# Chapter 135
“How long do you plan to rest here?”
“Until the kingfisher calls.”
“What if they ask to meet right away?”
“Then we leave right away.”
It was an answer without hesitation. Jade even gave a slight expression as if wondering why this was even a question.
‘He said we should rest…’
Lee Hwan pouted slightly with indignation.
They had only been sitting for about an hour. He himself was fine since he’d been carried in and had slept soundly, but Taesung hadn’t been able to rest properly.
Though he would never admit to being tired even if it killed him, he was surely quite exhausted.
‘He should rest a bit instead of spending time checking my wound.’
But Jade wasn’t wrong either. Lee Hwan needed to get back in touch with Praxis somehow.
Lee Hwan kept glancing at Taesung’s side, but eventually swallowed his dissatisfied thoughts and rose from his seat.
“There should be a payphone nearby.”
As he started walking toward the door, Taesung grabbed Lee Hwan’s wrist and shook his head.
In front of them, Jade asked in a calm voice:
“Where are you going?”
“I need to contact the kingfisher.”
“Why do you need to go out for that?”
“…Pardon?”
“Talk before you move. Stop secretly darting off in all directions when you’re all the same people.”
Jade shook his head as if disgusted and handed over what looked like an older model mobile phone. Lee Hwan thought it might be another SIM-less dummy phone, but the screen lit up showing signal bars properly on the status bar.
‘…What’s this? There’s no way he brought his regular phone.’
When Lee Hwan gave him a look asking what this was about, Jade answered straightforwardly.
“Burner phone. I know a center. I got it prepared before entering the experiment, and haven’t used it for about half a year?”
If it was a phone that had never been used, even Naru couldn’t track it. They now had a mobile device free from tracking for the time being.
‘My goodness.’
He never dreamed such a valuable item would fall into his hands. Lee Hwan blankly stared at the dial pad that appeared on the screen, pressed it once, and then startled, pulled his hand away.
The idea that he could now sit in the room and talk to others. That he could make and receive calls in both directions anytime. He felt strangely moved by this convenience he had taken for granted his entire life.
“…Should I put it on speaker now?”
“No, just listen by yourself. It would make them anxious if they heard outside noise.”
“Well, okay.”
“Tell them how many companions you have, and say you’re not curious about the address of where you’re hiding, but ask them to give a separate meeting location.”
Jade had an uncanny grasp of a fugitive’s psychology. He pinpointed exactly what would make someone anxious and what they would want to do before the call was even made.
All this without hesitation or deep thought, fluently as if reciting from a script.
He said he had worked as a mercenary overseas. It seemed these kinds of situations were commonplace then. No wonder his earlier question about being chased by people wasn’t as casual as it had seemed.
Curiosity about his past briefly crossed Lee Hwan’s mind, but he cleanly ignored it. This wasn’t the time to be curious about such things. He could listen to his turbulent battlefield stories after everything was over and causality was complete, while sprawled on the sofa in Taesung’s house.
While munching on snacks. Lying with his head on that bastard Kang Taesung’s leg.
‘Hmm.’
A random thought suddenly occurred to him that since Jade was something like a guardian figure to Taesung, it might be a bit awkward to meet him while lying sprawled out.
‘Really now.’
This wasn’t the time. Somehow whenever Taesung was involved, he ended up having strange thoughts. Lee Hwan clicked his tongue inwardly as he entered the number on the phone he’d been handed.
It was a number he had memorized to the point where he could recite it fluently even if stabbed awake.
—Whew… alright. Then I’ll see you at that location at 6 AM tomorrow. I need to prepare if I’m going to follow you to an unfamiliar place.
“Did you say the person with the evidence will arrive in the afternoon? I’ll do my best to help until then. You can contact this number anytime, so please call again before you depart.”
When he brought up the points Jade had suggested, Praxis readily accepted their joining. From what he heard of their plan, it seemed like a new person whose face wasn’t yet known would be taking over the kingfisher role.
It was exactly as Jade had predicted. Seeing things proceeding smoothly, Lee Hwan thought it fortunate that he was here for this crappy level of difficulty.
“…The appointment is set, it seems.”
“Then we can rest until then. Conserve as much energy as possible and leave at 5.”
After finishing, Jade slowly rose from his seat. He took the phone from Lee Hwan’s hand and suddenly headed for the door.
“Both of you tore your flesh to eat and used up all the medicine and patches. Stay quietly in here without doing anything stupid while I go buy some.”
Click. The door closed before he could stop him. Only after Jade disappeared did Lee Hwan exhale a long breath and loosen his stiff neck.
“Haah…”
Even after quite some time, a strange sensation still lingered. It was as if he had approached a piece of causality.
But not knowing whether it was physical distance or some condition, all he could feel was the continuous tingling at the back of his head.
The feeling had seemed quite clear in the basement of Building D. Now it was like a compass that had reached the axis but couldn’t determine direction, just spinning around and around.
‘It does seem like Jade is definitely related to the final piece.’
How could someone who didn’t exist before the regression affect the piecing together of causality? At most, he would have died in experiments a year or two before Lee Hwan awakened.
Lee Hwan frowned at the clue that seemed both graspable and elusive.
“Is your condition not good?”
Perhaps because of his furrowed face, Taesung asked in a blunt tone. Lee Hwan quietly shook his head and lowered his gaze to Taesung’s waist.
“That’s what I want to ask you. Is your wound okay? Since we just roughly washed it…”
They couldn’t even wash it properly by pouring plenty of water because they had to conserve drinking water. When Lee Hwan reached out with a worried expression, Taesung, unusually, didn’t avoid it and just looked at him quietly.
Under the clean clothes that he had found somewhere, the wound where the patch had been deliberately removed was half-healed. It seemed to be healing faster because it had been cut so cleanly with something like a knife.
“Your recovery is excellent so it looks like it will heal soon, but let’s apply some medicine just in case.”
Saying that, Lee Hwan rummaged through his bag. The leftover medicine rolled out onto his hand.
“Well, there’s nothing like a cotton swab… Wait a moment.”
Even though Taesung wasn’t going to run away and disappear, Lee Hwan kept glancing back at him as he went to the bathroom to wash his hands for some reason.
Then he returned, shook off the water, and squeezed the ointment onto his index finger. Just as he was about to apply it, Taesung, who had been still until then, hurriedly grabbed his wrist.
“…I’ll treat it myself.”
“What? You haven’t done it. You just removed the patch.”
“There was no need to keep it on when it’s already healed without inflammation.”
“Let’s just apply some medicine just in case.”
“I’m fine. Take care of your own wound.”
“Didn’t you already disinfect my wound?”
While even cleaning his dirty face and limbs.
When Lee Hwan answered without giving an inch, Taesung fell silent again as if he had nothing more to say. Lee Hwan tapped the large hand holding his wrist to remove it and carefully rubbed the medicine on his wound.
It didn’t look like it would hurt much anymore, but Taesung faithfully furrowed his brow every time Lee Hwan’s hand touched him.
‘Is it itchy?’
So when he pressed a little harder while rubbing, Taesung now went so far as to close his eyes. Lee Hwan wiped his slippery fingers on a tissue and muttered to himself.
‘Impatient guy.’
The simple treatment ended as he put a bandage on with a slapping sound. Lee Hwan dragged Taesung to the bed, made him sit down, and sat beside him.
“It’s almost over now. Let’s endure just one more day and then live comfortably.”
Of course, when your memory returns, you won’t be comfortable. Lee Hwan swallowed the words he couldn’t bring himself to say and smiled wryly.
Just the fact that the completion of causality was near made him feel a little better. The anxiety he had felt since crawling out of the basement of Building D still remained, but that too would improve once he found the last piece of causality.
Lee Hwan pretended not to notice Taesung’s gaze that kept looking at him and slowly exhaled a deep breath he had been suppressing for a very long time.
* * *
The rain that had started the day before continued relentlessly. Fortunately, the once-heavy raindrops had thinned considerably, making it possible to go out without an umbrella.
Lee Hwan shouldered the bag he had prepared in advance and left the motel.
“We set the meeting place near the mountain, right?”
“You heard everything I explained yesterday.”
“Let’s go straight up the mountain. All three of us wearing hats would look too suspicious.”
Indeed, anyone would hesitate upon seeing someone walking around with such sunglasses on top of a hat.
Rather than spreading eyewitness accounts of madmen here and there, it was better in many ways to just bring civilians straight into the mountains.
Lee Hwan walked, listening to the pounding of his heart. Despite being clearly this tense, somehow it didn’t feel real.
“You’ll take the lead for the contact. That will reassure the other party too. We’ll stand guard from a position just within sight.”
With those final words, Jade adjusted his walking pace and moved away from Lee Hwan. Lee Hwan mumbled the plan Jade had outlined to himself and quietly checked his watch.
The appointment time was drawing near. The sounds of Taesung and Jade were gradually fading. Lee Hwan swallowed dry saliva with a gulp from his parched throat.
