Episode 497:
When Song In-myeong expressed his intention to help.
“….”
Park Da-young’s head turned faster than ever before.
‘…Are you serious?’
For now, start from there.
Dayoung Park made eye contact with Inmyeong Song. The opponent does not avoid it. Even considering that he is a serious sociopath, this is a believable response. If Park Da-young provided enough interest and benefit, Song In-myeong would help.
So what are the interests and benefits that can be provided here? At a minimum, it is a threat to Park Da-young’s safety, and at a maximum, it is a threat to all survivors.
What Song In-myeong finds most interesting right now is the fact about regression, so he could use that as bait, but…
‘That’s not possible. ‘You can’t let that bastard find out about regression.’
There is also a way to get Song In-myeong’s help but kill him in the middle to break the deal.
‘If you use telepathy with Park Da-hoon, he will understand and use his power to kill Song In-myeong. Right now, I’m not doing well because my condition is bad, but as long as I concentrate…’
Anyway, the opponent would do the same whenever he was at a disadvantage. They’ll break the deal and abandon us or kill us. There was nothing that Dayoung Park couldn’t do.
If you’re lucky, you can save Park Da-hoon and let Song In-myeong be killed by the monster. Song In-myeong is probably not offering help out of pure favor, so this is okay.
It’s probably not Song In-myeong who doesn’t know Park Da-young’s thoughts, but there was no other way right now.
“….”
Today, Park Da-young is a burden that cannot even walk on her own without Song In-myeong’s help.
After finishing her long thought, Park Da-young opened her mouth.
“…Are you going to help me?”
“As long as you act the way you like it.”
“great.”
Even though they knew they had different dreams, the two held hands.
“Please save Dahun.”
In this way, Song In-myeong had the opportunity to observe the returnees.
* * *
Lee Jae-heon suddenly felt bored.
“I’m out of my mind.”
I had no idea who the man in front of me was or what year he was born.
Was it the second time? No, there may have been countless. For him, life and death were so familiar that he could not be wary of them and objectify them. It was like that in the past and even more so now.
Jaeheon Lee stared at the souvenir shop, which was completely black and nothing was visible.
“….”
I think I felt something similar to this one day.
“….”
One day….
“…I will go in.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“I’m going in.”
Suddenly, I didn’t even know what I was saying.
Maybe it’s been like this for a while. I don’t know if this is a dream or reality, life or death, so what can I know?
“…Jung Eun-woo?”
I asked to confirm.
“Please speak.”
“…Junior?”
“Say yes.”
“Am I hallucinating?”
“It’s not like that.”
Is what I’m seeing real?
I wonder if the person in front of me right now is Jeong Eun-woo or a junior who doesn’t listen. Which of the answers I heard was an auditory hallucination and which was real?
You never know. Maybe both answers were hallucinations or maybe they were real.
Jaeheon Lee couldn’t judge anything.
“I’m out of my mind.”
Even muttering like that didn’t bring me back to my senses.
However, I was distracted by the fatigue that filled my intestines and the auditory hallucinations that permeated my brain. Jaeheon Lee’s best option was to let go of everything while remembering what he had to do. He always did his best.
“….”
Maybe not.
“I have to work.”
Did I always do my best…?
Have I always been a useful resource?
I had a lot of useless thoughts, was swayed by emotions, had a dirty personality, and in the end, I ruined everything by not following even the orders I was given. Can we really say that we did our best?
“Work…”
Isn’t it too heinous to pretend to be obedient now?
“….”
But what can I do?
Even though it was born like this, it had to survive, it couldn’t die, it had to move.
“….”
In the end, he decided to give up.
Since when did you work shamelessly?
So there was no need to save face. He just has to do it because there is work in front of him. There was no need to think any more complicated thoughts than that.
“…It’s hard to make a living.”
As I said that, I heard a familiar voice.
“That’s what life is like.”
“Is this also an auditory hallucination?”
“Yes, senior.”
“I knew so.”
“Who are you going to abandon this time?”
“I don’t know either.”
“Why didn’t you die then?”
“You disgusting bastard.”
I had a bloody knife in my hand, a mission at hand, and a disobedient junior next to me.
Isn’t it really a perfect environment?
It was the perfect environment to abandon ‘Lee Jae-heon’.
“…See you later.”
As always, it was just a courtesy.
He went into the souvenir shop.
* * *
“Let’s see….”
It was impossible to move on Park Da-young’s legs, and the delicate and weak kindergarteners also couldn’t go to dangerous places. In the end, there was only one person, Song In-myeong, who went to look for Park Da-hoon.
Feeling free to work alone for the first time in a long time, Song In-myeong organized his thoughts.
‘I’m sure there’s something there.’
The survivor team formed around Lee Jae-heon was unimaginably harmonious, but there was severe information asymmetry. There was a separate party leading the strategy, and the rest did not seem to share it.
“I felt like I could survive if I just followed the advice of the people in charge, so I followed them without complaint.”
But it was a strange thing. Unlike this case where they were scattered, almost all of the survivors from previous Eonhak high schools stayed together. This means that it was not an environment in which only a few people could selectively receive information.
So, there was a problem with that ‘environment’.
‘What kind of environment does it take for information asymmetry to occur?’
Song In-myeong walked down the hallway and rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand.
“Park Da-young had no qualms about death.”
It starts from there.
“Death doesn’t end with just death…”
If there is an opportunity.
I could also understand Park Da-young’s detached appearance.
“yes?”
Therefore, Song In-myeong could not treat them carelessly or kill them.
Couldn’t Song In-myeong’s hasty judgment and actions now affect his ‘opportunities’ after death? He had to be careful.
Song In-myeong, who was thinking inwardly, grinned and muttered.
“…Well, there’s no way he would welcome me if I went to visit him alone.”
In front of Park Da-young, I cleared my throat by saying, ‘Isn’t it okay to tell the man that I came alone because you were killed by a monster?’ but that didn’t work.
‘How quick is that person to notice?’
Consciously or unconsciously, Song In-myeong classified Lee Jae-heon as a human equal to himself. I didn’t think that ‘he’ Lee Jae-heon would be fooled by the clumsy lies he told. Even if you were deceived, you will be accused of failing to protect the students.
Therefore, Song In-myeong’s actions of helping Park Da-young and going to save Park Da-hoon were all meaningful. It will benefit me in some way.
“Hmm….”
Song In-myeong exhaled exaggeratedly and shrugged his shoulders.
“I hear a strange sound.”
Churrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
A disgusting noise, as if something full of moisture was dragging along the leg.
“He’s not dead already, right?”
It was clear that a monster was chasing me.
Song In-myeong sighed heavily as he calculated the possibility that Park Da-hoon was alive.
“It’s like a dog.”
Other survivors said that when someone dies, they feel the feeling of their heart dropping, but Song In-myeong was quite dull in that regard, so he could not trust a sense he did not know. If he was dead, all we had to do was find the evidence as soon as he died.
Percussion!
Song In-myeong ran down a curved hallway.
“…Student Park Da-hoon, fuck student Park Da-hoon! Damn, if you’re behind, wave your hand! “Did you understand that I’m supposed to scream at least one second before I run over?!”
Song In-myeong called out Park Da-hoon loudly.
First, it’s to divert the monster’s attention to me. Second, it was to let Park Da-hoon know that he was a rescue worker.
The good news is that the closer you get to the ‘Amazon of the World’ that Dahoon Park is heading towards, the more tanks there are in the hallway. Although Park Da-hoon may be an idiot, he is not mentally ill, so if he is not dead in the meantime, there is a high probability that he is hiding among the fish tanks.
“….”
And.
It was as expected.
“…You crazy bastard…”
Park Da-hoon was panting and hiding between large and small tanks.
The monster I encountered while looking for medicine to give to Dayoung Park was clearly the one that had been following me from the feeding corner. The monster that relied on sight and had a dull sense of smell or hearing. Although he appeared to be particularly thirsty for blood, fortunately, Park Da-hoon was clean and uninjured.
As soon as he decided that it was impossible to fight against the biological slime monster, which seemed to have grown bigger in the meantime, Da-hoon Park quickly hid himself between the tanks.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck…’
I felt like my brain was melting with shame at the fact that I was reassured by Song In-myeong’s voice coming from far away. No, it might have already half melted.
“Park Da-hoon, you fucking bastard, are you even listening…! I just said, if you feel like you’re going to be rummaged, scream like hell! I too must find my own way to live! uh?!”
“You really are a piece of trash…”
I don’t know what the monsters are doing if they aren’t catching that human trash.
‘Oh, they won’t catch it because it’s trash.’
Song In-myeong shouted loudly, but no dramatic change occurred in the monster that was stomping around looking for Park Da-hoon. Although they stopped following Song In-myeong’s voice, they did not try to catch him. Once again, we could see that the monster had poor hearing.
The monster continued to hover near Park Da-hoon, who was hiding behind the pedestal of a large water tank.
‘…It’s not like I can’t hear the sound at all…’
Seeing Song In-myeong’s yelling and stuttering like a machine with behavioral errors, it seemed like he could hear a voice that loud. I could feel the presence between the water tank pipes, but the sound was coming from the other side, so I was wandering around for a while as if I thought something was strange.
“….”
Park Da-hoon did not want to die.
It was so different when Jaeheon Lee was there and when he wasn’t. When that person supported me, I felt like I could do anything, but now, even though I knew there was a next time, I was scared like a lost child left alone on the street.
So I didn’t want to die. It seemed so painful.
‘Since Song In-myeong is drawing aggro, if you find the right timing and run away by hiding between the tank pedestals, you can keep your distance from the monster. First off… you have to get off.’
How on earth would you die if you were eaten by that slime-like monster? I could have suffocated because my lungs were filled with mucus, or I could have been chewed alive by the monster’s teeth, or I could have slowly melted to death because it was made of acid. In any case, the terrible imagination doubled my fear.
The sound of my pounding heart was eroding my hearing, and my consciousness was as black as my eardrums on an airplane. I wasn’t crying. There was no way I could afford to cry. I had to stay away while Song In-myeong went on a rampage as bait.
“…Whew….”
Park Da-hoon, barely holding his trembling breath, moved his feet.
Shut up. The well-scrubbed floor made a small noise every time my shoes touched it. It was the sound of walking on glass with shoes on. Why am I so anxious even though I know the monster can’t hear me?
Dahoon Park soon found out why.
“….”
Fish in the tank.
All the little monsters were looking at Park Da-hoon.
The moment I realized that the big monster that was blurred behind the water-filled glass was also like that.
“…ah.”
Oh my!
The monster opened its mouth.
Dahoon Park was under the large palate.
“Fuck.”
The inside of the mouth is as black as ink.
* * *
Quad!!
* * *
“….”
Jeong Eun-woo, who was waiting outside the souvenir shop, raised his head.
“…?”
Something is happening now….
“Chief, what happened?”
“….”
“Manager.”
“….”
“….”
Jeong Eun-woo turned his head and looked inside the souvenir shop.
Lee Jae-heon’s legs and hands dripping blood appear blurry.
“…ah.”
Eunwoo Jeong soon realized.
“….”
“… Manager?”
That was a body standing without a head.
Jaeheon Lee is dead.
* * *
Song In-myeong stopped the monster.
“…So Song-in….”
“What the fuck are you doing without standing out!”
Park Da-hoon lived.
(Continued in the next part)
