It wasn’t like this was the first or second time such a sudden situation had occurred, so my head worked well. It was just that, as someone who was not only blocked from seeing but also poor at perceiving human presence, grasping detailed information was no easy task.
The thick smell of blood tangled together and pierced my nose, and the shouts spreading from inside the auditorium and the bickering noise of the monsters intertwined to disorder my hearing.
However, the more survivors were clumped together in a jumble, the more difficult it was to distinguish their individual presences. Because of that, even those who seemed to be a few steps in front of me appeared only as a large lump and couldn’t be identified beyond that.
What I could vividly know was at most Lee Gojun’s voice, what seemed to be his younger brother’s retort, and the healing ability Lee Gojun was stirring up.
The only one I wanted to save was Lee Gojun, but I didn’t possess the keen senses to discern his precise location. Moreover, right now I didn’t have the leisure to calculate various possibilities and pick out the best one among them either.
Just grabbing Lee Gojun and dragging him to a safe zone to escape would be arduous work.
‘…For now.’
I had to move. Only I wouldn’t be attacked by the monsters rushing in hastily, but even those in my vicinity wouldn’t have their lives intact either.
I removed my hand that had been touching the wall and boldly stepped forward.
“Geonwoo, Geonwoo-ya……”
I slightly frowned to not miss the voice full of agitation. I poured all my concentration only into chasing Lee Gojun.
Because of that, I failed to notice.
“D-don’t come! Don’t come near…!”
That sharp warning was aimed at me, not a monster.
“I told you not to come…!”
A skin-cutting sharp pain brushed my wrist. At a sensation I hadn’t expected let alone was familiar with, by the time I recognized the situation I was already lifting my eyelids and capturing the situation that had struck my vision.
At a distance of less than two steps, a female student frozen stiff just gaped her mouth, unable to do anything about her wildly agitated face. A drop of blood that had flowed along the curve of the cooking knife she gripped with both hands soon fell to the floor.
The long scratch that had probably formed on my wrist, the pain blooming from there was unpleasantly terrible. But what was immediately important wasn’t this trivial wound that wouldn’t affect my life at all.
I quickly raised my head. Among the gathered survivors, I discovered the profile of Lee Gojun trying to treat his younger brother sitting slumped against the wall and his blood-soaked leg. And at the same time, I faced the monster beyond them that had noticed my existence and started running.
There was no time to think otherwise. Squeezing my eyes shut, I moved quickly toward Lee Gojun’s position that I’d grasped thanks to what just happened, not caring about the blood dripping down my wrist.
Monsters don’t attack me. That said, the humans around me aren’t necessarily safe either, but… at least, if I grab them or stand in the way.
I felt the house-sized monster raise its arm-thick claws to aim at Lee Gojun. Without time to think otherwise, I stretched out a rough hand to grab Lee Gojun’s wrist and threw him behind me. Then I rushed forward.
Because of that, my body unable to overcome the recoil was buried deep in a soft embrace. And then following that.
Grrrrr-.
A low cry like scratching a throat was heard. But strangely, that voice didn’t contain even a trace of threat. Soon the monster moved a little away from me, then my face was pressed against and released from some moist and squishy surface.
I froze as I was. My closed eyelids trembled finely. Without time to grasp the situation, that thing from just now approached me again and licked up my cheek and forehead.
‘…Tongue?’
So.
‘A monster’s, tongue?’
I knew that if I closed my eyes and didn’t make sounds, the monsters wouldn’t throw even a bit of interest at me. But that was thorough indifference at most, not this kind of act that could be called favor or even affection following in succession.
The sticky saliva smeared on my face itself wasn’t that unpleasant. But because this situation was very flustering, I let out a soundless dry breath.
‘Why me?’
And that too, not even glancing at the appetizing humans that would be right behind me.
The hand that had frozen in the air for a moment soon stretched out again. It was just before those fingertips burrowed into the monster’s soft fur.
Swish-.
Following the noise cutting through the air, what had been standing close as a doorstep in front of me screamed sharply and stepped back. The presence of that body staggering then catching its balance reached me vividly beyond my closed eyelids.
Between the thick smell of blood spread all around, a new scent of blood that had just bloomed permeated. However, what followed immediately didn’t give me enough leisure to grasp the situation.
Before I could even perceive the thin object heading this way once more, it, having approached right up close, burrowed into my calf.
What was embedded deep in my skin produced a distant pain I’d never even imagined until now. It was pain of a dizzyingly enormous magnitude, a completely different kind from simply being cut by paper or even a blade. Having had the experience of reflexively opening my eyes in surprise at the pain just before, I avoided another disaster by gritting my teeth, but it wasn’t easy to hold onto the thread of reason.
My legs that had lost strength bent. My school uniform pants soaked wetly and stuck to my skin. When I moved the hand pressed on the floor to grope at my leg, the shape of a long, thin rod touched my grasp.
‘…An arrow?’
Only then did it seem I could feel the presence of others rushing over in a group from far behind. Between the tinnitus piercing my eardrums, their murmuring, their urgent shouts, and the choked sound of sucking in breath in surprise burrowed in.
Meanwhile, the arrows that passed by me several more times embedded in various parts of the monster before my eyes. As the attacks that were repeated because they couldn’t hit a vital point steadily accumulated, the monster that had completely withdrawn from me along with the deepened scent of blood collapsed.
The saliva still thickly remaining on my face, the pain in my leg throbbing as if to tear through my mind and the smell of blood close by, even the scene of survivors’ and monsters’ presences mixing chaotically were too vivid.
“Kim Hayoung!”
With the familiar voice crying out my name as the last thing, I let go of the thread of consciousness I’d been desperately holding onto.
***
Lee Geonwoo’s household was quite strange. At least in Lee Geonwoo’s own view, it was.
It wasn’t for reasons like the house being full of debt, or the parents being addicts to gambling or alcohol, or abuse toward children being carried out. If it had been such a noticeable, solid problem, Lee Geonwoo would have probably reported it long ago and legally dealt with it to overthrow that family.
But Lee Geonwoo’s family, especially the grandmother standing at the head of it, was a bit different.
“What is called nobility.”
Whether waking up in the morning to give greetings, eating meals, taking charge of work or just taking rest, a long sermon always followed starting with those words.
About the value of each and every life that living beings possess.
About the god that, though unspecified, is certainly looking down on us.
Nevertheless we are still not noble, and about the virtues and benevolence we must have to approach that damn nobility.
When he was young and couldn’t speak properly, he didn’t understand grandmother’s words and listened blankly, but it wasn’t so after his head grew bigger. He didn’t want to waste time listening to the detailed contents he couldn’t understand and didn’t want to understand.
But his older brother Lee Gojun was different. He buried grandmother’s words in his heart and engraved them in his mind, trying to practice those acts himself.
Lee Geonwoo couldn’t understand such a brother at all.
‘Won’t he get conned by some cult at this rate?’
Nevertheless, because Lee Geonwoo loved his brother, he couldn’t unconditionally curse or stop him. Rather than grandmother who forced an incomprehensible family motto or parents indifferent to their children, he loved the brother who had carried and raised him from when he was a baby, so he didn’t want to hurt him unnecessarily.
So he was living with his mouth quietly shut when suddenly appearing grotesque things overturned the city and country into chaos.
At the time, Lee Geonwoo was fortunately at home thanks to leaving school early. But his brother wasn’t.
He called but he didn’t answer. It was the same when he sent a message. He anxiously chewed only his nails and tried to run out of the house, but grandmother grabbed him.
“Those who won’t die won’t die. Salvation is attached to your brother.”
Grandmother’s eyes, which hadn’t seemed very normal usually either, glinted eerily on that particular day. As if she was seeing through something beyond reality. Lee Geonwoo thought it might be an unknown ability that arose together with the appearance of the monsters.
“They are together.”
It was still full of things he couldn’t understand, but.
“You must survive without fail.”
Lee Geonwoo hoped that, like grandmother’s words, his brother wouldn’t die easily.
‘Even if I go out now, if our paths cross we’ll just get more complicated.’
Brother might be coming home. Moreover, what Lee Geonwoo had awakened wasn’t an ability specialized in combat, so even if he went outside there was a high possibility he’d be regarded like useless baggage.
So Lee Geonwoo decided to wait. Watching the sun pass and the sunset fall, soon watching the dusky night settle, listening to the monsters’ cries beyond the open window, he stayed up all night.
But his brother didn’t return.
