Convict Unit: Black Parade

“I want to be a dog, too!”

Dia made a point of saying it again.

Jae-hee, who had frozen at the insane declaration, let out a long, drawn-out ahhh.

“So, what you’re saying is… you want to cast off all the external shackles that bind you, become a free spirit, and you’ve just condensed all that into a single sentence. Right?”

“While that’s also true, I genuinely want to be a dog.”

Well, she’s reached quite an incredible conclusion…

Jae-hee gave up trying to understand and simply gaped.

Status Window stepped forward. “Fufu, Miss Dia. We’re inside a Gate… The only ones watching are us desu.”

“...!”

“And we are the Black Parade’s Secret Service. It’s okay in here desu. You can be honest desu. Do whatever you want desu. That’s what the Secret Service is for…”

Status Window smiled, his expression warm and benevolent.

“Now, Miss Dia. Declare it once more, loud and clear desu… What do you really want to be desu?”

Dia swallowed hard.

“Like Ms. Rabid Dog, I want to cast off all the shackles and restraints of being the President’s daughter and…”

She squeezed her eyes shut, then snapped them open and finally said it again.

“I want to live freely and proudly, as my true self! Just once would be enough!”

***

A few moments later, the group was proceeding deeper into the dungeon.

“It’ll be hard to escape back through the entrance, so the fastest way out is to find the Gate Core, destroy it, and let the Gate itself collapse,” Jae-hee said, taking the lead.

“It was a micro-Gate, so the dungeon itself should be small… which means the Core should be close, right?”

“That’s right. The Core should be appearing soon,” the Doctor agreed. She’d participated in a few Gate operations before.

Micro-gates typically had very small dungeons. This one, too, had to be nearing its end.

“Once we take care of the Core, this mission will finally be over…”

“Yeah…”

“And then I won’t have to look at that anymore…”

“…”

A cold sweat trickled down Jae-hee’s back as he glanced over his shoulder.

There, scampering along, was Dia, putting her desire into practice while the rest of the team did their best to ignore her.

It was a bizarre spectacle, the kind only possible inside a Gate, with only the Secret Service team as witnesses.

Regardless…

“Hm.”

Dia, who had been diligently scurrying after the group on all fours, furrowed her brow as if something wasn’t to her liking.

“Hmm… something’s not right.”

“…”

“Why is that? I don’t particularly feel free.”

Dia carefully observed Rabid Dog beside her, trying to mimic her.

“Do I need fur, like Ms. Rabid Dog? Or do I need to be able to scratch my ear with my hind leg?”

“…”

“Should I try barking like a dog? Woof woof?”

But all that came out was a yap, yap—a cry worthy of a chihuahua.

The suffocating feeling that shackled her heart refused to disappear.

Dia swept a hand over her still-constricted chest and asked Rabid Dog, “How can I become truly free, like you, Ms. Rabid Dog?”

Rabid Dog merely shot her a sullen, sideways glance.

Not that Dia had expected an answer; she just let out a small sigh.

What a crazy world.

Jae-hee was shaking his head, pitying Dia for having finally snapped under the stress of being the President’s daughter, when—

“Ah!”

Just as they’d expected, a glowing stone floating in midair soon came into view.

“There it is! The Gate Core!”

Jae-hee drew his sword.

The grade and hardness of a Gate Core were proportional to the Gate’s size.

Since this was a micro-Gate, the Core wouldn’t be very tough. Jae-hee figured he could shatter it with a single attack.

Just then, the last remaining group of slimes moved to block the Black Parade’s path.

But they didn’t just block them; the slimes began to behave strangely.

“The slimes… they’re merging?” Jae-hee muttered in confusion.

The individual Mirror Slimes tangled together, melting into one another until they formed a single, massive entity.

Its surface looked as if it were pieced together from countless mirrors.

Seeing it, Status Window cried out urgently. “That’s a fused entity of Mirror Slimes, a Mirror-ball Slime desu!”

“What’s its ability?”

“It’s similar to a Mirror Slime, but a little different desu! It broadcasts a target’s unpleasant past, their most shameful moments… live across its entire body desu!”

The moment Status Window finished speaking, the Mirror-ball Slime flashed brightly, and its entire body began to display Status Window’s cringe past.

A scene of him confessing to the most popular kid in kindergarten and getting rejected.

A scene of him being teased for the rest of his time there.

A scene where his mistake ruined the entire class’s performance at the school talent show, earning him glares from every kid and parent.

A scene where he was pushed into running for elementary school class president, only to lose miserably and be laughed at.

A scene from his first day of middle school, where his parents showed up to hand out snacks to the entire student body, smiling and asking everyone to please take good care of “our dear Tae-chang.”

“Agh! This stuff is so petty, but it’s painful just to watch!” Jae-hee yelled, clutching his head.

Then, when Status Window was in high school, the roof of their new house suddenly collapsed and…

Huh?

Just as Jae-hee registered his confusion at that last fleeting image, he heard a cry.

“Kraahhhhh!”

Unable to withstand the continuous revelations of his cringe past, Status Window coughed up blood and collapsed.

This was damage that not even the windbreaker Jae-hee had lent him could block.

As Status Window fell, the images on the Mirror-ball Slime’s surface flickered and changed.

Its next target was…

“...!”

Dia.

Her own embarrassing past began to flash across the Mirror-ball Slime’s countless mirrored facets.

A scene of her birth as the daughter of the legendary Hunter San Kim, bearing the weight of everyone’s expectations.

A scene of her receiving the test results that showed she had no talent as an Awakened.

The kind face of her mother, trying desperately to hide her disappointment.

The stoic face of her father, whose thoughts were always a mystery.

For her father, who was walking the path of a politician, she had tried desperately to be the perfect daughter.

But her mother always seemed to regret her lack of an Awakening, and her father had never once smiled at her, no matter what she did.

No matter how hard she tried, her parents had never once praised her, never once told her she’d done a good job.

“…”

Dia couldn’t even scream. Her face was a pale, bloodless mask.

Jae-hee rushed in front of her, shielding her with his body. “Miss Dia, don’t look—!”

But the moment their eyes met, the moment he saw her clutching at her chest in agony, something shifted.

“...!”

He saw his younger self in her.

The boy trapped within walls of snow and ruin.

“…No.”

And so, Jae-hee stepped aside.

“It’s okay to look, Miss Dia.”

“What?”

As Jae-hee moved away, Dia’s face went pale again before the endless replay of her past failures.

But Jae-hee’s voice was strong as he spoke to her.

“Whether you live inside a Gate or outside. Whether you live as a dog or as the President’s daughter. None of that matters.”

“...!”

“What’s important is that you free yourself from the shackles in your own heart. From the prison you built, Miss Dia! Your own prison!”

Every shameful memory reflected in that Mirror-ball was Dia’s prison. The bonds of a past that held her captive.

“You said you wanted to be free?”

And the key to that prison was in Dia’s own hands.

The key to the prison in one’s heart was always, only, held by oneself.

“Then open the door and walk out!”

“...!”

“It’s okay, you can do it! Of course you can! You’ve already… found the person you want to be!”

As he said it, Jae-hee blinked.

Huh. If that’s the case, then what about me?

I… How do I get out of my prison?

How… do I fly…?

Just then.

“That’s right…” Dia, who had squeezed her eyes shut, snapped them open and glared ahead. “I don’t need some Awakening…”

With steady eyes, she faced her past head-on.

“And I don’t need some title like ‘the President’s daughter’!”

“...!”

“Because I… have already found who I want to be!”

The girl yelling so boldly was still on all fours.

But why does her ideal image have to be a dog…?

Jae-hee felt like crying a little.

From her position, Dia let out a threatening, chihuahua-like roar at the Mirror-ball Slime.

“Grrrr… woof!”

“...!”

“Woof woof woof woof woof—!”

And then, a crack spread across one of the Mirror-ball Slime’s countless mirrors.

That was the beginning.

As Dia’s heart held firm in the face of her shameful past, the mirrors that had failed in their attack began to crack, one after another.

“...!”

Jae-hee didn’t miss the opening.

He kicked off the ground and flew.

The Mirror-ball Slime scrambled to lock onto him, trying to display his past.

“My past—”

But Jae-hee was faster than the slime’s mirrors could form an image.

Swinging his pure white longsword—Mountain Lord—like a raging gale, Jae-hee roared.

“—is happening right now!”

Shattering the cracked mirror, Jae-hee plunged like a cannonball through the Mirror Slime, bursting out the other side.

Shards of mirror scattered in every direction, and the images of Dia’s past etched upon them shattered into pieces as well.

Watching her painful memories explode like fireworks, Dia smiled through her tears.

“Woof woof woof—!”

She was still on all fours.

***

Strictly speaking, the Mirror-ball Slime wasn’t a Boss Monster. It was just the dungeon’s Mirror Slimes, gathered together to protect the Gate Core.

After defeating it, Jae-hee walked up to the Gate Core and swung his sword with all his might, splitting it in two.

The Gate Core broke apart without any resistance.

Jae-hee picked up a fragment from the ground and looked at the Doctor, who nodded. “You can cash in that loot and share a bit with us later.”

“Yep. Will do.”

Jae-hee smiled at Dia, too. “You went through a lot, Miss Dia. You’re the one who cleared this Gate.”

Dia hesitated for a moment before speaking in a small voice.

“…Praise.”

“Pardon?”

“Could you… praise me again, properly…?”

Wriggling closer to the bewildered Jae-hee, Dia shyly presented the crown of her head.

He remembered the images on the slime. In all those memories, she had never once received proper praise from her parents.

Jae-hee squeezed his eyes shut.

Okay, just this one last thing. As part of the Secret Service…!

He carefully reached out and stroked her cinnamon-roll hair.

“Y-you did well. You did a really good job…”

“Hehe… woof woof.”

“…”

Somehow, it felt less like petting a person and more like petting a dog.

He couldn’t help but wonder what fresh canine madness this was, but seeing the genuine relief and catharsis on her face, he couldn’t bring himself to stop.

As he mindlessly patted her head, the cavern began to grow faint, its form dissolving as the Gate collapsed.

Jae-hee looked around, his mouth slightly agape.

“The dungeon… it’s disappearing.”

“The Realm Erosion is being nullified,” the Doctor explained. “The Core that anchored the coordinates between this world and reality is gone, so as the Gate vanishes… the Dungeon’s ‘connection’ is severed.”

“I honestly still don’t really get the principle behind it.”

Just then, Status Window, still spread out on the floor, mumbled something. “The sure-fire way to win a fighting game… is to unplug your opponent’s LAN cable…”

That analogy was even harder to understand.

Then, a familiar voice called out from the other side of the cavern.

“Oi.”

Jae-hee turned to see Ghost.

She sauntered over, her hands stuffed in the pockets of her suit pants.

“Looks like you guys took down the Gate Core faster than I could come find you.”

“Master! You’re safe!”

“Of course I’m safe. You all did a good j— Hm?”

Ghost stopped mid-sentence, halting her approach. She slowly surveyed the scene around Jae-hee.

“Hmm?”

“...?”

At Ghost’s puzzled expression, Jae-hee finally took a look at the scene from her perspective.

The President’s daughter, blushing as she knelt obediently on all fours like a dog.

And Jae-hee, patting her on the head.

“…Ah. I see.” Ghost let out a short, dry breath and nodded. “So that’s your thing, kid.”

“No, wait a minute.” Jae-hee waved his hands frantically. “No, no, I don’t know what you’re thinking—well, actually I do, but it’s not that, Master!”

He knew how unconvincing he sounded, but he had to shout with every fiber of his being.

“It’s not what it looks like! I swearrrr!”