Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!
The light of stars densely embedded in the night sky dyed black as the sunset faded was all the more vivid. Tired of looking up at the moon that had become rounder compared to yesterday, I turned my gaze. As I sat buried in the pile of blankets, one of the twins offered me chocolate as if paying tribute.
Bite-sized chocolate with alphabet letters tapped my lips. When I quietly opened my mouth, the sweet thing slipped right in.
“I’m Cha Jeoh. The younger of the twins.”
As if educating a dog while giving it treats, he was repeating his self-introduction every time he put a chocolate in my mouth. The fact that I’d called the twin “the one to your left” earlier, and then remained silent without answering when he asked just to make sure, must have been that shocking. Since then, the two brothers had been coming up to me and doing this whenever they had a chance.
Of course, since I didn’t dislike it, I left them alone. Their chattering that I had no intention of listening to in the first place could just be ignored. I was extremely satisfied with the current environment where I could get snacks without having to move my hands or arms.
“Cha Jeoh.”
He, who had been about to offer me chocolate again, turned his head. His brother, who poked just his face out from the art room storage, sent a look telling him to come over.
He pouted his lips in dissatisfaction, put down the chocolate bag, and stood up.
“I’ll be right back. Don’t eat alone and wait for me.”
This time it’s “wait,” huh. While thinking such idle thoughts, I was staring at his receding back when Lee Gojun, who had been sitting silently beside me, carefully asked.
“Are you two… perhaps, well, in a special relationship?”
I turned my head to silently stare at Lee Gojun. As if misunderstanding my emotionless gaze, he shrank his shoulders and rambled excuses for no reason.
“No, it’s just, your images don’t match at all. So like, somehow, I just can’t imagine you being just close friends……”
“We are in a special relationship.”
“Wh-what?”
Lee Gojun, suddenly startled, blinked his wide-open eyes.
“Who… with who?”
“……”
“The older brother? Or the younger one?”
“The one you treated yesterday, who hurt his thigh.”
But the one who was just feeding you chocolate until now was the other one, right? Thanks to Lee Gojun making exactly that expression, I belatedly realized that the twin just now was a different person from the twin who hurt his thigh. But since this wasn’t a particularly important issue, I swallowed it without mention.
Lee Gojun opened and closed his mouth while reading my mood.
“Th-then, you two are……”
“I’m his benefactor.”
Lee Gojun, who had been about to recite the word starting with “lo-,” hurriedly closed his mouth.
“Like you, those guys also call me their benefactor.”
“Ah, benefactor……”
Lee Gojun, who had ambiguously trailed off, let out an awkward laugh. Yet still glanced toward the storage as if expressing his unresolved doubt.
“But you’re the twins’ benefactor? Not the twins being your benefactor?”
“They said they could live without dying thanks to me.”
“Gasp, what, really? Not just anyone else but those Class 4 twins?”
Those Class 4 twins?
I subtly rolled my eyes at the unfamiliar title.
“What’s that?”
“Huh? You don’t know?”
Lee Gojun, who didn’t hide his look of amazement as if looking at a natural person who’d been stuck deep in the mountains and just came up to the city, eventually leaned toward me. Then he whispered in my ear with a voice lowered as much as possible.
“The twins caused trouble at least once a year. The most representative among them was what happened last fall… urk!”
Lee Gojun let out a choked breath and moved away from me. One of the twins, who had appeared without any sign, was looking down at Lee Gojun with sharp eyes.
“You keep crossing the line? Since when were you two so close that you’re even whispering?”
“Hayoung-ah, Hayoung-ah! Save me!”
“Why is this crazy bastard calling for Hayoung? This won’t do, you’re going out to the hallway tonight to stand guard.”
He firmly grabbed the struggling Lee Gojun and dragged him away.
“I… I have a healing ability, though? Such a precious talent…!”
“So what. If you don’t get hurt it’s fine, so why would we need that kind of ability?”
“I even treated Cha Woodan’s wound…!”
I blankly stared at them going back and forth like two kittens fighting, then withdrew my interest. Of course, it was a situation where Lee Gojun was being one-sidedly dealt with, but whatever it was, it wasn’t a scene that drew my interest.
In the meantime, the other twin, who had approached without a sound, naturally took a spot beside me that Lee Gojun had occupied. Then he picked up the bag from the floor and took out a chocolate from it.
“Shall we eat chocolate, Hayoung-ah?”
When I slowly turned my head, he drew a vivid smile toward me.
“I’m Woodan. Cha Woodan. The older of the twins.”
Unfortunately for him, those words weren’t something that drew my interest either.
“Ah.”
Instead of answering, when I made a small sound and opened my mouth, his perfect smile briefly crumbled. However, erasing even that brief moment of carelessness right away, he put the chocolate in my mouth.
I silently chewed the chocolate melting smoothly on the tip of my tongue.
***
Early morning sunlight seeped in through the cracks of the window. My pupils, which had been following the yellow sunlight dyeing the art room floor, moved in that direction upon sensing an approaching presence.
Lee Gojun, who had barely been allowed one bottle of water and one energy bar from the acorn storage, sat down beside me as if it were natural. Though his nape was grabbed as usual by one of the twins who followed and he moved a bit farther away, the distance was still close nonetheless.
Lee Gojun, who had peeled the wrapper off the energy bar, bit off half of it in one go.
“I expected it to some extent, but you guys really are living abundantly. The food upstairs ran out long ago.”
‘The food already ran out?’
It seemed the food had been almost gone since the time I was kicked out of Kang Jekyung’s group. Come to think of it, in such a desperate situation, they would have conscripted even Lee Gojun, who had awakened a healing ability, and pushed him outside the classroom.
I roughly scanned Lee Gojun’s shoulder, which had finished simple treatment using medicine borrowed from the twins, then slowly opened my mouth.
“But why did you come down to the third floor? You wouldn’t have been unaware that the third floor is swarming with monsters. It might have been better to settle in a corner of the fourth floor and hide.”
“Ah, that……”
Lee Gojun, who seemed to be recalling yesterday’s memories, trembled while tightly gripping the half-cut energy bar. Vivid fear settled in those black pupils.
“When I tried to run away from the fourth floor, I had no choice but to come down to the third floor.”
“Why run away?”
Compared to the third floor, there were hardly any monsters on the fourth floor, and at most, the existing entities were mostly weakened from being severely dealt with by Kang Jekyung’s group. If Lee Gojun had made up his mind to hide quietly, he wouldn’t have encountered such monsters, nor would he have been chased by them.
Lee Gojun couldn’t immediately answer and paused. Soon he lifted the corners of his mouth awkwardly and drew a good-natured smile.
“They tried to kill me.”
What?
“Since the third and fourth floors are isolated spaces anyway, they said there’d be no trouble if they killed me in advance. When I saw it then, the other kids who’d been kicked out before me also seemed to have died because of them, not from monsters.”
I recalled the time when I was kicked out of the classroom by Kang Jekyung’s group. If I had relaxed just a bit more or tried to remain on the fourth floor, I too would have faced the crisis of being killed by them. And probably with high probability, I would have lost my life helplessly.
“So I thought you were dead too.”
“……”
“While running away like that, I came down with the mindset of struggling somehow, and I saw you through the art room window……”
Lee Gojun’s voice, which had been speaking softly, had been soaked in moisture at some point. As if afraid he might accidentally spill tears, he reflected me pitifully in his two eyes that rippled without even blinking.
“You really are my benefactor. I will, definitely, sniff.”
I turned my head away, ignoring Lee Gojun who finally shed tears. Unless it were the twins crying like that, I didn’t particularly want to appreciate him crying with his utterly ordinary face.
“Then what are they going to do now? Stay holed up on the fourth floor and starve to death together?”
The twin who had grabbed Lee Gojun’s nape threw out a question while mulling over his words. In the meantime, the other twin passed his brother and came to sit beside me.
Lee Gojun gasped, choked up from crying.
“Hic, I, I don’t know. Sniff.”
It wasn’t a satisfactory answer in content or tone. More strength entered the grip of his hand that had grabbed Lee Gojun’s nape.
“Would he get quiet if I cut his tongue?”
“If you want to make him quiet, you should cut the vocal cords, not the tongue.”
When I added thoughtlessly, Lee Gojun stared at me blankly as if he’d suffered the betrayal of the century. But being shocked and turning pale was only momentary, as he mumbled something incomprehensible like ‘Yeah, if Hayoung wants…’ and fidgeted.
When did he seem so timid and fearful, but now Lee Gojun’s mental state was gradually becoming questionable. However, in a world ruled by monsters, there was no way a psychiatric clinic would remain, so what could be done? And originally when the world became a pandemonium, everyone tended to go a bit crazy and mad.
It was when I was convincing myself alone like that. Feeling something off, I narrowed my eyes.
The presence of monsters beyond the hallway was unsettled. Soon they began moving busily with one place as their goal.
Shortly, things flashing past could be glimpsed through the window illuminating the hallway. Beast-type monsters were disappearing like arrows from the left to the right.
He, who had been watching outside similarly, released Lee Gojun’s nape as if throwing it.
“It seems people came down from upstairs.”
The other twin beside me nodded in agreement.
I thought so too. The survivors who survived on the isolated third and fourth floors were only us and Kang Jekyung’s group. In such circumstances, with monsters rushing in as if chasing prey, it was obvious without deep thought who had attracted that attention.
“It seems they came down since they didn’t want to sit still and end their lives by starvation.”
Saying so, he waved his hand in the air to pull up the shadow at his feet. Creating a magnificent sword in one go, he swung it a couple of times to get used to it in his hand.
I watched him preparing for possible danger, then opened my mouth.
“How many are there?”
