Savior Proto-Call Chapter 3

Chapter 3. No Longer Human (3)

The pain was so intense that tears welled up in Yoon Doha's eyes.

Without thinking, she instinctively tried to shove the woman's head away.

But the woman seemed utterly determined to bite off a piece of Doha's flesh, relentlessly sinking her teeth into her skin.

"You... fuck..."

If I were just ten centimeters taller... No, even if I were only a finger's width taller, I could've shaken off this crazy woman and escaped in no time...

Awakening didn't dramatically improve a person's natural physical capabilities.

And since Yoon Doha was considerably smaller than the woman, all she could do was desperately yank at those snow-white locks while her entire body trembled.

The burn dressings covering several of her fingers, already damaged and peeling, began coming loose.

Fluid seeped steadily through the gaps.

They were injuries she'd sustained while working her part-time jobs.

Every part of her body hurt.

But she couldn't simply surrender the flesh being mercilessly crushed between another human being's teeth.

There was no way she could just lie there and calmly allow someone to mutilate her leg.

Yoon Doha pulled at the woman's hair with enough force to nearly tear her scalp off.

Unfortunately, the woman didn't budge an inch.

"It hurts, it hurts... Excuse me... HEY!"

Her habitual politeness disappeared, leaving only the most basic, desperate forms of address.

"Kh..."

But to someone who had been behaving irrationally from the very beginning, Doha's cries seemed no different from meaningless background noise.

The white-haired woman remained completely absorbed in what she was doing.

Someone, please come.

Anyone.

Someone must have heard me screaming in this ridiculously quiet corridor. Come out already!

Yet contrary to her desperate hopes, not a single person showed so much as a strand of hair.

No wonder the recovery room was so fucking soundproof that I almost started hearing things.

But seriously, how can absolutely nobody come out?!

Yoon Doha's eyes reddened with fear and agitation, and blood vessels stood out like thin knife marks against the whites of her eyes.

Despite her increasingly helpless state, another stream of vulgar curses began pouring from her mouth.

This time, however, the profanity was entirely deliberate.

"You... FUCK! LET GO OF ME, YOU GODDAMN BITCH!"

The insult was somewhat offensive, though not entirely unjustified given the woman's behavior.

Yet the woman remained completely unfazed.

Her relentless biting showed no sign of stopping.

If anything, Doha's screams seemed to excite her further.

So this is how those bastards at the Salvation Agency manage disasters who've completely lost their minds to Phantom Pain.

Judging by her appearance, she had clearly been confined somewhere.

At last, Yoon Doha understood why the woman had been running through the research wing's corridors in such a state.

After all, someone capable of doing things no sane person would ever consider couldn't be allowed to wander freely among ordinary citizens going about their peaceful lives.

Just as that somewhat rude assumption crossed her mind, another bite sank into her knee.

"AAAAH...!"

The woman's sharp canine teeth finally tore through her flesh.

Yoon Doha's terror reached its peak.

Her heart, which had been beating steadily beneath her ribs until moments ago, now thrashed so violently that it seemed ready to stop functioning altogether.

Perhaps that was why—

A sudden recklessness surged through her instead.

Like an animal driven into a corner, she found herself considering all sorts of violent and cruel actions she normally wouldn't even have the nerve to attempt.

Even the smallest creature would try to tear out a predator's fur with its teeth before dying.

Even when facing an unknown opponent against whom resistance seemed utterly hopeless.

I'm supposed to enter the academy in two weeks.

There's no way I'm letting myself end up in the news as some unfortunate girl who got bitten to death by an ability user suffering from Phantom Pain.

She refused to accept such a meaningless ending, where the fragile opportunity she'd finally been given was snatched away before she could even seize it.

And at the hands of another human being, no less.

An ability user.

A rabid dog trying to eat another person alive.

"I SAID LET GO OF ME...!"

Yoon Doha twisted her face into an even fiercer scowl than the stern expression she usually wore to keep others from seeing her as an easy target.

Then she began grabbing, clawing, hitting, and shoving the woman's head and shoulders indiscriminately.

At some point, the fluid seeping from the wounds on her hands became tangled in the woman's white hair.

She didn't care.

Crack! Thwack! Smack! Crunch! Rrrip!

The sounds of the woman chewing on her flesh and Doha striking her head and tearing at her hair combined into a grotesquely discordant symphony.

The sounds of their brutal struggle echoed throughout the otherwise silent corridor.

Torn strands of white hair became tangled between Doha's scar-covered fingers.

But she was hardly in a position to worry about hair that would eventually grow back.

If anything, she desperately hoped the pain might somehow bring the woman back to her senses.

Unfortunately, the woman's desperate, obsessive determination to cling to Doha's leg and bite it made her impossible to stop with a few blows from Doha's arms.

Sometimes, surrender wasn't necessarily shameful.

Yoon Doha had occasionally relied on giving up as a means of survival.

After all, there were situations where struggling unnecessarily only made things worse.

As she reflected on her usual approach to staying alive, Yoon Doha gradually let her shoulders slump.

Still clutching the woman's hair, she stared blankly ahead.

The woman's actions filled her unfocused vision.

Once her body reached its physical limit and her strength began draining away, resignation inevitably followed.

The fact that not a single person had appeared despite all the commotion left her utterly disheartened.

She even began seriously wondering whether the woman's Phantom Pain involved some bizarre condition in which her soul had fused with that of a canine.

At this point, it seemed like a perfectly reasonable suspicion.

With eyes drained of every last ounce of strength, Doha watched the woman enthusiastically feast on her knee.

The white-haired woman didn't even seem bothered by the murderous glare directed at her.

She showed no inclination whatsoever to lift her lowered head.

And just as Doha's remaining strength to struggle was finally running out—

Another commotion erupted from the corner where the woman had first appeared, charging out like a rabid dog.

"Lee Young-ah...!"

An unfamiliar name rang through the corridor.

Immediately afterward, someone wearing a white lab coat appeared at the far end of the hallway.

Two more people followed closely behind.

Both wore black trousers resembling joggers and tops made from similarly stiff material.

The heavy pounding of footsteps and the lighter squeaking of rubber soles against the floor overlapped, echoing through the corridor like the distant announcement of the end of a disaster.

Yoon Doha instinctively raised her head.

Her eyes held a mixture of hope that this nightmare might finally end and resentment that they had taken so damn long to arrive.

...Fucking finally.

They say Korea's country code is 82 because Koreans are all about doing things quickly.

So what the hell? Is this not South Korea anymore?

While unleashing every curse she could think of internally, Doha focused on the two figures behind the woman in the lab coat.

Their clothing was distinctive enough that she had little trouble identifying their profession.

They're ability users affiliated with the Salvation Agency.

"Haaaaah...! L-Lee Young-ah! Lee Yoooung!"

The brown-haired researcher turned deathly pale at the sight of the two women.

They looked as though they'd been engaged in some filthy, underhanded brawl, biting and tearing at each other like wild animals.

Yoon Doha narrowed her normally gentle eyes into a vicious glare.

Then, as though deliberately demonstrating the situation, she smacked the white-haired woman's head one more time.

The sensation of the woman's face pressing against her injured kneecap sent a chill down her spine.

"Baek Lee Young...! You can't do this here!"

You can't do this here?

That was hardly the appropriate thing to say.

Ripping apart a complete stranger's pants and chewing on their flesh was something one shouldn't do anywhere, to anyone.

"L-Lee Young-ah! Stop!"

In any case, Baek Lee Young wasn't Doha's name.

Apparently, that rather gentle-sounding name belonged to the human being currently attempting to practice cannibalism on her.

It'd be nice if she could actually live as peacefully as her name sounds.

"Mmm."

A groan that sounded as though it had been scraped from the depths of a throat accompanied another surge of agonizing pain.

Refusing to lose, Yoon Doha struck the woman's head once more and breathed harshly through her teeth.

But Baek Lee Young, who had clearly lost her mind, didn't care.

Instead, almost as though she were deliberately showing off, she clamped her teeth down on the skin just above the area she'd already torn open.

Then she began chewing rapidly.

Perhaps the arrival of people capable of stopping her had made her impatient.

"Hngh... You fucking bitch."

Doha spat out the short curse through a pained whimper.

At the same time, she began desperately praying to every god she could think of.

Please.

Please don't let my Phantom Pain turn out to be something this disgusting.

Please don't let me become something that throws away its humanity like this.

She begged every god in the world with all the desperation she could muster.

"Lee Juhan! Pull Baek Lee Young off her!"

"Yes, Najin! All right, Lee Young! Lee Young! You're not supposed to bite people!"

A muscular man with a buzz cut approached, clapping his hands together as though psyching himself up.

His sturdy build was so imposing that he wouldn't have looked out of place standing beside a refrigerator.

Another person stepped forward beside him.

A dark-blue ponytail swayed behind the newcomer's head, and an eyepatch covered their left eye.

The two grabbed Baek Lee Young by the arm and waist, respectively, and began pulling her away.

Fortunately, the difference in physical strength was overwhelming.

Baek Lee Young was separated from Doha with surprising ease.

The same body that hadn't budged an inch no matter how desperately Doha struggled was suddenly lifted straight into the air.

However—

Rrrip. Plop.

...Plop?

"AAAAAAH...!"

A scream so shrill it seemed to tear through the air burst from Yoon Doha's lips.

She instinctively clamped a hand over her mouth and held her breath.

Her dry, stunned eyes fell upon her knee.

The surface that should have been smooth and relatively flat was now uneven, with a shallow depression gouged into the flesh.

Because the damned woman's teeth had still been embedded in her skin when she was pulled away, a portion of Doha's flesh had been torn off along with her.

The remaining wound was ragged and irregular.

Bright-red blood continued welling up from the torn flesh.

Even in that moment, Yoon Doha found herself inwardly marveling at the woman's absurdly tenacious bite strength.

Then, finally unable to endure any more, she doubled over and curled up around herself.

"Fuck... Agh... Goddamn it..."

Muttering curses under her breath, she barely managed to lift her head.

Baek Lee Young had finally been pulled away from her.

A filthy mixture of saliva and blood stained the woman's lips pink.

Her white hair was so disheveled that her eyes were almost completely hidden.

Yet the fresh bloodstains around her mouth, as though she'd just finished slaughtering an animal, remained unmistakably visible.

Despite having just torn living flesh from another person, Baek Lee Young wore an utterly vacant expression.

She shook her head vigorously.

Then her throat moved in a pronounced gulp.

A moment later, she abruptly lowered her head.

Plop. Plop.

The pieces of flesh she'd torn away dropped onto the floor near her feet.

Yoon Doha's eyes trembled violently at the grotesque sight.

She now understood, with every fiber of her being, that the rumors she'd heard weren't baseless after all.

When encountering an ability user, the first piece of information you needed to uncover wasn't their name.

Nor was it their affiliation.

Nor even their grade.

It was the symptoms of their Phantom Pain.

Among the many bizarre rumors she'd heard here and there, she'd never encountered a case of Phantom Pain quite this uncontrollable.

Of course, perhaps she'd vaguely imagined that something like this might exist.

But imagining it and experiencing it firsthand were entirely different matters.

Is this supposed to be some kind of bad-luck cleansing before everything begins?

Or is it a warning of what's waiting for me?

A migraine flared through her head, as though someone had poured molten iron directly into her brain.