WOSE Chapter 1

0. Whale Fall

In a winter forest dense with skeletal birches, the woman ran through the snowfield like a whale with its tail fin severed.

The thickly piled snow seized her troubled ankles again and again. Her frail body, difficult to move even on flat ground, swayed and stumbled, collapsing several times, but still she pressed forward, forward.

Beyond that rising white blizzard, she absolutely could not be caught by those searching for her.

But contrary to her desperate heart, it was a bitterly harsh day. Too harsh for a woman who had fled in such haste that she hadn't even managed to grab a proper coat.

Even the breath that had continuously clouded white faded away. Her jaw trembled, teeth chattering against each other. Click-click-click. Her exposed hands, both cheeks, both legs—they ached beyond feeling, approaching numbness.

It was agonizing. Her breath rose to her chin and beyond, as if her lungs would tear apart.

And yet.

Why did this situation not feel particularly unfamiliar?

There had been a time when she'd run this desperately before.

In the vivid pain, the woman recalled a past winter day not so different from this one.

Yes, the day she first fell into this world. That day too, she had been fleeing just as wretchedly.

Iyu. Yu (祐) meaning "to help."

True to her name, her end was no different—giving her liver and gallbladder to help family, friends, even strangers.

On that brutal winter day when she'd been scammed out of even her barely saved rent deposit by a friend. Returning home exhausted after work, she came face to face with men in black who'd come to collect her father's debts.

That man who knew nothing of responsibility had apparently not stopped at secondary financial institutions but had finally reached into the third tier as well.

"Your father spilled where you live real easy, you know? Said his daughter would pay it back for him, so don't worry."

"No money? What are you worried about? People have more to give than they think."

The man flicked his cigarette butt to the ground and ran his eyes down her body. Like appraising the worth of goods spread at a fish market, or perhaps a slaughterhouse.

Iyu's spine went cold. She violently shook off the reaching hands. Without looking back, she ran desperately down the steep alley. Curses and heavy footsteps clung to her relentlessly.

Her breath rose to her chin. Her vision blurred entirely with misery and fear. Her exhausted legs swayed, yet like a truck with no brakes, she couldn't stop.

Because she didn't want to be caught. Because she wanted to live like a human being.

Yes, because she desperately wanted to live.

But as if mocking that desire, she soon found herself trapped in a dead-end alley.

Iyu stared with dead eyes at the high wall standing like a prison and the black shadow cast right behind her.

'Why only me.'

They said happiness and unhappiness were supposed to alternate. Was her life to be painted only with unhappiness and end that way?

"Phew, tag's a bit rough at my age. I'd say the night walk's done, wouldn't you?"

'This is the end?'

In a stinking alley, taking someone else's sins upon herself?

Horrible despair washed over her as if blood were draining from beneath her feet. The moment her rigid body went limp. She discovered a white glow on the blocked wall, and dropped into this world.

Surprisingly, after that wretched end, a new beginning had been waiting for her.

Waking at the center of a round table as large as her studio apartment, she soon realized this world was not the one she'd lived in. That she could never return, as well.

Having lost even a shred of hope for the future in that alley, she refused to adapt. She didn't even want to accept reality.

But the people of this strange world were all uniformly kind to her. And for good reason—this world was being devoured by something like a black hole called "darkness," and the only solution to it was beings from other worlds, like Iyu.

They desperately needed an outsider who would become their savior—that is, "Iyu."

So Iyu realized. That in this place, she didn't need to struggle desperately to make a place to live. That perhaps she could even possess something called happiness.

Though it had begun out of necessity, they willingly offered her sincere hearts. As her protectors, as friends, as lovers...

She had believed she'd finally found where she belonged, discovered a refuge.

'To think it was actually a worse hell...'

Even when her legs and arms became impaired in exchange for removing the darkness, even when she lost her senses one by one, she could endure it. Because those who still cherished her willingly became her legs, her arms.

But when she lost her beloved attendant to the lies and deception of those she'd trusted. When, as a result, she lost even her sight and became no different from a waking corpse. For the first time, she despaired deeply in her heart.

Was it the pity of a god who finally took pity on her foolishness, or perhaps divine mockery? On a night when she could miraculously move her body.

Believing there must have been unavoidable circumstances that forced them to deceive her, she limped to find them, and there she finally faced the brutal truth.

"How is the Savior's condition?"

"I heard this incident was quite shocking—she's been refusing all visitors. From what I hear, she's no different from half a corpse..."

"Tsk, to be in such a state just because one little servant died."

"If we could absorb the darkness by simply throwing the Savior's body at it, we wouldn't have to go through the trouble of catering to a child's moods."

The one she'd believed cared for her like family sighed thus.

"Well, either way, thanks to the human representative playing the Savior's lover so well, most of the major darkness has disappeared. Now we just need to resolve the darkness in the merfolk's seabed, but with the Savior's condition like this..."

"Sorry, but I need Kalix's help again this time. If you and I talk it through properly, 'our one' will gladly sacrifice herself again."

The one she'd believed was her friend suggested with a benevolent face.

"...I'll try speaking with her."

Finally, the one she'd believed was her one and only lover readily agreed.

'Ah...'

Iyu slowly blinked her eyes, clouded and devoured by darkness. She didn't scream. She didn't shed tears. She didn't burst through the door to curse or rage at them.

She simply slowly understood the cruel truth.

That what they'd given her had been nothing but deception from start to finish. That the worry, apologies, gratitude they'd shown—even the friendship and love—had been worthless sandcastles. That everything surrounding her had been lies, shoddy and beyond shabby.

And so Iyu fled, as she had that night when she ran to survive. Perhaps even more desperately than that.

Not from loan sharks, not from her father like baggage—but from her dear friends and lover.

"Our one!"

"Savior!"

Through the harsh wind, voices desperately seeking her drew closer and closer.

Running frantically, Iyu finally reached a cliff's edge, cut off like a dead-end alley.

Iyu at last turned around with her back to the cliff. She stared vacantly at the familiar faces that had caught up to her.

Through her imperfectly returned vision, haggard complexions reflected back. Likely because she appeared so precarious she might tumble over the cliff at any moment.

"Savior! How can you move—no, why on earth are you doing something so dangerous!"

"Our one! Wait, it's dangerous, so don't move anymore and stay right there! I'll come to you..."

The man standing at the center of those who'd chased Iyu—her lover—suddenly stepped toward her.

"Don't come closer!"

Had she not screamed and taken one more step back, it would have been so.

The man, his steps stopped helplessly, carefully reached out his hand.

"Our one, please. Calm down and come here. Yes?"

Where his smile that always seemed to shine like the sun had been withdrawn, only anxiety and fear remained.

Those trembling fingertips, that desperate voice, those uneasy eyes. In the past, she would have believed these were his love, his worry for her.

But now, knowing he'd taken on the role of lover to force sacrifice upon her. His worry could only look like nervousness that the replacement to plug the world's holes might disappear.

Truly detestable beyond endurance, Iyu coldly warned.

"If anyone takes even one more step, I'll fall just like this."

She glared in turn at the one who'd once been a dear friend, a relied-upon adult, and a lover.

To them, Iyu was not an intimate friend, not a child like a daughter, not a beloved lover—just a foreigner. A tool to fill the crumbling world. A whale whose life was spent, meant to give its blood and flesh and bones to save hundreds, thousands of lives.

"Calm down. We only want to protect you."

The benevolent angel coaxed her with a honey-sweet voice.

Iyu paid no attention, glancing down at the dizzying cliff bottom with no visible floor. Her legs trembled not from running down mountain paths with her impaired body, but purely from fear.

She didn't actually want to die. She didn't want to throw herself into that endless somewhere.

But with this rag-like body, used and exploited to the limit, the only revenge she could take on them was this.

"...Truth is, I wish this wretched world would just perish."

Iyu sneered and for the first time threw her body for her own sake—not into "darkness" but into a dark place.