The ponytail girl, gaining confidence from Lee Gojun’s reaction, didn’t drag things out any longer and immediately added:
“He came all the way to the school looking for you…!”
Lee Gojun’s younger brother?
Now that I thought about it, he had said something like that when we were still in the art room. Something about how if he survived, he needed to go see if his younger brother was doing well.
Belatedly grasping the situation, I rolled my eyes and observed Lee Gojun. Unable to easily comprehend the content of the words the ponytail girl was machine-gunning at him, he just stood there frozen, his open eyelids trembling. Then, when the ponytail girl shook him forcefully, Lee Gojun snapped back to his senses a beat late and desperately nodded his head.
“That’s, that’s right. My younger brother… Geonwoo, my younger brother.”
As if afraid of misspeaking, Lee Gojun enunciated each syllable clearly as he responded. On his face, along with vivid anxiety, rippled a glimmer of expectation he couldn’t quite hide.
I silently drummed on the bed sheet while staring intently at Lee Gojun.
“……”
I briefly recalled the orphanage building and those children, then quickly lost interest.
***
“We’re here. This is the broadcasting room.”
Hearing the low voice informing me of our location, I tapped the arm of the person holding me. Cha Jeoh obediently loosened his arms and set me down on the floor.
Behind me, the broadcasting room door closed, and from across the way came Lee Gojun’s voice saying he’d closed all the windows too. Only then did I slowly open my eyes.
No wonder I’d been feeling a gaze constantly poking at me from earlier—the ponytail girl was watching me with a look of curiosity that hadn’t quite faded. She seemed to be itching to ask about me being carried with my eyes closed by Cha Jeoh, but she couldn’t bring herself to say anything. It was because she’d asked a related question in the hallway just moments ago and had been exhausted after facing Cha Jeoh’s hostility and Lee Gojun’s fanatical defense.
Turning my head without much feeling, I tapped the broadcasting room floor with my toes a few times before belatedly taking a step. Equipment and computers that no longer received power were lined up against one wall. Since I’d never entered the broadcasting room during my two and a half years enrolled here, nothing was familiar—everything was just strange.
I looked around the interior of the broadcasting room carefully. Then I stopped at a certain spot and tilted my head slightly.
‘…Looks like someone used an ability.’
On the heavy door leading to the studio inside the broadcasting room, a blue padlock made of light was floating in the center.
Through my narrowed eyes, I examined the palm-sized padlock. Meanwhile, behind me, Lee Gojun was pressing the ponytail girl with a quite desperate tone.
“My younger brother, you said he’s alive, not dead. You said he was in the broadcasting room.”
“I didn’t say… he wasn’t dead. I said he’s probably alive.”
Half-heartedly listening to that conversation, I slowly reached my hand toward the studio door. I brought my fingertips to touch the surface made of a different material than ordinary doors for soundproofing.
The blue padlock briefly glowed with a dim light and clicked. Like trying to open it by inserting the wrong key, the padlock bobbed alone in the air a few times before stopping its movement.
“Kim Hayoung happens to be standing right there.”
Belatedly removing my hand from the door, I turned my head. The ponytail girl was pointing her finger up at me.
“He’s in there. Your younger brother.”
Blinking quietly, I stepped aside. Looking now, the ponytail girl’s finger wasn’t pointing at me but at the door beyond me—that studio door I’d just placed my hand on.
Lee Gojun, who immediately followed the ponytail girl’s gaze, moved forward before anyone could stop him. He showed cautious movements only briefly when passing by me, then reached the studio door in one go.
To Lee Gojun’s back, the ponytail girl let out a bitter sigh filled with misplaced guilt.
“Um, sorry I couldn’t tell you in advance, but that door is locked. And it’s not just locked—it’s locked with an ability, so there’s no other way to open it. The soundproofing is so thorough that we can’t even communicate with whoever’s inside, so we’ve been anxious all day…”
Before the ponytail girl’s lament could even finish, Lee Gojun reached his hand toward the door. And the moment his fingertips brushed the studio door, a vast light spread out, dyeing the inside of the broadcasting room blue.
I blinked, taking in that brilliant scene with my eyes. The small padlock that had been floating at the center of the door grew to nearly five times its size and rose into the air. Soon, with a click—a small but clear sound—the motion of the padlock unlocking was formed in light.
At the same time, the studio door seemed to open as well. Lee Gojun, as if he had no time to be distracted by the giant padlock shape, immediately squeezed through the door gap. Perhaps he looked relatively less surprised because he’d already experienced this phenomenon before.
‘…They said there was someone who awakened a locking ability.’
The twins had said so. That person had used their ability to lock the passage leading to the second floor, but the conditions for unlocking it were so excessively demanding that there was practically no way to open the door. The words that those conditions hadn’t been revealed but ultimately no one would be able to fulfill them also remained in my vague memory.
As I was turning this over in my head, I looked back at Cha Jeoh, who had drawn close to my side. Sensing my gaze, he bloomed into a vivid smile without a moment’s hesitation. It seemed more like an emotional change instinctively revealed upon facing me rather than conscious expression management.
“Why?”
First, I picked a question, wanting to confirm how much of that locking ability was visible to Cha Jeoh’s eyes.
“That just now, did you see it too?”
“I saw the blue padlock float up there and open. It just disappeared.”
That meant he hadn’t seen the scene of the padlock floating there from before the door opened. He also said it just disappeared, so he probably couldn’t see the padlock that had shrunk back down and was circling the center of the door in its unlocked form either.
“Oh, and when the second-floor stairs opened, I saw the exact same blue padlock. I don’t know what condition we fulfilled though.”
“Then the person who set the locking ability must be inside there.”
Beyond the wide-open door, overwhelming sobbing spreading from inside the studio echoed through the enclosed space. Only then emerging from my thoughts and looking around, I saw that even the ponytail girl had already gone inside and was nowhere to be seen.
Fortunately, I didn’t sense any foul odor like that of a rotting corpse. So that sobbing sound was probably an expression of relief and joy rather than agonizing pain.
Taking Cha Jeoh, who stuck to me like a shadow, I headed inside the studio. Having barely taken one step as if standing on the threshold, I quietly observed the scene unfolding before my eyes.
The studio was configured in typical broadcasting room fashion. On one side were long desks and several chairs, and on the opposite side was a stand alone without a camera. I could see several bread bags and water bottles that didn’t match this place’s image rolling around on the floor, but since that was a landscape you’d see anywhere after the world became like this, I didn’t pay attention to it.
And at the center, there were two boys sitting collapsed on the floor, hugging each other tightly as if they had no strength left to stand.
The one whose back was only visible from my direction was a familiar figure—Lee Gojun. So the boy on the opposite side, whose arms barely peeked out as they embraced the other’s back, must be the person who was his younger brother.
The relationship between the brothers seemed quite affectionate. Seeing them embrace like that and shed tears, I could almost physically feel how much they’d worried about each other. Meanwhile, it was so like the sunfish-like Lee Gojun to cry while holding his breath and whimpering so as not to disturb others, and it was also like his younger brother who must resemble him.
The brothers, who had been like that for a while, belatedly separated from each other. They seemed to be exchanging some conversation, but I couldn’t make out their murmuring at all, so I quickly lost interest. Then I turned my attention elsewhere.
Come to think of it, right next to me was someone who had a special sibling too.
I turned my head and looked up at Cha Jeoh. Our eyes met seamlessly with him, who had been watching only me as if he’d never had any interest in the touching reunion of older brother and younger brother in the first place.
‘…Did Cha Jeoh say he was the older brother, or the younger brother?’
My head, still clumsy at memorizing and remembering about others, didn’t possess such detailed information. So I tried hard to trace back my hazy memory, but it wasn’t easy. I was concentrating with my brow slightly furrowed when I suddenly felt another gaze reaching me. The eyes were too burning and sparkling to ignore and just dismiss.
Having no choice but to check, I saw Lee Gojun, who had at some point turned to face me. Having finally obtained a glance from me, he smiled brightly.
“Geonwoo-ya, let me introduce you.”
I hoped that the inexplicable sense of foreboding creeping over me was just needless worry, but anxious premonitions were never wrong.
“This is my benefactor.”
Lee Gojun spread his palm and pointed at me. His younger brother, who had been behind him, turned his gaze that had been fixed only on his older brother toward me.
“And he’s the Messiah of our Church of Hayoung.”
