Episode 356
The sinkhole in the center of the apartment consisted of a large hole in the center and a monster nest on the wall that connected like an anthill.
Some of the survivors who stopped by here must have collapsed from exhaustion on the seemingly endless stairs. Someone would have visited a house filled with walls and had their skin peeled off by doll monsters and died. Someone must have given up on life after struggling in this crazy pit so twisted that they couldn’t find their way out.
And maybe someone else.
“Director, Director….”
His limbs must have been torn by that pitch-black hand visible down the endless pit.
“Please, oh please.”
Hands as desperate as a person on the verge of starvation or drowning repeatedly expand and contract at the bottom of a bottomless sinkhole. Withered like a dry tree branch, caught by hands poking their sharp fingers into the air.
That’s how you die. Oh, I will die. Monsters won’t miss prey that falls from the sky.
“Don’t let go of your hand…”
Kang Min-ah begged.
With such a desperate hand gesture that could be compared to those pitch-black hands on the ground, he held on to Lee Jae-heon with that face. Kang Min-ah’s repeated pleas were not to Lee Jae-heon, but to herself.
I don’t know why, but Lee Jae-heon’s other arm, which Kang Min-ah was not holding on to, was apparently seriously injured, so even if Lee Jae-heon was an expert at dealing with the underworld, it seemed difficult to climb up a cliff of this size with those hands. The other people seem to be busy dealing with the monster that poured out of the door that Jaeheon Lee was blocking, so only the sound of repeated blows can be heard from behind.
“Boss.”
So, Kang Min-ah had to bring Lee Jae-heon up. I shouldn’t have let go of this hand. Kang Min-ah may have been even more desperate because she had already put Lee Jae-heon in this situation with one mistake, but blaming herself would not change anything. Because adults must take responsibility for their own mistakes.
“Director, please….”
“….”
“…don’t let me go.”
My words stung so much that I felt so resentful toward Kang Min-ah, who had to take responsibility for all of this, as the hand that was holding her twitched. It was miserable.
“Say something.”
Despite Kang Min-ah’s words, Lee Jae-heon did not open his mouth.
Lee Jae-heon’s hand, which was being held by him, just started shaking little by little and slowly slipped away.
“….”
Kang Min-ah also knew how bad the current situation was.
I don’t know what happened while they were separated from Kim Yeon-woo, but Lee Jae-heon was suffering from various injuries, and Kang Min-ah was here after surviving four days with minimal food and rest. Kang Min-ah holding on to Lee Jae-heon, an adult man with a good physique, with only one hand would have been an feat that could not have been accomplished if it were not for the secret world.
But you know.
“You have no obligation to die.”
“…Kang Min.”
“…Why do I have to keep seeing this situation…”
There was no reason for Lee Jae-heon to risk death like he does now. I had no right to cause Kang Min-ah great pain again.
Kang Min-ah always lived with a cliff at her back.
That was the reason why Kang Min-ah, who had difficulty doing her job even in the reality where everything was controlled by printing, was able to enter a large company called Ohsung, and it was the wisdom of life that allowed her to shrug her shoulders in fear but not run away. Kang Min-ah has always lived like this.
Because there is no place for adults to escape to.
“…Boss!!”
So even if I lost my grip, I had no choice but to jump in.
Kang Min-ah threw herself towards Lee Jae-heon, who was falling.
* * *
Becoming an adult was not something that could be solved simply by getting older.
Thinking must be mature. The vessel must be wide and the division between public and private affairs must be clear, but the more human nature is, the better. If you are a true adult, you should be able to easily take on all the responsibilities that relationships between the state and society require.
Due to the mistakes of her immature parents, Kang Min-ah, who wanted to quickly become an adult, had no choice but to be immature.
Her nature was pathetic. He was as curious as he was timid, but he lacked proactiveness and was an idiot who couldn’t do anything skillfully even though he grew older and became an adult.
Sometimes he showed himself to be dependable enough for someone to rely on, but that was just the desperate struggle of a lesser fool who wanted to somehow become an adult.
Still, I believed that if I at least pretended to be an adult, my personality would really change someday.
“Hey Mr. Lee…!”
And when Kang Min-ah first encountered the secret world, she was still pathetic.
I fell off a very, very high railing and was saved just before I died.
“You fucking idiot.”
“…Huh ah…!”
“Run like hell. “Run, just look after those bastards and run!”
My mind became numb due to the heavy atmosphere of the other world, and my head stiffened as my life was threatened. Her limit was to follow whatever Lee Jae-heon, whom she had always considered an immature adult, shouted at her. No, I think I couldn’t follow it properly because I was so sad and crying.
“Huh huh ….”
After all, the bottom of the man named Kang Min -a was everything. Even if they want to accomplish something, they only have the will to do it, but the results are mediocre. They don’t have a lot of courage, so they easily blame others and are ordinary yet pathetic adults who can never be called good adults. That was Kang Min-ah.
That’s why Jaeheon Lee looked so great.
“…Hey, manager.”
“What is it?”
“thank you.”
“….”
He was an adult.
“It was nothing.”
He was a person with broad courage who did not think it was a big deal even if he got hurt or made a costly sacrifice on someone else’s behalf. I felt a sense of disparity because it did not suit Manager Lee Jae-heon, who was always narrow-minded and immature, but at the time, everything was good.
Kang Min-ah is a pathetic adult, so she wanted to lean on an adult when she felt fear.
“why?”
“…yes?”
“Why are you worrying?”
but.
“Is there a reason for that?”
Unfortunately.
“…yes. “It hurts when you get hurt.”
Jaeheon Lee was not a normal ‘adult’.
Around the time I first headed to the park and entered again. Kang Min-ah was quietly listening to other people’s conversations with her mouth shut. In the behind-the-scenes world, Lee Jae-heon often creaked, but while he behaved quite smoothly, he constantly revealed his strange common sense to them. That strange reaction was usually seen when talking to Jung In-ho or Ha Seong-yoon.
“It’s okay, this was the most efficient.”
Damn efficiency. That damn rationality. And sacrifice.
It was bullshit from Lee Jae-heon, who had already gone crazy for a long time, and was trying to make his own reckless sacrifices easier to listen to. Now I know a little bit about why Lee Jae-heon says such crazy things, but when I first heard it, I thought he was really a human.
So, isn’t Lee Jae-heon a monster? A bizarre way of thinking and a skilled fighting style. As Kang Min-ah, who knew ‘Director Lee Jae-heon’, the hypothesis that he was replaced by a monster on his way to the underworld felt much more plausible.
“…Uh uh….”
That’s exactly what it means.
“…Kang Min-ah.”
“Boss…!”
Instead of saving Ha Seong-yoon from a crazy bastard named Song In-myeong, when he was being chased by him, his legs gave out and he fell off a cliff.
“ah.”
Even when I let go of reason due to the extremely familiar feeling of falling.
“Kangmin!”
“….”
In the end, Lee Jae-heon did not give up on ‘Kang Min-ah’.
Thus, even as Lee Jae-heon died after suffering, cold people lost their reason, kind people fell into madness, and innocent and innocent people died, ‘Kang Min-ah’ thought of Lee Jae-heon. Even while he was going crazy, he wouldn’t have held on to the dead person for so long if he hadn’t shown blood-smelling kindness.
However, even if she inherited memory from memory, even if ‘Kang Min-ah’ changed into Kang Min-ah, her essence remained the same. A pathetic and immature adult. An incompetent person who used a crazy adult as a support and let him fall off a cliff. Still, I am a bug struggling hard not to fall into the pit of guilt.
“….”
Kang Min-ah had to be completed.
“…take responsibility….”
Still, it is incomplete.
Kang Min-ah manipulated her hammer without saying a word.
Depression comes. It paralyzes the mind and distracts thinking. As I struggled with the strange comfort of the garden and the criticism brought by silence, I found myself drenched in a strange sense of defeat and guilt.
Kang Min-ah often repeated this.
“Because I’m an adult.”
I, too, am an adult and need to become an adult. What a strange thing.
“Because I’m an adult….”
I have to do my part. Let’s take responsibility. I can do it.
“….”
When the cliff appears, Kang Min-ah will rise again.
That’s the intention. No matter what the process or outcome is. That much was undoubtedly true.
* * *
“…Manager.”
Water fell from Kang Min-ah’s dark blue eyes, covered with hair.
“I am I…”
“…Yes.”
“…I told you I could do it.”
Actually, I may or may not have said that before. Anyway, the important thing is that in the end, Kang Min-ah fell off a cliff again.
So I caught Jaeheon Lee.
“Mina Kang, please hold on tight! “You can go up!”
“Mr. Ha, I never thought I, this crazy person, would live and do things you only see in movies…”
“We, Fitz, are good! Oh my, you’re good! “Tear it even more!”
Kim Yeon-woo, who grabbed the leg of Kang Min-ah, who was holding on to Lee Jae-heon, and Vivian, who grabbed Kim Yeon-woo’s leg and pulled her up with all her might. Pompitz tears the cotton doll monsters that he managed to kill so that they have no chance of being revived. And Kwon Yeon-hee supports it.
Ah,
it makes me laugh.
“Did you do well this time…?”
Jaeheon Lee answered the vague and vague question.
“You always did well.”
“….”
“…Thanks to you, I survived.”
He laughed.
“right?”
I had tears in my eyes again and was so busy crying and laughing.
Kang Min-ah beat the cliff.
(Continued in the next part)
