NAPE - 78

“What do we do?” Bibi sighed, looking at Namwon.

“Didn’t the catalog say to hide?”

“But didn’t it say to contact someone?”

“Contact? Where?”

“I don’t know. They took the catalog away earlier. And hey, my phone’s not working either? Hmm. Should we just keep looking for what we came for? Maybe if we wander around, something will happen.”

Truthfully, Namwon didn’t have much of a plan either. While they were contemplating, the sky was completely swallowed by darkness. The arboretum, once night fell, was eerie. It was a stark contrast to the dreamy and vibrant atmosphere of the day.

The beautiful forest looked sinister, like a devil’s maw, and the animal-shaped structures scattered throughout seemed grotesque, as if they could come alive at any moment. The absence of streetlights only amplified this feeling. Their phones still had no signal. It must be because it was a secluded area and near the mountains.

The pitch-black darkness created a sense of unease, suggesting unknown dangers lurking. It endlessly stimulated their imagination—was something hiding behind a dead tree, or was someone chasing them? A human would have been terribly tense at the slightest sound. However...

“Wow. My sight is incredibly wide at night, for sure.”

Vampires were the very creatures that constituted that ‘danger.’ Namwon and Bibi, far from being scared, leisurely and calmly walked around, exploring like cats. There was no retreat for them. They walked and walked through the dark trees. The warnings they had heard and read during the day were completely out of their minds.

“Wandering like this, there’s no end to it.”

“Indeed. Since the signposts disappeared... Huh? Hey, they’re back.” Namwon, surprised, ran to the newly appeared signpost.

“This must be an electronic screen. It keeps changing. It was number 6 earlier, but now it says number 8.”

“Let’s go.” Following the new signpost, they came upon a wetland. This place also exuded an eerie atmosphere. Zelkova trees near the water’s edge cast long, ominous shadows with their branches, and reeds haphazardly surrounded them on all sides.

The black surface of the water was densely covered with water hyacinths and duckweed, making it difficult to gauge its depth, and the silhouettes of rocks half-submerged in the water created the illusion that something was peeking its head out and staring at them.

The football-field-sized wetland had no safety fences or lifebuoys or any other safety equipment. Only a single, narrow, unstable bridge stood there. If one were to stumble, they would fall into an unknowable depth of darkness.

“Hey. Vampires are only weak to fire, right? What happens if they fall into water?”

“I don’t know. Try it once.” Bibi answered vaguely and stepped onto the bridge first. Whether it had been repaired or not, it shook precariously like an earthquake with every step she took. Namwon followed behind, giving a long lecture on safety complacency.

As she wanted to avoid getting soaking wet in the middle of the night, Bibi crossed the bridge as carefully as possible. When she reached the middle, Bibi suddenly felt the bridge shake violently.

“It’s not even windy, so why is it shaking so much?” Namwon must have felt it too, as he inadvertently looked back and poked Bibi’s back in surprise.

“What’s wrong?”

“Look at that.” Turning her head, she saw a large object standing at the entrance of the bridge where they had first stepped. It glowed in the darkness, and seeing that it had four legs, it was presumed to be a bear. Until it stood on two legs and hobbled towards them like a human.

“Hey... What is that?” Namwon fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a gun. Bibi aggressively bangs her fangs and growled. She didn’t know what that hairy, human-like thing was, but she had no intention of letting it interfere with her.

“Hey, wait. It’s annoying to fight on the bridge, so let’s cross first and deal with it then.” Namwon noticed that the bridge’s center of gravity was gradually shifting to one side and stopped Bibi. Since he wasn’t wrong, Bibi nodded and ran forward. Just then, the moon, which had been hidden by clouds, appeared. Thanks to it, the shadow reflected on the water was clearly visible.

Bibi frowned, seeing ‘it’ sprinting after the two of them with terrifying speed. Its joints were twisted in an unusual way, and the way its limbs creaked at bizarre angles was quite grotesque.

Its face was red, as if the skin had been peeled off, and its mouth was wide open as if its jaw had dropped. With its ridiculously large teeth and various other features, she concluded that it was not a creature within the human realm.

Finally, when they had crossed the bridge, Bibi quickly turned around. It had almost closed the gap with Namwon.

“Hee-hee-hic!” With a strange laugh, it extended its hand. It was almost touching Namwon’s nape.

Bibi grabbed the old rope connecting the bridge to the pillar and opened her mouth. The moment Namwon threw himself to the ground as if he had been waiting, she snapped the rope with her sharp fangs. The bridge, which had been connected to the ground, tilted sharply. The grotesque creature thrashed clumsily and fell into the wetland. Water shot up high as if a bomb had fallen.

“Hah, little brat, messing with us when you’re nothing.” Bibi was the one who had defeated it, but Namwon strutted proudly, dusting off his hands. Having crossed the wetland, the two finally entered the new Sector 8, and the long-sought shortcut finally appeared. Delighted, they diligently followed the path, and a dome-shaped greenhouse stood at the end of the path.

“This must be the Luna Greenhouse.” The huge greenhouse’s door was open. The interior, like the outside, was as dark as the deep sea, but the eerie aura was even thicker. Namwon and Bibi cautiously looked around. They said there were many tropical trees, and indeed, their appearances were different. The leaves were broad, and the stems stretched long like lakes.

“Oh! Isn’t that a person?” Namwon pointed to something that looked like a hanging corpse. Upon closer inspection, it seemed that a branch had broken, causing fruit to hang low, creating an optical illusion in the darkness.

“You’re not scared. It’s just dark,” Bibi said with a look of disdain, and Namwon mumbled an excuse, looking embarrassed. It seemed he was easily frightened, perhaps because he hadn’t been a vampire for long. She had to guide him well. Bibi proudly puffed out her chest and walked confidently, as if to show off.

Unlike the outside, this place had more unusually shaped trees. Trees with round trunks like jars, large animal sculptures made of plants, and so on.

The most off-putting thing was a foul odor coming from somewhere. After sniffing around and tracking the source of the stench, they found a flower as tall as a human. It was a broad-leaved plant with a gigantic, phallus-shaped spadix. Its scientific name was Amorphophallus titanum, also known as the corpse flower.

Bibi, reading the explanation on the sign, had an admiring look in her eyes. It smelled like a dead body. What kind of plant was this? For the first time, her interest in this arboretum grew significantly. Bibi observed the tropical plants in more detail. Nepenthes, Venus flytraps, Rafflesia... There were so many strange things. Namwon also marveled and touched various things.

“Hey, look! It’s a Venus flytrap. It’s huge. There are some as big as my palm. Wow, that one could eat a dog, no, a person!”

“What’s a Venus flytrap?”

“It says here. ‘It’s a carnivorous plant that entices prey with a sweet scent, then traps it with sticky sap and sucks its bodily fluids.’ And so on... ‘It’s used as a raw material for infertility treatment and abortion drugs.’ So depending on how it’s used, it can create or erase something.”

Namwon made a profound expression. Bibi was pleased with the giant carnivorous plants. It seemed her taste was closer to these than to pretty flowers.

“Put your hand in. Let’s see what happens,” Bibi urged Namwon with a curious expression. Namwon readily inserted his hand between the large, pincers-like leaves without refusing. The widely open leaves snapped shut around his large hand, as if they had been waiting.

“Uh... Uh-oh? It bit me...!” Namwon panicked, shaking his hand, which was caught by the sticky sap. Whether he panicked or not, Bibi leaned in close to the flower with an academic posture.

“Is it sticky?”

“It’s incredibly sticky. Incredibly! Ugh! What? Why does it sting?”

“Does it prick?”

“Damn it, it’s sucking my blood!”

“Cool.”

“Cool? Then should I plant my corpse here and take this one?” Namwon scoffed, grabbing the flower stem stuck to his arm and snapping it off. Sticky sap streamed from the severed stem.

“Why is this red? It’s unsettling.” A blood-red, viscous liquid flowed from the broken stem. Bibi subtly extended her tongue and tasted the sap. Oh. It tasted quite good.

“It’s delicious.” At Bibi’s words, Namwon’s eyes widened in surprise, then he tasted it himself and his face lit up. Smacking his lips, he broke off another one for research purposes. Bibi also broke off another one, following his lead.

“Ouch!”