Chapter 159

“It is being stanched, so do not mind it and keep walking.”

Cha Si-eon’s voice was calm.

But it had no persuasive power at all.

Blood was leaking like water, yet he said he was stanching it.

“Would it not be better to treat it properly before moving?”

“This is not bleeding that can be stopped here.”

Cha Si-eon said that and kept walking.

Every time he took a step, a new bloodstain was stamped onto the ground.

But I was still an utterly weak child, so it was impossible for me even to support that wounded person from beside him.

At that moment, Cha Si-eon, who had been walking ahead, stopped dead.

“There are about 800m left.”

Click—

The sound of a magazine being changed rang out.

“If you keep going, you should be able to meet the 「Monks」.”

“What do you…….”

I looked up at Cha Si-eon as he turned around.

Why was he suddenly saying this?

That was when it happened.

Mew—

Behind me, I heard the cry of a kitten.

This was a sound made by a 「River Crosser」.

“Run. As fast as you can.”

Cha Si-eon gave that short request and held out a pistol to me.

I looked at Cha Si-eon for a moment, then received the pistol.

The gun, covered in blood, was much heavier than what I usually felt.

Holding the pistol, I began to run.

RATATATATA—!

Gunfire rang out behind me.

I did not look back.

When the gunfire suddenly stopped, I nearly stopped walking too.

But I gathered my mind and kept running.

But then.

BOOM—!

An explosion occurred.

Along with the roar, heat blew against my back.

What followed after that was silence.

A brutal stillness that told me death and peace touched one another.

In the end, I stopped.

Several times, I thought about looking back, but I could not bring myself to do it.

If I look back now, everything ends.

My instinct was saying that.

I took a step again.

Then I ran while looking only ahead.

There was not much left.

800m was a distance I could run in 5 minutes.

But I was already out of breath.

“Hah, haah……!”

My legs were heavy despite how little I had run.

In truth, they hurt.

Cha Si-eon and Baek Sa-ra had carried me around without letting my feet touch the ground, but after jumping into the river and being caught in an explosion, I was already injured.

So every time I stepped down, it felt as if blades were stabbing into my knees and ankles.

Damn it, so what?

I am the only one left now.

If I want to save those people, I have to…….

“Hah, hngh…….”

The breath that had risen to my throat eventually turned into a sob.

Damn it, tears began flowing.

Noise mixed into my already irregular breathing.

Cha Si-eon seemed dead.

Baek Sa-ra was dead.

The others had probably died too.

I had to revive them.

But why are you still lying in my grip?

The moment I saw 「Crow」 in my hand, I finally collapsed.

“Do not die…….”

Unable to run anymore, I fell limply on the spot.

Then, holding onto 「Crow」, I murmured desperately.

“Do not die and leave me alone…….”

Take me with you instead.

Please, Mom.

I could not tell.

Whether I was a 28-year-old editor, or a 9-year-old child who had lost his mother.

Whether this pain was grief over another person’s death, or despair that I had been left alone.

If only I too had died early.

If only I had been swept up by the chunks of metal and flames that fell from the sky and died without even knowing why.

Pain belongs to the living.

The dead leave while carrying only their own death, but the living remember all the dead.

So they live together with death.

To live is death.

Then perhaps instead.

Death, which may be kind to me too.

That was when it happened.

Step— step— step— step—

Near my ear as I lay weeping, footsteps came.

I flinched and raised my head.

From the opposite side of the bridge, the 「Monks」 with lotus heads were walking toward me.

They were the beings I had been waiting for all this time.

But for some reason, I did not feel glad.

Rather than gladness, the thought of why only now came first.

I sat there and looked at the 「Monks」.

As they had done the first time, they passed me indifferently.

Stop—

But the final monk stopped in front of me.

It pressed its palms together toward me and deeply bowed its head, where a lotus flower had bloomed fully.

It was an action whose meaning I could not understand.

What did that grotesque being know of humans to imitate such an action?

“…….”

Yet for some reason, tears spilled from my eyes again.

That was only an imitation.

A meaningless mimicry by a monster.

Even so, through that action, I came to see myself reflected.

Myself, who had wished for death as I pleased.

I cried as I regretted what I had nearly given up, even if only for a moment.

And when those tears stopped, I had become an adult again.

“Phew…….”

I exhaled for a long time.

Perhaps because I had become an adult, or perhaps because I had cried as much as I could, my heart was calm.

After catching my breath, I wiped my terribly wet face.

Then I properly put on the clothes that had rolled up here and there.

“……First, let us go to the doors.”

Everything from beginning to end was a mess, but it was still too early to give up.

Once there, I could try nursing 「Crow」 or whatever else.

“Team Leader Cha has already been saved several times…….”

At the very least, Team Leader Cha was an important person to 「Crow」 too.

So as long as it woke up, this time too, it would move to save Team Leader Cha.

“Baek Sa-ra and Jeong Jin-u too.”

The probability was high that it would revive the others as well.

Because it had revived even that Director Go again and again.

So get a hold of yourself.

Now, I really am the only one left.

Persuading myself, I stood again.

Then I began running with the body that had returned to an adult’s.

I felt the distance that had seemed endless when I was a child shrink in an instant.

I can do this.

In this state, it is possible.

I ran while building that certainty, and soon reached the doors.

“Phew…….”

I caught my breath and looked at the doors.

Could these truly be called doors?

Would it not be more accurate to call them a wall?

Of course, it was not an intact wall either.

The center had a gaping hole through which the sky was visible, and the parts still intact were covered in doors.

A form like incomprehensible modern art.

In any case, the central part had all been shattered as it spilled out bombs, but at the edges, there were still intact doors remaining.

And seeing them up close, I could know clearly.

All the doors here were doors from 「Yongsan Station」.

The glass doors leading into the station, the metal doors of the station offices, even stall doors from the bathrooms.

It seemed every door within the station had been dragged here and embedded into this place.

Just how much does 「Big Cat」 want to hide 「Railway Station」?

Admiring that obsession, I put 「Crow」 into my pocket.

Then, holding the pistol in my hand, I slowly approached the doors.

Fortunately, the area around the doors was quiet.

Perhaps because it had already used the move prepared to wipe us out, it now remained abandoned like an old factory.

Thanks to that, I was able to reach the front of the doors easily.

Moreover, most of the doors at my eye level were intact.

Now I just had to choose one among them and enter.

“…….”

I could not readily open a door.

Because I had watched bombs fall from inside this place in real time.

No. No.

That bombing earlier was the result of madly opening and closing doors in order to deliberately match the date.

The probability that opening a door would summon that day again was endlessly low.

Of course, that day was not the only dangerous day.

Another atrocity might be stored in this space.

But that too would be a special incident.

Most days, excluding that day, would have passed uneventfully.

There would have been far more days when ordinary people led ordinary daily lives.

Right, unless God hates me enough to want me dead.

The moment I opened the door, a space that sentenced me to death would not appear.

I trusted probability and opened the door before me.

Click—

No, I tried to open it.

But before I even grabbed the doorknob, the door beside it opened by itself.

Through the gap in the door, I saw something black.

The moment I saw it, it swallowed me.

CRUNCH—!

Shock came before pain.

And what followed was darkness.

That did not mean God hated me.

It probably neither hated nor loved me in particular.

Humans seek God in order to give meaning to their shabby existence.

Humans have always done that.

And as if laughing at such humans, some things simply happen.

Defeat.

Failure.

Death.

Ruin.

Or completion.

This too was merely one of the things that happened.

---

Is death white?

I think so.

Judging by how everything around me is white.

Is death a woman?

This also seems right.

Because I keep hearing a woman’s voice.

-First, I hope my death is not too great a sorrow to you. If others aside from me have also come to harm, I offer words of mourning and comfort to them and their bereaved families.

Then is death the will I wrote?

This also seems right?

The words I have been hearing since earlier match exactly the contents I wrote in my will.

-I received advice to write my will as shamefully as possible. So I thought about ways to make myself feel ashamed, and I did find a method, but this was not merely a matter of my own shame. I wondered what sin the living had committed that they should have to learn of a dead person’s fetish, so I have decided to refrain from mentioning it.

Ah, damn it.

I should have burned my will before coming out.

I had simply left behind the thing I scrawled down at dawn with all the sensitivity of that hour.

-You really wrote this as your will?

Death muttered as if dumbfounded.

Then, in a voice that had lowered another layer, it admired,

-This is something……? If you do this, people will wonder about your fetish forever. To mention it like this and then die, how wicked…….

No. This is a misunderstanding.

I had no such intention.

No, more importantly.

What exactly is this voice?

There is no way death would have such a self-willed ego.

The moment I felt doubt, the senses that had been dead came back to life.

“Yes, hurry and remember.”

The sound that had been circling without direction became a clear voice and lodged in my ear.

“This is already the third time you have seen it.”

When I turned my head toward the direction of the sound, there was a woman.

A face I knew.

With that familiar face, the woman whispered to me.

“To die again. I’m disappointed in you.”