Chapter. 17. Preparation for travel (19)
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Sararak-Saarrak-
Morning.
What usually wakes a camper in the wilderness is the sound of sand that had gathered during the night flowing over the camp.
I feel a scratchy sensation flowing down my tired body.
I can feel the dark horizon subtly becoming brighter, and in the cool air, the campfire that burned out during the night is struggling to warm my toes, and I feel
myself, along with the satin-like hair and soft skin on my arms and chest .
Memories of last night, when I had completely let go, came to mind.
“Wow….”
Oh my god. How on earth should I explain this feeling?
The most passionate and complete relaxation? A sense of satisfaction you’ve never felt before in your life? The sense of accomplishment of someone who has achieved the oldest secret wish? Are you happy with the rough sketch?
okay. It’s happiness. I was truly enjoying happiness.
As a man, I have imagined this moment tens of thousands of times, but I swear I never thought that a single experience could shake a person so much.
Dana, not wearing a single cloth, was in my arms. The sight of him snuggling into my arms as if he hated the cool morning air was so cute and dizzying that I felt like my heart would melt.
The problem is that in the embrace that Dana is currently digging into, there is a communicator located exactly where her head is resting.
“…I should contact you and tell you not to come.”
When I contacted them yesterday, they said they would send a car over here by this morning.
The sun has not fully risen yet, but soon it will be a suitable time to call it morning.
Will the vehicle sent from the dome arrive early in the morning or late in the morning?
How much time is left from now until the car arrives?
.
.
.
.
.
If you rush, you’ll have time to do it one more time –
knock knock.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Ugh! Ugh? Huh?! Oh no! nothing!”
As soon as I woke up, I was able to come to my senses when the color demon that had invaded the place was about to run away when I heard a hand knocking on my chest with a finger inside my arms.
side!
Dana, who had her head buried in her chest, lifted her head and kissed her lightly.
“Good morning~”
“Good morning… morning.”
I’m dying. That languid voice that has just woken up, that rosy face that clearly shows who is making it tired, and that waterfall-like hair that narrowly covers the place where the blanket fell while half-rising!
As Dana usually had a neat and static image, her disheveled appearance had the power to paralyze people’s brains.
“You’re thinking to yourself again. We talked about it yesterday, let’s share everything without hiding anything. “What were you thinking?”
“I was going to contact the provincial dome and ask them to come to the rescue about 12 hours later…!”
“Twelve hours each?”
“Oh uh….”
.
.
.
.
The fact that Dana asked ‘for twelve hours at a time’ instead of asking ‘why’ clearly showed that she was thinking the same thing as me.
I’m dying. My blood pressure is so high here and there that I’m dying! What is the visible distance of my changed body? The horizon is almost completely open, but the fact that there is no dust yet visible doesn’t mean there is enough time for the vehicle to arrive? Wouldn’t it be okay? Since we started with outdoor play anyway, it was a challenge to get the attention of others –
“Uuuuuuu!”
I’m in big trouble. My brain broke after just one night of experience! This means that a large and powerful filter has emerged at the center of my perfect thinking circuit!
As I was slapping my cheek to the point where I made a loud sound, I heard Dana laughing in amusement next to me.
“I know what you’re thinking, and I too… If I wanted to do that more than the professor, I would have done more, but it wouldn’t be lacking.”
“…I guess I should go home, right?”
“It’s a little embarrassing to see articles like ‘Professor Park couple refuse to return to the dome, saying they don’t need anything as long as they have each other’ appearing in the community. Also… a little here… my back hurts, my knees hurt… we’ll be together from now on, so there’s no need to rush things too much….”
“Big!”
I imagined it. I imagined it! Damn it, I can’t calm down!
While Dana was putting back on the plastic raincoat she was covering, I had to fight against my imagination, which was growing like a snowball.
Just as I was starting to stoke the embers in the bonfire and start roasting the radioactive scorpion meat, which had started to smell a little strange, on a concrete plate, Dana, who had washed her face and changed her clothes, sat down next to me. I was disappointed with the clean clothes she brought, but I had no choice but to wear them.
“Wow, the breakfast the man prepared.”
“How can you even eat this for breakfast?”
“This too is an eternal tradition that human history is proud of. “As this is a world where many things have disappeared, we must cherish what remains.”
Dana took the scorpion meat that was about to taste bad to her mouth as if it were a precious meal, and I, who was roughly stuffing it into my mouth next to me, couldn’t even taste it.
“Oh, it’s dust.”
“vehicle? where?”
“Stir-ki. Next to the mushroom rock at the edge of the horizon. “Dana may not be visible.”
After eating breakfast and drinking a cup of boiled water tea, I saw a truck approaching from afar. That dust was like a signal that my short and intense vacation was over.
The dust coming through the dawn light and Dana leaning on my shoulder and looking at it.
“…Dana. “Did you ask me last night where I was going?”
It’s a meaningless story. In reality, no matter how long I spend over there, it won’t be even a day, so the story I’m about to tell you now is nothing more than a meaningless story that will cause unnecessary worry and anxiety.
Hearing my voice subside, Dana leaned on my arm a little more strongly.
“….let’s go?”
“If we just look at the facts. Instead, you don’t have to wait this time.”
still. I hoped at least someone would know.
I am not a great person who donates all my money or continues to do good deeds without anyone knowing, but I am just a small citizen who wants others to recognize me when I do good things and who wants someone to acknowledge me when I work hard.
I wanted to keep in mind that at least someone was waiting for me. I want to create someone who will be waiting for me outside who will not be forgotten even on a journey that may take years or decades. I couldn’t resist that kind of greed, so I said,
“Dana. “From now on, I want you to keep everything I say a secret.”
I told it all away. GG and Gedreutz. Completers and rewards. What I got. Countless data souls, enough to form one world. Hell planned for them and my choice.
The time I will be away from her is fleeting, but I am leaving on a long journey.
I saw her biting her lip as she listened quietly.
I felt my fingernails digging into the collar she was holding.
“Is this what you were trying to hide until the end?”
“huh.”
“So today is the end of the creation of April World?”
“that’s right.”
“To increase the possibility of returning even a little, we need to connect as quickly as possible before the contamination spreads further, right?”
“okay.”
“Even if you do that, the moment you hear that there is a world where it is impossible to save no matter what AI does in history, it is also true that if you do not save that world, you will never come back, right?”
Tears welled up in the eyes of Dana, who seemed like the happiest woman in the world just a moment ago. Uneasy. fear. A gaze filled with even a bit of resentment.
Resentment toward lovers who finally reach each other perfectly, but then walk into limbo again.
I faced her eyes without avoiding them.
“Dana. “Did you tell me what the World Tree said to me when we were talking earlier?”
“Go out and make a lot of good memories….”
“Okay. “That’s it.”
[okay. I hope you make as many good memories as possible. From now on, um… for your days.]
These are the words that the World Tree hesitantly asked me in the administrator’s space before returning to reality.
Now that my return is approaching, I can truly understand the meaning of those words.
“milestone. A memory that could become a solid milestone that will not wear out even after many years, perhaps longer than the time I lived as ‘Professor Park’. “It meant creating those memories.”
I have lived as Professor Park for twenty-five years.
If I go back this time, there is a high possibility that I will have to live as a person with a different appearance and different abilities for more than the years I lived.
The ‘good memory’ that World Tree spoke of was an anchor that would hold on to the remaining part of ‘Professor Park, the wasteland man’ who was about to wear out and disappear. This is my goal that I will think of in moments of pain, like a family photo taken out of a battlefield. A signpost that will show me the direction I need to go even in pitch-black darkness.
“My milestone is you. Dana.”
I raised my head and saw the brightening wasteland.
This place, this moment.
I engraved in my mind everything about this moment I shared with my lover who wanted to share everything with me.
A memory that will shine brightly even through a thousand years of pain.
Dana’s body was shaking in her calm confession.
“Do you know that if you ignore the people over there even now… you can continue to be as happy as today and the day after tomorrow as if nothing happened?”
“know.”
“And that you wouldn’t?”
“okay.”
“It’s really… stupid.”
Dana leaned her trembling body against me and buried her face.
“…. I hear that the person I love is going to die, and I love that sight, so I can’t stand it… I’m so foolish…”
Ugh, huh.
A few teardrops wet the concrete floor.
“love you. “I love you so much that you will never be in my life again.”
I felt a part of me being tied to this moment by her words and gestures.
“…You’ll be back, right?”
“Did you see that I couldn’t come back at some point?”
“You won’t forget, right?”
“Rather, it reminds me so much every night that I’m worried that I’ll have to wash my blanket every morning.”
“You’re not going to go and make another woman, are you?”
“Kuhm! hmm!”
“It’s not that I don’t understand the professor, but… not from now on. really. You already gave me everything, but it’s like saying I’m not enough…”
“Kuhuhmm! ” hmm! Hmm!”
oh my god. A jealous expression with tearful eyes!
…I can’t stand it.
Slam!
I reached for the rifle I had left nearby and skillfully loaded the ammunition I had prepared neatly in case of an emergency.
And then they fired one after another into the air towards the dust that was now quite close.
[bang! Tatang! bang! Taang- Bang! Taang-….]
“….Sniff! Is that a military signal? Uh…[Approach/Kill/2 hours later/Contact]?”
“Well, I think it’s necessary to secure ‘enough’ good memories for my survival.”
“Ah…”
Dana understood what that meant, looked back and forth between me and the horizon, then nodded slightly and lowered her head.
If you roughly translate it, it means, ‘If you come here now, I will kill you. He sent a signal using gunshots, saying, ‘Come back in two hours.’
Not long after the successive gunshots rang out in the sky over the wasteland, the approaching dust cloud was seen to stop.
[Paang! phut! Pang- Pang- Pang! Pang!….]
[Place/Current location/Camping is also possible/Insufficient operation time/2 hours]
“Phew!”
“Puhup!”
Likewise, we both couldn’t help but laugh at the other person’s intentions conveyed through military signals using gunshots.
A gunshot with a sense of space, unique to a shotgun.
A tone of voice that can be felt even in military signals.
“Does that look like Ian and our kids over there?”
“What do we do? Although it’s still far away, I feel a little burdened because I think there are a lot of people I know there…”
Even as Dana said that, she looked at me with sorrowful eyes, and then looked at the dust cloud. I fumbled with my arm a little and then looked back at the dust cloud again and again.
….Yesterday she took the initiative despite her shyness, so this time it will be my turn to take the lead.
Sigh!
I immediately took off my rain poncho, took a piece of cooled charcoal from around the campfire, quickly scribbled on it, and then roughly hung it on the edge of the open wall.
“Aaaah! Professor Kyo!”
“good memory! “Let’s leave good memories, Dana!”
“Now wait a minute! for a moment….!”
Then he picked up Dana, who had hesitated, and rushed to a comfortable place to lie down inside the building.
The place they left in an instant. On top of the fluttering red plastic poncho, the words
[Do not disturb]
were clearly fluttering.
****
2 hours later.
A truck stopped in front of a couple dressed somewhat disheveled.
“Hehehe! Hey, new groom! “I heard you had a hard time for a few days, but how did your powers become clearer?”
“Metal Joe, you idiot…! “I would have left Dana and I alone in this dangerous wasteland!”
Wow!
“…You are my life-long benefactor, sir. Thank you so much.”
“Hehehe. Repay me with a pretty niece, you soft cherry-like bastard. And if you want to express your gratitude, there’s someone else you should do it besides me.”
“hmm?”
While pretending to grab his collar and thanking his lifelong benefactor, Master Metal Joe, Ian smiled heartily and pointed to a person who was just getting off the truck.
Tall and tall.
A face full of freckles and slightly sharp eyes.
Orange hair and jeans t-shirt.
And Jokas follows with a precious hand placed on the stomach and a tired face.
“Hey~ Mr. Park! Did you truly have a happy time! “This person couldn’t help but help me out!”
“No way… you?”
The person that all the circumstances point to.
The woman approached with a grin on her face and lunged at Dana, who was next to me!
“I did it! This is just because a lover who spends the night with his lover has a different sense of distance just by looking at him! Oh my, that’s great, my little brother! “You’ve literally climbed the mountain, so you can come down now, disciple!”
“No Noru sister!”
“Do you know how anxious I was, worried that that guy might have a malfunction? Any problem? Didn’t we just set aside two hours and talk a lot? Is it useful? Does it fit your mouth? “Can you educate him too?”
“Oh sister!”
It’s definitely true. Of all the people I know, he was the only person who spewed obscenities before even saying hello.
“Do you take roe drug? “Is that really you?”
slap!
“Yeah dude! When I heard that Professor Park had been going around making trouble since the first day of his return, I thought, ‘Oh, he really doesn’t have an answer!’ So I went to BDSM with my heavy body. Isn’t it okay to call this a wasteland-style wedding planner? Hehehehe!”
“Joe Jocas….”
“I’m not apologizing this time. “I think the results came out well.”
A husky voice and uninhibited behavior.
When I first met Dana, I felt disturbed by the difference between the community and reality, but I was amazed at how this person could be so similar in words and actions.
“To be honest, as a small citizen, I benefit a lot from the famous Professor Park, and I thought it would be good to continue to build on what I have already built up from generation to generation! Since I’m currently 3 months pregnant, I thought that if I pushed a little, my child and Professor Park 2nd generation could be like friends! “Please take care of the future, Professor Park!”
Crazy hate. It’s literally the human ‘Noru Drug’ itself.
In the end, Jocas bowed his head and apologized instead.
“If you’re all done talking, get on board quickly. Let’s go back and talk about the rest. Anyway, you have a lot of time now, right?”
“hmm. yes.”
“I see…”
At Ian’s words, Dana and I shared a look in silence.
okay. I was happy and happy enough. So much so that I have never even dared to imagine it.
So now it was time to return. To Gedreutz’s world one last time.
In the car heading to the dome, an old song was playing on a cheap car audio system.
The Dome skyscraper was visible in the distance.
****
