Episode 15:
In the original novel, the main character begins from the beginning experiencing the death of Chief Kang Min-ah.
Chief Kang Min-ah fell away from the group and fell into the building below. No one was there to catch her, but instead she ran away, so she fell.
It would have been better if he had just died, but instead of even being able to do that, he was torn apart by monsters and died with his flesh in tatters.
He was able to easily guess her fate from the countless spider legs that were chasing after us, and he saw it with his own eyes as he exited the building.
It didn’t take long for the group’s morale to soar that they became murderous.
The death of a close colleague. That cruel end. Efficiency and humanity.
It was after meeting two students much younger than us that the main character, who had lost his mind, came to his senses.
In-ho Jeong overcame the death of his colleague with his sense of responsibility as an adult.
Of course, it was too harsh and dry to say ‘we overcame it’, but at least it allowed the protagonist to make a rational decision.
Although I lost my existing colleagues who had let go of my mind and willingly accepted death, I was able to meet new lives for whom I could take responsibility.
However, the current Jung In-ho has never experienced the death of anyone else.
There were no weaklings to blame, and Director Lee Jae-heon saved them all and even comforted their spirits that should have been shattered.
Will Jung In-ho have the luxury of dealing with the death of others?
“….”
Of course, none of them welcomed death.
Of course, Dr. Ha Seong-yoon was familiar with death as he was a professional by profession. However, that was not a reason to love death itself, and more than that, death was unfamiliar to Jeong In-ho.
It’s unfamiliar and scary. I hate it to the point where I feel like I’m trapped in a gray steel room.
Just imagining it makes my entire body tense up with an unpleasant, painful, and frustrating sensation. That was the concept of death.
Because he was Jung In-ho, he was able to sense the death of others before anyone else.
“…I have to go.”
“….”
“I have to go.”
Also, I never once prepared for it.
Jeong In-ho fixed the monkey wrench and immediately ran out of the room.
The way he threw away all the tree branches he had picked up showed how agitated he was, and that agitation was also contagious to Doctor Ha Seong-yoon and President Yoon Gar-ram.
The two who stopped at the back of Jeong In-ho, who ran quickly, soon instinctively realized how the situation was going and started moving their legs as well.
Jeong In-ho, who was running ahead and fighting the approaching monsters, felt something strange.
‘…Why did you come so far away…?’
The place where the four of us were and where we are now were too far away.
The reason Jeong In-ho left his group was so that they could have time to talk to each other, and he had no intention of going further than the distance he left his group behind.
In the first place, wasn’t he just here to pick up tree branches?
There were plenty of people around the group to that extent, no, no. In-ho Jeong didn’t even realize when he had become so far away from the group.
But if I had to think about the process, I could.
They didn’t say anything as they went looking for branches, and Jeong In-ho took this silence for granted because they were not close to each other at the time.
So, if we had to look into the cause of the current situation…
“….”
He remembered the hypothesis that Dr. Ha Seong-yoon had just presented.
The hypothesis that mental strength is important in this world.
The moment he looked back on it, Inho Jeong realized.
It was entirely their group’s will to come this far, but as Doctor Ha Seong-yoon said, their mental strength was low, so they came this far without even thinking about it.
In short, this is what happened after being bruised.
Jeong In-ho suddenly felt goosebumps rising up to his fingertips.
He obviously thought he was sane, but in this world, even that was an arrogant judgment.
Doctor Ha Seong-yoon called him as he bit his lip.
“Mr. Jeongin Jeong Inho…!”
“….”
“We have to move together! “If we split up, it’ll be even more of a headache!”
Hearing Doctor Ha Seong-yoon’s words, Jeong In-ho turned to the two.
“Then run faster.”
“…Mr. Jeong In-ho.”
The doctor with a distorted face continued.
“I understand that you are urgent, but. If anything, the situation could get worse if we go there.”
“How does it get worse…? “There’s no one worth fighting over there right now.”
“But Jae-Heon Lee….”
“The scream you heard just now was a woman’s!”
Jeong In-ho finally lost his composure and shouted.
President Garam Yoon is with us, and the remaining ones are Manager Minah Kang and Employee Yeonhee Kwon.
Director Kang Min-ah was too scared to scream, and no matter how simple employee Kwon Yeon-hee was, she was not stupid enough to not know that screaming in this situation could attract another monster.
‘One of those two screamed?’
If I hadn’t thought that much, I wouldn’t have come to my senses at work in the first place, and if it were a situation where two sane people would scream, there was only one thing they could think of.
“It means that you are in a situation where you are so close to death that you can’t make a decision…”
Jeong In-ho said, gritting his teeth.
“I’m hearing that Director Lee Jae-heon you mentioned is in a situation where he is completely unable to protect one of the two.”
“….”
“Then what gets worse here…?”
At least Director Lee Jae-heon was in a state of inability to act, and one of the female companions screamed on the verge of death.
There were only four people there, so it wouldn’t be surprising if they all died.
But could it be worse than this?
“Those people are all my…my co-workers.”
How long have I been with these people?
Manager Kang Min-ah often ate and spent time with me, and intern Noh Yeon-seok shared all kinds of concerns with me.
Employee Kwon Yeon-hee is a face I see occasionally while walking down the hallway, and Manager Lee Jae-heon is like that.
He was someone who finally had something worth talking about.
Those people all seemed to be dead, and I already guessed that one of them was dead.
How can Jeong In-ho, who already hates death, regain his composure?
I wasn’t that much of a monster.
“…Run quickly.”
“….”
“I really don’t think I would be crazy if I were late….”
I wasn’t confident that I could do that.
* * *
Fortunately, it wasn’t that difficult to find the way we came earlier.
Among their group was President Yoon, who said he usually went for a walk in the park, and she led the way through trees that all looked the same.
“Did we… come this way?”
“….”
“No, I’m sorry. “I said something strange.”
Of course, the fact that he came all the way here without even thinking seemed like a horrifying fact to President Garam Yoon. Just like In-ho Jeong did.
She looked disgusted at the fact that she had not been able to recall this path for a while, even though it was clear that she had come there of her own free will.
It may be because they felt how threatening this world was to them.
Yes, this world harbored a lot of malicious intent.
The tree in the park, which should have been only a few meters high, towered as if it were in a jungle, blocking the sky, and its trunk, unlike what we knew, did not feel lifeless.
It had a strange feeling, as if paint had been applied to Styrofoam or cement.
A world where even simply living and breathing is uncomfortable and burdensome.
A world where even though I moved with my own will, it didn’t feel that way and I felt uncomfortable, as if I was being observed by someone.
That’s where we fell.
Okay.
“….”
Jeong In-ho frowned at the vine he stepped on without even recognizing it.
There weren’t many monsters that aggressively approached like this, but that wasn’t the only problem.
How on earth did the sound become just a sound?…
‘How could it be this disgusting?’
A feeling of nausea rose up and he breathed heavily.
Physiological tears flowed and vagueness engulfed my head, as if someone had put their hand down my throat and stirred it up.
It felt like if I stopped running even just a little bit, I might grab a tree and throw up.
In fact, Jung In-ho was not the only one to have this reaction.
Doctor Ha Seong-yoon, who was running with them, was also running with a silent frown on his face, and it seemed that the paleness of his face was not simply due to the wound on his side.
Suddenly, he thought of intern Noh Yeon-seok, who threw up as soon as he left the company. Yeonseok probably felt this way at that time too. Oh my…
“…Ugh.”
I feel like a cockroach is eating into my stomach.
It was an extremely vivid and horribly unfamiliar sensation.
The good news was that President Garam Yoon’s condition didn’t look too bad.
Rather, she was guiding us where we needed to go with such quick movements that Jeong In-ho had reasonable doubts about her.
In response, In-ho Jeong recalled the ideals of the flower shop that Manager Jae-heon Lee had pointed out.
“Oh, here. Yes here. “You can go here.”
“…All right.”
In front of her flower shop, tree roots were sticking out like old tree-lined streets.
What did that really mean? Why were the road to the flower shop and the park connected?
And what was Manager Lee Jae-heon, who looked around and pointed out as soon as he left the company, approached there alone?
Since all of his judgments so far had been wrong, In-ho Jeong could not guess Director Jae-heon Lee’s intentions at all.
What on earth was he thinking, alone in this world, holding a pipe in his hand?
Why was I the only one who shed so much blood and didn’t even feel any resentment?
“We’re all here. If we break it here…!”
“….”
“…is…?”
Jeong In-ho couldn’t understand him.
“….”
“….”
“…Kang Kang Min… Seed.”
President Garam Yoon’s voice shook terribly.
The first thing that caught my eye was a large wall-shaped sculpture right before I reached the location she guided me to.
It was none other than Chief Kang Min-ah, who collapsed bright red.
Director Kang’s eyes were staring into space.
“…uh.”
“….”
“Uh uh….”
At that moment, no other sound came out other than “uh.”
The breath just comes out as if a thick iron is pressed against the solar plexus, and the stiff tongue cannot capture the form of words.
Maybe the lips did the work for this idiot who forgot to breathe.
As I exhaled through my mouth, my eyes were wandering around looking for a sense of reality as I was seeing a scene for the first time in my life.
To be honest, I think I’ve seen a lot of similar situations in movies that are rated 19+, but somehow it felt completely different from what I saw on the screen.
Books always say that knives retain blood, but now I realize why they used that ridiculous expression that liquid seeps into metal.
The person who first thought of that expression must have killed someone himself, and the place where Director Kang was lying was stained bright red, as if the wooden plank was soaked with water.
The person who spewed out the blood was staring into space, like a doll, in an unthinkable way.
It was so lifeless that I wondered if it was really the person who had shed this bright red blood, and it was shaking like a mannequin or something that imitated the closest human being.
The shirt, which he usually wore neatly, was tattered as if it had been torn by tens of thousands of teeth, but he still looked quiet like an ornament on the filming set.
It was too foreign and unfamiliar to be the shape of a person I knew.
The wide open left eye and the distorted right eye are strangely unrealistic.
“…Go Kang Kang Min. Mina….”
“….”
“No no no why….”
Grumpy.
President Garam Yoon sat down on the ground.
Perhaps you and Employee Kwon became close friends in that short period of time.
Since she was the first person I met after falling into a world with no one to rely on, her death was so devastating.
Jeong In-ho recalled the smiles the women had when they first met under Kwon’s leadership.
Unable to approach Manager Kang Min-ah or even hold her hand, he quickly turned his gaze away from CEO Yoon Gar-ram, who was looking at her.
Jeong In-ho noticed that Dr. Ha Seong-yoon was looking somewhere else.
And at the end, there was intern Noh Yeon-seok, stuck in a large tree as if torn apart.
“….”
I see.
I guess this is what I meant by not being able to say anything.
“…Yeon Seok-ah.”
Still, he let out a breath.
That was all.
There were too many things floating around in the pockets of my head.
The sight of Yeon-seok’s legs in the distance or a piece of meat that looks like a broken doll. And blood-soaked trees and the thick hands that held them were scattered here and there.
But after saying it out loud, ah.
“….”
What I was seeing was really a corpse.
I thought that people dying instantly was something that happened under the sky. I realized that what I was seeing was really a murder scene.
“…under.”
I laughed out loud.
How can this be expressed as ‘death’?
