Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!
Lee Gojun blinked his wide-open eyes busily.
“Don’t just stare at me, try bringing out those sparkling things.”
“Sparkling… Ah!”
Lee Gojun shook his head up and down as the golden aura he’d raised again rippled. When I pointed at the right twin’s thigh, that light swam through the air toward it.
“I’ll say it again, you’re not tearing open the wound. You need to wrap and embrace it like sewing together torn skin.”
“H-how?”
“Do it like now. Move it the way I told you.”
“How do I… move it?”
It couldn’t help but be a stupid question. I briefly understood the heart of a teacher with a pitiful student who, despite having excellent academic enthusiasm, had a stupid head and always remained in the lower ranks.
“You’re already doing it. Moving it according to your will.”
“……”
“You brought it in front of the wound following my hand gestures, following my eye signals.”
“…Ah. Wow. Woah!”
Only then did Lee Gojun, realizing what he’d been doing without even knowing it, let out an exclamation, got surprised, then covered his mouth in emotion.
After that, there was nothing more to explain. Lee Gojun, who had leapt in one bound from being last in the entire school with only passion to being a top honors student, swiftly healed the right twin’s wound.
While the right twin fiddled with his smooth thigh that didn’t even have a scar mark left, Lee Gojun whirled around to face me.
“What are you? An angel? A fairy?”
I couldn’t deduce at all what kind of thought process would lead to the identity of a teacher who taught the proper usage of an ability being connected to an angel or fairy.
“Whatever you are, I’ll repay this debt for the rest of my life! I promise! I swear!”
I don’t know why everyone likes unreliable words like “from now on” and “for life” so much either.
“…We haven’t said we’d let you live yet.”
“Hayoung, you’re my benefactor!”
Lee Gojun didn’t even pretend to hear my words and spread his arms wide. Then, like when he’d clung to my leg earlier, he hugged me tightly before I could even react.
“This bastard, now that I look at him he’s a total fox. How far are you two progressing?”
I let the left twin’s crazy statement, no less formidable than Lee Gojun’s crazy behavior, go in one ear. Lee Gojun, whose nape had been grabbed, didn’t persist any further unlike earlier and obediently let go while grinning.
Watching the two’s behavior, I felt my stomach churn with a shallow anxiety that rose out of nowhere. For some reason, it seemed like not only the twins but also Lee Gojun would firmly establish himself as one pillar of my future.
Around the time the excitement that wasn’t quite excitement from the left twin and Lee Gojun had somewhat subsided, the right twin was quietly clearing away the now-useless bandages on one side. Having rolled down the pants he’d rolled up, he casually threw a question at me.
“But how did you know? Why Lee Gojun couldn’t exert his healing ability, how changing the operation method would solve it.”
How did I know?
“I just, I can see it.”
At my answer that was indifferent beyond carefree, Lee Gojun, who had been sitting demurely on his knees again, showed bewilderment.
“You can see it? Me using my ability? How is that possible… Ah, so earlier too…!”
What kind of question is that again?
“Can’t you see it then?”
“…Usually other people can’t see the flow or movement of abilities unless they’re the person using it.”
I kept my mouth firmly shut, unable to believe the right twin’s lukewarm explanation. The left twin, who noticed my suspicious attitude, hurriedly added.
“Then Hayoung-ah, can you see me using my ability too? Not the completed sword, but like the process of that sword being made.”
“You mean those worm-like things? Coming out of your shadow.”
The left twin, who had widened his eyes round, exchanged glances with his brother.
However, for me it was still a story not easily believable.
“…I thought it was natural.”
“Hayoung does… have better observation skills than others.”
That was the conclusion the right twin spat out. Though it was an excessively plain and anticlimactic ending, even from my position as the person in question I had no other way to explain it, so I obediently nodded.
“Then let’s consider this matter resolved. Hayoung-ah.”
The right twin, who had curved his eye corners round, continued.
“I’d like you to tell us now. What ability you awakened, what connection it has to your behavior.”
The other day he’d seemed to pass it over pretending not to know as if he’d completely forgotten, but it seemed he hadn’t forgotten but was pretending to forget while waiting for me to bring it up first. But even as time passed I showed no sign of opening my mouth at all, and a topic about abilities had naturally come up, so he seemed to be asking again at this opportunity.
“Like today, we don’t know when what kind of unexpected situation might occur. If we know about your ability, we can prepare in advance and be careful, right?”
It was a valid point. Moreover, looking at the situation I was in now, it seemed the twins as well as Lee Gojun, who had newly joined us, had no intention of obediently letting me go. It was obvious they planned to cling desperately and hold onto me to the end if I looked for an opportunity to leave alone.
Of course, I had absolutely no intention of staying with them “from now on” or “for life” as they said. But at the very least, it seemed I’d inevitably be stuck with them for one to two months, and for that period of time, notifying them of my ability in advance would help everyone’s safety.
‘…Right.’
To both the twins and Lee Gojun, I was considered a benefactor, so surely they wouldn’t use me as “monster bait” or sell me to other survivors.
Having hardened my resolve, I slowly opened my mouth.
***
A week ago, or more precisely, rewinding a week and three more days. The afternoon of the day when it had been exactly one week since the apocalypse era had arrived, with monsters appearing and turning the city to ruins.
In the third-year classroom full of corpses and blood, I, who had been hiding there for a week, was gradually feeling the limits of thirst and hunger.
The first few days I’d endured by scraping together snacks from the classroom lockers, but now even those were gone. The drinking water in the water bottle I’d saved and saved again was only enough to disappear with a few swallows.
So I had no choice but to leave the classroom and decide to go down to the lower floors.
Since I’d been holed up only in that classroom on the fourth floor for the past week, it was the first time I’d decided to go out into the hallway. However, like everyone else, I too had instinctively realized the ability I’d awakened, so I naturally closed my eyes and sensed the hallway I was facing for the first time in a week using only smell and hearing.
Thanks to deliberately choosing the late dawn hours to come out, there were no survivors wandering the hallway. Occasionally monsters roaming the vicinity passed by me, but they weren’t a threat to me.
When I had safely come down to the third floor and was crossing the hallway, an incident occurred. No, I caused an incident.
Why I did that, I still didn’t understand my own actions at the time. The only fact I could know was that it was an impulse I couldn’t dare think of refusing, and an instinct I couldn’t help, just like when I realized and wielded my awakened ability.
Without knowing it myself, I stopped standing still in the center of the hallway I’d been drawn to, and slowly lifted my eyelids. Even while clearly guessing what would happen after that, without a hint of hesitation.
I had no particular sense of belonging to the species called humans, but if you asked whether I enjoyed harming life, that was absolutely not the case. I just didn’t care about others’ deaths, but I didn’t wish to become a murderer myself.
But why did I have to open my eyes there?
I saw beast-type monsters converging on me from both sides of the long hallway. Among them, the one standing at the head of the direction where I was positioned was a monster in the form of a giant snake.
Others might furrow their brows and call it repulsive, but at least to me it didn’t feel like such a terrible appearance.
I stared intently at that monster. Even knowing that not just the one right before my eyes but all the monsters in the school, and other monsters in a range gradually widening as time passed, were being drawn here, I didn’t stop.
I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t afraid.
It felt like something was broken.
There was nothing new about it. Originally I’d been treated as a human bizarrely broken, living alone in a world different from others.
“…Ah.”
Only when the snake-shaped monster had reached a distance of at most a few steps from me did I belatedly come to my senses. Reflexively letting out a shallow exclamation, I hurriedly lowered my eyelids to block my vision.
In the meantime, the monster that had approached right before my nose stopped abruptly and hissed roughly. The thing that had seemed to be fumbling my nose bridge while flicking its forked tongue soon turned its body.
But just because I survived didn’t mean what had just happened was undone. The majority of monsters that had already been in the building had long since swarmed to the third floor.
Moving belatedly toward the stairs leading to the second floor, the fire door was firmly closed and wouldn’t open. Even after rattling and knocking several times to no avail, I eventually went back up to the fourth floor.
That’s how I came to meet Kang Jekyung’s group. They welcomed me with no intention of hiding their plan to use me as a meat shield if necessary. Fortunately, since they didn’t catch any hint about my ability, I succeeded in deceiving them with a half-hearted lie.
Receiving minimal rice, receiving minimal water. Hearing the sounds of other survivors dying beyond the hallway, seeing several who had awakened combat-useful abilities go outside the classroom and return injured.
Then, as if calmly accepting a fate that had been scheduled all along, I was kicked out of Kang Jekyung’s group.
And I met the twins.
