“Literally, it was death in the line of duty.”
When I spoke with difficulty, Nam Ihyeon snorted.
“Death in the line of duty my ass, it was a dog’s death.”
“……”
“The entire vicinity was a residential area. The Association couldn’t say that Markos almost came out of the gate, so they swept it under the rug.”
“Did they…… really have to keep it from the bereaved family?”
“That’s how the Association is. It would be difficult to persuade them, and it was a mission that didn’t make sense to begin with. If the bereaved family started making an issue of it and pushing the matter, it would be perfect for media coverage. It happened to be a sensitive time diplomatically. They buried it saying let’s go quietly, quietly.”
Nam Ihyeon’s tone had the kind of tedium that only someone who had experienced this dozens, hundreds of times could feel. He had always handled things that way, and even when he complained about it, nothing was fixed, so in the end, Nam Ihyeon seemed to have gotten sick of it.
Perhaps because he knew about this aspect of the Association, Nam Ihyeon hadn’t raised issues about the guiding kidnapping either. If you think of it as making a fuss over nothing anyway, the Association ignores it. In a direction that’s clean to handle, with no loose ends. As if there had never been any problem in the first place.
If he had known the truth, would Jeong Sanghyeop’s choice have changed? I thought I couldn’t be certain either way. The fact that Jeong Sanghyeop’s precious noona died was an unchanging truth, and it was also true that the Association’s wrong judgment was in the background.
However, it might have been different if he learned that she could have escaped but chose not to. Because he was proud of his noona, an A-class esper. No. Would he be even more furious instead? Would he resent his noona for doing her best until the end but not taking care of herself?
“What kind of choice do you think Esper Nam Ihyeon would have made in that situation?”
“That’s a difficult question.”
Contrary to my expectation that he would answer easily, Nam Ihyeon pondered for a long time. Then he looked at me and continued speaking.
“I’d do my best to escape. I’d definitely survive.”
“What?”
“I’d definitely survive. Even if I get criticized.”
“Why?”
“Because then the Association won’t be able to make that choice again. Using people’s lives as shields by holding their half-baked sense of duty hostage.”
“What if only Esper Nam Ihyeon gets criticized and it ends there?”
“Can’t be helped.”
“……”
“I have to survive anyway. Then I can either catch more monsters or not. It’s not like there are hundreds or thousands of S-class in this country. If I die, the only one who’ll be at ease is me, right?”
It was unexpectedly profound words. The one and only SS-class esper was precious, but the fifty or so S-class espers couldn’t be ignored either. Especially those belonging to Esper Department 1 were targets that had to be protected unconditionally. That way, safety for the next 10, 20 years could be guaranteed. Gates opened unpredictably and frequently, and the number of high-ranking espers rarely increased.
That was the correct logic. According to the logic of power, that is. But the word ‘small fry’ I had seen in the novel kept coming to mind. Isn’t it because the small fry have their roles that this system is somewhat maintainable? Has the Association been considerate of them to that extent? Hadn’t I also thought that the Association’s S-class-centered management style was natural? Because they were strong and indispensable existences.
Then was I an existence that could be dispensed with because I was weak? During the past 20 years I spent as a C-class guide? My thoughts increased to the point of giving me a headache. Nam Ihyeon patted my shoulder and continued speaking.
“Don’t think too much. When it comes to you, think about it then. It’s not too late.”
Nam Ihyeon got up from his seat and stretched widely. Then saying he’d be going, he left. I remained alone in the large hospital room and chewed over the conversation I’d had with him again. I had quite a lot I wanted to say when I met Jeong Sanghyeop tomorrow. Of course, whether he would give me that much time was uncertain. I checked my phone.
The novel hadn’t been uploaded today. I repeatedly went into the application several times. There was no new news.
“Does this author always not upload at important moments?”
I didn’t like the author’s attitude of acting as if problems must be solved directly. But it couldn’t be helped. I put down my phone and approached the window that Nam Ihyeon had opened wide.
A cool breeze blew. Even so, my stuffy insides didn’t cool down in the slightest.
* * *
I had a dream again. The same dream. I was lying down, and people came and went in the corridor with dry expressions. The window of the abandoned hospital was open. Even the wind felt piercingly cold as if it too was broken. Unlike the previous dream, I went straight out to the corridor.
Whether I was invisible to people’s eyes, no one paid attention to me. People in protective suits, the still vivid letter X, patients crawling out of hospital rooms as if in agony.
“Kill me! Just kill me!”
“Painkillers…… please give me painkillers.”
Some people had blue bruises all over their bodies. Some people were so emaciated that their bones were completely exposed, collapsed on the floor. No one even thought of rescuing them. They didn’t seem to care.
‘Isn’t everyone dying too much for this to be a hospital? Is this a place for torture or experiments?’
I thought that while looking around. Recalling the evil forces I’d seen in movies and dramas. It seemed like my unconscious had created this kind of space in my dream as a result of being too immersed in the novel.
‘By the way, my unconscious is pretty useful, isn’t it? It’s brought things to life in detail.’
I was impressed seeing the medical materials scattered here and there and the elements that well represented the dirty abandoned hospital. Thinking of it as a meaningless unconscious made it much easier to view. The letter X kept bothering me, but as Nam Ihyeon said, worrying in advance wouldn’t solve anything. I wasn’t Conan, and I wasn’t Sherlock Holmes either. I had no choice but to experience what was given and learn little by little.
The moment I thought that, someone stood blankly in front of the hospital room where I was. It was that hospital room where the window and door were already all broken, so the wind from the window was blowing all the way to the corridor.
He was quietly looking at ‘Park Garam in the dream’ lying on the bed. I wanted to see his face, but I couldn’t see properly because he was wearing a hood. I approached there to see his face. Before I reached the hospital room, someone tapped his shoulder and the hat naturally came off.
‘Jeong Sanghyeop?’
He was thin, but it was definitely that face I’d seen at the western gate. He quickly put his hood back on. Then he left the front of my hospital room. I quickened my steps to catch him.
“Ugh!”
But before I could go far, I stepped on a round medicine bottle and fell right over. Since I hit my chin on the floor first, blood came out of my chin.
“Ahh, it hurts.”
Holding my bleeding chin, I looked at the numerous small medicine bottles that had fallen on the floor. They looked like drugs that go into syringes, with small English letters densely written on them. And in some places, X was marked in black magic marker.
I looked closely at the letters that X was covering. I alternated between several medicine bottles and combined the letters that the writing in magic marker was covering. The bleeding chin was no longer important.
E-E-O-N
It seemed to be the name of a product. They were all the same drug. What is this? Where’s the manufacturer? The moment I was holding those medicine bottles, someone stepped on my hand as if to crush it.
“Ahhh!”
The medicine bottles instantly shattered, and I opened my eyes wide while feeling the brutal sensation of my hand being torn. I couldn’t tell who had stepped on my hand.
When I opened my eyes, I had completely awakened from the dream. I had the illusion that my hand was still tingling. It didn’t feel like a dream at all, and I felt eerie because it seemed like a vivid event that had just happened.
I raised both hands to check if my palms were okay. Naturally, there wasn’t a single wound. I sighed and got up from the bed. Then I looked for my phone and searched for ‘new drug EEON’ in the search bar. Only a few unrelated posts came up, and there was no information about it.
I entered an international portal site and searched for EEON again. It was the same. I tried spacing it out, writing it as it sounds, but there were no answers.
“Nothing comes up.”
Was it really just a nonsense dream? The moment I touched my chin while thinking that, I felt something wet. Thinking I might have drooled, I looked at my palm and red blood was smeared on it. I was so surprised that I ran straight to the bathroom. There was a wound on my chin. I immediately washed it off with water and looked at the wound.
X
It was an X-shaped wound torn long horizontally. It was small, but perhaps because of the red blood, it looked vivid. The stinging pain hurt as if I had just been cut with a knife. I rubbed it with water several times and just washed my face and came out. Then I called the nurse.
The nurse scolded me, asking what I had done during the night for my chin to be torn. I laughed awkwardly, then got scolded again for the wound opening when I laughed.
My mind was dazed. I wanted to know what was blurring the boundary between dream and reality. What is X, what is that drug, and what about those people who had become zombies? And why was Jeong Sanghyeop there, and why was I there?
Hypnosis was no longer an important issue now. There were many things I had to ask Jeong Sanghyeop, and many things I had to hear. My body, my instincts were truly telling me. That this dream is also like the novel, that not even one thing should be passed over in vain.
