Mysterious Stranger Prologue (English translated)

As the drizzle and small snow fell, the roads and streetlights shone brighter than before.

 

As the sun set, people each sought their own refuge, walking on foot or, for those with a little more time, using four-legged animals. These were ordinary days, noisily moving about.  

 And My life was the same. I was just a salaryman at a London newspaper office, walking on foot, running around, and earning money for my efforts.   

There was no reason to be completely satisfied with this ordinary life, but there was no reason to be greedy either, so I just wanted to end the day with the word 'satisfaction'. 

 

However, as history shows, such expectations were shattered in an instant.

 

"Damn, you're trying to show off just by wearing a Burberry coat..."  

 

It was the beginning of days when I bit my lips like candy and even my fingernails disappeared like a crab's eyes.  

'Even when I was interviewed, I wasn't this nervous,' he thought uselessly, and hurried his steps.

 

It was like a toddler who had only seen the front of a coin and now sees the back for the first time, feeling fear spread through his entire body - even to every strand of hair. 

 Only the vague feeling that he had to grab onto even the smallest shred of straw to survive filled the streets. 

 

"It's an extra edition! An extra edition!!"

 

The stillness of the evening streets was completely shattered by a small child. 

He wore a flat cap pulled down as much as possible, clutched a wad of newspapers in his left arm, and shouted loudly enough to echo throughout the neighborhood. 

'Was that a familiar child? Was that a child I saw?' In fact, that was a subject of no interest to me at all. 

I snatched a part of the newspaper that the child was holding tightly in his hand until it was torn, and read it slowly. 

'The fire that engulfed a residential area in London was a reporter from a newspaper??'       

In that moment, as my anger surged, I threw down the newspaper I was reading and grabbed the young child by the collar. The boy's eyes were downcast. He looked as if he was about to burst into tears. When I let go of his hand, the boy quickly threw down the bundle of newspapers and ran away. It was only a moment before he disappeared from sight. Let's turn back the clock in our heads to figure out what went wrong and what to do next.

 

'To COUNTER-CLOCK WISE'

 

 (Meanwhile...) 

 

"Guys, it'll be more problem if you guys stands like this, and like this PLACE."

 

At the words of a gray-haired middle-aged man, a sturdy man wearing a brown coat and a bowler hat seemed to be trying to convey his intentions by silently waving his hands and arms. The girl next to him, with long white hair and red eyes like cherries, simply conveyed his message dryly to the gray-haired middle-aged man.

 

“We just did what we had to do, sir.”

 

   At those words, the middle-aged man’s head started to hurt. There was no way the London police would believe the ridiculous story that two men had wiped out the entire Bonggolneri Mafia, more than twenty of them. In any case, everything they saw right now was a clear fact: they were standing on a floor where even the walls were dyed red. The middle-aged man swallowed hard and soon opened his mouth. 

 

“... Let’s clean up those chunks of meat and think about it again. I’ll have some whiskey at home to forget about it.”

 

The man in the bowler hat simply nodded. Then the two leisurely left the crime scene without leaving a trace. Then, as if the goddess of fate was laughing at him, the British police rushed into the scene in an instant, a ridiculous sight that even the fish in the fish and chips would laugh at. 

 

In this city such an <full of nonsense stories>, [London], he was somehow alive even now.

 

 It was a white winter in 1672.