END OF THE MONTH BONUS CHAPTERS!
I slowly turned my head to find the presence of the person who had uttered just one word. Of course, this time too I didn’t get the direction right, so Cha Jeoh turned it for me himself.
“…Who are you? When did you come down?”
“I jumped down.”
Leaving behind Cha Jeoh, who accepted the answer as if it were natural when anyone else would have asked again, I felt Cha Woodan take another step closer to me.
“Hayoung, are you okay? You’re not hurt anywhere? Can you turn your face this way?”
I obediently entrusted my face to Cha Woodan’s hands cupping both my cheeks. He turned my head this way and that, examining me thoroughly. I could only be freed when he was satisfied after checking and rechecking.
“Why were you outside?”
“…….”
“Did someone grab you and drag you out?”
I firmly expressed denial so the twins wouldn’t waste their energy on useless misunderstandings. Then Cha Woodan considerably eased the tension that had been spreading.
Only then realizing we were positioned too close, Cha Woodan slowly stepped back. Quietly, silently, a stillness followed for a moment that I, relying on my hearing, could discern nothing from.
Soon Cha Woodan readily opened his mouth and called Cha Jeoh.
“Switch with me.”
“…Huh, what?”
“I’ll go use my strength, so you take Hayoung and stay somewhere safe. Right now, you look terrible.”
Cha Woodan silently watched as Cha Jeoh froze in a daze, then groped his own face with quite urgent hand movements.
“Do I, do I look ugly?”
“Yeah. Quite a lot.”
“That can’t be… Hayoung-ah, you absolutely can’t open your eyes. You can’t open them. Promise me.”
Earlier he’d been making a fuss about me not answering, and now he was making a fuss about me promising something regarding eyes I couldn’t even open.
Ignoring words not worth answering, I tapped Cha Jeoh’s broad shoulder again. Fortunately, this time he grasped my intention immediately and scooped me up into his arms.
While I wriggled to find a comfortable position, I heard the sound of palms meeting—clap. It seemed like the two had high-fived, but I couldn’t know what they’d done that for.
***
There was a lot I wanted to ask. What had happened to Lee Gojun, why had the passage to the second floor suddenly opened, and so on. So I spent my time organizing and speculating on each question while quietly nestled in Cha Jeoh’s arms.
I didn’t know when we’d entered the main building, but the wind that had been blowing coolly and brushing my skin had already stopped. The first-floor corridor was just quiet without any presence of monsters, with only the fishy smell of blood and stench floating in the air. It seemed Cha Woodan, who had moved ahead, had finished cleaning up with the other survivors and gone upstairs.
“Let’s go to the infirmary.”
Cha Jeoh announced our destination by my head. As long as it was a space that could be recognized as a single area, it didn’t matter where we went, so I nodded without hesitation.
Soon came the sound of slowly turning a door handle and opening the door—click. Cha Jeoh, who seemed to look around the interior beyond, finally stepped in.
As if handling a glass craft, Cha Jeoh devoted himself to setting me down on the bed. His face, probably feeling utterly proud while looking at me properly settled on the bed sheet, was vivid beyond my closed eyelids.
“I’ll close the door and windows and come back.”
Having said that, Cha Jeoh moved in my stead, going through the procedure of confirming the area. I fiddled with the sheet touching beneath my palm while feeling his presence making a big circle around the infirmary. Befitting a bed equipped in a school infirmary, the texture wasn’t very soft.
Moreover, on the bed I was sitting on, there was just a bare sheet—I couldn’t get my hands on anything resembling a blanket. Then the pile of blankets stacked in the third-floor art room suddenly crossed my mind. Hadn’t Cha Jeoh said… he’d gathered and brought those blankets from the infirmary?
“I’ve confirmed everything’s closed.”
At the confident tone coming from right in front of me, I slowly lifted my stiff eyelids. Just as I was composing my vision that couldn’t focus properly, Cha Jeoh subtly approached my side.
“Hey, Hayoung-ah.”
I stared at him as if asking what was the matter.
“Where were you trying to go earlier?”
“…Ah.”
“Don’t tell me, by any chance, were you really trying to leave the school? Why?”
Unfortunately, even if he asked where I’d been trying to go and why I’d done that, there was nothing I could answer. What Cha Jeoh wanted to know was also one of the questions I wanted to know the answer to satisfyingly.
“I don’t know either. Where I was trying to go or why I was trying to go.”
Cha Jeoh closed his half-open mouth again. The air in the infirmary, which had been merely monotonous, seemed to churn subtly.
Cha Jeoh lowered his eyes to stare at the floor, and I stared at such a Cha Jeoh. While we were just silently spending time like that, I was the first to turn my gaze away.
Feeling Cha Jeoh’s belatedly moving gaze follow me, I looked around the interior of the infirmary anew. I could see shelves and glass cabinets that should have been full of medicine and tools completely empty. I also saw the door of a drawer left half-closed, and the health teacher’s desk messily in disarray also caught my eye.
“The kids on the auditorium side took everything.”
The kids on the auditorium side?
When I turned my head, my eyes immediately met Cha Jeoh’s. Not avoiding and mischievously entangling his gaze, he smiled brightly as if he’d completely forgotten his earlier desperation.
“Right now at Hanul High there are three representative factions. One of them is the kids who’ve made the auditorium their base, and since only people who’ve awakened healing abilities are gathered there, their numbers are small.”
“…If they have healing abilities, why do they need medicine?”
“They’re trying to gain the upper hand by controlling everything related to treatment and recovery.”
I suddenly thought of Kang Jekyung’s group. Despite being in a situation where they only had each other because they had to be isolated on the fourth floor, some had tried to step on others to rise up, and tried to use the ruled class by seizing power that way. So in a broader society, it would be worse if anything, not less.
Anyway, what was important right now wasn’t this new information or unfamiliar system.
“What about Lee Gojun?”
Cha Jeoh’s gaze missed me and lingered in the air. Those black pupils momentarily took on an irritated hostility.
“He’s alive, at least. The problem is his head seems broken inside.”
“What do you mean? Is his head injured?”
“It’s not that, he’s just gone crazy.”
A profound dissatisfaction seeped from Cha Jeoh’s resolute voice. Had those two’s relationship been that bad? I gave up on retracing memories of the past that didn’t come to mind well because I hadn’t watched them closely.
Instead, I turned my ear to the new topic Cha Jeoh brought up.
“But what’s with your hair? Did you bleach it white in the meantime?”
I tilted my head at words I couldn’t understand. Then Cha Jeoh, who had turned his steps, looked around the infirmary and brought me a hand mirror that had been sprawled on the desk.
“See it with your own eyes.”
I received the palm-sized mirror and reflected my appearance. Soon discovering my hair, I smacked my lips sourly.
“…What the hell.”
I reached out and fiddled with the ends of my hair. The area that touched my fingertips had lost its original black color and had faded to white. It was a vivid color that left no room for denial.
“Hayoung, you just found out too?”
“Yeah… I don’t know either. Why my hair became like this.”
Could it be related to the way I keep impulsively moving and acting?
Or it might simply be a phenomenon caused by the ability I’d awakened. Hadn’t the twins mentioned in passing last time that among those who awakened abilities, there were cases where parts of the body were transformed or newly formed?
But for that to be the case, the ability I’d awakened wasn’t related to hair or color. So it seemed more credible to connect it with my impulsive behavior and movement that arose out of nowhere.
“Wait, Hayoung-ah.”
I put the hand mirror down on my lap and stared at Cha Jeoh.
“There’s someone coming this way.”
I turned my gaze from Cha Jeoh and stared intently at the infirmary door beyond him. Unfortunately, while I was skilled at sensing the presence of monsters, I was endlessly clumsy at reading the presence of people, so I couldn’t read the human presence outside with just that.
‘…At least it doesn’t seem to be Cha Woodan.’
If the person coming here were Cha Woodan, Cha Jeoh wouldn’t have bothered mentioning it. He would have just covered my eyes in time with Cha Woodan standing at the door, and Cha Woodan would have knocked first instead of opening the door right away.
Then for the same reason, the possibility of it being Lee Gojun, who knew about my ability, was also significantly low.
‘Then who is it?’
As soon as I worried, Cha Jeoh’s large palm covered my eyes—thud. Skin that was just a little bit rougher and just a little bit higher in body temperature than Cha Woodan’s enveloped me.
Soon the infirmary door opened a beat late. Since the sound of throwing the door wide open without warning or notice was excessively loud, my perked ear muscles twitched. Soon a female’s beautiful voice flowed into my ear.
“What, Cha Woodan. You were in the infirmary?”
‘Cha Woodan?’
While I subtly furrowed my brow beneath the palm, Cha Jeoh immediately refuted in a displeased tone.
“Bullshit. Who are you calling Cha Woodan? He’s upstairs right now.”
“Oh, really? The guy on the second floor was swinging a sword though? Wasn’t that the ability Cha Jeoh awakened?”
“Anyway, the guy swinging the sword is Cha Woodan, I tell you.”
When Cha Jeoh retorted with disgust, the woman readily accepted.
“Okay, well. What can I do when the people themselves say so… But who’s that kid?”
I faintly felt the ticklish sensation of another person’s gaze scanning me.
