The Disaster Management Bureau agents snapped their heads around.
“Whoa!”
Wires tipped with Jin Nasol’s ornate nails shot out and snagged the mer-child’s sleeve.
This was the personal weapon of A-squad’s assistant manager.
“Huh? Look, fireworks!”
The child laughed.
Hearing the tainted mer‑child’s giggle, Jin Nasol sliced the most lethal appendage first—the part that secreted paralytic and infectious fluids.
Slice.
“Aaaagh!”
“It hurts! It hurts!”
An agent’s counter‑strike missed by a hair.
Without a pause, Jin Nasol yanked the now‑crippled mer-child in with her wire and clamped the child under one arm.
“Eek!”
Then she announced.
“Take one more step and it dies.”
“…!”
It was a perfectly rational choice.
‘Her legs aren’t in perfect condition.’
Her calf, still numb from the bell‑blade trap, had already forced her to burn items just to keep up with that ominous cat.
Trying to fight two Bureau agents, grab the loot, and run in this state would be idiotic.
And Jin Nasol loathed idiocy.
So, she chose.
“I said stay back.”
“…!”
Words failed, but the gesture spoke plainly.
“Hold on, Bronze-ah.”
Agent Choi, who valued every single life, raised both hands as if to yield while frantically hunting for alternatives.
But…
That was not the Bureau’s textbook response.
‘Hostage.’
The textbook agent, Agent Bronze, stared at the villain with dark eyes.
These scum planned to steal the twelve shells that could save twelve children.
‘Even though those people could escape without them.’
Letting them go would doom those kids.
The Bureau’s priority was crystal clear.
Maximize lives with minimal sacrifice.
—If one civilian must be lost to save many more.
‘So be it.’
“…Bronze-ah?”
Agent Bronze made his decision in a flash.
He raised his glass handgun and charged.
“Hey—!”
At that exact instant, another creature moved.
Jingle.
“W‑Wait…!”
Amid Baek Saheon’s startled cry, the cat sprang soundlessly off his shoulder.
Clamped in its jaws was an Angel’s Sigh conch, pulled straight from Baek Saheon’s bag.
“No!”
The cat sprinted straight at Jin Nasol.
“…!”
She reflexively braced to kick and flick her wire, yet the cat wasn’t aiming for her.
It veered slightly, down and sideways.
“Huh? Kitty doll…”
Straight to the mer-child in Jin Nasol’s grip.
The cat pressed the conch, still clenched in its teeth, tight against the child’s ear.
“…!”
From within the shell flowed a tingling voice.
Hummm.
It was a hum as lovely as a soprano’s aria, a lullaby a parent once crooned.
A stirring phrase of a national anthem, a jubilant hymn brimming with life.
But only one phrase.
A single melody drifted softly, tenderly from the shell and tickled the child’s ear.
“…Huh?”
The tailless mer‑child froze.
Hm, hmmmm, hmm, hmmmmmhh…
Bleeding slowed.
Ulcers shrinking on face and limbs, the torsion of infection easing, vocal cords returning to proper shape.
It wasn’t a full rewind to a pristine child, but the rampant infection faltered, and the human life still inside flared like kindling catching flame.
Next moment—
“Huuu…”
With a deep sigh, the child was once more simply a sick little boy.
“……”
“……”
Everyone, stunned by the miracle, hesitated on pure instinct.
“W‑What’s going on? Mom…!”
The boy burst into hysterical sobs, the hallucination collapsing, Twinkle Twinkle Ocean Palace gone, and horrific reality laid bare to naked eyes.
“…!”
‘It even breaks the brainwashing…!’
And as the child was banished from that blissful dream and kept bawling, the cat, astonishingly, crept into his arms and let him cling for comfort.
“K-Kitty…”
Even when the child yanked its head with a rather rough grip, the cat sat motionless.
That only made it creepier, yet the signal was unmistakable.
That creature was friendly toward children.
‘Is this a ghost story whose rules change by age?’
Ever an elite of the Field Investigation Team, Jin Nasol kept analyzing, yet she did not release her hostage.
She merely stopped overtly subduing the child. No one could predict how that cat‑shaped danger would react.
But…
“Really, these people are out of their minds.”
Someone exploited that tiny opening.
“…!”
A glass bullet flew.
Jin Nasol saw it. One agent fired the glass handgun at her legs while another, already in range, tried to bind her torso.
‘Hah.’
She deliberately let herself topple backward.
Her body, suddenly limp and boneless, slipped past their grapples by a hair.
At the same time she flung the hostage straight into Agent Choi’s arms.
“…!”
The moment Agent Choi caught the child, who was still clutching the cat.
‘There are hostages everywhere.’
Jin Nasol made the cold calculation and kicked the door.
‘We’re pulling out.’
The other Daydream employees, reading her intentions, moved to follow. Baek Saheon gripped the bag holding the remaining eleven Angel’s Sighs and bolted.
[This way]
The cat looked up.
“…!”
The ominous cat quietly stepped out from the arms of the child held by Agent Choi.
“Why are you…”
The quadruped creature walked among the frozen onlookers. Then, after passing by everyone, it stopped in front of something.
The severed tail of the young mermaid, the one Jin Na-sol had cut off.
A strand of the ulcer mass.
[This way]
The cat’s form crackled as it turned to face the people.
“W-What are we supposed to do with that…?”
[This way]
Its blood-red eyes looked directly at me.
A gaze that seemed to already know everything about me.
“……”
Fucking hell.
Baek Saheon quickly grabbed the tail with his gloved hand, trying to stuff it into the waterproof pouch on the front of his bag.
But Agent Choi was faster. He snatched the tail away before he could.
“Ah…!”
Agent Choi, still categorized as a ‘child’, firmly gripped the still-wriggling tail that was desperately trying to parasitize him, and spoke to the cat.
“You provoked the attack because you needed this, didn’t you?”
Silence.
“What use is this tail?”
The cat did not speak.
And yet, it answered.
[This way]
By fixing its gaze on the employees of Daydream Inc.
“…!”
Agent Choi secured the tail in a containment case and then hurriedly began scribbling words on the ground with the chalk he carried.
A point of connection where the gaze of the Twinkle-Twinkle Dragon Palace and the Mermaid Grave intersects.
– You guys are using the tails, huh?
“…!”
– If you tell me where and how you use it, I promise I won’t fight anymore until we get out of here~ I swear it on my honor as an agent! ^^
– Is it something you use to escape? I know all about you running away on the escape vessel. So where and how do you use it?
‘This crazy bastard…’
But Agent Choi had his reasons for confidence.
– The cat seems to want us to talk, too, right?