I quietly watched Lee Gojun while retracing events from when I was with Kang Jekyung’s group.
There were hardly any names and faces I’d left in my head, as I was particularly bad at remembering people, and among those, if I had to pick from those I’d met after the apocalypse era, there were only two.
Kang Jekyung, and Lee Gojun.
Actually, rather than remembering Lee Gojun, it was closer to having become so familiar with him that his name reflexively came to mind just from hearing it. Unlike Kang Jekyung’s name, which I’d consciously memorized and embedded in my mind to belong to the group, Lee Gojun’s name had literally become familiar to my ears.
During the past week isolated on the fourth floor, the leaders of Kang Jekyung’s group kept looking for Lee Gojun at the drop of a hat. Lee Gojun, Lee Gojun—they called for him so much that even I couldn’t help but remember.
“Your awakened ability is healing, isn’t it.”
Lee Gojun, who had still been hesitating unable to choose his words, suddenly flinched.
Healing abilities that inevitably had to be far fewer in number compared to comprehensive abilities simply divided into combat abilities, defensive abilities, and so on. So everyone would try to pull even one more person to their side, and there was no way there would be idiots thoughtlessly pushing them into danger.
While Kang Jekyung had a selfish disposition, he wasn’t a stupid person. That’s why during the past week, even while working Lee Gojun hard, he’d been more generous in providing him food and drink.
So how had such a Lee Gojun ended up expelled from Kang Jekyung’s group and come down to the third floor? I didn’t need to ask that question again. Thanks to Lee Gojun, who’d been reading the room the whole time, opening his mouth first.
“…Lost it.”
The small mumble wasn’t clearly audible. As I just blinked my eyes quietly, Lee Gojun, who had been glancing at me, raised his voice with effort.
“It’s gone, I lost it.”
Gone?
“Your ability?”
“…Yeah.”
Could that even happen?
Lee Gojun carefully glanced at me as if gauging my reaction. Then he suddenly clenched his fist and seemed to steel his resolve, before throwing his body toward me. By the time I tried to dodge belatedly, Lee Gojun had already tightly hugged and clung to my right leg.
“S-save me! I’m good at everything! Really, I’m good at anything!”
“This, this crazy bastard. Let go right now, will you?”
“Just give me orders, Hayoung-ah. Huh? I can really dedicate this one body and be loyal to you!”
“Hey, stop being crazy and let go. I haven’t even touched Hayoung’s leg yet, so where do you……”
I deliberately withdrew my attention from the left twin who was getting angry at a strange point while grabbing Lee Gojun’s nape. Instead, I stared intently at Lee Gojun, who was choking and coughing but still trying not to let go of me.
No matter how I thought about it, it was strange. There was no way an awakened ability would disappear overnight, and only for Lee Gojun alone, as if washed clean.
Of course, it wasn’t impossible, but if so, shouldn’t there at least be a proper reason? Just as everyone had awakened abilities as if to stand against the monsters when they appeared, conversely if abilities disappeared, there should be justification for it.
“Did your ability completely disappear?”
Even to the question I threw in an indifferent tone, Lee Gojun brightened up as if he’d found a lifeline. The left twin, who had been looking between us, clicked his tongue irritably and withdrew his strong grip.
Lee Gojun, whose breathing hole had been freed, answered urgently without even catching his rough breath.
“Th-that is, it’s not completely gone but……”
“Earlier you said it was gone.”
“Saying it’s gone isn’t wrong either… I have the ability, but I can’t heal……”
I mulled over Lee Gojun’s rambling words, his mind seemingly urgent, then turned my head. As if he’d been staring only at me the whole time, the right twin, whose gaze immediately collided with mine, curved the corners of his eyes round.
“Roll up your pants for me.”
As if he’d completely forgotten being flustered by my “can’t handle it” comment yesterday, he acted disgustingly shy and rolled up his shorts. I could hear a tsk sound again from the side, probably the twin standing on the left.
I moved my hand to lightly push away Lee Gojun, who was clinging to my leg like a cicada. Lee Gojun, who had stubbornly persisted when the left twin tried to remove him, withdrew obediently while reading my mood.
“Are you… going to kill me?”
“Try using your ability on the one to your left.”
“…Huh?”
“You said the ability didn’t completely disappear but only healing doesn’t work. So try using it now.”
After hesitating, Lee Gojun looked to his left. But the person in question, the twin on the right from my position, was for some reason staring at me with a frozen smile.
“Hayoung-ah, I’m asking because I hope not, but you didn’t say ‘the one on the left’ because you don’t know my name, right?”
“……”
“You said it that way so this friend could understand easily, right?”
I silently kept my mouth shut. Not refusing to answer, but having nothing else to say.
Reading the correct answer from my silence, his smile creaked for an instant.
“You still have trouble distinguishing between me and Cha Jeoh? Even though you specifically picked out that the one with the wound on his leg is me.”
I had nothing to say to that question either. As he said, I still couldn’t distinguish the two, couldn’t remember their names. I hadn’t memorized which of the two had wounds, who had combat-type abilities and who had mental-type abilities, who was wearing what clothes. No, I deliberately hadn’t memorized them.
“…Well, it’s Hayoung after all.”
What’s this, is he having a monologue?
After briefly closing and opening his eyes, he quickly tidied his expression and skillfully hung an arc on his lips. Then Lee Gojun, who had been fidgeting unable to do this or that, finally turned toward him.
I followed with my eyes as Lee Gojun cautiously reached out his hand. Watching the scene of him trembling and unable to get a grip despite being a healer, unwrapping the blood-soaked bandage with shaking hands, I then shifted my focus to the white skin beneath.
On the firm thigh, the outline of muscles visible even without deliberately flexing sat beautifully.
‘…Sitting like this really makes me seem like a pervert.’
But I couldn’t tear my eyes away, and didn’t want to. What awakened my reason as I rolled my eyes as if entranced was the right twin’s voice tinged with laughter.
“What, Hayoung-ah. Going to get another nosebleed?”
“What, nosebleed? Another?”
The left twin suddenly butted in. The right one, who had calmed his emotions in one go, threw a flat, dry answer.
“Just, briefly yesterday.”
“Yesterday? When I went out to catch the Wolf? What happened, what exactly happened?”
I’d already been ignoring the left twin’s interrogation and gave a look to Lee Gojun, who seemed to be waiting for a signal. Frozen with tension, he gulped and overlapped his two hands.
Lee Gojun’s palm touched the right twin’s thigh. That hand covered the center of the wound that had recovered quite a bit in a few days, and soon a golden aura began to rise from Lee Gojun.
And not long after, the right twin, who had been receiving Lee Gojun’s healing ability, gritted his teeth.
“Urk.”
A groan he couldn’t quite suppress burst from him. Lee Gojun, startled, hurriedly removed his hands and floundered.
“E-everyone reacted like this. Even if the wound doesn’t worsen, it doesn’t heal either, and the person receiving it complains of pain……”
I stared intently at the faint golden light remaining like a trace rippling around the thigh wound.
“Actually, I hurt my shoulder yesterday. Since then my ability became like this, but I don’t know how to reverse it, and I got kicked out from upstairs too……”
“……”
“I-I’m really good at everything, Hayoung-ah. I absolutely must fulfill my mission. And I have to go find my younger sibling too, to see if they’re alive……”
Since I showed no particular reaction, Lee Gojun’s two eyes wetted with moisture and rippled. Letting that desperate appeal go in one ear, I slowly opened my mouth.
“It’s because you’re nervous.”
“J-just let me live… huh? Wh-what did you say?”
“Your healing ability didn’t disappear, you’re just nervous.”
Lee Gojun had a timid personality to the point of being fragile, enough to tell at a glance. Such a person said he’d hurt his shoulder yesterday. I hadn’t been interested until just now so I didn’t know, but now that I looked, I could see quite a few red blood drops staining the shoulder area of his white shirt. Seeing him move around fine, it didn’t seem like a serious wound, but it was a clear fact that he’d been injured by a monster.
With Lee Gojun’s sunfish-like mentality, if he’d been injured on the shoulder by a monster that had approached right before his eyes, the fear and terror at that time would have been considerable. Moreover, just the fact that Lee Gojun, who had awakened a healing ability, went out into the hallway where monsters roamed showed how much Kang Jekyung’s group had tried to force and control him.
Also, there was no way the kids counted as leaders of Kang Jekyung’s group would have considered Lee Gojun’s wounds and circumstances. As far as I knew, Lee Gojun’s ability couldn’t heal himself, but such information would have been of no interest to them. They probably roughly lifted up the confused and injured Lee Gojun and shamelessly shoved injured people at him.
The pain and trauma from his shoulder wound, the anxiety that he might be pushed outside again by Kang Jekyung’s group, the pressure about his healing ability that continued in the meantime.
So Lee Gojun hadn’t used his healing ability, he’d poured it out. Without even knowing it himself.
Originally Lee Gojun hadn’t been able to cleanly heal all the injured due to stamina issues. But healing even part of the group with a precious ability and losing the ability’s usefulness to not be able to heal even a single person were stories of different dimensions.
Of course, they probably gave him a few more chances. That’s why instead of being immediately kicked out yesterday, he was only expelled from that group this afternoon.
But what use was not being immediately kicked out? While he couldn’t use his ability properly, the explicit oppression would only have intensified, and in that state there was no way Lee Gojun could have regained his sense for using his ability. Rather, with that fragile mindset, there was a high possibility he’d become dispirited, afraid of hurting the other person more, afraid of causing pain for no reason.
“Lee Gojun.”
“Y-yeah?”
“Don’t just pour out your ability recklessly. Because you’re tearing open wounds like that, the other person feels pain.”
