In the midst of the chaos, someone noticed a figure in the sky and pointed a trembling finger toward it.
"There’s a monster there!"
People looked up. Upon seeing the woman's form, an unexplainable panic bloomed in their hearts—a primal dread akin to the fear people felt for the darkness during the prehistoric age. This was a terror rooted in the deepest instincts of the soul.
Sensing the emotions directed toward her, the expression of the Woman in the Rain slowly shifted. Her kind and gentle appearance vanished, replaced by a face that seemed to tear open along the sides. A bizarre grin split all the way to her ears, with sludge constantly rolling out of the rift. Within her pitch-black eye sockets, there was only dead silence and mockery.
She slowly extended her hand. Her spindly arms far exceeded the proportions of a normal human. Using both hands, she made the gesture of framing a photograph, aiming it at a figure below who was taking advantage of the chaos to commit a robbery. She brought her thumb and forefinger together as if clicking a shutter.
A terrifying scene unfolded. The torrential rain suddenly exploded into a waterfall of spray. The figure framed within her fingers vanished in a flash of blinding white light. All that remained was a small section of a severed arm, cut with impossible precision, falling to the ground. It still tightly gripped the stolen bag, its blood rapidly staining the rainwater crimson.
"Bitter..."
The Woman in the Rain squinted, her face contorted into an expression that was either pleasure or discomfort.
"So bitter, so bitter..."
Another flash of white light erupted as the robber’s accomplice was severed at the waist. The cut was just as impossibly clean; blood mist sprayed, muscle tissue collapsed, and his entire lower half toppled forward, his knees hitting the ground with a wet thud.
"It’s still so bitter... it tastes terrible..." The expression on the face of the Woman in the Rain twisted as sludge continuously flowed from her seven orifices.
"You are sweet."
A girl nearby let out a piercing scream as she saw the figure in the sky aim the finger-frame at her. She collapsed into a kneeling position on the ground; paralyzed by extreme terror, her body refused to obey her, and her legs were too weak to even stand.
Just as she covered her face and screamed, a young man appeared just in time. Placing a hand on her shoulder, the two vanished from the spot into thin air.
In the next instant, the rain curtain exploded into a torrent. As water droplets surged outward, the girl slowly opened her eyes amidst a sharp, whistling sound, momentarily stunned by the appearance of the young man beside her.
"Run."
Jian Liu calmly lifted his hand from the girl's shoulder. His black trench coat was drenched, hanging heavily from his shoulders. He held only the remaining half of a broken umbrella as he met the mocking, terrifying gaze of the woman in the sky.
The young man's firm voice snapped the girl back to reality. She nodded frantically and sprinted away.
Once he confirmed the girl and the surrounding people had cleared the area, Jian Liu finally breathed a small sigh of relief. Under the gray sky, he was now the only one left facing the urban legend known as the Woman in the Rain.
Jian Liu methodically issued commands to the rest of the Dawn Society through his communicator:
"Go and control the situation. Don't let the chaos spread further. The target, 'Woman in the Rain,' is a hazard-level urban legend. It is possible she could ascend to disaster-level by feeding on the people's fear. I'll handle everything here."
"You are..." The throat of the Woman in the Rain rolled before she grinned. "It doesn't matter. What matters is that you are sweet."
With that, she aimed her finger-frame at the young man once more. Seeing that he didn't dodge or hide—merely gripping the sharpened handle of his broken umbrella, a hint of sharpness in his dark-circled eyes—she sneered and pressed her hands together to trigger the shutter!
At the final moment before the white light arrived, Jian Liu moved. He didn't try to leap out of the woman's frame; instead, he simply tilted his body slightly. His entire arm vanished in the blinding white light, causing a waterfall composed of blood and rain to explode outward.
"Sour... so sour..."
The features on the face of the Woman in the Rain twisted together as if she had eaten something filthy. Her entire face became extremely hideous. In contrast, Jian Liu stood there with one arm missing, leaving only a tattered suit sleeve where his limb had once been.
"What a disgusting sour taste!"
The Woman in the Rain screamed freakishly and lunged at the young man, who remained stationary. Despite his slight paleness, he was still calm. She looked as though she intended to tear him apart with her bare hands.
"Will the President be alright?"
A member of the Dawn Agency who had arrived to stabilize the scene looked on with concern. A veteran member, who had seen many such storms, chuckled and replied:
"You should be asking if that urban legend will be alright after drinking the President's blood. The moment I saw that thing actually swallow a part of the President's body, I knew it was already over."
Just as the hands of the Woman in the Rain were about to reach Jian Liu and tear apart his unperturbed face, her massive body suddenly froze in mid-air. Then, she plummeted into the rain, splashing a large crown of water upward.
"What did you do..."
Her hair splayed out, covering her pale face, though one could vaguely see massive, worm-like veins of bruised purple twitching across her skin. These veins were currently throbbing violently.
"Urban legend poison," Jian Liu said, gripping the sharpened umbrella handle. He walked to the side of the Woman in the Rain. The arm that had been consumed had somehow regrown unnoticed; the skin was as translucent as jade, looking like that of a newborn infant just brought into this world.
Her voice trembled and broke, emitting a low, sobbing plea like that of a child.
"...Let me go, I didn't do anything wrong, let me go..."
"You really don't have a shred of remorse, do you? As for letting an urban legend go... I can't do that."
Jian Liu smiled. Just as he was about to thrust the sharpened umbrella handle into the woman's chest, a sudden gunshot put him on high alert.
As a bullet hole appeared in the head of the Woman in the Rain, a bizarre expression of happiness and liberation actually surfaced on her face. Her form dissolved into countless black-and-white butterflies that scattered into the air.
More than one urban legend had been born in the recent chaos. Jian Liu turned his head toward the entrance of a nearby alley.
A figure clad in a funeral suit, his head replaced by a massive white butterfly with black-patterned wings, slowly stepped out from the curtain of rain, clutching an exquisitely carved white-patterned handgun. Jian Liu's expression became more solemn than ever before as his fingertips lightly tapped a message onto the communication curtain.
The members of the Dawn Society were stunned. Their President only issued retreat orders via Morse code when facing extremely high-risk, sudden incidents. It meant the situation could spiraled out of control at any moment and that they should prioritize preserving their strength as much as possible.
In the distance, the members of the Dawn Society looked up at the overcast sky. Thunder rumbled occasionally, making the entire firmament tremble.
What exactly was happening over on the President's side?
A solemn and mysterious aura, like thick ink dropped into a quiet pool, permeated the air, allowing for not a hint of levity. Life and death seemed to linger around that fluttering, white butterfly with black markings. Upon closer inspection, the raindrops falling from the sky didn't actually touch his funeral suit; an invisible current of air kept the rain at bay.
He didn't attack Jian Liu. Instead, he walked toward a mangled corpse. The sound of his black leather boots stepping through the water echoed heavily and loudly through the gray world.
The white butterfly with black wing-patterns vibrated its wings gently. The patterns on its wings seemed to express a lament for the loss of life, yet also felt like a divine pity for all the suffering and tragedy in this world.
He aimed a different handgun, one carved with black patterns, at the corpse. With a bang, the mangled body also transformed into countless black-and-white butterflies.
With a third gunshot, the severed arm left behind by the final victim also dissolved into butterflies and flew away. From start to finish, he did not attack anyone present, nor did he show any ill intent. He merely gave a deep bow of respect to everyone before walking back into the shadows of the buildings and vanishing into the growing silence, just as mysteriously as he had arrived.
Rate on N.U.
