Chapter 25
A-XX Portrait of the Disassembled God (3)
step. step. step.
Myeon Bu-jang walked.
Not slow, not fast.
Slowly, carefully, yet without a single trace of hesitation.
A straight line toward the Portrait of the Disassembled God.
As if he already knew exactly what he had to do.
I held my breath.
No—I wasn’t even breathing anymore.
My lungs felt crushed, my throat completely dried up.
But I wasn’t the only one.
Assistant Son was bent low, his body tightly hunched.
Sik Ju-im bared his teeth, growling low while gripping his chains.
Deputy Mok’s roots trembled slightly, and even Manager Batori had stopped shaking his tumbler.
As I watched that scene, I suddenly realized something.
This was a moment that felt like climbing a staircase.
A final step where, once seen, you could never go back.
Myeon Bu-jang stopped right in front of the Portrait of the Disassembled God.
Then he raised his arm.
His suit sleeve rolled back smoothly, and his fingertips gently rested on the broken god’s chest cavity.
That moment.
“……!”
Everything stopped.
All movement of the Portrait of the Disassembled God—literally came to a halt.
As if it had truly turned into a statue.
Even the flesh crawling through the cracks, the organs, the eyeballs, and the pulsating veins all froze.
Time in the isolation room seemed to stop, as if the unit called “life” had been briefly turned off.
Myeon Bu-jang was the same.
His movement stopped.
More precisely, his entire body froze.
But…
Something was strange.
Not everything.
His face.
His seven faces.
The seven expressions revealed above his suit.
Each of their mouths did not stop.
In fact, they began moving faster.
All mouths, at the same time, endlessly muttering something.
A voice you should never hear began to be heard.
