After the vibration and noise that Wolf had been causing settled down, the two didn’t ask about my ability again, as if they’d completely forgotten about it.
I’d wondered if perhaps they’d noticed I didn’t want to talk about it and were pretending not to know. But no matter how I looked at them, they didn’t seem like the type of people to be considerate of others, so I quickly discarded that guess. They were just human goldfish, I supposed.
We spent time chatting away until nighttime. Nine times out of ten the content was worthless and joking. Even that was mostly just the twins bantering back and forth between themselves.
I just observed them anew as if watching aliens who’d dropped straight from Mars. Still, compared to when I was part of Kang Jekyung’s group, it wasn’t unbearable.
‘You were on the fourth floor before coming to the third?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Were you alone? Or with friends?’
‘Not friends, just people I happened to run into.’
‘But why did you come down to the third floor alone?’
‘That too, just happened.’
‘Hasn’t it been a whole week since the fourth floor was cut off because of the third floor? You still have food left, I guess?’
‘Probably.’
‘Hayoung-ah, being with us is more comfortable than being with them, right?’
‘……’
I didn’t remember well what I’d answered. The voice gently burrowing into my ears was like a lullaby I didn’t usually listen to, and the nest made as a bed substitute by piling up several layers of clothing was more comfortable than expected. I fell asleep without even realizing my consciousness was fading.
And when I opened my eyes again, a new sun of a new day that had arrived without fail was shining and illuminating the inside of the art room.
“While I’m going down, should I bring a mattress from the infirmary?”
“I don’t know. Isn’t the window here too small to bring in a mattress?”
“Is that so? Then just a blanket at least…”
I could hear the conversation continuing faintly. The sound wasn’t loud but wasn’t entirely unobtrusive either, pulling my consciousness up to the surface.
When I turned my body from facing the ceiling to lying on my side, the uniform jacket that had been keeping me warm slid smoothly down.
…Had I slept covered with the jacket as a blanket? I’d made a makeshift sleeping spot by laying clothes on the floor, but I didn’t think I’d covered myself with anything.
“Hayoung-ah. Are you awake?”
I was still too drowsy for my head to work. Perhaps because I’d been able to sleep deeply without interruption for the first time in a while, my eyelids were stiff and didn’t move well. As I stared into the air with my eyes half-open, I saw two sets of slippers approaching me.
“Going to sleep more?”
The voice asking me quietly was especially pleasant to hear. It seemed the brilliant beauty already imprinted in me was having an extremely positive influence on my judgment.
I was breathing dryly through the gaps between my teeth that were parted, unable to close completely, when suddenly my cheek was poked by something long. When I rolled my eyes slightly, I saw one of the twins reaching his hand toward me. What seemed to be his finger—once would have been enough—repeatedly pressed into my flesh two, three times.
I stared at him with the hazy vision of someone not fully awake. The beauty I could barely see kept sparkling on that face that was still blurry, dazzling my eyes.
“Why can’t you get it together? Hayoung-ah, are you sick somewhere?”
Asking that, the hand that had moved away from my cheek now touched my forehead. The chilly coldness touching my skin wasn’t bad.
“What, does Hayoung have a fever?”
“No, fortunately not.”
“Then just leave him. Looks like he’s not fully awake.”
Even though the exchange of words stopped, the hand covering my forehead didn’t fall away. Finding it bothersome, I turned my head and the cool temperature briefly lifted before sticking back on. That large palm covered not just my forehead but both my eyes completely.
“I’m going.”
“…Why are you grinning like that? Happy to be alone together?”
Beyond the hand covering my vision, small laughter spread.
“Jeoh-ya, what can we do? Should this hyung drag his injured leg and go down too?”
“Huh?”
“Of course, if our Jeoh is too scared to do it, hyung will have to do it instead. How about it, should I go?”
“Fuck, what hyung. You were only born 3 minutes earlier.”
The one who’d ground out the fierce curse passed by me with heavy steps. Soon the sound of a window opening rang out from behind me, so I reflexively pressed my lips tightly together.
“I’ll be back before lunch.”
“Take your time.”
“I’m gonna run there and back fucking fast.”
“Yeah. Make sure to roll and fall on the way down. Got it?”
To that last request that wasn’t really a request, a snort as if finding it absurd served as an answer. Amidst that subtle war of nerves, having shaken off my drowsiness, I thought: Hearing them bicker like that, they were definitely twins, not doppelgangers.
***
The twin approached me as I stood leaning against the art room’s characteristically large desk. Of course, I only called him ‘the twin’ for convenience of address—the one who came to me with a bright smile was one, not two.
I stared blankly at the water bottle the twin held out before slowly receiving it. Even after seeing me yesterday not just drink water but pour it all over my clothes, he still thought to bring it. Since quite a lot of food was piled up, perhaps his generosity was broader than others’.
The twin, who’d already handed the bottle over to me, unnecessarily reached out again to open the cap for me. I followed his incomprehensible action with my eyes before raising my head. With my vision full of his face, he belatedly noticed my gaze and bloomed into a full smile.
“Should I bring something to eat as a meal too?”
“No. I don’t eat breakfast originally.”
“Then we can wait until Cha Jeoh comes back and eat lunch together.”
The twin currently outside was Cha Jeoh, Cha Jeoh…
I mulled over the name that still felt unfamiliar while taking a sip of water.
A little while ago, Cha Jeoh had gone down to deal with the Wolf that was the cause of yesterday’s vibration. Not that he went down to the lower floor through the stairs, but literally jumped ‘down.’
‘I thought the survivors on the lower floors would open the door or clear a path.’
Completely unexpectedly, Cha Jeoh favored the method of opening the art room window and jumping out. When coming back up too, he said he climbed the tree located near the building’s outer wall and crossed through the window.
Hearing it, it seemed that from the lower floors’ perspective of isolating the third and fourth floors, they couldn’t open and close the blocked passage at will either. The one who created that defensive barrier was a survivor possessing an ability related to ‘locking,’ but the conditions for opening and closing doors were too demanding to fulfill easily. Because of that, there was effectively no way to open the door—it was as good as firmly locked.
‘Even so, it seems like a rather brutish method.’
From the twins’ perspective, with the body and ability to support that action, it might be an efficient and convenient method rather than brutish. Though it would be something I couldn’t even dream of doing.
“Should I lift you up?”
At the sudden question, I raised my gaze that had been wandering the floor to stare at him before me.
“…What?”
“You. Weren’t you about to climb onto the desk just now but gave up?”
My body flinched, hit right on target. Strength entered the hand that had been touching the desk behind me.
As he said, I had just tried to lift myself up to sit on the desk. My legs were getting sore from continuing to stand leaning against the desk, and I’d remembered him sitting on the desk when he’d injured his thigh before. But trying to get on top of the desk using only one hand while holding the water bottle wasn’t easy. The fact that the art room’s wide desk was about a hand-span higher than a classroom’s typical desk also played a part.
So I quickly gave up and turned my attention elsewhere. But he seemed to have been watching that brief action.
That said, I didn’t want to go so far as receiving help from others to get on the desk. I was about to shake my head to refuse when, before I could react, I saw two hands abruptly approaching.
Hand grips considerably larger than mine touched me without giving me a chance to resist. Sliding his hands under my armpits, he lifted me up in one swift motion.
For the first time, vivid emotion appeared on my face that had been emotionless in all things, rarely surprised or greatly flustered by anything.
“Hey, wait, wait a second.”
I swayed, unable to find my balance for a moment due to my two feet floating in the air. Of course, as long as the twin was holding me well, there was no danger of falling, but that didn’t mean the chilling fear that had bloomed in that instant immediately subsided.
Because of that, just as I was about to grab onto his arms supporting me with quite urgent movements—
Splash—!
With a sound like sharp waves rising through a calm sea, the bottle crumpled in my hand, now empty with most of the water having flown away.
For a moment, all the flow and breath of the world seemed to freeze and stop.
“Ugh, that’s cold.”
Despite being taller than me, his face positioned below mine in this moment—I looked down at it blankly while floating in the air. Water that had been stored at room temperature for a long time but felt relatively cold being lower than body temperature was thoroughly soaking his white, fair face. I could see water droplets flowing down his sharp jawline and then dripping to soak his uniform shirt.
My weakly parted lips slowly closed. Following that, gulp—the sound of swallowing dry saliva rang unusually loud.
For an ordinary person, a figure thoroughly soaked in water might look unseemly, but that story didn’t apply at all to him before my eyes. The sight of his hair clinging damply to his forehead, soaked with moisture, couldn’t be more bewitching. Even his skin glistening with water was sparkling all the more, empowered by the sunlight shining from behind me.
