Episode 331
“….”
“….”
Lee Jae-heon, who had been silent for a while, opened his mouth.
“…I don’t know what I felt, but I keep thinking of areas for improvement.”
“It’s gross.”
“I wonder if that’s what In-ho Jeong would say.”
He recovered his momentary blank expression and spoke in his usual dry tone.
“…I think I’ve said this before, but it’s a common occurrence. “Whether someone comes to kill me, or I have to kill someone, or we all die from something else… it’s not that surprising.”
Those words reminded Jeong In-ho of Lee Jae-heon’s old colleague who had already died. This strange criminal left many questions, but we knew nothing about him other than the fact that he was Lee Jae-heon’s former colleague.
“….”
Jeong In-ho asked Lee Jae-heon whether it was because his thoughts were focused in that direction.
“Does that happen to everyone who stays in the other world for a long time?”
“what.”
“Like the person who tried to kill the manager before.”
“ah.”
“No matter how desperate I was, I tried to kill the manager.”
The problem was that he did not simply commit murder, but attempted to kill Lee Jae-heon, a person he depended on and liked. If he is pushed that far, wouldn’t Jung In-ho someday try to kill Lee Jae-heon for his own purposes?
I had such a delusion.
“I…”
Jeong In-ho, who was muttering something, closed his mouth again.
“….”
He was afraid of Lee Jae-heon’s death.
Even if I were in Lee Jae-heon’s position, I didn’t think dying would be any less scary. This was even true in the previous episode, where Jung In-ho died because he wanted it.
The feeling of being momentarily out of breath due to an abnormality in my body gave me a physiological eerie feeling, and even though I knew that there would be another opportunity after that, I was afraid of the momentary emptiness. That’s what death was like.
“…Chief, you really shouldn’t die.”
He didn’t know why he was saying this, but Jeong In-ho continued, forgetting even the context.
“It’s so scary.”
Even Jeong In-ho didn’t know who was scared of what and how.
“Because that can’t be done…”
What does it mean that it can’t be done?
“….”
In the end, Jeong In-ho closed his mouth again.
Until just now, I was really curious about Lee Jae-heon’s story, but not anymore. His story is gloomy, but he himself is so calm that his head hurts as he listens to it. I was already tired, but I didn’t think there was any need to become more tired.
“….”
“…I guess I’m tired.”
Lee Jae-heon, who managed to notice it, said.
“I will get up soon. These days, kids keep asking me to play with them…”
“It’s cute.”
“Let’s talk more later.”
“Yes, I like it.”
Still, didn’t it come out quite well that the target was Lee Jae-heon? Thinking that this was enough for today’s conversation, Jeong In-ho looked up at the sky again.
A ceiling so white that it hurts the eyes.
“…Let’s talk again later.”
My head goes blank.
* * *
And there was to be no ‘later’.
‘How dare this bastard try to fool around?’
Lee Jae-heon, feeling embarrassed, muttered inwardly.
‘Even though I spoon-fed him this much, he’s still going to waste his time like that.’
To some extent, I expected this to happen, but I found Jeong In-ho even more disgusting than I expected. The reason he was doing such things in the first place was to completely escape from the other side of the world. He wanted to escape, so he begged the protagonist, but since the protagonist, Jung In-ho, is like that, it’s obvious that it won’t work out.
“Ah, Mr. Lee Jae-heon….”
“Mr. Kim Yeon-woo.”
“Are you okay, Jeong In-ho?”
“It will gradually get better.”
As Kim Yeon-woo approached me, Lee Jae-heon began to control his facial expressions.
“I will be there to help you a lot, so you don’t have to worry too much.”
The attitude of ‘I’ll get tired soon, but I’ll put myself down for you for a while’ works very well for people like Kim Yeon-woo who are moderately naive, quite smart, and outrageously righteous. Kim Yeon-woo was impressed by the instinct-like likability work, but looked at ‘Lee Jae-heon’ with concern.
“Jaeheon Lee doesn’t necessarily have to take responsibility for everything.”
“It’s not really like that, but…”
At this point, he even gave me an expression that said, ‘I don’t realize I’m doing a good thing.’
“In the first place, Mr. Jeong In-ho is my direct subordinate, so it is right for me to manage him here. Of course, Kim Yeon-woo feels a special sense of responsibility as he is a police officer, but this is a matter under my jurisdiction.”
“I understand that other survivors are also being taken care of. “It was closer to counseling than management, but it would not have been burdensome for Lee Jae-heon.”
“That’s it… It’s just… There’s no harm in having a conversation…”
‘Lee Jae-heon’ changed the topic as if he didn’t want this topic to be prolonged.
“It looks like you are hanging out with Hong Kyung-jun. Do you have any information?”
A certain degree of safety was secured as we stayed in a garden that did not allow other monsters to invade, but unless someone had unique tastes like Choi Min-hong, no one would truly believe in a scarecrow dripping with blood. The survivors, who had nothing urgent to do as the Eonhakgo expedition was postponed indefinitely, were searching the surrounding area to find a second shelter.
Kim Yeon-woo answered Lee Jae-heon’s question in her unique, clear voice.
“First of all, the only thing that matters is that the apartment stairs are safe. Even though it is a complex near a shopping mall, the monsters there are not coming this far or are not coming close… One time, I went inside room 201 of building 101, but I could not find any monsters inside.”
“There was no problem getting in.”
“Yes, but I felt a strange sense of rejection. Cemetery… I don’t know if this is the right analogy, but it was cool like a cemetery. “I don’t know what the rules are, but I couldn’t sit on the sofa or the dining table chair.”
“It’s a rule…”
I felt sick of it for no reason. It hasn’t been a few years since I first experienced this side world, but I still feel this frustration and vagueness. It was a world with something that made even him, who had been a competent person in his previous life, sick of it.
“Was the purpose of exploring the surrounding area to find a new shelter?”
“you’re right. Detective Hong Gyeong-jun and other people, including myself, have often looked around the area, but have not yet been able to find a suitable shelter site. The police station seems to be the best in terms of preventing monsters from coming in like this place, but there is no place that is good enough to ignore the advantage of a garden that provides a stable supply of food….” “If anything, you will need a place to escape to.
”
“I agree. So, we looked around to see if there was a safe place inside the apartment complex, but we felt we were not prepared right now, so we decided we needed to discuss it further.”
“I think it was a good decision.”
Jaeheon Lee nodded slowly.
“The Eonhak High School exploration failed… It’s closer to being aborted, but the plan was disrupted and the survivors may be confused. “Eonhak High School is a school, so the rules are stricter than normal, but you don’t have to let down your guard just because it’s an apartment.”
“Yeah, anyway, wouldn’t apartment complexes also have rules of some sort? As a resident staying in the same complex, I also have to cooperate with the managers. “I am paying attention to things like building management… or class meetings, as they may have been reflected in the underworld.”
“Then what about the monster we met in the apartment…?”
“Oh, I didn’t tell you that. “I guess I was out of my mind too.”
Kim Yeon-woo snatched up Hong Gyeong-jun, who was passing by, and continued talking.
“Mr. Kim Yeonwoo?”
“I caught it.”
It was so natural that for a moment I thought Hong Kyung-jun was the monster of the apartment complex.
“…Is the reason you arrested Hong Gyeong-jun so that you can tell me more about the monster you two witnessed?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Huh.”
Kim Yeon-woo seemed to have a tendency to push forward as his mentality worsened, but he seemed to have no particular awareness, which made me even more scared. Isn’t he the type of person who, if he gets really mentally upset, is likely to literally go out and get left behind?
‘So, in the original work, he died in Jang Seo-ah’s place without even thinking about what happened afterwards.’
If the original fate of the novel had gone as planned, the ugly adults would sacrifice Jang Seo-ah to escape the green algae monster, and Kim Yeon-woo would be so disappointed in them that he would sacrifice himself instead of the child. There were times when I felt strange when I saw the survivors, who were all scheduled to be exterminated at the time, now happily resting in the garden.
‘It’s not for nothing that they’re number one in sunfish. If I go any further here, I might end up like the original, so I have to be careful.’
There is no way Hong Gyeong-jun knew that, but his gaze was very strange, as if he was also remembering that Kim Yeon-woo’s condition was not so good compared to reality. And Lee Jae-heon’s feeling when he saw it was also strange.
‘Well, you’re the same asshole.’
No, rather, that bastard was worse.
‘Kim Yeon-woo is good at managing his mental and physical health on his own, even without self-awareness, so what the fuck are you doing?’
He seems fine now, but Hong Gyeong-jun had a tendency to turn around as if there was some kind of Bluetooth connection when a problem came up that Jae-heon Lee couldn’t handle. Didn’t we just confirm that during our last expedition to Eonhak High School?
‘You stuffy bastard.’
In Lee Jae-heon’s thoughts, Hong Gyeong-jun was already like a candy that would slowly melt if left under the midsummer sunlight. It doesn’t mean that he melts away as cleanly as snow like Kim Yeon-woo, but that he is a nuisance that makes the situation sticky.
Hong Gyeong-jun, who did not know Lee Jae-heon’s true intentions, was making an ambiguous expression, perhaps because he was dragged in right away.
“Um… first of all….”
“Please explain.”
“What do you mean by explanation?”
“You two were talking about the results of your exploration and that of another team.”
“Aha… I understand if you mean monsters or terrain around here.”
Still, as long as ‘Lee Jae-heon’ is fine, it is worthy of praise for being much more efficient than last time at the park.
‘…Yes, in a way, that is also the result of struggling to survive in the underworld, so you can’t criticize it for being useless at all.’
Aside from those thoughts, just looking at Lee Jae-heon’s face, he seemed to be seriously listening to Hong Gyeong-jun’s story, and Hong Gyeong-jun and Kim Yeon-woo also had no doubt that they believed in Lee Jae-heon’s sincerity. Lee Jae-heon’s strength was that he could manage his facial expressions like breathing.
“I remember that Unhak High School was structured enough to be called a school, but this apartment complex is a little twisted. Well, the deformation is not that severe, but if you go into the center of the complex, there
are buildings closer to houses than apartments…” “The buildings are gathered in a circle. You can look for a mixture of apartments and houses in real life, but the problem lies in the form, not the form. “Because those houses are gathered inside the sinkhole located in the middle of the complex.”
“I had no idea how to get down there. Since there aren’t many monsters, it’s hard to understand the rules… Of course, thanks to that, exploration wasn’t that difficult. I was worried about Han Do-yoon, who was imprisoned there, but surprisingly, he was walking around fine. “It was fortunate.”
“As for my monsters, first of all, there are a few mannequin monsters that look like they work in the local office and a few eyeball monsters in the security office. It looked bizarre, but it was easy to observe because it didn’t come out of the security room. “It has been identified that there are a total of 10 security offices within the complex, but we cannot be certain as sinkhole exploration has not been conducted.”
Jaeheon Lee, who was listening to the story, asked.
“Wait, did you say eyeball monster?”
“It was a name we chose at our own discretion… but we really had no choice but to call it that. “It was a round eyeball that filled the small security room.”
“…That….”
Was it in the novel?
“Oh, do you know someone?”
“Who do I know here? There are only monsters in the world.”
“I made a mistake for a moment. Do you know any monsters?”
“Hmm….”
I know.
‘Not this way… he went to the other side of the apartment complex and appeared.’
I wasn’t sure about the sinkhole, the house, and the Nabal, but I remembered the eyeball monster. The protagonists of the original story were much more passive in their exploration because they could not return like they do now and lacked common sense about the underworld, and even if they could not let go of their minds, the only place where they could rest their bodies was an apartment complex.
In most apartment complexes, the number of monsters was small and the rules were not that harsh, and there were cases where monster access was conditionally blocked. It was quite common to sit down and check if an apartment complex was visible, as if opening a random gift box.
“…That…”
And among them, the eye monster appeared only three times.
“….”
“That?”
“….”
“I’m curious about the story behind it.”
“hmm.”
‘Lee Jae-heon’ looked around the garden with a nervous expression.
“…This was the altar.”
discharge. In other words, an altar. In general religious groups, it is similar to a table where ancestral rites are held or mass is held, but in the other world, the meaning of the term is slightly different.
“Discharge? So…”
“Of course, this is not a religious facility, but isn’t anyone able to offer sacrifices?”
“….”
“…The scarecrows have strange tails.”
It seemed like this could bring a new breath of fresh air to the depressed survivors.
Oh, of course it will be bloody.
(Continued in the next part)
