“Gudong!”

“Dong!”

On the lush green grass, two Gugudongs were waving their short little arms, knocking against each other as they discussed something intensely.

The One Above All, who was on patrol, drifted past from afar and spotted them at a glance.

As usual, he made no attempt to hide his presence, lazily appearing.

“What’s wrong?”

The moment the words fell, the two Gugudongs jerked at the same time, their round bodies nearly bouncing off the ground.

They then began waving their forelimbs in panic, retreating step by step as they waved—and then—

Whoosh!

In a flash, they vanished without a trace.

Leaving the One Above All standing there, blinking, completely at a loss.

By the afternoon, things grew even stranger.

As the One Above All passed another stretch of grassland, he looked up to see several Gugudongs suspended in midair, their limbs tightly tucked in. From a distance, they looked like a single, round bundle of glowing fireflies.

He hovered in the air, watching for a moment, and eventually spoke up.

“What are you up to?”

As soon as the words left his mouth, the Gugudongs in the air suddenly stretched out their limbs and began to struggle.

Below, the Gugudongs holding the ropes fumbled about, and accidentally let go—

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Like marbles being scattered, the Gugudongs fell back to the ground, clattering noisily as they hit and rolled into a heap.

Amid the chaos, the ropes tangled around them, and one Gugudong even stepped on its own head.

The One Above All paused for half a second, an inexplicable sense of unease rising in his mind.

…This… might be my doing?

For several days in a row, whenever the One Above All passed through the various shards, the reactions of the Gugudong he encountered were almost always the same—

either they sprang in place and fled in fright,
or they dropped whatever they were holding and bolted away, their movements uncannily uniform.

At last, on the morning of the fifth day, the One Above All paused in the air, silently watching a group of Gugudongs detour far around him.

After a while, he murmured to himself:

“So… they really are avoiding me…”

“But why?”

The words were so soft that even the wind couldn’t carry them away,
only lingering by his ears, circling a few times.

A few more days passed, and the situation began to change.

By chance, the One Above All spotted a makeshift stove set up on the grass.

No one knew where the Gugudongs had gotten hold of so many ingredients—some were directing others, some were beating eggs, others tending a fire.

Still others, in a flurry, stirred batter while bumping into one another, all the while struggling to stack unstable bags of flour higher and higher.

This time, he didn’t approach, nor did he speak.

He simply hovered at a distance, watching quietly.

After observing for a while, the corners of his mouth slowly lifted, and he finally turned and left.

Somewhere within him, a faint, long-forgotten stir quietly surfaced.

“Hahah. Let them be.”

“After all, if you know too early, it takes the fun out of it.”

He chuckled softly in midair, letting his form dissolve into the light.

—When was the last time he had felt such a simple anticipation for something?