Lein tucked the book into his inner coat pocket, then left this rundown place.
The night was already deep.
The sky over Ash Lane was stained lead-gray by factory smoke as always, with even the starlight miserably sparse.
Lein tugged his coat collar up, shoved his hands into his pockets, and walked along the gravel-paved alley toward his rented room.
At this hour, he might normally run an errand for Coleman—deliver something or pass along a message—and earn a little extra money.
But today he just didn’t have the energy.
Mr. Slone’s smug face had drained his last bit of patience, and Tim’s absence weighed on him, leaving a bitter taste.
Lein passed through a narrow alley, his footsteps echoing between the high walls on both sides, making it sound as if multiple sets of feet were walking.
He suddenly thought of the thing that had controlled him.
Ever since that morning, when he’d been driven to the Sharp Hook Gang’s hideout, the sensation of being taken over by an external force hadn’t reappeared.
A whole day had passed.
Had the other side gotten bored?
Lein leaned toward that conclusion.
After all, what fun could there be in controlling a poor kid from Ash Lane?
He wasn’t someone worth the effort.
Or maybe that morning’s incident was just a freak occurrence with a minuscule probability—some supernatural force he couldn’t understand had happened to pass through his body, like a gust of wind skimming the surface of water, stirred a ripple, and left, never to return.
If that were true, then great.
Lein exhaled a long puff of white breath, watching it vanish quickly in the cold winter air.
He genuinely hoped that entity would just leave him alone, let him live his life in peace.
Being controlled felt worse than drinking Mr. Slone’s cheap tea—at least you could spit that out.
But just as he thought that—
He suddenly stopped.
It wasn’t his own choice.
In that instant, a familiar binding sensation surged through his limbs and joints, as if countless invisible threads had pierced through his muscles, pinning him in place.
Lein tried to step forward, but his legs wouldn’t move.
‘Great, here we go again.’
Lein sighed inwardly.
He’d just been celebrating that this mess was over, and now he was slapped in the face.
Could this thing read his mind?
Then what were those thoughts of his—walking right into a trap?
His body quickly moved on its own, turning and walking in the opposite direction.
This was clearly not the way back.
Lein resigned himself.
His body followed the main road of Ash Lane for about ten minutes, then stopped in front of a closed general store.
‘It can’t be making me rob this place, can it?’
Lein was appalled.
He had no problem stealing from the Sharp Hook Gang—those guys were scum anyway.
But making him steal from the poor folks of Ash Lane?
His conscience couldn’t bear it.
Surprisingly, the controlling force or entity gave no further instruction.
His body just stood there, motionless like an abandoned statue by the roadside.
Lein could feel the night wind seeping through his collar, chilling the back of his neck.
In the distance, a few drunks staggered past, muttering slurred words.
One of them glanced his way, probably thinking anyone standing around at night was crazy, shook his head, and walked on.
After standing there for about two or three minutes, his body moved again.
It turned and walked in the opposite direction.
‘…’
Before long, he was taken to another place.
This time it was the dead end of an alley, with high walls on both sides blocking out what little light there was.
His body stopped at the base of the wall, waiting again for no apparent reason.
Lein’s eyes were forced to stare at the mottled brick wall in front of him, covered in cracks and water stains.
Someone had used charcoal to draw a crooked pattern—looked like a child’s graffiti.
Then, without doing anything, he was made to move on to another place.
Unlike that morning, this time the entity seemed to have no purpose at all.
It simply made him walk to one spot, pause for a while, then go to the next, repeating the process.
Lein lost count of how many alleys he’d been driven through that night, how many strange places he’d stopped.
Sometimes it was in front of a closed door, sometimes at the end of a staircase, sometimes right in the middle of an empty alley.
Every stop came without warning—he’d be walking, then suddenly halt, stay a bit, then change direction and continue.
‘What the hell is this?’
Lein tried to find a pattern in the seemingly random behavior.
If the entity had a clear goal—like last time when it stole from the Sharp Hook Gang’s hideout—it should have made a beeline for the target.
But this time, it showed no sense of efficiency, just aimlessly wandering Ash Lane, moving from point to point, pausing, then changing points.
‘Is it looking for something? Or confirming something?’
Lein’s mind raced.
If he imagined Ash Lane as a map and marked all the spots where he’d stopped, would they form some shape or pattern?
He tried to recall the route he’d walked, but with all the turns and narrow alleys, his memory was a jumbled mess.
The unknown entity was probably verifying something through him, Lein vaguely sensed.
But what exactly?
He couldn’t figure it out.
What in Ash Lane could be worth paying attention to?
Just as Lein was pondering, his body stopped again.
His gaze was forced upward, looking ahead.
A building stood at the end of the alley.
Lein had lived in Ash Lane for years and knew every street and every building like the back of his hand.
But he had never seen this building before.
That shouldn’t be.
Ash Lane was big, but ultimately just a slum.
A house he had no memory of couldn’t just appear out of nowhere.
Yet the building stood there, solid and real.
Two stories high, built from dark bricks covered in a thick layer of grime, as if it hadn’t been cleaned in ages.
The windows were narrow and long, set into heavy frames, with a murky fog on the glass that let no light through.
The front had no sign, no house number, no kind of identifying mark at all.
It was as if it had grown out of the alley’s shadows, quietly lurking there, waiting for something.
Lein stared at the building, and a chill crept up his back for no reason.