Chapter 123

Even when looking at the same work, readers each discover different things.

So the meaning of a work expands infinitely through its readers.

The same is true of humans.

No, the same is true of everything in the world.

Someone’s precious son can be someone else’s terrible nightmare.

A bug’s natural enemy is a snake’s prey, and in a place where one breathes through gills, humans drown.

Everything in the world forms its own unique relationship with everything else.

And the meaning of that relationship changes from moment to moment.

My first impression of the Special Management Bureau was of irresponsible bystanders.

When I was offered appointment, they were collaborators whose interests matched mine.

After 4 months passed, I came to respect them a little, those people who kept enduring despite creaking at the seams.

And now.

The meaning between me and it was changing again.

Whether in a good direction, or perhaps a bad one.

---

“For now, they said to bring her in with us.”

Kwak Jae-gyeom, who had finished the call, told us.

Kim Ji-an and I only nodded silently.

Kim Ji-an got into the car with us as we returned to the Bureau.

There was no conversation inside the car.

Once we arrived at the Bureau, we followed Kwak Jae-gyeom’s guidance and headed straight for the Field Division conference room.

Cha Si-eon was waiting there.

“Mr. Seo Do-un, you should go in first.”

“No, I will listen together.”

Cha Si-eon tried to send me inside, so I refused.

I sat beside Kim Ji-an, and heavy silence flowed.

“What are you doing right now?”

Cha Si-eon asked after a long while.

Those words were not directed at me, but at Kim Ji-an.

At Cha Si-eon’s stiff voice, Kim Ji-an visibly tensed.

But even while secretly trembling with her hands under the table, Kim Ji-an spoke calmly.

“Show me Lee Sol.”

“No.”

“You have kept her locked up for too long. Please let me at least confirm her condition.”

“This is not something for an outsider to be involved in.”

“I am…….”

Kim Ji-an did not seem used to this kind of situation.

Judging by the way her face had gone white and she only bit her lip.

Perhaps coming to find me and speaking to me had been the boldest action this person was capable of.

“Is Lee Sol really here?”

When I cut in, Cha Si-eon turned toward me.

I met that dry gaze for a moment, then added,

“Show me.”

“No.”

“I am not an outsider.”

“It is also not within Mr. Seo Do-un’s work scope. Do not involve yourself in unrelated matters.”

“Why is it unrelated? I was the one who took care of Lee Sol and sent her outside.”

“Mr. Seo Do-un.”

“Team Leader, have I ever not cooperated with the Bureau until now?”

At my question, Cha Si-eon closed his mouth and looked at me.

As if asking whether I really had to come at him like that.

Thanks to that, this situation became even more absurd to me.

Cha Si-eon looked at me as if he had been obstructed by someone on his own side, but I was the one who felt thoroughly excluded.

In the first place, the one who had even informed me of this fact was the outsider sitting beside me.

The woman beside me, wearing a short-sleeved blouse and black slacks.

Kim Ji-an had abruptly come to find me and introduced herself as a former employee of the Special Management Bureau.

When she said she had been in a research team, I remembered the name too.

Researcher Kim Ji-an, who had been in Research Team 2 before the Bureau reorganization.

Before the Bureau reorganization meant quite a while ago.

An old Bureau employee who had resigned at least 2 years ago coming to find me, and even tracking my movements to approach me, was not something to laugh off moderately.

But that problem became rather trivial because of what Kim Ji-an said next.

“Do you know that Lee Sol is being quarantined in the Bureau?”

It was something I was hearing for the first time.

If a person I had never met in my life brought up something like this, normally I would treat it as nonsense.

But I was only flustered by those words. I did not doubt them.

Because the suspicions scattered through my unconscious had raised their heads on their own and convinced me.

There are times when you feel hunger only after realizing your stomach is empty.

Just like that, the facts I had passed over as nothing much came to mind one by one.

The last Lee Sol I remembered had been in a surgical gown, quarantined in the Bureau.

After that, I had never seen Lee Sol once.

I had talked about Lee Sol with the Bureau people a few times, but I had never heard anything about that child’s recent condition or how she was doing.

There was no way these people would not conduct post-event monitoring.

And if it were an exciting story for them, there was no way they would not talk about it.

“There is a safety issue.”

Cha Si-eon answered in a reluctant tone.

“So it is not a situation where just anyone can meet her.”

The premise that Lee Sol was here had at some point become natural.

So this situation began to feel more and more unreal.

Where should I begin pointing things out?

In truth, even what I should take issue with was vague.

The same was true of my position and role as I sat here.

Kim Ji-an’s words asking for help and Cha Si-eon’s words telling me not to get involved seemed to be pulling me from both sides.

It was then.

Click—

The conference room door opened without even a knock.

The person who appeared beyond it was none other than Acting Team Leader Oh Tae-o.

Perhaps Oh Tae-o had heard our conversation from outside, because he omitted even a greeting and said,

“A meeting is difficult, but observation from outside is possible…… She also happens to be asleep now…….”

At Oh Tae-o’s sudden intrusion, Cha Si-eon’s expression stiffened even more.

On the other hand, Kim Ji-an did not show any particular reaction.

As if she had known in advance that Oh Tae-o would appear.

I had thought she was someone who did not know how to fight.

It seemed I had been mistaken.

Kim Ji-an was merely unused to direct confrontation; she was not someone who was poor at mind games.

Rather, perhaps I should say she was skilled.

The person who had arranged this board was Kim Ji-an, and Oh Tae-o and I were the janggi pieces Kim Ji-an had chosen and placed.

The confusion I felt was also because I had been dragged into this board against my will.

It was an unwelcome situation, but for now, I decided to play along.

“Then let us go now.”

“Mr. Seo Do-un.”

“Team Leader.”

When I stood, Cha Si-eon called me.

I did not avoid him and looked straight at Cha Si-eon.

“To be honest, I do not know what the situation is. So I will see it myself and judge.”

“…….”

Cha Si-eon had no way to overturn this board.

He could not lose my trust, and the path to escape with an appropriate excuse had vanished too.

In short, it was checkmate.

And the woman who had encouraged that was still trembling quietly beside me.

Perhaps realizing he had fallen into a trap, Cha Si-eon quietly swallowed his breath.

Then he rose from his seat.

“I will guide you myself.”

In the end, Cha Si-eon took the lead, and we followed him out into the corridor.

Cha Si-eon led us deep underground.

It was the same path we had taken before to meet Ryu Dan-a.

We arrived at the contaminated-person detention facility on the lowest floor of the Bureau.

Even from there, we had to go farther in for a long while.

The endlessly continuing passage gave the feeling of wandering through an undersea tunnel.

How long had we walked like that?

Cha Si-eon stopped before a wide wall.

It was literally nothing but a wall.

It did not look like a space where a person might stay.

“Where is Lee Sol?”

Instead of answering me, Cha Si-eon pressed a switch on the wall.

At that moment, the ivory wall became transparent, and the space beyond it appeared.

It was a wide space the size of a large auditorium.

Inside, something like a used and discarded structure stood alone.

An enormous siren.

And the steel frames supporting it.

To my eyes, it was nothing more or less than scrap metal waiting to be disposed of.

Until I found the girl sitting beneath it.

“…….”

No way.

……No way.

I could not properly process the information before my eyes.

The sitting girl was small, and the siren rising above her was too enormous.

The girl was clearly a living creature, but what had grown from her back was a cold and endlessly sharp inorganic thing.

So her form also looked as if she had been pierced through by sharp steel frames.

“Ah…….”

Kim Ji-an covered her mouth and groaned.

Only after seeing that reaction did I barely understand that the child was Lee Sol.

As Oh Tae-o had said, perhaps she was asleep, because Lee Sol had her head deeply lowered.

Because of what had grown from her back and shoulders, she could not lie down, so she was sleeping while sitting like that.

I had finally processed the information value before my eyes, but rather, I suffered from a sense of alienation, as if I had been separated from the world.

It felt as if the sound of a siren, WEE-OOO, was ringing by my ears.

---

Lee Sol was contaminated.

From the moment she came out of Railway Station on February 3, she had recorded a high contamination level.

The Bureau watched her progress and waited for the contamination level to fall.

But the contamination level hardly fell, and when March came, bodily deformation even began.

Something like thorns began to sprout from her shoulders.

They grew by one handspan every day, and Lee Sol showed symptoms of delirium.

Every night, she cried while calling for her father.

She repeated the words “Dad, save me” like an incantation.

By April, her aggression became pronounced.

Researchers were injured by the thorns Lee Sol swung like wings.

Around that time, Lee Sol was moved to the contaminated-person detention facility.

At the same time, she was assigned the contaminated person number 146.

It was around May that a siren appeared above Lee Sol’s shoulders.

At that point, people realized exactly what Lee Sol was coming to resemble.

No, they could no longer deny it.

From then on, Lee Sol began making siren sounds and breaking the surroundings.

She repeated breaking things and being subdued, breaking things and being subdued.

That behavior was still continuing even now.

In other words, Lee Sol had been locked up in the Bureau for the past 4 months.

Should I call it darkness under the lamp? In a sense, she had been staying with me in the same building this whole time.

But these taciturn people had hidden that fact very well.

They buried and concealed her underground so I would not know.

If you ask whether I felt betrayed by this fact, it is difficult to answer.

It is not as if I must know all of the Bureau’s circumstances.

Still, Lee Sol was connected to me too, so I wondered whether they had needed to exclude me this much.

On the other hand, even if I had known this, what could I have done?

I would only have realized that what I did at 「Railway Station」 had been meaningless wasted effort.

So there was nothing to complain about either.

Lee Sol was contaminated and quarantined underground in the Bureau.

I simply had not known. This was something that had already continued for 4 months.

Then why had Kim Ji-an come to me for help only now?

The reason was simple.

Right now, discussions were underway among the higher-ups.

Discussions regarding Lee Sol’s disposition.