It seemed there were quite a few people in this space. It was difficult to distinguish each of the presences tangled haphazardly in this not-so-spacious area one by one. Eventually giving up, I tapped the floor beneath my feet with my toes.
There were many people inside the student council room, and therefore there was no way we could control them all. It meant it would be difficult to perfectly prevent them from opening windows or doors as they pleased. So to prepare for any possible situation, I asked the twins for something to use as a blindfold before entering the student council room. Also, it seemed that way would be more convenient for making others think ‘that person cannot open their eyes’ rather than ‘is keeping them closed,’ avoiding needless questions or demands.
“So, that side is the upper floor representative?”
‘…Upper floor representative?’
I stayed still, thinking they were referring to one of the twins, when a hand from the left appeared, snapping fingers to announce its presence, and wrapped around my shoulder.
“Yeah. Our Hayoung. Kim Hayoung.”
My eyelids closed beneath the cloth trembled.
Upper floor representative? Who. Me?
It seemed I wasn’t the only one flustered by the out-of-the-blue statement. The sound of other survivors who had survived on the upper floor and come down to the lower floor, scattered in all directions, murmuring with sour expressions brushed past my ears. However, Cha Jeoh, who wrapped around my shoulder and pulled me to him, didn’t care at all.
I, who had reflexively opened my mouth, hurriedly controlled the impulse and bit my rolled lips. In the meantime, Lee Gojun, who had been standing close behind me, spoke with his characteristically kind, warm voice.
“I don’t know what you mean by upper floor representative, but what’s certain is that Hayoung is our Church of Hayoung… Mmph!”
Seeing Cha Jeoh separate from me at the same time Lee Gojun’s words were blocked off, it was obvious what situation had occurred even without being able to see it. Of course, I had no intention of reproaching Cha Jeoh for his impulsive action.
Meanwhile, those who had been evenly positioned within the student council room, seeming to observe us intently, began to open their mouths one by one.
“First of all, that’s everyone who came down from the upper floor, right? As for abilities… we’ll have to check step by step.”
“You all know we don’t have much food left, right?”
“So what are you saying? That we should kick out kids who are perfectly alive?”
“Wasn’t all the talk finished before they came? Why are you fighting again, why?”
Various voices burst forth from the ‘ㄷ’-shaped desks surrounding the upper floor survivors. In the midst of that struggle showing no signs of ending, bang! A loud noise of someone striking the desk hard rang out.
“Ten of my comrades died. Ten! But what, we should live together going hahaha hohoho with them? With those no different from murderers?”
“I don’t know how you opened the door, but before opening it, you could have given us a heads-up, or you could have cleared out some monsters from the third floor before coming down. Ten died just on our side, and if you count the total casualties, it’s even more than that.”
As if the misdirected anger that started from the right side of the student council room had become a signal flare, gradually other directions also began to step forward and add their words. Those sharp gazes seemed to prick my skin, so I raised the back of my hand and swept my cheek once.
‘What a spectacle.’
I could clearly see the hopeless, ruined future of Hanul High if things continued like this. Not knowing whether their families were alive or dead, their friends and comrades they’d laughed and chatted with dying before their eyes, and in the midst of it all, people who’d gone half-mad struggling against monsters to survive—it wasn’t that I couldn’t understand them acting so fanatically. I just understood but had no desire to respect them.
I threw away my brief curiosity. Since if I showed a sign that I wanted to leave this place right now, the twins would naturally accompany me as if it were obvious, and I was about to turn around with that certainty when—
“Th-the door was opened by that side! So I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m also just, in a victim’s position!”
A sharp shout interrupted, cutting off the argument within the student council room.
As always, I was indifferent to others, not despising or hating the existence called humans itself. Since I had no particular interest in them, I didn’t care at all whether they lived as they pleased and died as they pleased, or walked the path to destruction among themselves.
So if they would make an effort to exclude me from their group, that would be quite appreciated, but—
“If responsibility must be taken, those guys should take it! Not us innocent people!”
That didn’t mean my feelings weren’t hurt. The monotonous mood seemed to plummet through the floor in an instant, so I gently furrowed my brow.
They could feel as if the twins and Lee Gojun were murderers who had recklessly created casualties with their actions. Generally, when people are placed in dangerous situations, their reason becomes paralyzed, and they try to protect themselves by passing on sins that are no one’s fault to others.
But if so, they should also recognize that while the twins and Lee Gojun were murderers, they were simultaneously saviors who had extended their lives by even one more day. It was none other than those three people who had recklessly jumped into the line of death to treat the injured and also exterminated the monsters that had swarmed down to the lower floor. If they were trying to forcibly extract a price for sins that those three didn’t even have, it meant they should also pay the price for the appropriate grace they received.
“Bullshit.”
Cha Jeoh, who had been standing beside me, muttered lowly. I was breathing in as if agreeing with him when a weighty voice that swept away the noisy chaos from all directions in one go was heard from the front.
“Who exactly are you referring to by ‘those guys’? The two twin sunbaes in the center? Or that… that sunbae behind them too?”
“Th-that white-haired one too!”
White hair?
‘Who’s that.’
Aren’t all the people here high school students? But is there already someone who bleached their hair white?
I was expressing a sour doubt when the presence on my right side, which had already been close, drew even closer and stuck to me. Not satisfied with that, Cha Woodan, who even wrapped his arm around my shoulder, gently tilted his head.
“So what are you trying to do? Kick out the upper floor representative plus two key personnel?”
The weight leaning down from above my head wasn’t burdensome. Feeling that warmth, I carefully turned things over in my head.
I still couldn’t accept the part about me being the upper floor representative, or calling just the ends being grayed ‘white hair,’ but that wasn’t the immediate point. Certainly, they wouldn’t be able to kick out the twins, who could be called Hanul High’s greatest combat power, by putting the false accusation of ‘murderers’ on them.
Hadn’t the twins told me before? In exchange for receiving water and food from the survivors, they were helping with periodic extermination of monsters on the lower floors. If the twins were to leave the school in such circumstances, they too would suffer considerable damage.
So the Hanul High survivors couldn’t kick out the twins no matter how much they disliked them. Then why did they create this situation, this farce like a well-scripted play?
“That would be a bit much, right? No matter that you’re sunbaes, it would be burdensome to endure the world outside the school alone.”
‘…Ah.’
Looking at it now, it wasn’t even a problem that required deep consideration.
‘They want to put a leash on them. On the twins.’
Even I, who hadn’t paid careful attention to the twins until now, knew that those two didn’t consider altruistic goodwill or anything like that. But would they, who must have shared much longer time than me, not know the twins’ true nature? Including what Lee Gojun had tried to say before, the twins seemed to have been famous figures within Hanul High even before the world became like this. Then they would know even more about the twins.
In other words, they knew that attempting moral persuasion about victims or survival on the twins wouldn’t work.
‘It wasn’t that kind of emotional ploy they intended from the start.’
Unless they wanted to emphasize the ‘unfortunate circumstances’ the twins themselves were in right now.
‘Remember that if you go out without proper preparation, you won’t even break even. So bow your heads appropriately while they’ll accept you.’
The pathetic arrogance that the twins would decide to remain at school instead of needlessly going outside and courting danger. A shoddy threat disguised as persuasion, based on that.
“Um… what do you think, sunbae in the center?”
“……”
“I heard that side was the real power on the upper floor.”
Perhaps the words of that person babbling as they pleased might be valid. The anger and hostility-filled gazes from those of unknown origin wouldn’t harm us immediately, but physically going outside the school was entirely different. There was a high possibility our bodies or safety would suffer direct harm.
Of course, if they were ordinary survivors, they would have judged that way. Because of that, they would have been inevitably crushed by these people’s pressure and obediently agreed.
But that wasn’t a story that applied to the twins, who weren’t ordinary at all.
