# Chapter 121
Sano trusted Jeongyeon. That’s why he never looked back until he passed through the collapsing laboratory’s doors. Only after getting outside did he finally turn his head, catching his breath roughly, fully believing his friend would be right behind him.
But he was alone.
Unable to believe it, Sano’s eyes blinked stupidly. The situation dawned on him very slowly.
Jeongyeon wasn’t there.
Maybe he was playing a prank using his superpower. He liked that kind of joke, after all. Desperately rationalizing, Sano called out to him.
“…Lee Jeongyeon?”
His terribly trembling voice scattered immediately. His brain went completely blank. Just as Sano was about to take a step back toward the exit they’d come through—
CRASH!
With a thunderous sound, the laboratory entrance collapsed.
“Jeong…”
A huge cloud of dust rose before Sano’s eyes. When the thick dust that filled his vision settled, the scene was devastating.
The completely sunken white concrete, small fragments filling every gap, and jagged steel beams sticking out were too densely packed for even a head to pass through, let alone a person. Following that came continuous rumbling sounds. The building was collapsing entirely, one section after another like dominoes.
Sano mumbled something, but couldn’t even register what he’d said. A silent scream clogged his throat. It was unexpected. It was something he couldn’t have even anticipated.
Staggering away from the doorway as if to avoid reality, Sano scanned the side of the building with a blank gaze. There must be parts that hadn’t collapsed yet. He needed to go back in, to save him again.
With a pale, sickly complexion, Sano walked and walked. Not knowing what the building’s exterior walls looked like, having never seen them before, he just looked for any possible way in. If there was just one place, just one hole created by improper collapse…
BANG! CRASH!
What woke Sano from his daze was a massive explosion.
That was unmistakably the sound of the building completely collapsing. There was no time to waste. If Jeongyeon was trapped under the pile of debris… His face, drawing in a breath, was stricken with terror.
Rushing to the pile of debris that blocked the interior even as it crumbled, Sano frantically moved his hands. His tender skin was quickly cut and mangled. Blood streamed from his fingernails and palms, but he couldn’t even feel the pain.
Yet predictably, bare hands couldn’t even make a scratch on the building debris. Sano’s face twisted in anguish. He had never seriously thought about the usefulness of superpowers before. To Sano, superpowers merely signified the success of the experiment, meaning he could go outside with Jeongyeon—nothing more, nothing less.
But at that moment, for the first time, he regretted not having a superpower himself.
If only he had a superpower like Jeongyeon’s, or even a weaker one. Then he could have gone to save Jeongyeon.
It would have been good if he had been a butterfly.
If he had been a butterfly…
Plop, plip. Droplets fell on the back of his blood-covered hand. The drizzling rain soon became a heavy downpour. Shhhh… The rain he felt after so long was cold, stinging, and chilling. His damp skin bristled. From this point on, Sano began to dislike getting wet.
The most annoying thing was that his hands, slippery from moisture, kept missing their grip. Sano frowned deeply. His vision, completely soaked, was blurry.
How long had he struggled to clear away the debris pile, feeling around without rest? Someone pulled at his drenched body. The man who grabbed his shoulder said something, but he couldn’t hear it properly. His ears were numb.
The man, who had been shouting roughly, soon picked Sano up. No. I can’t leave here. Sano struggled with all his might, but with the body of a child whose strength had been depleted, proper resistance was impossible. His body was wrapped in a dry cloth, as if being bound.
“Open… gate!”
“Kid. No. It’s too dangerous here. You’re too badly injured!”
“I have to save Lee Jeongyeon.”
“Lee Jeongyeon?”
“My friend is inside…”
“A child? There’s another child in there? We’ll try our best to find your friend. But you need treatment first. Leave the rest to us.”
No matter how much Sano shook his head in refusal, no one took his side. The child was forcibly moved into a car and transported somewhere. He continued to struggle for a while afterward, then fell asleep as if passing out.
When he woke up, he was in the emergency room. His badly injured arms were tightly wrapped in white bandages. Sano, who had briefly opened his eyes, blankly stared at the ceiling.
He had dreamed a strange dream. He escaped with Jeongyeon, but Jeongyeon wasn’t there… It was a very, very strange and irritating dream. Sano was convinced it was a nightmare. And to tell his friend about this ridiculous story, he looked around.
He was still alone.
“You abandoned me.”
“…Th-that…”
“Did you think I would just let it go if you left me behind and disappeared?”
Sano, sitting blankly on the hospital bed, belatedly realized that the sneakers Jeongyeon had made for him had also vanished without a trace. The feeling of endlessly staring at his clean bare feet was indescribably horrible.
It was a miserable reality. Even the adults who had pulled Sano out knew nothing of Jeongyeon’s whereabouts. After leaving the hospital, Sano went back to wandering the streets. The boy, who had lived solely inside the laboratory, didn’t know where he was or where the laboratory was. Still, he wanted to go to the laboratory, had to go there, so he just walked aimlessly.
Even if it wasn’t Jeongyeon alive, he had to find Jeongyeon’s body at least. That guy had said Sano was his first friend. He always came looking for Sano, asking to play.
He must surely be lonely. Sano had to be there with him.
Sleeping anywhere and eating anything while wandering, the young child’s body held out quite long, but eventually tired. One day, Sano collapsed in a corner of a deserted alley.
He didn’t even have the strength to move a finger. Lying on his side made his body tilt awkwardly. In that state, Sano lay blankly.
Then suddenly, he noticed a broken block jutting out between the pavement. Its shape resembled the debris from the collapsed building.
Sano, quite absently, thought that it looked unpleasant.
Then the broken block slowly writhed and disappeared into the ground.
His eyes, with swirling green light, blinked slowly. Just now…
He could tell instinctively. Something had left his body. It was his doing. At first, he gradually learned how to handle it like learning to walk, but soon he picked up speed. In less than five minutes, he could level all the ground around him.
Sano knew that this was the “change” that the people in that laboratory had so desperately wanted.
“Ha…”
A despairing sigh flowed through the empty alley.
What followed was intense hatred.
It wasn’t an ability to create all sorts of things like Jeongyeon’s, but it was a sufficiently impressive power. Enough to easily clear a pile of collapsed debris. The belated manifestation brought self-loathing instead of joy. Why only now, why at this time.
“If I had discovered my ability just a little sooner.”
“…”
“I could have saved you.”
Even after awakening his ability, finding the laboratory whose location he didn’t even know was a difficult journey. But after dozens, hundreds of failed attempts, Sano finally discovered the location.
That was the year marking the first anniversary of the laboratory’s explosion.
The laboratory was completely empty, with only the site remaining.
Sano didn’t give up. He went around the streets near the laboratory, searching for Jeongyeon’s whereabouts everywhere, but no one knew the boy. Only after another year of frantic searching did Sano barely accept the fact that he couldn’t know how Jeongyeon had disappeared.
After that.
After that, just.
“What do you think I thought?”
Sano laughed fiercely.
Even how he had lived was vague. Whenever he tried to do anything, he remembered that moment when Jeongyeon would appear and reach out his hand, making his strength fail. He just lived. Just because he couldn’t die.
With nothing he wanted to do or could do, walking without purpose became his life. He didn’t know where to go or what to do. Constantly walking, Sano suddenly looked up. On the sign he looked up at without meaning to, the letters “Chohosi” were written.
Chohosi. A place he had heard of.
Sano entered the city as if entranced.
There, he met Heesu. Heesu immediately recognized Sano’s ability and became his sponsor.
“Do you have a name? What’s your name?”
A name. He had a name that only one person had ever called him.
“Je Sano.”
For the first time, Sano spoke his name aloud. And so, he officially became Je Sano.
