Thud!
The moment whatever was inside it fell out, I reflexively stumbled backward. It was half-melted and rotting, barely holding the shape of a human being if you looked closely enough — it took me a fair amount of time to realize it was a zombie.
“……Is that a zombie?”
Even though my head had already made the call, I wasn’t fully convinced, so I stepped closer and asked. Baek Hyunwoo crouched down and casually rummaged through the corpse with his bare hands, then nodded calmly. “Yeah.”
“But I don’t think it was originally in this state…… It looks like it deteriorated further after being put inside the cocoon. I’m not sure if it decayed naturally or if there was some other factor involved.”
“……Maybe both?”
“Could be.”
I hid behind him and quietly stared down at the corpse. The face was so liquefied it was beyond recognition, and the stomach and chest looked like rotting slabs of meat. What was strange was that despite the level of decomposition, there was no smell.
“Why doesn’t it smell?”
“Who knows……. I don’t think we have enough time to look into that.”
Unlike me, who was taking it seriously, Baek Hyunwoo gave off the vibe that he didn’t particularly want to bother. He rummaged through the corpse a few more times with a bored expression, then used his knife to slice open the stomach in one clean motion. When I saw pus oozing out like melted cheese, I couldn’t hold back my disgust and buried my nose in the hem of Baek Hyunwoo’s clothing.
“No bones or organs.”
“Did they melt?”
“Probably.”
“Ugh…….”
What was the reason a monster capable of creating something like this would stuff a zombie inside a cocoon? It was so obvious that even stopping to think about it felt pathetic. I grabbed hyung’s arm as he kept reaching to poke at the corpse and said:
“It was probably trying to use it as food, right?”
“That’s not certain. Why? Are you scared?”
“Of course I’m scared…… Zombies were human beings in the end. Doesn’t that mean they could eventually eat humans too?”
“Were human beings. Don’t worry too much. Not all mushrooms are the same just because they’re mushrooms. Think of it like that.”
Mushrooms……
Maybe it was the unexpected analogy, but even in such a grim situation, I let out an involuntary deflated sigh. I quickly shook my head to clear away the stray thoughts, then pulled out one of the antibacterial wipes I’d been carrying — the ones Baek Hyunwoo had packed for me before we left the hospital — and held one out to him.
“Wipe your hands.”
“Will you wipe them for me?”
“Are you a child, hyung?”
I grumbled for no real reason, but still carefully wiped Baek Hyunwoo’s hands clean. He’d touched and examined all of that because of me, so I felt bad enough that I at least wanted to do this much.
“You don’t have to be so thorough.”
“Say something that makes sense.”
When even washing with soap wouldn’t be enough, he was telling me to be less thorough. This was the same person who nagged me to wash my hands every time I stepped outside even briefly — so hearing him say that annoyed me enough that I pinched the back of his hand hard.
“You’re saying that when a zombie just showed up?”
“Mm, sorry.”
That was a voice that was not sorry in the slightest.
I didn’t bother responding further and just silently glared at him before letting out a sigh and pulling my hands away.
“Done.”
“Thank you.”
All I did was wipe his hands, but Baek Hyunwoo acted as if he’d received some grand gift. Moments like this made me feel a little sad. If there were more I could do for him, I’d just brush it off as him making a fuss — but this really was the best I could manage, and it made me feel like he had no expectations of me at all.
“Are you going to open the other cocoons too?”
I swallowed my bitter feelings and asked carefully. Baek Hyunwoo shook his head firmly.
“No, I don’t think that’s necessary.”
If he said so, then that was that. I didn’t ask why. I didn’t want to make him do something I couldn’t do with my own hands either.
“Shall we head back?”
“Yeah.”
I followed behind Baek Hyunwoo — who was smiling so brightly it was enough to lift anyone’s mood just looking at him — and we slowly made our way out of the village. I’d been tense the whole time, worried we might run into monsters, but they were nowhere to be seen — whether they were nocturnal, or had already fed and gone to sleep.
Once we left the village, there was indeed a river, just as hyung had said. But the bridge spanning it was quite high and sturdy, so no matter how much the water rose, it didn’t seem like it would affect our travel. Sure enough — he stayed longer on purpose, for my sake.
Feeling sorry and grateful, I reached out and tightly gripped the hand of the hyung walking ahead of me. Baek Hyunwoo turned back with a worried look on his face and asked:
“Are you tired? Want me to carry you on my back?”
“I grabbed your hand because I wanted to, that’s all.”
“Is that right? You wanted to hold hyung’s hand? Still such a baby, our Sihyeon.”
“That’s not — ah!”
Before I could even protest, Baek Hyunwoo tugged our joined hands and pulled me in, catching me as I stumbled and wrapping me into his arms in one swift motion. Not carrying me on his back — he actually hoisted me up and settled me on his forearm like you’d do with a small child, and all I could do was open and close my mouth, too stunned to even resist.
“Want to lean on hyung’s shoulder and go to sleep?”
“Oh, come on. I can still walk on my own feet.”
“I know, I’m the one who wants to do this, so don’t worry about it.”
“I don’t want—”
Smooch.
I stopped mid-sentence and gaped. What was that just now? It was too wide to be a peck, wasn’t it? Did he suck on my cheek? No — wasn’t that closer to suctioning? Unable to get over the shock, I grabbed my own cheek, and Baek Hyunwoo grinned softly and whispered:
“You’re so cute.”
“…….”
On top of pecking and nibbling…… he was doing this kind of thing now too? Did he really see me as twenty months old rather than twenty years?
“How can something this adorable even exist?”
Is something wrong with his head? Even so, he’d never done anything quite like this before……. I met hyung’s gaze with trembling eyes. Beyond the playful gleam, there was a sincerity I couldn’t ignore. Was he serious?
“Y-you haven’t forgotten that I’m twenty, right?”
“Why? Is this not something to do to a twenty-year-old?”
“Obviously not — I’m an adult. To just, my adult little brother’s cheek, just — like that…… huh? What kind of hyung does that.”
“Why not? If you look hard enough, you’ll find one.”
Baek Hyunwoo lightly flicked the bridge of my nose with his finger.
“And you may be an adult in name, but you’ve only been alive for twenty years. Come back after living at least two hundred, and then hyung will say — ah, our youngest has finally grown up.“
“That’s basically saying you’ll treat me like a kid forever.”
“Mm?”
I replied in a deflated voice, feeling vaguely wronged, and he looked briefly puzzled before acting like he’d just realized something, then played it off smoothly.
“Oh, right. Humans live a hundred years at most, give or take.”
“What — anyone listening would think hyung isn’t even human.”
“Well, I’m not not-human.”
He seemed to have switched up the way he was teasing me. Boring. I grumbled and tapped his arm repeatedly. It was already ridiculous that I was being held like this while insisting I was an adult — I’d told him to put me down, but he pretended not to hear.
“Do you want to grow up that badly?”
“……I don’t know, it’s just something I’d been hoping for for a long time.”
In my past life, they said that once I turned twenty, they’d let me go outside. In this life, it’s only once I’m twenty that I can get treated and live a normal life like everyone else. I didn’t have any major complaints about my life, but I also didn’t want to resign myself to being shut inside forever.
All I wanted was to travel on my own, stay out all night, go to famous festivals…… things I had only read about in books in my past life, and only seen through the TV or internet in this one.
But even as I grew older, if I was still going to be treated like a child — still needing protection — then those things would remain out of reach forever. Maybe that was why I reacted so sharply to it.
“Hyung wishes our Sihyeon could stay a baby forever.”
“Don’t say such horrifying things.”
“Why is it horrifying? Haah……. Back then, I liked that you couldn’t do anything on your own and had to rely on hyung.”
“……Anyone listening would think I actually do something now.”
Even by my own measure, I was dead weight, plain and simple. I answered in a deflated tone, and Baek Hyunwoo murmured, “Oh come on,” his brows drooping.
“You do so much on your own.”
“Like what?”
“You can walk.”
What kind of answer is that?
I was about to scrunch my face up, thinking he was teasing me again, but Baek Hyunwoo continued with complete sincerity.
“You can go to the bathroom on your own, eat on your own. And you sleep well and wake up well all by yourself.”
“…….”
“You have no idea how much I hold back, do you? If it were up to me, I’d want to do everything for you.”
“…….”
“So lately I’ve been kind of happy. I can carry you around like this, go everywhere together, and you only eat what hyung goes out to find for you.”
And you can’t sleep without hyung either. I keep putting you to sleep, and it makes me happy when I can wake you up if it looks like you’re having a nightmare.
The words he added softly were unmistakably soaked in happiness and joy. This wasn’t just something he was saying for my benefit — he genuinely felt that way.
And I, too, decided to simply accept that side of Baek Hyunwoo. To be honest, it was a little bewildering, but thinking about it — he was one of the male leads of the novel.
And what exactly is a male lead?
By nature, their passives are absurd devotion and obsession. Even if a character is selfish, when you look at what they actually do, they’re practically a walking charity. The Baek Hyunwoo in the book wasn’t far off from that either.
The moment that had stood out the most, above all else, was when the female lead said she could just take a taxi and turned down his offer of a personal driver — so he went and founded an entire taxi company and arranged for taxis to always be stationed along her usual routes.
And it was none other than Baek Hyunwoo who, whenever the female lead fell ill, would feel sorry for her — and yet quietly rejoice that she wasn’t going anywhere, that she was lying in bed and depending entirely on him.
I knew it was better to keep the novel and reality separate now that zombies had actually appeared…… but the person himself hadn’t gone anywhere. And while it wasn’t certain, even with the world in this state, there was a chance he might still meet the female lead.
If that happens, his attention will shift over to her anyway.
And besides, it wasn’t as though he’d said he loved me — he just found me cute. I let out a long, weary sigh like a younger sibling exhausted from being overprotected, and went limp in his arms.
