I quickly scanned the door’s exterior. Unlike when Lee Gojun’s younger brother had used his ability to lock the door, no special form was visible nor was any flow of power felt. However, that didn’t mean I could be certain that door was an ‘ordinary door’ with no ability used on it. What I could see was only the scene of that ability ‘in progress’; if what the opponent had used was a consumptive ability that merely reinforced the door, there would be nothing to learn from seeing the belatedly completed result.
“That’s why I said let’s talk first.”
The student council president’s low mockery burrowed into my eardrums irritatingly.
If what Cha Woodan had now was Cha Jeoh’s combat-type ability, he might have been able to easily destroy a door like that. Whether Cha Woodan was thinking the same thing, he was rolling his eyes with a rarely revealed raw, irritable expression.
Then, as if he’d suddenly made up his mind, Cha Woodan strode toward me without any explanation. Then he took off his gym uniform jacket and covered it over my head.
“Cover your skin as much as possible.”
Before I could understand the meaning, Cha Woodan lifted me up in his arms. The sensation of my body suddenly floating had become familiar by now, so I half-heartedly pressed on Cha Woodan’s shoulder and firmly gripped the jacket he’d covered me with so it wouldn’t slip down.
“Sunbae?”
The student council president’s flustered question wasn’t enough to restrain Cha Woodan’s steps.
“What are you trying to…”
“Close your eyes.”
At the whisper that cut off and burrowed through the student council president’s voice, I lowered my eyelids without hesitation. No sooner had I done so than a thud—a solid and eerie noise followed. A sound that seemed like something was breaking, or something was collapsing. Soon what had turned to powder and fluttered about brushed against my fingertips that had been poking out beyond my jacket.
That day, I realized for the first time the fact that ‘a person can break down a wall without weapons.’
A sharp wind blew and brushed past us. And soon, my body that had seemed to float high into the sky plummeted downward.
I reflexively gripped Cha Woodan’s collar tightly. I felt Cha Woodan readjust his hold on me as if to reassure me.
Soon a light impact that wasn’t severe covered us. I could tell without seeing the series of movements as Cha Woodan, who had skillfully lowered his body upon reaching the ground, slowly straightened his legs and stood up.
‘…We just jumped down to the playground right now, didn’t we?’
My mouth just gaped at a situation that was hard to believe even after experiencing it directly. Cha Woodan carefully pulled down the jacket from me, then quickly scanned my various parts to see if I was injured anywhere.
I slightly narrowed my brow at that composed behavior. Then an awkward laugh settled down over me.
“Since the situation is what it is right now, I’ll explain this to you later.”
“……”
“For now, we just need to go to the auditorium, right?”
Was this really a situation I could understand and accept even if he explained it in detail? Though there were difficulties in giving an affirmative answer, revealing such doubts when I couldn’t even speak as I wanted would only waste time needlessly right now.
I nodded slightly. As if he’d been waiting, Cha Woodan turned his steps and entered the main building again.
***
A noisy scream pierced my eardrums. I needlessly touched my ears and struggled to sharply raise my senses.
The auditorium we’d just entered was swarming with far more monsters than I’d felt in the warehouse earlier. Once a riot broke out and survivors started drawing attention, it seemed monsters from other places had gathered here too.
‘How many… people are there?’
I was originally so poor at reading human presence. In the midst of this, the vivid presence of the monsters piled full in the auditorium dispersed my concentration, making it difficult to read the existence of the survivors that had become hazy.
Swallowing a sigh, I lightly tapped Cha Woodan’s shoulder. He looked at my touch and belatedly understood what I wanted, opening his mouth.
“There are a lot of them. Uninjured ones, injured ones. Dead ones… there are quite a few too.”
Though it was an excessively merciless word choice and expression to refer to fellow survivors, I didn’t bother to point it out since I possessed much the same level of humanity.
“The window connected to the outside is also broken. Maybe because this is the second floor, it seems some stubborn monsters from outside climbed up.”
‘No wonder there were so many.’
“As expected, the speed of killing monsters is too slow. If they’ve drawn this much aggro in the first place, it seems better to give up on finishing the battle quickly…”
Trailing off his words, Cha Woodan lightly kicked off the ground. Compared to when we fell down from the third floor earlier, my body floated a very small height and landed stably after passing a short distance.
Soon one monster seemed to howl eerily, then sounds of desperate shouts and curses pouring out could be heard from the area where we’d been standing just moments ago.
“…Yeah. And as for Lee Gojun, he’s not visible with a rough scan of my field of vision.”
Concentrating on Cha Woodan’s voice calmly continuing to speak instead of the ear-splitting noise, I drew the structure inside the auditorium in my head.
The auditorium was wide, corpses were scattered everywhere, and survivors and monsters were mixed together in what was truly pandemonium. In such a chaotic situation, the possibility that Lee Gojun, who hadn’t awakened a combat-type ability, had fled far away with his younger brother who similarly couldn’t fight seemed slim.
‘He couldn’t have already died, could he?’
Even while thinking that wouldn’t happen, a needlessly regretful anxiety bloomed. Lee Gojun had good survival skills and luck, having run from the fourth floor to the third floor art room to cling to me, but a person’s life could be cut off at any time in any way.
Even just to determine Lee Gojun’s life or death, it seemed necessary to clean up this pandemonium to some degree first. Though it would be difficult for Cha Woodan alone with his mental-type ability to handle it, by this time Cha Jeoh would have finished going out and almost reached the school, so just holding out until then would be doable.
When I tapped Cha Woodan again, he put me down. After checking the flat floor a couple times with my toes, I gestured with my chin to Cha Woodan.
“You’re going to move alone? Won’t that be dangerous?”
It wasn’t a situation where survivors were fighting each other, and this moment when monsters were running rampant and clamoring couldn’t possibly be threatening to me. Cha Woodan wouldn’t be unaware of that, so it was needless worry.
“…Don’t go too far. When Cha Jeoh comes, I’ll go right to you.”
Fortunately, Cha Woodan didn’t take long to precisely grasp what I wanted from him. After surveying the vicinity, the movement of him lightly picking up something that had been rolling on the floor rippled beyond my closed eyelids.
“I should work hard. Since Hayoung is trusting me.”
Ignoring Cha Woodan’s nonsensical words, I immediately passed him. Even knowing the structure and the monsters’ positions, the possibility of bumping into other survivors wasn’t small, so I moved my steps carefully while touching the wall.
Voices filled with all kinds of anger, fear, and irritation in addition to chaos tangled messily and echoed in the auditorium.
Saying to treat those who’d awakened combat-type abilities first, saying there was no leeway to use healing abilities in such a situation. Even that was buried in painful screams filled with the pain of death, and submerged in desperate sobs of trying to carry a comrade on one’s back and flee.
The combat personnel who had gathered at the auditorium belatedly seemed to be engaging in battle with their respective disciplines. Perhaps they’d undergone reorganization of sorts after the manpower called the Cha twins had left, as it wasn’t that there were no monsters collapsing from attacks.
However, it was woefully insufficient to safely protect the remaining survivors to that degree. Moreover, since they were trying to prioritize protecting the life and death of the healing ability users, there was no progress to speak of in exterminating the monsters.
In the midst of this, the student council president and his close associates weren’t even showing their faces.
‘Even if the student council president has a mental-type ability, not all the others would be like that.’
Then my palm suddenly brushed against a material with a cool chill different from the wall. Feeling it slide smoothly even though I hadn’t applied much force, I gauged my current position.
‘If it’s a door around here…’
It would be the side door leading to the corridor behind the auditorium. Seeing that it wasn’t closed or locked, it seemed a small number of survivors had probably used this door to escape to the corridor beyond.
But unfortunately, this place was also hard to call a favorable route for survival. After all, one monster that had felt the commotion here was crawling from across this corridor…
“Hayoung, Hayoung-ah?”
A familiar voice grabbed my ankle. Stopping my movement as I was, I silently moved my lips.
‘…Lee Gojun.’
I quickly turned my head toward somewhere beyond the side door. With slightly narrowed brow, I listened carefully to not miss Lee Gojun’s voice in the noisy environment.
“Hayoung-ah, how did… Geonwoo, our Geonwoo…”
“No, hyung. I’m okay. So stop it and it’s better for you to run away first, hyung. Okay?”
Lee Gojun’s power rippling desperately in the air, that flow was transmitted to my skin through the air. Swallowing a small sigh, I moved my gaze from the small presences together with the two brothers to the vicinity of the air.
The movement of the monster that had made this place its destination was gradually getting faster.
