"What???" one of them asked, aghast.
Rudra wasn't in his right mind—his brain was cooking in its own juices, neurons fraying from the strain of Kronos Desist. He stumbled on his feet, each step uncertain, as if the ground itself was against him. His words slurred, half-born of delirium.
[A] – Ask which dog is the favorite in local cuisine
[B] – Double down on this fuckery
[X] – Ask their opinion on the Japanese
[Y] – Tell them how to dismantle a fridge
[B is selected]
"Have sex," he repeated, voice thick with a hiccup as he clutched his stomach. He swayed side to side, struggling against gravity like a drunken soldier. "You know… to control your population problem."
A girl in the group, arms crossed, rolled her eyes so hard Rudra could almost hear the friction. "Listen here, mister. Do you think it's that easy?"
Rudra let out a crooked laugh. "I mean—it works back in my country." He hiccuped again, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. "One of the reasons we have, uh, one-point-five billion people."
The group erupted into a strange silence—half disbelief, half awkwardness. One boy, lacing his words with sarcasm sharp enough to cut glass, muttered: "Why didn't we think of that???"
Rudra blinked at him, then grinned like a fool, doubling down without hesitation.
The group's chatter cut short as Rudra's body lurched, his vision smearing like wet paint. His knees nearly buckled, and for a moment he thought he'd collapse right there on the bridge. But then—
A strange warmth pressed against him, not his body, but his soul. Hands, firm yet paternal, rested on his shoulders.
He blinked hard, sweat mixing with the sting of bile at the corner of his lips, but the vision did not fade. The suited ghost lingered, solid in its unrealness, as if mocking every rule of sanity Rudra clung to.
"The fuck—?" Rudra croaked, his throat raw. He staggered a step back, finger half-raised as though he could point this nightmare away.
"What the fuck?" he said again, louder this time. His pupils darted, golden flicker straining against the neon.
"What the fuck??" now nearly a bellow, people on the bridge turning to stare.
His knees went weak and he grabbed the railing. "What the fuck?" he panted a fourth time, his voice cracking like a broken reed.
{"What the fuck?"} Bhairava parroted dryly in his head, nearly deadpan, but it only added to the ridiculousness.
And all the while, Abe's ghostly smile & faltered—untroubled, dignified, eerily proud.
[» Achievement Unlocked: WHAT THE FUCK]
Forty minutes later, Rudra sat slouched on a cold steel bench near the bridge's end, his back sticky with sweat that not even the night air could soothe. An empty cola can rolled at his feet, rattling against the concrete as he cracked open his third.
"Woah…" he exhaled, long and relieved, gulping the fizz in greedy mouthfuls. The sweetness burned his throat, but in his haze it felt like medicine. "My melted brain has been refreshed back to normal. Let's fucking go." He clenched his wrist, testing his pulse like a boxer gearing up for the next round.
{"We are here waiting for someone, I assume?"} Bhairava's voice coiled around his thoughts, steady as always.
"Yuuup~~," Rudra drawled, the carbonation fizzing in his gut as much as his words. He leaned back, staring at the distant skyscrapers reflected in the Han's black surface.
"Kim Han Jhoonghyuk," he muttered, letting the name hang. "Almost sounds like someone who is both omniscient or a reader."
{"What a viewpoint,"} Bhairava replied with the faintest smirk laced in his tone.
"…Omniscient… reader… viewpoint?" Rudra repeated under his breath, a sigh escaping his chest as though the words themselves carried some invisible weight.
{"Wapis boliyo."} (Say that again?)
"Whatever," Rudra muttered, rolling his eyes skyward as if the night itself were pestering him. The cola can hissed when he crushed it against the railing, aluminum giving under his grip. "Two years. Complete isolation in a jail, and now they flown me to another nation. Wonder how this went through." His sigh misted the air, a faint white against the neon haze. "I miss her."
{"Your master?"} Bhairava's voice pricked at him, neither mocking nor sympathetic, just cutting straight to the bone.
"Yeah," Rudra said, the word dragged out like it carried lead.
{"Though she abandoned you."}
He snorted, low and bitter. "I mean, I do miss her—enough that I'll rearrange her dental alignment the next moment I see her." His jaw tightened, teeth clicking together in a strange cocktail of longing and rage, the kind of contradiction only someone like Rudra could carry without breaking.
The car that rolled up was glossy black, a sedan too polished for the dusty bridge lot. Its chrome trim caught every flicker of neon from the city behind, shimmering like oil in water. Rudra straightened a little, cracking his neck, muttering under his breath.
"Fucking finally. I was getting agitated on how much they make an impatient brat like me wait. Hell, I was wondering if he was gonna spook me from behind like in movies—considering the fact they all look the same."
{"That's racist."}
"Not as racist as the stares I've been getting from passing people," Rudra shot back, rubbing his temple.
The doors clicked open in unison, and out stepped two men.
The first was short and fat, with a face that looked like it had been sculpted out of dough and pressed down into jowls. A thick mustache bristled across his upper lip, dark and immaculately combed, as though it was the only part of him that got real attention in the mirror. His suit was charcoal-gray, tight at the belly, the school crest badge pinned just above his chest pocket gleaming in the streetlight.
The second was his opposite: tall, almost skeletal in build, with a gaunt face that looked starved of color. His black tie was too long for his torso, hanging awkwardly over a blazer that looked one size too big. His hair was neatly parted to the side, jet black with a stiff shine, and a thin wire pair of glasses clung to the ridge of his nose. The same badge glinted on his chest, though the way his fingers fidgeted with it betrayed nerves the fat man didn't show.
{"They look like school staff, with that tie and badge and all."}
"Yeah," Rudra muttered, his eyes flicking between them, sizing them up.
"You must be Mr. Rudra…" The fat man's voice trembled just a notch too high for his frame, his thick fingers swiping across his phone screen in panic. He squinted at the text, sweat clinging to his temples, as if forgetting a surname would sign his death warrant. "Mr. Rudra… uh…"
"Only Rudra," the boy cut him off, his tone flat, decisive. He towered over them at 6'3, his shadow stretching across the pavement. "I don't have a last name. For… reasons."
The fat man nodded quickly, his mustache twitching like a nervous animal. Before the silence could curdle, the woman beside him stepped forward.
She was nothing like her colleague—sharp, poised, and deliberate in every movement. Her blazer fit snugly over her tall, lean frame, the edges pressed and crisp. Her hair, jet-black, was tied into a neat bun that exposed her neck and hardened her features. A pair of pearl earrings gleamed as she tilted her head, and her gaze held steady, unflinching.
"The Indian Military Force—IMF—briefed us about your arrival," she said, her Korean accent barely brushing against the English syllables. Her voice carried authority, clipped and assured.
"You are here to find and extract one of the Shaktipeeths. The Devi Yooni."
"Call it a womb, for lack of a better word." Rudra exhaled, waving a hand lazily. "It isn't hard to find. It releases a radiation that strips away people's desire to procreate. Radius being… Japan and South Korea. Manifold-shaped radiation signature."
"It makes a lot of sense," she replied without missing a beat, her expression tightening, as if this strange truth had aligned pieces of a puzzle she'd been working on silently. Then she extended her hand, composed and firm. "I am Han Seoyeon, assistant to the board."
The fat man shuffled forward, bowing clumsily before adjusting his tie. His badge caught the light as he spoke, "Park Jung-soo. Principal of Yeongnam Academy."
"That's too complex for my licking," Rudra muttered, scratching the back of his neck with exaggerated laziness. "Can I just call you two… Seo and Yeo?"
Han Seoyeon's eyes narrowed, a faint twitch pulling at the corner of her lip. "No, you can't," she said sharply, the dominance in her voice cutting through his mockery. "After all, starting tomorrow, you will be a student at our school. The Haneul High."
"Damn," Rudra breathed, shoulders slumping. The word carried the drag. His cola haze had worn off, but the absurdity of the night only thickened.
"Here's the key to your dorm," Seoyeon said, pressing the brass tag into his palm. "Near the school. Tomorrow, 8 AM, classes start. Make sure you enter before then."
{"That means you have to wake up at six."}
"OK, I guess," Rudra muttered. His thoughts drifted back into the silence of his cell, the endless hours without clocks or alarms. I almost forgot how to wake up early, he sighed inwardly, fingers tightening around the key.
"Get in the car. I'll drop you tonight," Principal Park Jung-soo offered, his tone awkward but polite, as if making up for the stiffness in Seoyeon's.
Rudra shrugged, eyes glinting under the neon reflections on the water. "No thanks I think I will tour around the cityt"
{"I wonder why that Kim Han… guy didn't come?"}
"I should ask them," Rudra muttered inwardly, eyes flicking back toward the pair as they climbed into the sleek black car. "Why isn't that guy here?"
The woman straightened her skirt, her tone calm but carrying weight. "He is hunting," she said, shutting the door with a heavy click. "After all—"
Rudra's throat dried. Gulp. He managed a crooked smile. ".No one."
[30 minutes later]
The bus jounced down the neon streets, the stale atmosphere thick with perfume, sweat, and the taste of vending machine coffee. Rudra sat back in his seat, half-asleep, the motion rocking him into a daze.
{"We have toured well around the city."}
"I know," grumbled Rudra opening one eye, "but this annoying time difference—it's still evening back home most likely." He settled, trying to get comfortable in the creaking plastic seat, closing the eye to evade the glares needling at all points on the bus.
In front, a little boy gripped a shiny figurine, waving it aloft like it was some holy object. His voice carried with crystal clarity through the tiny bus.
"Eomma, eomma, bwa! Solid Snake!" His Korean words bounced with pride.
His mother, distracted but kindly, bowed her head. "Oedi eseo on geoya?" (Where's it from?)
The boy grinning, chest out. "Metal Gear Solid V—"
His voice cracked, freezing mid-word.
A weight on his shoulder. The little plastic figurine shivered in his palm as he slowly raised his gaze.
The dark figure loomed over him—face consumed by shadows, single ahoge sticking up like a sword, crimson eyes burning with an unnatural flame. Air grew thick, the chatter on the bus fading.
"THAT. IS. NOT. SOLID. SNAKE."
The lips quivered on the boy, the mother stiffened, and all the bus passengers froze, heads turning towards the gigantic figure as the atmosphere of violence permeated the close space.
"He is… not?" The Boy asked fearfull but curious
Rudra breathed out through his nose, dropping his aura down one notch. "Solid Snake was like… twelve in Phantom Pain," he stated dryly, his red eyes fading back down to brown. "This? This is Venom Snake. He's a medic. Some dude named Ahab who was crafted to resemble Big Boss."
The boy tilted his head, confusion increasing. ".Who?"
"Solid Snake's dad," Rudra said, settling back in his seat.
The boy gulped. "But… but why is Snake twelve in V when he was, like, seventy in IV!?"
Rudra took a deep breath, as if expounding holy teaching to an infant. "Because V occurs like twenty, thirty years prior to IV."
The boy's jaw dropped. "WHAAAAT
"Yeah." Rudra began to list on his fingers, his voice as nonchalant as he was reading from a grocery list. "Snake Eater. Peace Walker. Ground Zeroes. Phantom Pain. Metal Gear. Solid Snake. Metal Gear Solid. Sons of Liberty. Guns of the Patriots. And… likely Rising, but not sure if it's cannon."
The bus went completely silent, all ears. The kid sat frozen as his whole perspective on the world had just been broken in two.
"…This is worse than his homework," Whispered the Mother.
{"And you just broke the innocence of a kid with the Metal Gear timeline,"} Bhairava stated dryly in Rudra's mind.
"Atleast it's not Kingdom He--"
Suddenly something happens as the time slows doen again, the gold again returns to that one eye as he looks here & there on the bus. He coudn'nt find anything but as time returns to normal after his 'danger sense' he hears a shriek
The shriek cut through the air like glass breaking.
"Aaaaahhhh!"" the old lady screamed in her seat, quaking with fear.
Rudra's eye shone with gold. "Dong means… Dragon?" he whispered, rushing to the front of the bus.
Through the windshield, he saw it—a long, serpent-like creature undulating across the sky above the Han River. Its scales shimmered in dazzling hues, emerald to sapphire to molten gold, like sunlight refracting through stained glass. It was majestic, beautiful, awe-inspiring. For a brief second, Rudra's breath caught in reverence, his chest tightening with childlike wonder.
But then the bus shuddered, horns blaring, and the awe shattered into urgency. His eyes snapped back to the driver.
"Driver!!" he yelped, dashing to the seat. "Reve—HUH!" His voice.
The man's eyes shone an unnatural violet, his hands unresponsive on the wheel as the bus swerved toward the guardrail. His face was slack, transfixed, lips uttering soundless syllables as he knelt in seeming adoration before the snake outside.
{'He stared at that thing for far too long,'} stated Bhairava in Rudra's skull, voice with bleak certainty. "{'Hypnotized"}
Rudra's pulse thundered. He gritted teeth, working a shuddery hand through soggy hair. "I was too." he admitted, the words tight and rough. "But my Danger sense—it resisted. Kept me awake." The bus swayed with the wheels scraping the rail, people shrieking, grasping for seats. Rudra rooted his feet, all his muscles rigid, gold eye still radiating. "All right," he snarled, fixing the driver and the monster through the glass. "It's Tonight's The Night"