around him, and…
No, Laila thought. Those aren’t marbles.
Suddenly, her throat felt parched.
“Those are eyes…” Laila whispered.
“The eyes of dead children. What on earth…”
Eustar leaned his head over Laila’s shoulder, still holding her as if embracing her. He slightly adjusted the decoration on the monocle he wore on his right eye and let out a small exclamation, “Ah.”
“Good. It’s very clear. At this level, I should be able to see what you’re seeing.”
As he muttered incomprehensible words, the boy’s ghost began to pick up the eyes rolling on the ground and repeatedly insert them into and remove them from his eye sockets.
Now that she looked closely, the place where his eyes should have been was empty. Laila shuddered at the eerie sight she wouldn’t want to see even in her dreams, and Eustar spoke again.
“Look carefully. Watch and listen carefully. What story is being told?”
“I can see it, but I can’t hear anything.”
“I don’t think that’s true. Listen closely.”
Laila took a deep breath. She slowly focused her attention on the boy who was endlessly repeating the act of inserting and removing eyeballs.
She knew she shouldn’t stare too intently, but now she had no choice. And with Eustar there, she felt a little, just a little more courageous than usual.
How long had it been?
It was only a few seconds, but to Laila it felt like years. Suddenly, a strange sound echoed in her ears.
It was hard to describe. It sounded like dry leaves rustling against each other in the wind, or like countless insects flapping their wings and crawling quickly through a narrow space…
It became clearer and louder. Finally, Laila could pick out a distinct phrase amidst the meaningless background noise of rustling.
—Those kids killed me. They killed me.
A shock hit her as if someone had thrown a stone at the center of her forehead. At the same time, Laila saw the memories of the boy who had created the Sink.
‘Bin… His name is Bin.’
Bin, who had just turned eleven this year, was living a relatively happy life with his mother on the outskirts of the village, who occasionally traveled to neighboring villages to work. Except for one thing, the fact that he couldn’t see, it wasn’t a bad life.
Around the age of six, Bin had barely survived a severe fever, but in exchange, he lost his sight. When the world suddenly turned dark overnight, he couldn’t bring himself to go outside.
When his mother had to go out to work all day, she would lock the door from the outside.
Then Bin would be alone in the dark house, pitch black both day and night. By touching the window, he could feel a faint temperature, and with that alone, Bin could sense that time was still flowing and feel reassured.
Then an accident happened.
One day, Bin’s mother, exhausted from fatigue, overslept. In a hurry not to hear complaints from the field owner, she rushed out of the house without even properly putting on her headscarf.
The carelessly locked padlock fell off, and Bin realized the door was open. He knew he shouldn’t go out, but he couldn’t resist the temptation.
When Bin stumbled out of the house, Tommy, who acted as the neighborhood leader, saw him.
—Hey, look over there! Looks like the blind boy’s out for a walk!
Tommy was a mischievous and mean boy who often bullied younger children. Bin was about the same age as Tommy, but teasing Bin, who could only stagger around unable to see, was easier than twisting a baby’s wrist.
Tommy took Bin to the forest with other boys his age, and at some point, they scattered, leaving Bin alone, shouting and giggling. No matter how much he cried and screamed, no one came.
“That child fell off a cliff…” Laila said, barely moving her trembling lips.
She slowly turned her head, pointing to an ominous dark cliff. It was right above the Sink. Below were treacherous rocks.
Two days later, when Bin’s mother found her son’s body in tatters, wild animals had already torn and mutilated the corpse. She held the ragged body, wailing, and then took her own life by smashing her head against a rock.
The villagers carelessly dumped the bodies of the two in the forest and returned home, forgetting about the incident. No one ever mentioned what happened that day. The house where Bin and his mother had lived was demolished.
Laila’s body shook with pain and anguish. The profound fear and terror Bin must have felt pricked Laila’s body like needles. Just as Laila was about to scream, Eustar gently patted her hunched shoulders and said,
“Thank you, Laila. Thanks to you, I could see clearly too. I’ll take care of it now.”
At that moment, Bin’s ghost stood up, glaring at Eustar with murderous intent and hostility.
Along with this, the unidentifiable ominous energy emanating from the Sink intensified. Laila felt like she was about to faint from suffocation, but Eustar moved his neck this way and that, his expression unchanged as if he was basking in warm steam.
He extended one hand forward. Bin, who had been trying to find eyes that fit him even as a ghost, suddenly opened his closed eyelids. Two snakes swiftly crawled out of those holes, approaching to bite Eustar’s ankle.
“You have no bottom. Look, you have no bottom. Look beneath where you stand.”
—Hate, hate, hate!!
An ear-piercing sharp sound shot up into the air. The wind whirled, and tree branches rustled, rubbing against each other.
“Look at your feet. See where you are!”
Suddenly, there was a loud bang. At the same time, Bin’s soul was sucked into Eustar’s hand.
What had been a completely human shape until he was crouching was now grotesquely transformed, like stretched taffy. Inside Bin’s stretched-out belly, screaming, there were no internal organs at all.
As the echo of the explosion faded, Laila lost consciousness.
When scheming men desperately battle for her favor in the male harem
This one’s also on my reread list! The rivalry, scheming between the men in the imperial harem are just as intense and thrilling as in classic palace drama novels, where concubines fight to the death. Give it a read, girls! I promise you won’t be disappointed.
Synopsis:
“I am not worthy of her… but I still want to be by her side, even if only as a loyal dog…”
Those were the painful whispers of Yue Guanyi – the proud Crown Prince of the Great Qi, who was torn between deep love and a guilty conscience. Despite holding the supreme power of the Imperial Guard, he still could not forget the dark past when he was sold into a brothel.
Fate played a cruel twist when Qiu Shuzhi – a young female official who had just passed the imperial examinations with top honors – stepped into his life. She did not know that she was the one who had saved him from a tragic fate many years ago. And now, her heart was the target of pursuit for both Yue Guanyi and the powerful Empress Dowager Qin Qing.
While Yue Guanyi only dared to silently care for and protect the one he loved from afar, the Empress Dowager Qin Qing openly expressed his feelings and did not hesitate to take advantage of his power to approach Qiu Shuzhi. The covert struggle between the two most powerful forces in the imperial court began…
Trigger warning: All men in this novel are yandere style.
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