A Horror Novel’s Supporting Character Wants to Live as a Human

Chapter 221

What should they do?

Wouldn't Yesung think Anutara was disgusting?

The Arahan exchanged urgent glances from behind, conveying the message 'someone go over there and bring Anutara away,'

But no one could step forward carelessly.

That was because if the people who had given advice tried to stop him, Anutara's dignity would become less than a scorpion's hind leg.

Since it had come to this.

'We can only hope that Yesung's heart is as vast as the desert!'

All the Arahan's gazes focused on Yesung.

Yesung, who had unintentionally become the center of attention, slowly raised his hand.

"Was it hard because it was hot outside? Others told me you went to place scorpion bait. It must have been annoying with sand constantly getting in your mouth.""Yeah."

"If you have nothing to do after this, let's rinse your mouth and rest in the shade. It's not good to be out in such hot places for too long."

Yesung, for reasons unknown, took Yurik's hand with a bright expression and went to the oasis.

He was a man with a much better disposition than the Arahan had thought.

*

Yurik rinsed his mouth at the oasis and shook off the sand stuck to his head.

Whether he washed Yurik's face or combed his hair, Yurik just sat there obediently.

Was he the only one who was secretly enjoying this because it reminded him of young Yurik?

After seating the cleaned-up Yurik under the shade of a tree, he also sat next to him.

Yurik seemed to be in a good mood as he leaned his head against the trunk of the large-leafed tree that blocked the sun and closed his eyes.

Looking at him like this, he had such a pretty and gentle impression.

How had he ended up being chosen as the villain who would destroy the world?

"What are you doing?"

"Looking at your face."

After watching Yurik for a while, he slowly opened his eyes.

Was it burdensome because he was watching?

Just as he was about to turn his gaze away, Yurik asked.

"Why my face?"

"Because you're handsome."

"Do you like handsome things?"

"Of course. There aren't many people who dislike them."

"Yesung is handsome too."

"Oh. What part of me is handsome?"

Precisely, he was talking about Arenheit's appearance, not his own.

Yurik observed him for a moment, then patted the space between his legs with his palm.

Was he telling him to sit? Him? There?

But this was the first harmonious moment since fighting with Yurik, and if he refused something like that, they might return to a stiff relationship again.

As he hesitantly approached,

Yurik wrapped his arms and legs around his body tightly.

"Is, is this piggyback? It's a bit heavy?"

"What's piggyback? I just did it because you were in front of me."

"Being like this reminds me of when you carried me while running."

"Why are you thinking of that now?"

"Because you were as heavy then as you are now..."

Yurik's arm around his neck went limp.

He could feel Yurik pressing his forehead against the spot where his neck and head connected from behind.

"Yurik, are you very angry? Because I said I'd go alone?"

"......"

"I'm sorry for making you angry. And for coming to find you for days and bothering you."

"I'm not angry."

"Then?"

"I was angry, but before that, I've been feeling hurt all along. Because Yesung makes me lonely."

"Lonely?"

He was making him lonely?

Yurik's words continued.

"I thought Yesung would stay with me forever. You said that when you left the Elder Things' city. Let's go together. So I thought Yesung would be with me."

"Yeah."

"The snake-people incident too. I ran away alone first. I was happy that you came to find me, but in the end we were separated for a long time because of that. I thought so many times that I should have been in the mud instead of Yesung."

"That's."

That wouldn't work!

You'd gather Yog-Sothoth again and build a castle!

He almost reflexively argued but closed his mouth.

"I know what intention Yesung had. I understand. The snake-people thing too, right? Because they hate us, you were worried they might harm me later."

"That, that kind of thing."

"Isn't it?"

If Yurik and the snake-people were put together, in the long term, the snake-people were overwhelmingly at a disadvantage.

And among his reasons for trying to drive Ig from this planet, 'Yurik' was at most 7%, no matter how generously he calculated.

But in front of Yurik, who firmly believed he was trying to get rid of Ig because of him,

How could he say 'That's not it?'

"...Right. I did that because I was worried about you."

"See. But there's no need for that. If you're trying to drive away Ig because you're worried about me, you don't have to."

"Even if it becomes very dangerous later?"

"Yeah. I'm stronger."

Had his confidence surged while he wasn't looking?

He didn't understand why he was declaring himself the strongest here.

"Ig might be stronger than you, you know?"

"That's okay too. I want Yesung to stay with me. For a long time."

His tone was very affectionate, but why did the phrase 'for a long time' sound particularly eerie?

When he slowly nodded, Yurik's hand wrapped around his hair and fiddled with it.

"When Shambhala people have babies, they live together for 40 years at the shortest, up to 70 years. They live in one house as family, but we haven't even lived together for 40 years. So I want to be together longer."

"That's the case for families."

"We're family too. Yesung brought me out. So you have to take responsibility."

Yurik was now arbitrarily changing his family register.

He looked back at Yurik because his logic was completely incomprehensible.

"I'm older than you, so if we became family."

"Obviously dad."

"Ah, that way?"

He seemed to have supported him too much.

Not even older brother, but suddenly dad came out, so he had said everything he needed to say.

Ignoring the fact that he was gradually being incorporated into the family tree of this worldview,

He covered and patted Yurik's hand that was staring at him intently.

"When you say it like that, it sounds like I'm too old."

"If not dad, other things are fine too. You can be my mother, or my sibling. You can be my sister, and if you want, I'll even be a lizard or spider that Yesung raises. You can be anything of mine. As long as you want it."

"You're mentioning every relationship you've heard of, aren't you?"

"I really don't mind anything. In Shambhala, people who are together are called family. I think of Yesung as my family. Because we're together."

He almost laughed without realizing it at those words.

Family.

His family was dead,

And the younger brother he thought he loved until the end had become some god's ghostwriter.

He had jumped into this regression to pay for that karma instead.

How many times had this regression been?

The concept of family he had once recognized in Korea felt like a very distant and vague concept.

Even when their bodies were in one room, their hearts were scattered to different places,

And within the social norms and perceptions of family, the responsibilities and duties they had to keep for each other weighed heavily on their hearts.

What was that relationship where love and hatred, sympathy and guilt, responsibility and irritation were connected in a lump without clear distinction?

Was his younger brother family to him?

Did his younger brother think of him as family?

What did mom and dad think of their children?

Parting forever without knowing how they defined each other.

It would probably feel similar to being dropped alone in the middle of a desert at night.

Then had Yurik also been wandering alone in the desert at night all this time?

Yurik asked once more.

"Am I your family?"

"...Yeah. Then you be the younger brother. Since I'm older."

He no longer had anything left that could be called family.

But no matter how he looked at it, the story wouldn't end if he didn't agree here, so he answered.

Yurik, perhaps finding those words funny, pressed his cheek against his back and laughed lowly.

"I remembered Yesung telling me to call you hyung in the Elder Things' garden."

"But in the end, you didn't call me hyung and it was fixed as Yesung."

"I'll call you that sometimes. Since you've really become my hyung."

Saying that, he asked with an unusually innocent face.

"You won't go anywhere, right?"

"Yeah."

Hearing the answer, Yurik laughed happily.

It was such a deep laugh that he couldn't tell if it was satisfaction about him accepting the 'family' he had forced, or laughter from some other meaning.

So he had no choice but to smile back pretending he knew nothing.

In fact, before coming to find Yurik, all plans had been completed in his head.

The end of it all connected to Leandros and the world he would build.

...But even if he explained to Yurik now about Leandros and the end of the story, he surely wouldn't understand.

They got along very well as if they had never fought and talked a lot.

The oasis had no visitors that day, so Yurik and he could monopolize it to their heart's content.

Only the Arahan could be glimpsed in the distance,

And they soon disappeared, so they weren't much of a disturbance.

He didn't have any particularly important conversations with Yurik.

Yurik told more than thirty things about what parts of him were handsome,

And he only threw rebuttals to that.

Besides that, things that happened in the Elder Things' garden,

Or small incidents that occurred while crossing the red earth together.

As they randomly brought up such memories, time flowed like water and the sun was setting before they knew it.

"I should go now. If I stay here longer, it'll get cold."

"It hasn't completely set yet."

"It would be nice if you considered my physical condition a bit, little brother."

"Mm."

Yurik looked at him with an ambiguous expression, then released the arms and legs that had been embracing him all along.

Damn. Finally free.

How many hours had he been in the same position?

"I'll come again tomorrow. Our great Anutara is surely busy, but surely not so busy that he can't spare time for his hyung?"

"You really seem to like the word hyung."

Yurik muttered as he stood up together.

Refusing Yurik's offer to walk him back, on the way home alone.

As he approached near his house, he could see two people standing next to the door.

They had been putting their heads together as if they had worries, but as soon as they saw him coming up to the house, they rushed over in one step.

Tika jumped around and shouted.

"Yesung! Yesung! Where were you! You weren't even home! How long we waited!"

"I was with Yurik near the oasis. What's wrong? Was it urgent?"

Why was Tika acting so urgently?

Looking at Shan next to her, Shan answered relatively calmly.

"We have something to consult about. Tika, give that to Yesung."

Tika handed him a small black pouch.

The pouch was soft but had better elasticity than expected.

Moreover, it was thick, so he couldn't see what was inside and couldn't guess.

"What's this?"

"It's a pouch made from scorpion stomach. It's used to store things like water. People take it when going on long journeys too. But that's not the problem, Yesung. Look at what's inside."

As Shan said, he untied the strings that tightly bound the pouch.

With a sloshing sound from inside came a slightly fishy smell.

It wasn't a completely unfamiliar smell. Something that had started to decay, familiar yet at the same time seeming like it wasn't originally supposed to smell like this...

"Could this be."

Shan nodded.

"An Arahan dropped it. That person said he was going to place bait to lure scorpions. He dropped this when leaving. ...We wanted to go find you, but for some reason there were Arahan wandering around the village so we couldn't go down. We might have been caught stealing this."

"Scorpion bait?"

Scorpion bait. Among Yurik's explanations, what was there?

-There's specific prey they like, so they're attracted to bait that the Arahan set up for camouflage near Shambhala.

The Arahan who were said to have mysterious power.

A pouch containing his spilled blood.

Bait that attracted scorpions.

But when Yurik dealt with scorpions, he didn't get a single wound.

There was no way he would smell of blood.

Yet the ability to detect Yurik. Was that an ability as a scorpion?

Or an ability as a beast that detected magic power?

As far as he knew, there had been only one thing absorbing magic power from the outside until now.

"...Yog-Sothoth is having offspring too."

Things that had died spewing black bodily fluid came streaming through his mind.

Things that existed in the 1st cycle. The Eastern Star Walker. Demonic beasts. The corruption that flowed along old swords.

What had the Elder Things said?

Even they had created harmless life forms based on life forms that originally existed on this planet and kept them under management.

A god of creation who had consumed and worn out everything after giving birth endlessly.

No one could deny the fact that such a god had become the source of this world.

As he quietly felt disgusted inside, Shan asked.

"Tell us. What is this? The Arahan didn't tell us about such things. Why do they carry such things around? What exactly is their power? What did Anutara teach the Arahan?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"Wouldn't not knowing be the real problem!"

Shan's voice rose unusually high.

Tika grabbed Shan's wrist, but Shan shook her off.

He looked at Shan quietly and answered.

"If you insist, I'll tell you."

"Then-"

"But that won't be today. You'll need believable evidence too. When we leave Shambhala, I'll be able to tell you then."

Shan firmly closed his mouth.

He turned to the frightened Tika.

"I'll keep this for now. And there's one piece of bad news."

"Wh, what is it?"

"Yurik."

He really didn't want to say such things.

He closed his eyes, opened them, and spat it out directly.

"He seems to have noticed that I'm planning to leave Shambhala."