Episode 12
Lee Jae-heon looked at the thick blood flowing from his palm.
‘…is it my blood?’
A strange sense of unreality brought on a hazy drowsiness, but Lee Jae-heon shook it off by slowly blinking his eyes.
As the day was getting dark, there was no time to think about random things.
He showed his hand and spoke to the doctor who was resting on a stone chair.
“As you can see, it’s torn. Will this also heal?”
“…No, why are you saying this now…”
The doctor muttered as if he was dumbfounded, and then quietly closed his mouth, perhaps sensing that words would not make sense.
All he did was pull out something that looked like a box of pigtails from inside his coat.
Jaeheon Lee looked at it and said that he was glad to see it.
“Oh, is it a bandana? “Thank goodness.”
“….”
“…Isn’t it?”
Doctor Ha Seong-yoon’s face frowned strangely.
“So you thought I wasn’t a psychopath… and that I would sew people up like dolls with needles and silk thread?”
“….”
If the company had blocked it with a stapler, I would have been a complete asshole.
Lee Jae-heon, who suddenly became a psychopath, decided to keep quiet.
I knew that I didn’t have to act like a normal person because of the setting I had planned for the weekend, but I didn’t want to show off as a psychopath before the actual battle even started.
Seeing Lee Jae-heon like that, the doctor seemed to be mulling over his slight dissatisfaction.
“You don’t usually treat people like that, do you? Silk thread that has not been disinfected not only has a high risk of infection, but also causes severe pain during treatment. We don’t have medical rooms for nothing. No, why did you create a wound that needs stitches in the first place…”
“If you have any complaints, let’s settle it with money. “How much will it cost?”
“That sounds like a very wealthy person.”
The doctor finished preparing and spoke while holding his torn hand.
“…There is no anesthetic, so we will do it as is. Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“it’s okay.”
“….”
He began sewing Lee Jae-heon’s hand with a face full of dissatisfaction.
The thin, smooth thread dug into his palm, but Jaeheon Lee just blinked as he felt sleepy for some reason.
The doctor seemed very dissatisfied with something.
“…Don’t wounds like this often get stitched raw?”
So, the doctor, who realized Lee Jae-heon’s intention to control his expression, stared at him quietly for a moment and drew a faint smile on his face.
It was the same expression I saw at the hospital over the weekend.
“That’s right. But there are very few patients who readily accept it.”
“It won’t be there at all.”
“At least I don’t take it for granted like you do.”
The doctor who said that moved his lips as if he wanted to say something more, and then said,
“…Okay, it’s over.”
Soon, he smiled as if he had given up.
“It was torn so complicatedly that I had to sew it for a long time. “I only took simple steps, so I recommend not using those hands if possible.”
“I have a lot of work to do.”
“….”
When Jaeheon Lee pointed his finger at the group looking around, he seemed a little annoyed.
As you can see, only the eyebrows are crooked, just like the smiling face.
Ha Seong-yoon spoke in a lowered voice.
“If you live like that, your life will be short, sir.”
“I guess so.”
Lee Jae-heon accepted the curse without any hesitation.
This may have been because it was a story that was not particularly surprising, but it was also a reaction given by Dr. Ha Seong-yoon, who the other person was ‘misunderstanding’ about.
He muttered inwardly. It’s really hard to make a living.
“Thank you for the treatment. “I hope you live a long time.”
“…Can I tell you this as a joke?”
Jaeheon Lee suddenly felt funny and burst into laughter.
“As you wish.”
* * *
Now that we had found a suitable spot, it was time to build a fire.
“Then water. “I think the next step will be building a shelter.”
“aha.”
“Mr. Kwon, change your habit of trying to understand something and move on. “Just ask me why.”
The reason fire became a top priority was simple.
In the wild, fire had many different uses.
First of all, it keeps your body temperature from dropping and brightens up a night without a single ray of light.
This means securing temperature and visibility. It also serves to heat the water source for safer consumption when the quality of the water source is poor or food is suspected to contain parasites.
Of course, the underworld is a bit distorted from being completely wild, but it is not much different from the wild in that it has to be self-sufficient in many things.
“Especially in the evening, if a monster comes out, it will be difficult without visibility.”
The faces of the group hardened at Lee Jae-heon’s words.
“That’s right. “I don’t know where the monster might be…”
“I’m really anxious.”
“Do I need to set up a trap…?”
Jaeheon Lee blinked at the words of intern Yeonseok Noh, who had no idea where he had picked them up from.
Isn’t flint, which can’t possibly be found in a place like this, called ‘rock’?
That guy was bringing up vague and miscellaneous knowledge from earlier, but it didn’t seem like it was just useless, so it was difficult to completely ignore it.
Lee Jae-heon continued speaking while wiping the corner of his mouth as if covering his mouth.
“I don’t know about traps, but it would be nice to make something like an alarm. “If you get close, you’ll hear a sound…”
“Oh, is that right?”
“The problem is, we don’t know what could be around here.”
So, whether it was a trap or an alarm, what had to be done now was to start a fire.
“As you can see, the sun is setting.”
In the original world, as the sun sets, the sunset would set and the world would turn red, but in the other world, there was no such thing and it was quietly being consumed by black.
The main character in the novel was most nervous on these evenings.
Unlike the existing world where there was even a trace of light, the other side of the world did not have even the slightest light from things such as the moon and stars, and it was impossible to secure visibility at all unless a fire was lit in advance.
This was natural because without a luminous body, no light would enter the eyes.
However, the reason he did not die right away in the novel was because he always carried a lighter with him. However, because the fire was so small, most of the people who came out of the company died.
After a day at the park, the only survivors were the main character, who had a lighter, the old manager, and the student who had immediately become obsessed with the main character.
I would have to look for other main characters the next day, but for immediate survival, I needed a big fire, different from the novel. Since there were so many people, I thought two bonfires would be enough.
Lee Jae-heon looked around and continued speaking.
“Then I guess I should pick up some dry grass first? “Both thin and thick branches.”
“Uh… does it have to be that diverse? “Can’t we just stick it on a tree?”
“Haa…”
At the intern’s words, he sighed with an expression on his face.
“If you want to light a fire by yourself until the lighter fuel runs out, do that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Didn’t I tell you to be more careful if you want to get rid of the intern label?”
Just as putting a lighter on a tree doesn’t ignite it, there is an order to starting a fire.
It was efficient to grow a spark from dry paper or grass, which catches fire most easily, and then move it from thin to thick branches.
‘Of course, this knowledge is not common sense.’
Jaeheon Lee glanced at the stunned intern, as if he was used to his own beatings.
He knows it too. How to start a bonfire is not common knowledge that everyone knows, and when people are scolded for not knowing such knowledge, they naturally feel resentful.
And that resentment will quickly turn into irritation or anger. Jaeheon Lee was aiming for that exact point.
From the beginning, he hated unnecessary waste.
This means that since physical strength, health, and emotions are regarded as resources, shallow conflicts were not caused without any reason.
But now, this kind of pounding was needed.
‘The distance has become too narrow.’
The relationship with the main character starts from the worst and goes up to the middle, so I leave it alone, but it was not the case with the others.
Perhaps because he took the lead and even got hurt on their behalf, the group’s favor with him was higher than necessary.
Therefore, Lee Jae-heon deliberately attacked his weakness, the title ‘intern’, and created dislike for him.
Not only the person involved, intern Noh Yeon-seok, but also Director Kang, who was close to him, must have felt uncomfortable.
The main character is probably in a similar situation, but I decided that this level of investment was necessary.
Jaeheon Lee wanted to have no restrictions on his actions.
However, the more the other party members rely on me, the more difficult it becomes to move and the more it interferes with free choice. Something had to be done before that happened.
So much so that even if he dies, he can overcome it within a day.
Jaeheon Lee shrugged his shoulders and continued.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about.”
“Yes…”
“You know this is all said with our interns in mind, right?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Yes, I didn’t say that because I hated you for no reason.”
He was truly a perfect old man until the very end. If you have enough pride to criticize someone and say, ‘It’s all for you,’ you can’t help but be annoyed by this.
Of course, since it was a short bruise, I wouldn’t have been that upset.
In fact, this wasn’t much different from the abuse I usually heard at work, but I probably mistakenly thought I was the only one who had become friends after coming to the other side of the world, and then realized that nothing had changed from before and felt worse than necessary.
Jaeheon Lee passed by the slightly intimidated intern and turned his gaze towards the thicket of trees.
‘Then let’s get out of the way before it gets even more awkward.’
It was a good time to leave in the name of bringing firewood, as there might be more people who needed to be brought in.
If you bring two students with you, the atmosphere will be much better.
There has never been anyone so efficient that they would antagonize a new group, even a minor, just because they ran out of food.
Lee Jae-heon, having decided to that point, took a step forward.
“I’ll roughly pick up the ingredients, and you guys will light the fire…”
“Manager.”
“…What is it?”
When I used an honorific without realizing it, the disgusting guy stared at him with pitch-black eyes.
“You lost a lot of blood and one leg is limping… Wouldn’t it be difficult for you to go alone?”
At his words, the group’s eyes automatically fell on Lee Jae-heon’s legs and shoulders.
The shirt around his shoulders, which had been roughly crushed because the doctor hadn’t seen it yet, was already stained pitch black, and the leg that had been pierced by the monster was burned at the ankle, making it difficult to move properly.
No matter how you look at it, it looks like a person who should be lying down and resting, not moving.
Jaeheon Lee, who now clearly recognized that point once again, frowned at the moment, feeling so dumbfounded.
“Just blood… “I shed a lot, but no bones were hurt.”
“But it will hurt.”
“….”
This bastard?
‘Are you crushing my build-up now…?’
Lee Jae-heon was so annoyed that he internally gritted his teeth.
Well, to be honest, Jaeheon Lee had no intention of being seen as a psychopath who was accustomed to pain like this.
Of course, the setting created a background that would be familiar with pain.
However, more than a certain degree of heterogeneity could cause the companions to feel fear, and for Lee Jae-heon, who wanted a level of favorability that was slightly above average, the feeling of fear was not very pleasant.
The mistake seen by the former protagonist earlier was the result of being consumed by the other side and losing mental strength.
He said he kept forgetting common sense about his past life and his current life, but he was careful in his own way, and above all, he had the skill to deceive the eyes of the other party members.
It is the power that makes you mistake what you are seeing.
Until now, the party had become very accustomed to relying on Lee Jae-heon. Of these, it must have been very convenient as he had the best judgment, was good at dealing with monsters, and even told him what to do.
Lee Jae-heon was wary of the distance between himself and the group becoming too close, not that he could fulfill his purpose, so he deliberately let them rely on him.
Because if it shows its psychological use, it will be difficult for Lee Jae-heon to act as he pleases.
Therefore, he wanted to gain favor as a means through its apparent use. Isn’t that why they tried to create psychological distance in such a cumbersome way?
But now the main character was ruining that build-up by reexamining the things Jaeheon Lee had done for them without anything in return.
“Now I see that your hand is torn too. Since when has it been like that?”
“….”
The things he had been trying so hard to hide.
What a fucking disgusting bastard.
