I Became the Cute One in the Troubleshooter Squad-Chapter 168: Of the Black Raven and the Snow-White Ghost (6)

Covered in thick, musty dust from squeezing through the narrow ventilation shaft, Raven and I were greeted by pitch-black darkness the moment we finally reached the lab.

Strange. I remember it being bright—almost painfully so—when I first opened my eyes here.

Tilting my head in confusion, I huddled close to Raven, pulling his coat tighter around me against the freezing air that felt like a walk-in freezer.

Just in case something like an invisible ambush came flying at us suddenly.

Not because the pitch-black surroundings were scary or anything. Really.

“We came down pretty far... I’m amazed such a large space exists down here. I can’t believe it was never discovered.”

Raven, as usual, didn’t seem remotely fazed by this eerie environment.

He simply swept the flashlight he carried from side to side with his usual calm demeanor.

Thanks to the flashlight’s impressive range, clean white walls and floors, not a single stain in sight, slowly came into view.

The silence was so complete—not even the faintest sound of bugs scuttling—I swallowed hard without thinking.

How could it be this quiet?

All I could do was pray we hadn’t come all this way for nothing in this miserable weather.

‘Wait... wasn’t it already like this before? I think I wandered around for over an hour back then too...’

But thinking back, yeah. This was normal.

Even when I first woke up here, I didn’t hear a single sound or meet another soul.

If anything’s changed, maybe it’s just that the power got cut.

Murmuring to myself, I tried to steady my thoughts and focus.

Maybe it was while I was steeling myself again, checking the surroundings carefully.

Crouched and brushing the floor with his fingertips, Raven looked at me seriously and spoke.

“For now, let’s start moving. Yuri, don’t stray too far from me. And just in case—be ready to use your telekinesis at any time.”

“...?”

Wait—first he says not to use it, now he wants me to?

I looked at him like he was ridiculous for changing his stance.

Apparently, he could read even that through the mask,

because without even making excuses, Raven averted his gaze down the hall and spoke quietly.

“What I said earlier was a general warning. You need to be careful by default. But if there’s no one watching... then of course you should use it to protect yourself. You planning to just stand there and get hit?”

“....”

“...If you get it, then let’s go. We’ll catch colds if we stay in a place like this too long.”

Wrapping up the conversation entirely on his own, Raven strode ahead like he expected me to follow.

The sight of his back moving briskly ahead with the flashlight in hand was just plain annoying.

I mean, I get what he means.

If I use my powers carelessly outside, I might get caught—so I need to be cautious.

But in a situation like this, it’s more important to survive than hide them.

Even so, I couldn’t help but feel like he was being totally inconsistent.

Why scold me earlier if this was how it was gonna go? I was actually scared back then, seriously.

‘...Tomorrow morning I’m putting salt in his hot chocolate instead of sugar.’

Vowing vengeance in the pettiest way possible, I stuck close to Raven’s back and kept in step.

Revenge aside, now wasn’t the time to get distracted—we had to stay sharp.

So how long had we been walking with me glued to his back like a gum wrapper?

After twisting and turning, up and down staircases, tapping on walls over and over again, Raven finally stopped.

“Haah, what the hell is this layout? Why does it feel like we’re going in circles?”

His face twisted with visible frustration.

Probably because we’d been walking for over thirty minutes and still hadn’t made it out of the hallway.

With not a single light on in the place, we had to rely entirely on the flashlight.

Following the passage felt like wandering through a maze with no end in sight.

And the occasional doors we passed were all tightly shut, just like the one I’d been trapped in.

The only thing we could do was keep walking endlessly down the corridor.

At this rate, we weren’t going to make any progress.

Raven seemed to think the same and handed the flashlight to me with a sigh.

“Phew... Yuri, hold this and shine it over there for a bit.”

“...”

Taking the flashlight without complaint, I pointed it at the door he indicated.

It was a clean white door with a bar handle—spotless, without a single smudge.

Clearly locked, the handle didn’t budge even when Raven tried forcing it.

Letting out a quiet breath, he stared at it sharply—and kicked it hard.

BANG!

Even though I knew a loud noise was coming, the impact made me flinch instinctively.

It was a brutal, stress-relieving roundhouse kick if I’d ever seen one.

‘Wow... anyone nearby definitely would’ve heard that...’

Still, I didn’t feel like criticizing him.

We didn’t know anything about this place—we had to try something.

And if someone was nearby, Raven would’ve sensed it already.

I just watched casually as he broke down the door.

After kicking it several more times, Raven finally shattered it.

Then, with a composed face, he took the flashlight back and cautiously examined the room.

“This is...”

“...!”

Peeking my head in through the busted doorway, my eyes widened on reflex.

The room was structured almost identically to the one I’d first woken up in—

And lying on the bed, as if asleep, was... someone.

Could it be... there’s another survivor besides me?

Frozen in shock at the completely unexpected sight, I watched as Raven approached to check on her carefully—only to furrow his brow.

“A corpse...? No, that’s not it. There’s no sign of decay...”

“...?”

I tilted my head at Raven’s puzzled expression.

What could he be seeing that made him react like that?

I stepped cautiously into the room to see for myself.

And the moment I realized the motionless figure on the bed was a girl,

I too understood the source of that # Nоvеlight # eerie dissonance Raven had sensed.

‘No breathing at all. A corpse... or a doll modeled after a human? But... this intense sense of wrongness?’

Staring at the girl quietly, I finally understood what was bothering me.

The two possibilities I’d reflexively considered... were both wrong.

First off, she wasn’t a corpse.

She wasn’t breathing, her heart wasn’t beating, no blood was circulating—

But there was none of the stench, discoloration, or decomposition you’d expect from a corpse.

So, a doll then? No—she was definitely flesh and bone.

A living organism, unmistakably human. Just one that didn’t bleed... or rot.

Then what was she?

Raven, sweeping the flashlight over her carefully, muttered in disbelief.

“It’s like... someone stopped time itself.”

“....”

“...Still, this might give the Association a lead. Yuri, let’s check the rest of the rooms. I want to see if this is an isolated case.”

I nodded at his words, still too stunned to speak.

It wasn’t just to buy myself time to process everything—

Something about that girl stirred a warning bell deep in my chest.

She had short brown hair and didn’t resemble me at all...

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I couldn’t just leave her like that.

So Raven and I continued down the hall, checking the rooms one by one.

And soon, breaking open the locked doors became my job, since

telekinesis was far quicker—and quieter—than Raven kicking them down.

“Phew, another one. Okay, I’ve marked the location. Let’s move on.”

“...”

By the time we opened the tenth room, what we found left my mind tangled in thought.

In addition to the first girl, there were three more—each lying as if time had stopped.

I crossed my arms as I looked down quietly at one of the motionless girls, her face peaceful in sleep.

‘Not every room has someone in it. Then what’s the difference between the ones that do and the ones that don’t? And why are they all little girls...?’

...Yeah, no clue. This wasn’t in the original story—I have no way of knowing.

Lacking information, I simply folded the unsolvable question away in my mind.

All I knew for sure was this:

I might’ve been one of these girls.

Maybe I was one step closer to uncovering the truth about myself—

Whatever it was, my expression had gone rigid as I instinctively searched my fading memories.

“Yuri, could you open this one too?”

“...!”

Snapped out of my thoughts, I stepped up to the door Raven pointed at and extended my hand.

Telekinesis took a lot of focus, so it helped to clear my mind.

Maybe it was because I was much stronger now than when I’d first woken up here, novelbuddy.cσ๓

but forcing open internal locks wasn’t that hard anymore.

Still, the moment I extended my power toward the door, I felt something different.

The interior mechanism, invisible to the eye, was far more intricate than the others had been.

From the outside, it looked the same—so why?

Tilting my head, I decided to just force it open and see.

Creaaaaak...

The unusually complex mechanism gave way easily, the lock disengaging without resistance.

Raven stepped forward without hesitation, grabbed the handle, and yanked the door open.

“Hmm? This is...”

“...!”

What lay beyond wasn’t another narrow, white room—it was a corridor leading elsewhere.

It was definitely connected to something.

Meeting Raven’s gaze, I could tell we both knew it.