Chapter 115

A thick, deep silence.

I pulled my dazed mind together and opened my eyes.

Before I knew it, the space must have been reconstructed, because I was lying flat on the floor.

“Hah…….”

I breathed shallowly and raised myself.

The surroundings were very quiet.

And empty.

It seemed 「Memory Flood」 had stopped with that final explosion earlier.

I had been flung around wildly, but where am I this time?

As I looked around, I realized the end of my wire was no longer fixed in empty air.

The line was loosened long, stretching somewhere.

Thinking just in case, I followed that wire.

Hzzzt— hzzzzzt—!

After I took a few steps, noise began to occur again.

Had I entered another memory overwritten with errors this time too?

I kept walking and passed through blurred memory fragments.

And soon, I found him.

Cha Si-eon, sitting on the floor.

Cha Si-eon had his knees drawn up, with his head buried between them.

His 2 arms were loosely resting on both knees.

“Team Leader.”

At my call, Cha Si-eon lifted his head.

Judging by his movements, his body seemed fine.

He only looked somewhat tired.

Cha Si-eon looked at me and muttered with an exhausted face.

“You again?”

“Do not slip casual speech in like that.”

“Whew…….”

At my correction, Cha Si-eon let out a long sigh.

After catching his breath like that, Cha Si-eon came to his senses and asked back.

“How did you get here?”

“I guessed roughly and got things right.”

Cha Si-eon looked at me uncomfortably.

“What is that expression?”

“Whew…….”

Cha Si-eon sighed again and took out the notebook.

Then he began scribbling something.

As if he had never been sprawled out, once something to do appeared, he did it properly again.

“I think we are almost there now. Is that right?”

“Probably. What was the memory Mr. Seo Do-un saw immediately before this?”

“It was a memory of Response Team 3 breaking through a transformed corridor in 「Animal Farm School」.”

Cha Si-eon also asked me about the situations before that.

I answered exactly as they were, and Cha Si-eon silently wrote them down.

Riiip—!

Cha Si-eon tore out the pages he had written up to now by hand.

Then he folded them in half and placed some in his own pocket and some in my pocket.

Knowledge obtained through a 「Life Chronicle」 could not be carried outside 「Library」.

So it seemed he was using his own sort of expedient to work around that.

While Cha Si-eon organized the records, I looked around.

This space where we were.

Here too, all the graphics were broken, and noise was everywhere.

“When is this memory from?”

“February 2 of this year.”

The answer was extremely specific.

Did that mean it was that memorable a day?

Wait, February 2 of this year?

“That is correct.”

When I looked at him in surprise, Cha Si-eon nodded.

“It is a few hours before Mr. Seo Do-un flowed into 「Railway Station Where the Siren Sounds」.”

That was right.

The first time I was dragged into a Special Zone was around 1 a.m. on February 3 of this year.

That meant…….

“This is the waiting area of the passage connected to 「Railway Station Where the Siren Sounds」.”

Along with Cha Si-eon’s words, the veil covering the space was lifted.

A space isolated in the form of a hangar.

On one side of that wide space, I saw a black tunnel with railroad tracks laid inside.

“I was monitoring the internal situation of 「Railway Station Where the Siren Sounds」 with Bureau employees.”

On one side of the hangar were Bureau agents with equipment spread out.

All of them were looking at a large screen with serious faces.

I also went over there and checked the scene reflected on the screen.

At the same time, I came to understand Cha Si-eon’s gloomy atmosphere.

“Were you watching this the whole time?”

“…….”

What the screen showed was the interior scene of 「Railway Station Where the Siren Sounds」.

There was a girl in a school uniform running down a corridor.

It was Lee Sol.

And 2 men chasing after her.

I recognized one of the men immediately.

That was Orange.

Hah…….

I swallowed a sigh at the situation on the screen.

The 2 men were chasing the girl as if they were hunting.

Was it my imagination?

That the bastards’ movements looked rather excited.

No, it was not my imagination.

Their faces glistened with superiority and excitement.

Disgust surged up.

Not because Lee Sol was a child I knew, but because the situation itself was hateful.

Grab—!

At that moment, one man snatched Lee Sol by the back of the neck.

Lee Sol threw off the padded jacket she was wearing over her school uniform and barely escaped from his grasp.

Then she began running away again, but how long could she last like that?

At that moment, one agent from Response Team 3 shouted.

“Team Leader, where are you going?!”

At that sound, I turned my head.

A little distance away, there was the February 2 Cha Si-eon gathering equipment.

Without even protective gear, he took only a silver ring, a rules book, and one gun, and said,

“I will be back within 15 minutes.”

“You cannot. You will not last 15 seconds, let alone 15 minutes. You know that, do you not?”

“Move.”

“You cannot!”

Cha Si-eon silently glared at the agent blocking his path.

As if telling him not to interfere.

The agent flinched for a moment, then stood his ground even more firmly.

“Absolutely not.”

Instead of continuing the scuffle, Cha Si-eon ignored him and passed by.

That agent grabbed his arm, but he shook it off in one move.

“Stop Team Leader!”

At that shout, the other team members joined in too.

But not everyone came to tear Cha Si-eon away.

In the hangar, field duty personnel other than Response Team 3 were also keeping their places.

So around a dozen people were watching the situation, but only 4 or 5 of them stopped Cha Si-eon.

Some among the remaining 10 could not bring themselves to hold Cha Si-eon back.

Some others seemed to be wondering whether they too should step forward.

Their atmospheres and attitudes all differed, but they also had something in common.

All of their complexions had turned pallid, as if they had drunk poison.

“Team Leader, if you enter now, you will die! Please come to your senses!”

The team members shouted again.

A person connected to the Bureau would certainly die if they entered 「Railway Station」.

He must not have been unaware of that fact.

He must have known well that even if he went, it would be nothing but a dog’s death.

I could not understand Team Leader Cha’s actions at all.

No matter how agitated he was, had he been this emotional and reckless a person?

I wondered that on my own, then pretended to be flustered when I saw Cha Si-eon’s face.

Contrary to my hasty assumption, the February 2 Cha Si-eon was not agitated.

Nor was he emotional.

As always, he was moving for the sake of what he had to do.

“……Were you planning to hand the rules book to Lee Sol and die?”

“…….”

I asked, recalling how the past Cha Si-eon had taken the rules book.

The current Cha Si-eon did not answer.

That silence was affirmation.

That was right.

Cha Si-eon would certainly die if he entered there.

But there was about 20 seconds until the siren sounded and the death by crushing occurred.

He intended to use that time.

In that time, he intended to shoot dead the bastards chasing Lee Sol and deliver the survival method to Lee Sol.

The February 2 Cha Si-eon knew what he had to do that clearly.

So he violently twisted and subdued his own subordinates.

It was then.

“Si-eon.”

Kwon Mu-seop’s low voice rang out.

At that heavy voice, Cha Si-eon flinched for the first time.

Kwak Jae-gyeom had called Kwon Mu-seop on his cell phone.

Cha Si-eon glared fiercely at Kwak Jae-gyeom.

Jae-gyeom lowered his head with a tense face.

But he did not end the call with Kwon Mu-seop.

“Do not go in. I am asking you.”

At the word “asking,” Cha Si-eon’s Adam’s apple moved heavily.

And time stopped.

Without realizing it, I had been holding my breath.

I knew only after exhaling it in a sigh.

“It seems you knew Lee Sol well.”

“No, she is only the daughter of a senior who was on the same team.”

Cha Si-eon deliberately denied my words.

But it was not persuasive at all.

Perhaps he thought so himself, because Cha Si-eon belatedly added,

“Lee Sol’s father played a central role in the Bureau. And several agents, including me, owed Lee Sol’s father our lives.”

It seemed that was true.

Putting together the bits of things I had heard despite the restricted information.

Agent Lee Seop had been a pioneer who found clues to Special Zones.

To Kwon Mu-seop, he was a close friend, and to Cha Si-eon, he was a senior to whom he owed his life.

But in the end, Cha Si-eon and the Bureau had not been able to save Lee Seop.

They had not even found his body.

They had not even accurately grasped whether he was alive or dead.

And then even his daughter was dragged into a Special Zone.

Perhaps the ones who should resent God were not me, but these people.

“Still, it is fortunate you did not go in then. If you had, you would not have come back out.”

I spoke while recalling what I had experienced earlier in 「Railway Station」.

Cha Si-eon looked at me with dark eyes.

Then, somehow reluctantly, he murmured,

“The bastard chasing Lee Sol died. So the situation ended provisionally.”

“Here! Everyone, come look! The bastard chasing Lee Sol died!”

The agent monitoring the screen shouted.

At that sound, everyone ran toward the screen.

A pool of blood was spreading in the corridor on the screen.

Something like a tire lay in the middle of it.

Lee Sol and Orange, frightened, ran away in different directions.

The siren must have sounded.

So it seemed one of the men chasing Lee Sol had been crushed to death.

Lee Sol ran away just like that.

But wherever she ran, there was no way to escape from that place.

Like a beast caught in a trap, Lee Sol wandered through 「Railway Station」 alone and desperately.

She shook the front door, which would not open no matter what, and burst into tears in front of the ticket gates that would not budge.

Then, in the end, everything became frightening, and people and the space itself became horribly terrifying, so she entered the bathroom and locked the door.

She shut herself inside that one-stall, shabby shelter.

And from then on, another hell began.

---

Manager Kwon Mu-seop had said this.

When Sol was dragged there, we all felt as if we were receiving divine punishment.

I felt I now understood a little what those words meant.

3 hours had passed since Lee Sol locked herself in the bathroom.

Monitoring continued too, and during that time, the siren sounded 3 more times.

Every time the siren sounded, the agents clenched their teeth.

And when that crushing passed Lee Sol by.

When someone who was not Lee Sol was crushed to death, they suffered under a terrible contradiction.

Why are we feeling relieved every time someone else dies?

What exactly was our role?

Since when did we only watch like this?

Meanwhile, the 3 men also emerged from the tunnel.

They were Orange, Red, and Black.

When they had just come out, they were laughing like fools with money bags slung over them.

Then, when they discovered the Bureau agents, they were briefly startled.

And toward the Bureau agents, they behaved more meekly and politely than anyone.

It was the same even when the agents put handcuffs on them.

The bastards tried to resolve the misunderstanding while pretending to be utterly sensible.

So the agents had to scrape together their patience in order not to kill them.

Cha Si-eon too merely looked briefly at the gun he had put down earlier.

He did not shoot them dead.

Instead, he seemed to be quietly thinking.

Where humanity ended, and where monsters began.

It was when everyone was going mad, knowingly or unknowingly.

“What is that bastard this time……?”

A new thug appeared in the women’s bathroom where Lee Sol was hiding.

That was Seo Do-un on February 3.