A proper tribute to welcome god, they said — but it was nothing more than a scheme to bind everyone together as accomplices by forcing them to share in a horrific crime, so that no one could escape. It was obvious: a trick to paralyze the frontal lobe through shocking acts, and to drive them deeper and deeper into religion by letting them rationalize that what they were doing was not wrong.
Sim Seowoo moved quickly to execute his plan.
“Are we going outside?”
“Yeah. But don’t be scared. It’s way safer outside than in the facility.”
“Mmmph, if it’s with Seowoo oppa, I think it’ll be okay……”
“That’s right! Hyung never lies!”
In the dead of night, he led the children and ran down the mountain path. Thankfully, the children followed without suspicion. On top of that, seeming to understand that they were running away, the last child to shout was quietly shushed by the others.
Sim Seowoo softened his gaze and smiled.
“Hey, is there anything you want to do when you get outside? Like a dream or something?”
It wasn’t the time for a peaceful conversation, but he wanted to ease the children’s tension even just a little. He kept his eyes moving discreetly, scanning their surroundings as he asked, and the child who was usually so shy and quiet that they barely spoke was the first to raise their hand.
“I, I want to live a normal life!”
“……Hm?”
“You said you went to high school, oppa. I want to go to school like that too, listen to lessons, and later go to university too. Being a university student is my dream……!”
“Me too, me too! Hyung said he wants to go to university, so I want to go too! Let’s all go together!”
The pure wishes sounded almost like a curse, in a way, but all Sim Seowoo felt was a tender ache. Had the stories he had casually told while teaching them etched themselves into their hearts like that?
“Let’s all promise to live normally together!”
And on the other hand, it was heartbreaking that the children, too, seemed to know on some level that life in the facility was not normal. They had been brainwashed from an early age, and yet somewhere in the back of their minds, they had held onto a curiosity about the outside after all.
“Yeah. Let’s live like that.”
Sim Seowoo nodded and made the promise. He was still a minor himself, and he had no idea how he was going to get through what was ahead — and he wasn’t confident he knew how to help the children either. But at the very least, it was certain that the cult was insane.
Convinced that getting out was the right thing to do, he pushed through the forest path swallowed by darkness, and in the moment he spotted what appeared to be the lights of a village far below and felt a surge of hope——
He was struck hard in the back of the head and collapsed.
***
Flicker, flicker……
Simply opening his eyelids felt like his head might crack open. Or perhaps it already had. The back of his head was damp, and his whole body burned as though he had fallen into a pit of fire. His brain felt melted, making it difficult to focus — but through the blurry, bleeding haze of his vision, Sim Seowoo found the all-too-familiar ceiling and let out a scoff.
Ah, it’s over.
Resignation pressed down on his entire body like a leaden weight. He grasped that he had been tied to the stage of the assembly hall on the first floor of the training facility — the one that had been used as a prayer room — but even the thought of needing to get up didn’t occur to him, and he simply stared blankly out the window.
The familiar shape of the ridgeline stirred an old memory. The time when he had gone missing as a child and his parents had reported it to the police, causing a commotion — the forest path he had walked alone that day felt similar to the one he had just sprinted down. And the mountain landscape he had looked up at back then seemed to resemble what he could see through the window right now.
A hollow laugh escaped him. The image of his parents, pale with panic at the thought of losing him that day, came to mind and struck him as absurd. And then, out of nowhere, a wave of resentment surged up toward the existence they had mentioned back then.
If I truly have a guardian angel, do something. Help me.
“Son……”
His parents’ voices came then. The state of their clothes as they climbed up onto the stage suggested they had likely been searching the mountain for him. Were they in a bind too, he wondered — but their faces were oddly bright.
The contrast between their dirty faces, slick with sweat and caked with dirt, and their strikingly clear eyes unsettled him in a way that made his skin crawl.
“Seowoo-ya, our precious son. We knew you were special, didn’t we?”
“A revelation has come down that you were born with a pure soul. If a being of such immaculate purity ascends to the Circulation Rite, then through that noble sacrifice, everyone will bask in glory, they say.”
Buzz, buzz — his head rang. Whether it was because of being struck in the back of the head with what he assumed was a baseball bat, he couldn’t properly make sense of what his parents were saying, but he vaguely grasped that they were spouting nonsense, and——
“Then you can wash away the sin you committed too!”
By the time he barely managed to hold onto his sanity, the words that reached him drew a laugh out of him.
The rebellion he had carried out this time had gone against the will of the Cult Leader and had created a great karmic stain on his soul — but thankfully, if he sacrificed himself for the ritual to awaken the evil god, he could wash that sin away, blah blah blah — the nonsense flowed past his broken mind without sticking.
There really isn’t a single sane person here……
And now I’m physically not sane either……
Lost in idle thoughts, a sound reached Sim Seowoo’s ears — someone knocking on a door. It was coming from a small storage room connected to the assembly hall. Whether the children were locked inside, faint cries of “Oppa!” and “Hyung……!” seeped out.
The voices desperately calling for him, paradoxically, made him want to let go of himself entirely.
Yeah. Let’s just die.
If he died, there would be no need to offer the children as sacrifice. If he just went along quietly, wouldn’t that be enough? It seemed like an entirely reasonable conclusion.
Sim Seowoo was exhausted.
The way his parents clutched his limp hand as though it were something precious right now, the tears they shed as their shoulders shook — none of it looked like sadness. They must be happy. It was a clear conclusion, and with it came a sense of relief — and at the same time, a quiet, unavoidable wretchedness.
It would have been better if I had gone mad like Mom and Dad.
From the moment he gave up on everything, his vision began to blur. He no longer felt any need to cling to consciousness, and he let his mind drift. His vision flickered like a broken projector, layering scene upon scene, and his hearing was a mess.
The moments scattered like ill-fitting puzzle pieces, tumbling out of order.
The followers gathering below the stage and dropping to their knees. The garbage Cult Leader, still dressed in his doctor’s robes, approaching the altar. Behind the chanting — half laughing, half crying — a nauseating stench filled the air. He could feel his body growing damp, as though something had been poured over him, but he didn’t have the presence of mind to identify it. And just as his head grew all the more dizzy……
BOOM.
A massive, reverberating crash slammed against his ears. It was a heavy, blunt sound so powerful that even Sim Seowoo, who had been letting all the noise around him wash over him, flinched.
And when he barely managed to clear his vision, the scene before him was the mountainside outside the window — shaking, undulating. It was as though the darkness within the mountain was rising. Just moments before, he had felt nothing, even with the people trying to kill him right in front of him — but now, instinct screamed at him that something was dangerous.
But Sim Seowoo could do nothing. His entire body was tied down, making escape impossible, and he couldn’t even be certain whether what he was seeing was real. And then, suddenly, a sharp ringing tore through his brain like a needle, making it impossible to regain his senses.
EEEEEEEEEEE——
Between the bursts of ultrasonic-like noise, the sounds of people fleeing and screaming blurred together, and then…… at some point, a choking, acrid smoke began to sting the tip of his nose.
The assembly hall was on fire.
The billowing smoke and scattering embers made a mess of his vision. Trapped in the sweltering heat, on the verge of passing out, there were voices reaching for him.
“Please save us! Help us!”
“It’s hot, it’s hot, it’s hot!”
“Oppaaaaaa……!”
Smoke was pouring out of the storage room where the children were locked as well. The flames were enormous — not just devouring the assembly hall, but threatening to consume the entire building — and the children pounded on the walls and cried.
Sim Seowoo wanted to get up.
But he couldn’t break free from the tight ropes, and the harder he thrashed, the more violent the dizziness became — enough to make him nauseous. It was because of his cracked head. Struggling desperately with his wrecked body, he suddenly felt a deep, consuming darkness creeping into the edges of his vision.
Was the ceiling collapsing? Or was some enormous hand reaching toward him?
Ah. It’s the end.
Sim Seowoo could find no way to escape the darkness flooding his sight. He had accepted death long before this moment, had already resigned himself — and yet, with a quiet bitterness, he thought, and let go of consciousness.
***
But Sim Seowoo did not die that day.
He had been tied down in a burning assembly hall, and yet he had not sustained even a single burn, and there was nothing wrong with his breathing either. Waking up completely unscathed was miraculous and strange — but he could not bring himself to feel happy about it.
The horrific fire that had swallowed Hoejin Mountain,
the death of the cult that had shocked society,
and the sole survivor of that day.
Those were the titles bestowed upon Sim Seowoo when he came to. He opened his eyes in a hospital and the very first thing he did was check the calendar — and then he stared at the wall for a long, long time.
Calm without turbulence, yet paradoxically as though everything had sunk beneath the surface — empty, tawny-brown eyes that held no relief, no joy whatsoever, gazed blankly at the date.
It was the 100th day.
