‘They don’t know how strong the twins are.’
They were merely guessing that the twins were exceptionally strong. Although they’d seen Cha Woodan and Cha Jeoh step forward swinging swords and slicing monsters more easily than others, they were probably defining the twins’ potential as just ‘above-average ability.’
‘They also don’t seem to know that the twins have been roaming outside the school just fine.’
While I chewed and swallowed their ignorance beneath my closed mouth, Cha Woodan gently withdrew his weight from me. Then, without hiding his barbed tone, he aimed at that person on the other side.
“Fine, then let’s hear it. What are you trying to demand from us to go on at such length…”
However, Cha Woodan’s words scattered shallowly and disappeared before they could even finish. It was because I had grabbed the hem of his gym jacket outer roughly.
‘People who can’t even use their heads properly.’
In this world where thousands die every day, wouldn’t stupidity also be a sin?
I swallowed the sigh that was about to escape my mouth and pulled on Cha Woodan’s collar again.
“Why, Hayoung-ah. Should I hold you?”
“……”
‘…Why is his way of speaking like that? As if he’s taking care of a child.’
When I expressed agreement sourly, Cha Woodan extended his arms as if he’d been waiting, so I obediently offered my body. Soon he stably supported my back and under my knees and lifted me up.
“Hayoung’s body fits perfectly in one armful.”
A perverted remark no less than Cha Jeoh’s reached my ears, but I pretended to ignore it and turned my head.
Let’s leave like this.
With that meaning, I raised my finger and pointed diagonally at where the student council room door should be. When perceptive Cha Jeoh guided my hand to correct the direction, I gestured even more confidently and jerked my chin at the twins.
Let’s go.
Staying here seemed like we’d only suffer losses, with nothing to gain. So I had no desire to drag out time and get caught up in their misguided hatred.
I felt the countless gazes pouring toward me and leisurely urged the twins.
***
“Stay here for a bit? Why specifically?”
Cha Woodan, who had approached behind me, gently untied the cloth that had been covering my eyes. Thanks to that, I lifted my eyelids, now free without being pressed down, and only then gave an answer to Cha Jeoh’s question that had been directed at me.
“It’ll be difficult to go outside right away and find a place to stay, won’t it?”
I looked around the dusty empty classroom once while adjusting my stiff vision.
The place where I, the twins, and the Lee Gojun brothers were currently located was Hanul High’s annex building.
Unlike the main building where the survivors were gathered, the already old annex building had been left unused and neglected even before the apocalypse era, so it was no different from an abandoned house. Thanks to that—if it could be called thanks—the students who survived the monsters were all staying in the main building without bothering to pioneer the old and worn annex. So the ownerless annex was a good choice as a short-term temporary residence.
For the same reason, since there had been no periodic monster extermination in the annex, a considerable number of adult and juvenile monsters were concentrated there. However, I’d heard earlier that Cha Jeoh had dealt with a monster species called Wolf that had been swarming in the annex, and since it was the twins who had quickly wrapped up the accident in the main building too, it seemed there would be no great difficulty in cleaning up the annex.
“Then let’s stay here for just a day or two. In the meantime, Cha Woodan and I will move in shifts and look for a livable space in this area…”
“We’re not going.”
At the voice that suddenly interrupted, I slowly turned my gaze that had been directed at Cha Jeoh.
“Hyung and I, we’re not going.”
“Wait. Geon… Geonwoo-ya?”
“If you’re going, go by yourselves. I only followed because hyung dragged me here from the start, otherwise I would have stayed in the main building.”
I silently observed Lee Gojun’s younger brother babbling as he pleased and Lee Gojun flustering in confusion at his sibling’s sudden bombshell statement. Understanding my silence as something, that younger brother snorted boldly and crossed his arms.
“I heard hyung awakened a healing ability.”
“……”
“So you’re doing this to use my hyung, right now. Bewitching hyung with that cult-like Church of Hayoung or whatever.”
My brow, which had been maintaining indifferent composure all along, gently furrowed.
I too had much to say about the mysterious religious order called the Church of Hayoung. In the first place, it only borrowed my name but wasn’t a religious order I established, and I had no right to do anything about the religious order. Since there was no way I could persuade Lee Gojun, who was already half-mad, even if I expressed complaints about the religious order whose necessity I didn’t understand at all.
So to be precise, it wasn’t that I bewitched Lee Gojun, but that Lee Gojun was attempting to bewitch me.
Lee Gojun, who had been surveying the situation with pupils where a fierce earthquake was occurring, hurriedly moved. Then he gently pushed his younger brother’s back and led him.
“Geonwoo-ya. Stop, come out here. Let’s talk, just the two of us.”
“Hyung, you don’t know about cults? Stuff like ‘Do you know the way’ and all that.”
“Lee Geonwoo, what cult? Don’t speak carelessly.”
Ha. The younger brother, who let out an empty laugh, couldn’t quite glare at Lee Gojun and directed his two fiercely blazing eyes at me instead.
“Not a cult? Then try explaining. What exactly does the Church of Hayoung do as a religion?”
“It’s right there in the religious order’s name. For our noble Messiah, Kim Hayoung…”
“That’s exactly what a cult is! Stories about families being torn apart after getting wrongly caught up in these malicious groups are common!”
“Lee Geonwoo.”
Lee Gojun, who couldn’t stand it anymore, pronounced all three characters of the name with a voice that still hadn’t lost its trembling even while trying hard to suppress his anger. However, the younger brother didn’t care. Rather, he gritted his teeth and escaped from his hyung’s touch trying to lead him out of the classroom.
“Fine, hyung. If you’re going to be like this, choose right here and now.”
“…What are you talking about?”
“Me, or that bastard?”
Bastard. At that part, I grabbed and restrained Cha Jeoh’s wrist as he roughly frowned.
“Lee Geonwoo, do you know what you’re saying in front of whom right now?”
“Choose, I said. Me or that bastard?”
“And, that’s a choice that can’t be made in the first place. You’re my younger brother, and Hayoung is…”
“Like you said, hyung, I’m your younger brother. Your one remaining family!”
‘…Younger brother.’
And one remaining family.
It was difficult for me to understand what those words meant.
I had no family. Parents, siblings—they hadn’t existed from the moment my memories remained.
There were those I could call something resembling family. Hanbit Orphanage where I grew up, the other dozen or so children who grew up with me there. But I was innately too barren in nature and a person who lived building too solid walls to consider them as connections with just that much of a connection point.
Perhaps because of that, when I was young, I thought I really was a broken human, like the other kids my age said.
“…Forget it.”
It seemed the conversation had rushed toward catastrophe while I was briefly lost in thought. The younger brother, with reddened eyes fully hurt and heated up, turned his back sharply and moved his steps.
Recognizing the direction he was heading, I immediately lowered my eyelids. Another large palm descended over my eyes. Judging by the relatively cool body temperature, it was probably Cha Woodan’s.
Soon, bang! The classroom door opened with a loud noise. The younger brother, who showed a movement as if glancing at Lee Gojun one last time, left the classroom with rough steps.
How could he be so confident when he might encounter a monster along the way? As if thinking similar thoughts to mine, Lee Gojun’s fidgeting restlessness, immersed in worry and hesitating, was transmitted even to me.
Swallowing a sigh, I waved my hand at the air. Lee Gojun, who read the meaning ‘follow him’ from that gesture, hurriedly took steps.
“Hayoung-ah, I’m really sorry… I’ll be right back!”
The sound of carefully securing the door brushed past my ears. Soon, when I pulled down the hand that had been blocking my vision in the classroom submerged in quiet, Cha Woodan didn’t resist and obediently relaxed his strength.
The black pupils revealed from inside the smoothly opening eyelids were fixed on the firmly closed classroom door.
‘It seems like… puberty.’
I thought they usually said puberty came around that age. I didn’t know exactly how old Lee Gojun’s younger brother was, but since he seemed to be about middle school age, it was exactly the right time for puberty to come.
‘Or really.’
Could he be throwing a tantrum like that simply because of the title ‘family’?
“Are you going to leave him like that?”
Belatedly raising my head, I faced Cha Jeoh, who was making a fierce expression. Feeling my gaze, he awkwardly softened his expression, but his lips, already protruding several steps, didn’t seem to have any intention of returning to their place.
“I never liked that Lee Gojun bastard in the first place anyway. I told you, he’s crazy.”
“It’s not for me to leave alone or not.”
“What do you mean nothing?”
Cha Jeoh, who heard my level tone, stepped closer without pause, rebelling. As if that wasn’t enough, he lowered his voice as if to assert his seriousness.
