Chapter 6

Chapter 6. I Thought I’d Escaped (1)

“Rescued Person No. 12 has regained consciousness.”

I turned my head toward the direction of the voice.

This place was entirely white.

So I thought it might be a hospital.

But my ordinary guess collapsed the moment I saw the person standing beside me.

The one looking down at me was not a doctor or nurse, but a human being wrapped in a protective suit.

A pure-white protective suit that did not show a single strand of hair.

“Are you awake? Can you see this?”

The protective suit asked, waving a ballpoint pen in front of my eyes.

But the way he moved the pen was far too half-hearted.

It did not seem like he was truly curious about my condition.

“Where am I……?”

“Please relax. This is reality! Fortunately, you made it out alive. None of your limbs are cut off or broken, and all four are intact!”

The protective suit spoke in the voice of a young man.

On top of that, he rattled off things I had not even asked.

“You were seriously cool. Handing the ticket over to the kid at the end like that. Then you went, ‘Pay it back to anyone later,’ and wow……! It was like watching a movie. I really got chills, you know?”

I listened blankly to those words, then sat up in shock.

No, I tried to sit up and failed.

Because the moment I lifted my shoulders, that protective-suit bastard pushed me right back down.

At an action closer to subduing than stopping me, I protested at once.

“What are you doing?”

“Please don’t move. The test isn’t over yet.”

“What test?”

“We’re measuring your contamination level. Let’s see. First, you can speak well. Pupil response is, hm, looks fine. Blood pressure and pulse are both normal. But this part hurts a little, right?”

“Aaagh!”

The protective suit pressed hard on my left shoulder.

Exactly where the fire extinguisher had struck me.

When I writhed in pain, the protective suit cackled.

“It’s fine. They’re just abrasions.”

I stared at the protective suit, dumbfounded.

Then the protective suit said in a voice mixed with laughter,

“Rescued person, even if you had taken the train out yourself, no one would have blamed you. Of course your own life matters most, doesn’t it?”

What is this out of nowhere?

“So we didn’t expect much either, but you saved the kid first and still made it out alive yourself, so all of us got excited for the first time in ages! We’re always watching things that make us want to vomit, and then for once, we got a whole hero movie. So just stay still for a little while. We might not be able to treat you like a hero, but we’ll give you decent courtesy.”

Courtesy, while pressing on the injured spot without warning…….

I was dumbfounded, but I pressed myself back against the bed for now.

I had seen it briefly while trying to sit up, and I was not in any position to argue right now.

I was wearing not clothes, but some scrap of cloth draped over my body.

Something like a patient surgical gown that would leave me naked if a single knot came undone.

Facing someone in a protective suit while dressed like this made me feel that something had gone very wrong.

So I calmed down for now and asked the protective suit.

“Is that child here too?”

“You mean Sol? Yes, she made it out safely too.”

“Where are my clothes?”

“They’re scheduled to be incinerated. Is there anything important in them?”

“Incinerated?”

“We don’t know what you may have gotten on them inside.”

It was absurd, but I had no reply.

So I let the small things pass and asked something more important.

“How am I alive?”

My last memory was Sol boarding the train in my place.

And the black forms mercilessly crushing me down.

The pressure I had felt then was still vivid.

So was the rough texture of the black forms, and the acrid, foul stench.

It was stranger that I had not died.

At my question, the protective suit answered.

“We don’t know.”

“What?”

“That’s why we’re analyzing it. We also have no idea how exactly you returned alive.”

BEEP—

At that moment, a machine sounded beside us.

The protective suit glanced at the monitor beside the bed, then spoke into a radio.

“Contamination measurement complete. Normal.”

Where is he reporting to?

CLICK—

Then a door in the distance opened.

What came through that door was not a person, but a serving robot.

The robot rolled naturally toward me, and instead of food, a set of clothes had been placed on top of it.

“Once you change, your case officer will come get you.”

Case officer?

There was nowhere near enough explanation, but the protective suit was already gathering his things.

Then, before turning around, he gave me a thumbs-up of unknown meaning.

“Good luck, rescued person!”

Equally meaningless encouragement.

After that, the protective suit left through the door the serving robot had entered from.

With a suspicious feeling, I unfolded the clothes that had been delivered.

A gray two-piece tracksuit.

I was rescued, right?

Leaving my confusion behind, I put on the pants first.

Then, just as I was putting my head through the opening of the T-shirt, another door flew open.

“Mr. Seo Do-un.”

The man who opened the door called my name from the doorway.

Perhaps he was a security officer here. He was a tall man wearing a black tactical vest.

Unlike the protective suit, who had behaved so lightly that he might fly away if someone breathed on him, the man spoke in a voice with neither emotion nor rise and fall.

“Follow me.”

At that heavy voice, I got up for now.

I put on the slippers beneath the bed and stepped outside the door. A wide corridor appeared.

The atmosphere was similar to a hospital.

But it was far larger than an ordinary hospital, and its atmosphere was bleak.

There were not even windows.

On top of that, even after walking for ten minutes, the same corridor kept continuing on and on.

“Where are we going?”

At my question, the man came to a halt.

At the same time, the ivory-colored wall beside us suddenly disappeared.

No, it turned transparent.

What? Was this not a wall, but something like a one-way mirror?

Beyond the wall that had become transparent like glass, I could see a wide space.

Just like the place where I had woken up, it was all white, with only a single bed sitting there.

And a certain girl in that room saw me and came running.

Who is that…… no, Lee Sol?

The one running toward me was none other than Sol.

What? Why is she also…….

Like me a little while ago, Sol had a scrap of surgical cloth draped over her body.

When I saw that from an observer’s perspective, a sudden sense of wrongness struck me.

A single bed in that wide space, and one person dressed in a surgical gown.

It was hard to see it as an ordinary medical facility.

Did that not look like the kind of atmosphere where some kind of experiment would be conducted?

Feeling a strange chill, I looked at Lee Sol.

Still, except for her clothes, Lee Sol seemed all right.

Considering the way she was running over at full tilt.

Sol came all the way up to the glass wall and shouted something.

But the soundproofing was so good that I could not hear anything at all.

CRACKLE—!

At that moment, a mechanical sound rang from beside me.

-……ster! Can you hear me?

At the same time, Sol’s voice, mixed with static, came through.

When I looked to the side, the man was holding a radio with an indifferent face.

Sol’s voice was flowing from that radio.

It seemed he was allowing Sol and me to talk.

I looked back and forth between that man and Sol, then answered.

“Yeah, I can hear you.”

-Mister, are you okay? Do you know how shocked I was? I really thought you were dead!

As soon as I answered, Sol shouted at me.

Then, before long, her eyes grew red, and she lowered her head.

-Ah, seriously…… thank goodness…….

At Sol’s choked voice, I also let out a breath of relief.

Only now did it feel real.

We survived. Both of us.

“Are you okay?”

-I’m not sure. I think I’m okay, but the people here keep…….

At my question, Sol answered while sniffling.

But then her words abruptly cut off.

When I looked to the side, the man had already turned off the radio and was putting it away.

“We let you meet briefly for confirmation at Lee Sol’s request. Follow me again.”

When the transmission cut off, Sol urgently struck the wall.

But that wall also turned back into an opaque ivory color.

Sol’s figure could no longer be seen.

As if protesting that one-sided cutoff, I stood my ground and asked,

“How long does that child have to stay there?”

“She will be quarantined until her safety is secured.”

But what came back was a purely textbook answer.

---

“Ah, it went to print? Thank you, editor-in-chief. Yes, yes. I’ll contact the author later. Not at all, yes.”

I bowed and scraped as best I could into the phone.

I had no choice.

When I checked the date, a full three days had passed since the day I had left work.

Thanks to that, I had become a guy who had been unreachable for three days and absent without leave.

All while missing the new book preparations and the meeting with the author.

Fortunately, the editor-in-chief had handled the urgent matters, so there was no disruption to the schedule.

On top of that, for some reason, I was said to have been in a traffic accident.

“My body is…… yes…… I’m all right.”

Maybe because of that, the editor-in-chief was actually asking after me. Ugh.

It pricked my conscience, as if I were dodging responsibility with a lie.

But this situation was certainly no less serious than a traffic accident, so let’s compromise for now.

“Yes, I’ll contact you once I’m discharged.”

I ended the call and placed the borrowed cell phone on the desk.

Then the person sitting across from me calmly retrieved the phone.

It was the same man who had guided me here.

Now that I faced him properly, the man was rather—no.

Extremely handsome.

He had perfectly balanced, wolfish features, a height approaching 190 centimeters, and a muscular body that showed signs of steady training.

In several ways, he had an appearance that made me wonder whether he was truly a civilian.

But separate from being handsome, his cold atmosphere made it hard to feel any goodwill toward him.

The surprising thing in the middle of all this was his long hair.

With that rigid atmosphere, it felt like a military-style buzz cut would suit him better.

For some reason, however, he had tied his shoulder-length hair up like a topknot.

Yet even that was far from affectation or looseness.

If anything, he felt like a member of some suspicious, extralegal organization.

Still, considering he had let me contact my company, maybe this was not an entirely shady world after all.

As I quietly gauged the atmosphere, the topknot man spoke.

“There are a few matters to confirm, so we ask for your cooperation.”

But what came out of his mouth was not the kind of thing I had expected.

“Before that, where is this place?”

“Video training will be provided later. Please ask questions then.”

“Shouldn’t you at least tell me who you are?”

“I am affiliated with the government.”

The topknot man answered carelessly.

Then, without giving me a chance to ask again, he continued.

“Do you remember what happened after you put Lee Sol on the train?”

“I don’t.”

“Did you hear any sounds or have any dreams?”

I answered reluctantly, then frowned.

Sounds? Dreams?

I don’t remember.

But I feel like I did have some kind of dream.

“That is enough. Then please explain the circumstances at the time of your barter exchange with the 「Thing in the Old Military Uniform」.”

“What do you want me to explain?”

“Mr. Seo Do-un, your barter exchange succeeded on the fourth attempt. I would like to know the circumstances that led you to use the book you had as the barter item at that time.”

I chewed over the man’s question, then faintly grimaced.

“……Were you watching all of that?”

“Monitoring is conducted at all times.”

“Then why didn’t you come rescue us?”

“It was a response in accordance with the manual.”

The manual?

I repeated the man’s answer, then asked back,

“Are you saying standing by and watching people die is the manual here?”

“If you display an uncooperative attitude, your return home may be delayed.”

The man spoke in an annoyed tone.

So for a moment, I lost the words to respond.

That living hell I had rolled my way out of was said to be a zone managed by the government.

Several people had died there, yet this person who claimed to be government-affiliated had simply watched it happen.

And he was even saying that was the manual.

Dumbfounded, I stared at the man.

The man met my gaze for a moment, then placed a bag on the table.

Then, with mechanical movements, he opened the bag and showed it to me.

“This is the compensation scheduled to be paid to you, Mr. Seo Do-un.”

Inside were countless bundles of fifty-thousand-won bills.

“However, at my discretion, the amount of compensation or the timing of payment may change. Will you cooperate?”

At the unexpected large sum of money, I lost my words in another sense.

Thousands, no. It looked like an amount in the hundreds of millions.

I looked at the money, then opened my mouth again.

“……What was the question?”