The student had straight, jet-black hair that reached her waist and wore a neat gray school uniform. Achille strode toward her, looking as though she had come straight from school.

Bobby sounded thoroughly puzzled.

“Where are you going?”

Apparently, he couldn't ignore a minor being here.

I half rose from my seat too. It wouldn't look good for the most junior member to sit there doing nothing while a senior got up.

The high school girl sat not far away, holding her opera glasses carefully in one hand. Nothing about her felt particularly out of place. None of the charisma or aggression the elders exuded. None of the prickling stares their agents sent from hiding.

She was an ordinary student, with none of those things about her.

Behind me, Riccardo muttered, “Always sticking his nose in...”

I followed the former detective and came to a stop behind him.

“What are you doing here?”

He launched straight in without preamble. The girl looked up.

Achille spoke stiffly as her eyes widened.

“Just coming in here is illegal.”

She didn't answer right away.

Sitting quietly in the noisy arena, she gazed up at Achille. She was an unassuming girl: no makeup, no alterations to make her uniform tighter, no distinctive accessories.

Just the elegant opera glasses in her hand.

They were an old-fashioned pair with a long handle attached to one side. I shifted my gaze from her bewildered face to study them.

They were well made. This was no shoddy item assembled from cheap materials. Every intricately engraved pattern on the handle would have required a skilled hand.

They must be worth quite a bit.

Where had she bought them? You couldn't find something like that just anywhere. Had she inherited them?

But why was I studying her opera glasses so intently?

Just as I began to wonder at myself, the girl spoke.

“Aren't you here to watch the matches too, mister?”

A sharp point.

I gave a small, awkward chuckle, but Achille didn't so much as twitch an eyebrow.

He sounded exactly like a cop as he asked, “Where did you come from? What about school?”

“School's already over. I came straight here as soon as it finished.”

She tugged down the hem of her gray skirt, which covered her knees.

“I didn't even have time to change. The school emblem's on my uniform. And here's my name tag.”

The yellow name tag sewn below the school emblem read “Mari.” A name in plain lettering. After checking the student's neatly embroidered name, Achille frowned even harder.

“Do you know what goes on here? This isn't somewhere an underage student should come alone.”

His stern-faced lecture had no effect on Mari. She looked up at him as though she couldn't understand what he meant.

“Why not?”

“For a start, it's illegal. And this place is full of scumbags. There's no telling what might happen to a minor like you who can't protect herself.”

“But I love these matches!”

A smile spread across her face, so bright it gave anyone looking at her pause.

There was genuine, unalloyed pleasure in it.

“Creatures versus illegal transplant recipients! Isn't it thrilling? So much fun!”

“If you want to see that sort of thing, go to the movies or watch YouTube.”

“But neither is as good as watching in person.”

The smile never left Mari's face.

I watched her raise the opera glasses to her eyes. She looked more eager than anyone for the match to begin. The warnings from the man scowling beside her didn't seem to register at all.

Something was a little off.

She lowered the opera glasses and turned to us again.

“My father was an illegal enhanced-body recipient too.”

“Oh.”

“He was always showing Mom and me how strong he was at home. But then...”

The unassuming girl's smile widened again.

As the arena grew louder around us, Mari finished with a smile full of conviction.

“One day, a creature trampled him to death, and he couldn't do a thing!”

ROAAAR!

Cheers engulfed us.

I looked up to see the main emcee appear in the arena. A typical white man with sleek blond hair swept back and an unnaturally white smile.

Dressed in a tuxedo, he stood atop a huge drone, waving to the crowd.

A holographic window floated beside him. The enormous display appeared to be a betting board for the matches. The constantly changing figures made my eyes swim.

How vulgar.

As I frowned, Bobby called from behind me.

“You need to get out there!”

She and Riccardo had come up right behind us. Achille only glanced over his shoulder, and Bobby frowned as she caught his arm.

“Hurry up! I'll look after the girl!”

“Hi, Mari.”

Beside Bobby, who was tugging at Achille, Riccardo smiled, his eyes curving.

He acted as though he often saw students who came to the arena on reckless escapades, driven by twisted curiosity. Cheerfully ignoring the emcee's cries of “At last! We're back! After overcoming every obstacle! At last! Back with you!” and the like, Riccardo looked down at Mari.

“Want to come get a hot dog with us after a match?”

Mari blinked several times.

While she considered it briefly and then agreed, Achille hurried out of the arena, spurred on by Bobby's insistence that he get moving and leave the rest of the meddling to us.

Riccardo kept talking to Mari.

My ears hurt and the air was stifling, as though I were at some enormous concert venue.

While my seniors busied themselves, I scanned the betting board and the feverish audience. The police were supposed to storm in later and take everyone into custody, but I doubted they could do it without incident.

People were bound to be crushed to death. Some would definitely be armed too.

Could this even work...?

Someone tugged at my elbow.

“Excuse me.”

It was Mari.

My seniors had taken seats on either side of her. I smiled faintly as she handed Bobby the tub of caramel popcorn.

“Yes?”

“Sit down and watch with us, and then we can go get hot dogs.”

Mari spoke as brightly as a student watching her favorite baseball team in person.

Then she gave a fresh, sunny smile, radiating something quite different from the students who might occasionally sneak in here for a rebellious thrill.

Her bright smile kept growing.

“The first match is about to start!”

The iron gate rattled open.

The cheering abruptly dwindled. The EDM cut off. After gazing down at the girl and her shining eyes, I slowly turned. My heightened hearing told me what was happening in the match. Hesitant footsteps emerging. A creature's heavy tread as it came out through the gate.

The emcee's voice rang out.

[“Let the first match begin!”]

Cheers shook the arena.

* * *

The first match ended quickly.

I hadn't expected the ousted elder to appear in the very first match. Sure enough, the first sacrificial lamb was just a drug-addicted illegal transplant recipient. Had he gotten an illegal enhanced-body transplant in a fit of anger, then failed to pay for it? Or was there some other story I couldn't imagine?

Whatever the case, he died miserably, his head bursting apart.

The boar creature, its mouth split all the way to its ears, greedily lapped up the brains scattered across the arena floor.

“Aw, what a shame it was so short.”

Mari, who had watched intently through her opera glasses, sighed. She set them neatly on her lap and murmured regretfully, “Can't we stay for just one more match?”

“You have unusual tastes.”

Riccardo chuckled, his arms folded and legs crossed.

Bobby couldn't come to terms with how bizarre the girl beside her was. She shot Mari a sidelong look, unable to hide her feelings.

Riccardo, on the other hand, was perfectly relaxed. He turned his gaze to the arena with his usual sharp-edged smile.

I studied him. He looked as though he were watching a boring holiday movie on TV.

“What are you staring at?”

“You look bored.”

At my blunt answer, his green eyes rolled toward me. I met their deep-green gaze head-on.

“By all of this.”

Cheers announced the second match.

After regarding me with unreadable eyes, Riccardo turned back to face forward.

I looked toward the arena again too. The second transplant recipient was emerging to face a wolf creature with a split mouth.

I thought he wouldn't answer, but then he said bluntly, “Everything these fuckers do is so predictable...”

Did he mean the criminal organizations?

“Looks like the pigs will take a while to get ready... Let's step outside once this one's over...”

The second contestant wasn't Colton's sacrificial lamb either.

He looked like someone who had lost his way between an inflated sense of self and a reality that couldn't live up to it, hurtling toward ruin. He was so excessively conscious of himself that every movement looked unnatural.

Unlike the first victim, though, he had the will to live. Weapon in hand, he fought to survive the match.

He didn't succeed.

The second contestant was eaten alive.

The sounds of the illegal transplant recipient's muscles and bones being crushed echoed through the arena.

The lunatics had attached a microphone to the creature's back.

Riccardo was still wearing his bored smile, though.

“Shall we go get those hot dogs now?”

As the contestant's death cries stopped, my green-eyed senior rose with an easy smile. He slipped his hands into his pockets and looked down at Bobby, who seemed to have lost her appetite entirely, and Mari, who was in raptures.

“Let's hurry before the crowd gets there...”

We left the arena.

The noise subsided instantly. My surroundings grew dimmer. We took the elevator down and stepped outside into a rush of cool air.

As my field of vision opened up, I felt a small sense of freedom. I had never been so glad to see a food truck in the distance.

The hot dog truck stood to the left of the beer truck.

We headed toward it, crossing an area where there was hardly anyone left apart from the food-truck staff. Only the lights around the trucks illuminated the wasteland. We reached the truck with cold wind slicing at our cheeks.

There was only one item on the menu.

Riccardo ordered a corn dog for each of us. Five corn dogs went into the oil side by side. As they fried to a golden brown, Achille came running, summoned by Bobby.

“Take this girl with you,” Bobby said as he ran out of the darkness.

He reached us in moments and nodded, looking at Mari with conflicted eyes.

“Yes. Their preparations seem to be taking a little longer...”

“Tell them to hurry up. Not that their incompetence is much of a surprise...”

“I've been on their backs.”

“Here.”

Mari thrust out a corn dog.

“The hot dogs are ready!”

Fried golden brown, coated in sugar and drizzled with ketchup.

I watched my seniors stop talking and take their corn dogs, each grasping a stick that Mari held. Bobby took hers first, followed by a reluctant Achille. Riccardo accepted the third with a smile.

Then it was my turn.

Mari held out a freshly fried corn dog to me. I smiled faintly and reached for it.

“Than—”

Ah!

What was that?

My eyes widened reflexively.

What had that been just now? Something had stung the back of my hand.

“A bug?”

Had a mosquito bitten me?

As I raised my hand to inspect it, police officers approached from a distance.

“You, schoolgirl! Get over here right now!”

An unfortunately familiar voice.

I shifted my eyes to see a cop swaggering toward us, hands shoved into a bomber jacket.

Regina approached Mari with a fierce scowl.

“Do you have any idea what kind of place this is? What are you doing here?”

A brief argument followed.

The schoolgirl refused to be taken away by the police. Regina refused to let her go. They bickered in front of the food truck for a while, but as Regina's imperious demands, Achille's grumbling, and Bobby's scolding continued, I was busy examining the back of my hand.

Strange.

I'd definitely felt a sting, so where had I been bitten?

Ever since my reunion with Jaeyeon, my senses of pain and touch had become so acute I could even feel a mosquito piercing my skin. Yet I couldn't find a trace of a bug bite on my hand.

I didn't think I'd imagined it...

I kept staring at my hand even as Mari finally relented and decided to go with Regina.

Until Riccardo, who had been standing quietly watching me, tossed out a question.

“What are you staring at?”

I looked up at Riccardo just as Mari called goodbye while walking away with Regina, and Bobby gave a perfunctory wave before remarking, “That girl was nuts.”

At almost the same moment, my eyes widened at the sight of my seniors' hands.

“Riccardo.”

My sharpened vision had picked out tiny wounds on my seniors, whose long years of missions had dulled their sensitivity to pain.

Wounds so very small that they probably hadn't even felt them.

The marks left by a needle going in and coming out.

“Why isn't the bleeding stopping?”

Pinprick-sized drops of blood had welled up on the backs of my seniors' hands.