Chapter 16

Chapter 16. Welcome to the Special Management Bureau (1)

When I opened my eyes, I saw a white ceiling.

It was a sight I had already seen once before.

“Rescued Person No. 12 and No. 13 has regained consciousness.”

Likewise, it was a voice I had heard once before.

When I turned my head, I saw a person in a Protective Suit.

“Rescued person, are you awake? Can you see this?”

The Protective Suit asked, waving a ballpoint pen in front of my eyes.

Still the same half-hearted motion.

I stared for a moment at the pen bobbing in front of me, then, for some reason, felt annoyed and slapped it away with the back of my hand.

“Ah.”

TAP, ROLL—

The pen flew off and rolled across the floor.

The Protective Suit stared at the fallen pen for a moment, then took out a new pen from his pocket and scribbled something down.

“Optic nerves normal, musculoskeletal response also normal…….”

Damn it…….

The Protective Suit was a magnanimous man who lightly accepted even a rescued person’s spite.

That irritated me, and this déjà vu was too sad, so I squeezed my eyes shut.

---

“I’m sorry this was so sudden, editor-in-chief. Ah, my body is fine, but…… no, not at all. Yes, yes……. Thank you. Then I’ll contact you as soon as the test results come out.”

I hung up and let out a long breath.

Then I looked at the men across the table.

Two people sat in front of me.

One was Cha Si-eon, whom I had still failed to strangle.

The other was, astonishingly, a young blond man.

Of the two, the blond man I was meeting for the first time smiled and opened the conversation.

“You must have a lot of questions, right?”

At the man’s question, I looked startled.

It was my first time seeing his face, but his voice was familiar.

It was the voice of that Protective Suit.

“Yep, that’s me. I’m Kwak Jae-gyeom from Response Team 3.”

The Protective Suit who revealed his name, Kwak Jae-gyeom, looked to be in his early to mid-twenties.

His face had a smiling look that matched his lively voice, and his hair was flamboyantly bleached blond.

In both atmosphere and appearance, he was completely different from the gloomy Cha Si-eon.

But that Kwak Jae-gyeom suddenly lit up his eyes and leaned toward me.

“Rescued person, can I call you hyung?”

“……Out of nowhere?”

“Yes. Really, I’m serious!”

Why was he suddenly trying to become sworn brothers under a clear sky?

When I looked dumbfounded, Kwak Jae-gyeom spoke with high tension.

“Actually, we were watching everything this time too. Wow, but I never thought you’d take off your mask there. You did that to save Sister Sa-ra, right? We really, seriously never imagined it.”

Ah, so that was what he was talking about.

“Did Ms. Baek Sa-ra and Mr. Han Ji-su make it out safely?”

“Yes, both of them came out fine. They got hurt a little, but well, their lives aren’t in danger.”

“That’s a relief.”

When I sighed, Kwak Jae-gyeom grinned and began chattering again.

“Anyway, even when you took off your mask, hyung, honestly, we didn’t expect much, you know? To be honest, I thought you’d die right away. But you held out better than expected, so people got more and more excited and started cursing because the rescue team wasn’t going in faster…… I’m telling you, it was no joke.”

Kwak Jae-gyeom made a fuss, but I was not in the mood to go along with him, so I only sat there awkwardly.

Then Kwak Jae-gyeom expressed himself even more earnestly.

“I’m not exaggerating. Even in the Bureau, there are almost no people who can hold out alone when that monster gun goes berserk. But you did that unarmed, wearing nothing but an otter T-shirt? Of course everyone lost it! Right now, whether it’s the Field Division or the Support Division, everyone’s in an emergency because of you. Yesterday, we even made a ‘Save the Otter Campaign Headquarters.’”

Save the Otter Campaign Headquarters…….

Isn’t that mockery?

And why am I already hyung?

No, before that.

Do these Bureau bastards all gather around to watch Special Zone situations like sports broadcasts?

Come to think of it, Baek Sa-ra had also known about me from the start.

“Anyway, both during the 「Railway Station」 and this time too, everyone got incredibly excited thanks to you, hyung. And your response to the 「Moving Gun」 will also be included in the manual, so there will be separate compensation for that at the Bureau level.”

“No, wait a minute.”

I cut off Kwak Jae-gyeom in the middle, as his words kept getting longer.

Most of it was good news, but right now, there was a more urgent issue I had to address first.

“Before that, what exactly is this situation? Why am I being told I can’t go home?”

Namely, the issue of my person.

A little while ago, I had taken indefinite sick leave from my company.

The reason was aftereffects from the traffic accident last time.

Of course, that was a fabricated excuse mixed with lies, and the real reason was something else.

Because these bastards had notified me that “I cannot go home for a while.”

It was absurd enough that I had been dragged back into a Special Zone and rolled around there again, but now I could not even go home.

Compensation or whatever else, I needed an explanation.

Then Cha Si-eon, who had been sitting beside us, opened his mouth as if he had been waiting.

“First, I will explain what Special Management Zones are.”

“Why……?”

But I asked back, and Cha Si-eon, whose words had been blocked, looked at me.

So I asked again, more precisely.

“I asked why I can’t go home. Why are you suddenly explaining that? Before, you told me to stop taking unnecessary interest and focus on returning to my daily life.”

At my point, Cha Si-eon’s gaze suddenly turned somewhere distant.

What? Why are you avoiding my eyes?

“The situation has changed. I will explain this in sequence.”

This is ominous.

I had a fairly bad feeling about it, but I had no choice but to listen.

“First, a Special Management Zone, hereafter Special Zone, is a dangerous space whose principles have not been identified. The primary characteristic of Special Zones is a hostile reaction toward humans, and they operate with the purpose of drawing in and killing or assimilating specific or unspecified citizens through unknown means.”

At this point, it was nothing new, but I still thought, What kind of bizarre nonsense is this?

An unidentified space hostile to humans.

It was not some urban legend, and even if I had seen it in an author’s manuscript, I would have tilted my head. I never thought I would hear such a thing in reality.

“The inflow of citizens into Special Zones is observed only in the Seoul Metropolitan Area of the Republic of Korea, among the entire world. The first point at which this phenomenon occurred cannot be confirmed, but it was 8 years ago that the government recognized the existence of Special Zones and began an official response.”

“8 years?”

I had been listening silently, but I cut in, startled.

“Didn’t you say the Survival Rules for the 「Hospital That Hunts Humans」 were still being produced?”

Did that not mean they had only recently started investigating it?

In reality, the mission Baek Sa-ra and the convicts had been carrying out had seemed close to early-stage exploration.

But they were in their eighth year of response?

When I looked puzzled, Kwak Jae-gyeom, who was beside us, explained.

“Well, the number of Special Zones is higher than you’d think.”

“How many?”

“Just the ones we’re monitoring number 37.”

That’s a lie, right?

“And over the past 8 years, about 90 Special Zones have been closed.”

If so, I would accept it.

I was shocked by the number of Special Zones currently being monitored, but after hearing the number that had been closed, I regained peace of mind.

In any case, that meant our government was stronger and was steadily eliminating them.

Long live humanity.

Optimistic however I liked, I asked again.

“Then you’ve gotten rid of quite a lot, and there aren’t many left now?”

“Uh, no. That’s a little different. This was before I was appointed too, but the Bureau’s original policy was full-scale war.”

“Full-scale war?”

“Yes. When a Special Zone was discovered, after completing preliminary exploration, people like Team Leader Cha would rush in and smash everything apart.”

Right, exorcism was originally physical.

And it did seem to have actually been effective.

Remembering the moment the 「Moving Gun」 had been smashed apart, I asked back.

“You don’t do that now?”

“No. Because no matter how much we smashed them, after some time, the exact same thing would appear again.”

“They appear again?”

“Mm, you know things like lettuce or green onions. Even if you cut off and eat the top part, as long as the roots are intact, they keep growing back. They say Special Zones are like that too, maybe with separate roots somewhere. No matter how much they smashed them, they kept appearing again and again.”

“Ha…….”

“So in the end, they say they gave up. The damage on our side during the total-war period was also serious, and if a new Special Zone appeared, there was the issue of having to figure out its characteristics and patterns all over again…… and decisively, the number of Special Zones did not increase beyond 37, so starting the year before last, the guidelines changed to managing them instead of destroying them.”

I had set the premise wrong.

It was not that there had originally been about 130 Special Zones, and the government had smashed them down to 37.

There had originally been 37, and they had tried all sorts of things over 8 years to eliminate them, but there were still 37.

In the end, they had aimed for extermination, but it was like pouring water into a bottomless jar, so they compromised with management.

Humanity was weaker than I believed. Damn…….

On top of that, after hearing this explanation, I had no choice but to ask this too.

“Then how many people get dragged into Special Zones?”

“It differs a bit each year, but by last year’s standard, approximately 4,500 citizens flowed into Special Zones, and of those, 208 returned alive.”

It was a number that was shocking, yet not shocking.

In the 「Railway Station Where the Siren Sounds」, I had personally seen four people die.

They had died like that in only an hour or two.

But if there were dozens more spaces like that, the number Kwak Jae-gyeom had just stated was not absurd.

“People disappear like that every year, and you’ve hidden it well somehow…….”

“Uh, that’s also a bit different. Rather than hiding it, it doesn’t really show much in the first place.”

At my complaint, Kwak Jae-gyeom answered with an awkward smile.

“The population of the Seoul Metropolitan Area is about 30 million. If you include the floating population without residential registration, it’s far more than that, and among them, 4,500 people isn’t a number that would stand out even if they disappeared. It’s a little higher than the annual number of traffic accident deaths and far lower than the number of suicide deaths.”

Kwak Jae-gyeom’s calculation was quite cold.

At the same time, it was realistic enough that I remembered what Author Na Bit had said.

How would the world look to a being higher-dimensional than humans?

Flames would soar beside people peacefully drinking tea.

Children’s bicycles would pass by people burned black to death.

This imagination of Author Na Bit’s was not merely fantasy.

In any case, I felt I had learned enough about Special Zones.

“So Special Zones are unidentified spaces that drag people in and harm them, and they were first discovered in our country 8 years ago. There are 37 in total, and even if you destroy them, they appear again. Last year, 4,500 people were dragged in, but only 200 people made it out alive. Is that right?”

“Yep, that’s exactly right.”

“So why can’t I go home?”

After going around and around, we had finally reached the main point.

……But what are you two doing? Since earlier.

At my question, Cha Si-eon and Kwak Jae-gyeom glanced at each other.

The two exchanged meaningful looks, then looked back at me as if they had resolved themselves to say something.

Seriously, don’t do this. Why are you getting solemn? You’re making me nervous.

When I faced them with wary eyes, Kwak Jae-gyeom opened his mouth again.

“I’m sure you understand well enough by now, but the probability of an ordinary citizen flowing into a Special Zone is truly slim. It’s almost like the probability of dying by lightning strike. But for one person to even fall into Special Zones twice in a row? That’s a truly astronomical probability. But hyung, you’ve already experienced that, so probability probably isn’t important to us anymore.”

Why is this digression so long?

With an ominous feeling, I simply asked directly.

“What is the conclusion?”

“We think you’ll continue being dragged into Special Zones from now on.”

At this point, even God should apologize to me.

Of course, I have no intention of accepting that apology.

Absolutely not.