Episode 56
Of course, it was true that Lee Jae-heon tried to embrace them first.
Because he was a typical old manager, he was hated by the main character, and although it wasn’t sad, it was still difficult. If possible, I hoped that Lee Jae-heon would also become a ‘partner’ of the main character.
That’s why I started a play that didn’t work. Pretending to be a coincidence, it stole the protagonist’s attention, destroyed his values, and injected a new image into him. As I adapted to the main character who likes good things, I was automatically recognized as a good person by other people.
It was something that could not be helped. Lee Jae-heon wanted to increase the trust between them, which had reached a negative level, and since they were just chicks, there would be no way for them to know his true intentions, so in the end, he was able to achieve the image of a ‘good person’ just as Lee Jae-heon wanted.
However, if he made a mistake, it was that he ultimately failed to gain trust.
‘Expectations have been raised unnecessarily.’
Clearly, Jaeheon Lee managed and instilled an image to become one of the main characters.
However, beyond Lee Jae-heon’s imagination, they were weak in the affection they received, felt guilty about helping, and were sensitive to the other person’s pain. That was quite an embarrassing fact for him, whether in his past life or his current life. What Lee Jae-heon wanted was a relationship that could not be abandoned even though they were at each other’s throats, not a relationship of distrust where debt and affection were accumulated through one-sided sacrifice.
‘Where on earth did this get twisted…’
It was a headache. It was still difficult to make a living and my life was always disgusting. Nothing has changed.
If the stage of the play had not been set in the underworld, things would have been better than they are now. One of Lee Jae-heon’s strengths was his quick resignation and new ideas, and even if he often confused the common sense of his past life and his current life, it would not have become uncontrollable like it is now.
If you look at the results of the plan that has been carried out so far from a distance, it seems somewhat plausible, but if you look at it up close, it is not at all. Instead of gaining the firm trust of his group, Jaeheon Lee developed separation anxiety, and instead of a dirty image, he pretended not to be like that, but was given the title of ‘gu-gu’ who will die if you take your eyes off him for a moment. Moreover, due to the unexpected meeting and the situation, the build-up with the detective and other survivors did not go as planned.
I was now so angry that nothing went as expected except for the big picture. Even more so because it seemed like he brought it on himself, about 10% of the time.
‘I think I’m misunderstanding it again that I spit out blood, but I wonder how I can resolve that…’
To be honest, I didn’t spit out that much. It was true that pastel-colored chicks who had never spit out pyragon before were making such a fuss that I was perplexed as to why there was such a fuss. What did I do wrong?
I don’t know if he spit it out just once, but the detective witnessed it. Due to Detective Hong Gyeong-jun’s personality, there was no way he wouldn’t come looking for him again, and there was a high chance that he would pretend not to notice and let others know about it. In order to avoid being suddenly stabbed in the back by this extremely over-exaggerated setting, he had to somehow package his blood in a way that was beneficial to the group.
‘Then how? ‘At what timing?’
What should I say, ‘Oh, I see, I understand.’ Can we go beyond that? The thought that it was probably absolutely impossible creeped into me, and I felt bitter.
Lee Jae-heon, who pretended to fall asleep and closed his eyes while contemplating, finally decided to throw away one more piece of his pride.
‘Dignity doesn’t feed you.’
I could have at least lowered some of my pride, which had built up as high as a mountain, to the floor. If only I could package the facts that were unfavorable to me and make them advantageous. Lee Jae-heon felt the need to organize his needlessly bloated settings by any means necessary.
So, it would be better to somehow adjust the image that has accumulated so far, but…
“….”
What should I do?
‘It takes an instant to make a person unlikable.’
Lee Jae-heon was confident in his ability to sway public opinion. Moreover, from the survivors’ point of view, the underworld must have been an extreme situation, so it wasn’t difficult to shake their heads as they were mentally driven out.
If that happens, the image of a good person I’ve built up in front of the group so far will be a bit of a waste, but if I leave it like this anyway, it will only hinder me. Wouldn’t it be better to once again go down to the negative mark and be treated as an untrustworthy personality? In the end, what he needed was trust in my abilities.
However, in the first place, the feeling of betrayal is a feeling that comes from missing the previous situation, so no matter how much you turn your head and avoid eye contact, the minimum expectation will remain. In that case, there was no way the main character and his party could tolerate him.
In this case, Jaeheon Lee was able to grab the leash of the group member.
‘It’s convenient.’
It was a fairly satisfactory plan.
No matter how much I wanted to die, in the end they couldn’t give up on ‘Lee Jae-heon’.
* * *
“I think I’ll need a can, too.”
These were the words spoken by Assistant Manager Jeong In-ho as the day dawned.
“It’s good because glass is hard, but it takes a long time to boil and it’s difficult to take it out.”
“As expected….”
“Oh, that. “I’m not saying anything about bringing a glass bottle.”
The protagonist expressed his disapproval as he said that, but Jaeheon Lee knew. I cursed at least once in my mind, saying, ‘Why did you bring glass?’, but I couldn’t say it out loud, so I just turned it around.
Lee Jae-heon intervened before Director Kang’s mentality crumbled.
“It’s okay. I needed it to cook something later anyway.”
“… Manager….”
“Oh, what, why?”
Anyway, it wasn’t an empty remark. In any case, in terms of durability, wouldn’t glass be far superior to cans? From a long-term perspective, it was a very good choice. Besides, I didn’t pick up the wrong glass when I had a can.
Director Kang’s face straightened slightly, as if he was comforted by his words, and, to his annoyance, President Garam Yoon smiled happily at the situation. At the same time, the intern’s face straightened and I felt even worse because I thought I knew why he was smiling like that.
‘I feel better because my crush has shown off.’
Jaeheon Lee clicked his tongue and continued speaking.
“Anyway, the water issue has been resolved.”
The issue of water safety was resolved faster than expected. Once the water was boiled and then drank, there was no problem, and Lee Jae-heon, who could not overcome his frustration, drank the unboiled water as is, confirming its safety. Still, since the day is not very warm, you may need to boil water.
The companions also hardened their expressions as if they had just remembered that incident. In particular, the expression on the doctor’s face as he took responsibility for our safety was even greater.
‘Even if I were the ugly 4-year-old who broke Goryeo celadon, I wouldn’t look at it like that.’
A sour voice was heard, as if the protagonist was not in a very good mood.
“…It could have been dangerous.”
“You’re not dead.”
“I think the manager only divides people into living and dead.”
“Do you want to keep talking? “Behave well, Assistant Manager Jeong.”
“I’m always sorry.”
No matter how much I looked at him smiling faintly with his eyebrows drawn together, he didn’t look very sorry. If it was Lee Jae-heon before he remembered his past life, it would be so petty that I would want to hit him in the back of the head just once.
As if such a protagonist was not enough, the doctor opened his mouth with a sigh.
“Are you aware that you are a patient?”
“It’s not like it doesn’t exist.”
“Whether you know it or not, just stay still. And then his life was short-lived.”
“Your words make me feel really good.”
Then, I eventually made eye contact with student Park Da-hoon, who was watching me…
“….”
“….”
“… Oh, okay, I understand. “If you don’t do it, it’s okay now.”
The way his eyes were moving back and forth seemed to remind me of the last conversation we had this morning. Just looking at it, it was a betrayal look that said, ‘You said you would protect me, but you are about to die.’
Of course, there was a high possibility that that was an intentional gaze, but…
“You definitely said something similar yesterday.”
“Would you like to stop if I lose my hair? Anyway, the result was good, no one died or was injured. “If anyone saw it, would they think you took a child who couldn’t even speak and force-fed him?”
“That’s not the problem, but… I’ll leave it at that.”
“How much more do you have to rob me to be satisfied?”
Honestly, it was ridiculous. Even after being caught drinking raw water, he made such a fuss and no one seemed to remember how bad it felt back then, no matter how long it had been.
But personally, I was a little satisfied.
‘It would be great if these small complaints accumulated and developed into conflict.’
It was a very minor incident as we are now good friends, but humans are creatures that only remember negative emotions. They were so worried about Lee Jae-heon, but coming back was such a small betrayal that they couldn’t be very happy.
After finishing his acting with a moderate amount of grumbling, Lee Jae-heon massaged his sore shoulders and opened his mouth.
“Rather than that… shouldn’t we fill our bellies little by little?”
Yes, now I am sure.
The time for farming, the flower of survival, has arrived. It may still be difficult to stop by a convenience store, supermarket, or pharmacy, but it is still time to pick up everything to survive.
‘Because we can’t continue to survive on snacks.’
He looked back on what he remembered from the novel.
In the original novel, there was nothing else to eat, so they ate bugs from trees, but so far, the group has used bottled water and snacks brought from the company as energy sources. Since I didn’t even know what caterpillars tasted like right now, my mental state probably wasn’t that bad.
‘But… it only lasts a day or two.’
No matter how much I reduced my food intake to the minimum, there was a Maginot Line where I had to eat to survive. Unless I had completely robbed the company, it would have been foolish to sit still and expect food to fall into my hands.
And there were surprisingly many safe foods in this world.
‘Because the novel was so devastated, there were a lot of places to pick things up.’
Since the author was a person who was very passionate about food, the food itself was plentiful. At least the natural medicine that can treat injuries is in the form of fruit, so if you look at the mirror lake from before, you can see how much she poured her self-interest into her novel.
Moreover, in the original, he had a mental breakdown and his judgment was clouded, so he just picked up and ate bugs that passed by, but now the group is in a fairly good condition. At this level, even if I were hunting for the first time in my life, wouldn’t I be able to get enough food to survive?
‘I even know roughly where the food is…’
He also had a general idea about hunting. There have been times in my past life where I personally went hunting to keep up with hunger.
However, I did not expect that even if I ran around holding the harpoon right away, I would achieve any tangible results. What did the chicks who lived on the cozy cushions do until just yesterday?
‘Then, if your mental strength declines, it’s actually more difficult.’
Ultimately, death erodes a person’s spirit. Whether it is a land animal or a water animal, hunting is essentially a matter of taking someone’s throat, so Lee Jae-heon expected that there might be cases where he felt sympathy for the round eyes of an animal like a rabbit and was unable to kill it. Unlike the novel, I’m not so hungry that I’m going crazy and picking up bugs to eat them.
That wasn’t strange at all. From the perspective of Lee Jae-heon, who had done everything he could, it was an outrageous act, but the act of killing something was not very good for his mental strength. If it was your first time, you were even more likely to feel guilt or fear. Even in real-life slaughterhouses, there are workers who suffer from depression.
Of course, it is a phenomenon that cannot be understood by Lee Jae-heon in the present life, who has common sense from his past life and lacks the ability to empathize, but just because he does not understand does not mean he does not know. Lee Jae-heon, who decided to regard his current group as five-year-old children, decided to become more flexible towards them.
‘So, rather than hunting animals where good results are difficult to predict and mental power is low, there is a more convenient way to find food.’
After thinking quickly, Jaeheon Lee continued.
“There must be fruit somewhere.”
gathering.
There have been ways to obtain resources from inanimate objects or plants, such as the way the group collected firewood and fetched water. Lee Jae-heon was confident that there would probably be no better way for his companions now that they were young.
‘I don’t have enough time, so I think I can only bring one type.’
Still, if I was lucky, I would be able to pick up a few of the items Jaeheon Lee had in mind. It would be best to collect the cure whenever possible. He wasn’t that hard to find, so it was his top priority for now.
As expected, some of them seemed to have relaxed their stiff expressions a little, as if they were thinking about hunting.
“Is…is there such a thing? “It’s a strange place…”
“Of course, it’s a world where our common sense doesn’t work well, but hmm. Still, you don’t think it’s an unrealistic world at all?”
In the first place, there was a reason why Lee Jae-heon described the hidden world as ‘reflected by human thoughts’ rather than ‘made of human thoughts’.
‘The other side of the world is not a formless space made entirely of thoughts.’
This was the key.
Human thoughts are added to a separate world that exists behind reality and has its own rules. This means that it is a bit of speculation on top of the existing world, and is not a deteriorated or evolved version of the real world.
Therefore, just as there is a food chain in reality, the underworld also has its own food chain, and just as there is an ecosystem in reality, there is an ecosystem unique to the underworld. There are ordinary animals in their own way, and there are certainly ordinary trees and fruits. Lee Jae-heon, who had already read this world as a novel, knew that.
He spoke with an iron plate on his face.
“Do you remember why I said last time that I thought I saw a four-legged animal?”
“Uh…ah yes.”
“They weren’t that strange when I saw them. “They were just like ordinary animals, and even those people don’t eat to live.”
“Yes?”
“I sometimes hear birdsong, so I think there might be some small fruit there.”
The other side of the world directly changed my brain, but in fact, if I concentrated well, I could see the correct colors of objects or hear the sounds of nature. It may feel like a static world, all black and white, but it can be quite livable if you find your composure.
“I think it would be really nice if there was such a thing.”
“Should we boil the fruits of this world and eat them like we drink water?”
“Seeing that the manager was fine when he drank it, it seems like it’s safe in some way…”
“Thank God, I wasn’t confident about stabbing a fish like that.”
“….”
Maybe these bright yellow chicks are good.
Looking at employee Kwon’s remark at the end, he probably thought of himself holding a harpoon, but Lee Jae-heon did not bother to tell us that instead of such a barbaric act, there was a sophisticated cultural object called a fish trap. I would find out sooner or later anyway.
Lee Jae-heon, somehow recalling the contents of the novel, found the right moment and quietly opened his mouth.
“So, someone who will move with me.”
The doctor asked him back.
“Where are you going now?”
“How old do I really look? Three?”
