Chapter 7
“Oh dear…”
“Good heavens.”
The faces of the neighborhood residents, guided by the Guards and boarding the transport vehicles to the temporary shelter, were filled with confusion.
Some even cried, overwhelmed by the relief of survival mixed with the despair of leaving their homes without even packing their belongings properly.
Amidst the chaos and confusion, the center of the incident was eerily quiet. Eunah, with her hair tied back in a single braid, stared coldly ahead.
“Do I have to tell you again to report the situation?”
Eunah’s icy question finally prompted the man to speak slowly.
“Well… there was still quite some time left until the predicted Hole occurrence…”
“So you didn’t even assign any monitoring personnel?”
“Due to the lack of manpower…”
“Did you submit a report to me about the manpower shortage?”
“That…”
Seunghoon lowered his head, speechless.
“It seems you made the decision on your own. But if you were short on manpower, you still had time to drink?”
Eunah’s chilling gaze swept over the members of her department lined up before her.
“Hic!”
One of the department members hiccuped, feeling Eunah’s sharp gaze.
“I consider this incident to be human error. I clearly told you during the meeting when we discovered this Hole. I said to dispatch monitoring personnel to the predicted Hole occurrence zone. I said to set up an emergency communication network for immediate contact with the Guards. Why wasn’t any of this done?”
“As I said before, due to the lack of manpower… Ah! But you don’t have to worry too much.”
Seunghoon stammered and spoke slowly.
Eunah stared at him silently, and Seunghoon, emboldened, continued.
“I checked if there were any reporters around, and there weren’t. The signal is blocked, so if we check now if anyone has filmed anything…”
“Are you saying we should cover this up so it doesn’t get out?”
“Yes! Yes!”
Seunghoon smiled brightly and nodded.
“Will that bring back the dead?”
Eunah asked coldly.
“…What?”
“The issue here is that people lost their lives due to our negligence, Mr. Seunghoon. Would you still say that if your family had died like this?”
“That…”
Seunghoon, who was about to say something softly, closed his mouth tightly.
“Everyone, submit a written apology. I will not let this slide. You will all be held accountable for this.”
The faces of the department members darkened at the mention of a written apology.
Eunah turned away, averting her gaze from them.
“Sigh.”
A frustrated sigh escaped her lips. Knowing what kind of personnel they were, she should have checked instead of just giving orders.
It was her fault for trusting Seunghoon’s words. Even if she made excuses about being busy handling other messy situations, it felt like it was her fault that things turned out this way.
As Eunah looked around with a bitter expression,
“Sehyun! Sehyun! Wake up! If something happens to you, I won’t be able to face sister! Huh?”
“Sister! Don’t die! Don’t die!”
Two people were clinging to someone who was being treated by medical personnel, shedding tears.
Eunah looked at the woman they were tending to. The woman, with her pale complexion, looked so haggard that she wondered if she was really alive.
Eunah recognized the woman. It was the woman she had seen first when she arrived here.
“She’s really lucky. It’s difficult for a civilian to kill even a young monster.”
A female member of her department approached Eunah and clicked her tongue, watching the woman being loaded into the ambulance.
“Did you confirm if she’s a civilian?”
“Yes. Her name is Kim Sehyun. She’s 25 years old. There’s no record of her being registered as a Guard.”
“What about the possibility of her being an Awakened?”
Awakened.
It referred to someone who had just become a Guard, chosen by the System.
“I couldn’t confirm because I didn’t have a portable identification device. But even if she’s an Awakened, if she hasn’t received any training, she’s no different from a civilian. If she were a Red Guard, she wouldn’t have had such mediocre skills.”
Eunah nodded in agreement.
“So she’s really lucky.”
The department member said again in admiration.
Eunah agreed with most of her words, but she found it hard to accept the word “lucky.”
Eunah’s gaze shifted towards the young monster that hadn’t been dealt with yet.
According to the witnesses, everyone had stayed hidden in their rooms, so it meant that the woman had fought this monster alone.
The woman must have risked her life multiple times to inflict wounds on the monster’s tough hide.
And when she jumped over the railing, holding onto the monster that hadn’t noticed the knife dangling from its neck, she must have been truly prepared to die.
Could her desperate struggle be simply attributed to luck?
Shouldn’t it be described with a word that encompasses all of her efforts, determination, resolve, decision, and courage?
“Please find out which hospital Ms. Kim Sehyun will be admitted to and the visiting hours.”
The department member, who was taking notes of Eunah’s words, looked up in puzzlement. Eunah’s gaze was fixed on the direction the ambulance had disappeared.
“I’ll personally go and get Ms. Kim Sehyun’s statement.”
***
Sehyun stood in the middle of a vast expanse, with nothing but a towering sky and endless land in sight.
A vast wilderness.
That’s what this place was. She had a feeling that she wouldn’t be able to reach the end of this space even if she walked her entire life.
Lost in thought, Sehyun tried to move her legs to explore this place but was startled.
She had no feet. Not only her feet, but her legs, arms, everything was gone. Her senses were alive and moving, even though she had no body.
Fear gripped her.
Was she dead?
It was possible. It was a situation where she could have died.
Despair washed over her.
It wasn’t like she had lived a particularly hard life, but to die from a single blow from a monster…
If she was really dead, someone would come to get her.
She was thinking absently that she hoped it would be her parents when,
Sounds poured into the middle of the wilderness. It was so loud that it felt like her ears would burst, and at times it was a whisper, as if only she could hear it.
“Everything will go smoothly.”
“Everything will go wrong.”
“It will all come to fruition.”
“All of this will fall apart.”
“Things will flow as you desire.”
“It will go against your will.”
The same voice continued, uttering contradictory statements like a chant.
What in the world…?
Sehyun looked around, trying to find the source of the voice. But she couldn’t see anyone speaking.
She was the only one here. Then, as if possessed, Sehyun raised her head.
Something was there.
It was so huge that she only noticed it belatedly.
It had a human form, but its size was so immense that she couldn’t take it all in with her eyes. Its face reached the sky and was invisible, and it shone brightly as if made of light.
She wondered if this was how an ant felt when looking at a human. At that moment, it moved. Light scattered and spread.
‘Ugh!’
Even though she knew she had no eyes, she felt a terrible pain as if her eyeballs were being scorched by the light.
She was thinking that it was like a punishment for seeing something she shouldn’t have seen when,
“Sehyun!”
She felt like she had suddenly fallen from the sky, and her eyes flew open. She stared blankly at what she saw in front of her.
Her hand felt heavy. Feeling a warm sensation flowing over the back of her hand, Sehyun tried to turn her head. Or rather, she tried to.
Her stiff neck wouldn’t move as she wanted, but it didn’t hinder her vision.
She moved her eyes to the side and saw her aunt, clutching Sehyun’s hand as if it were a lifeline, her shoulders shaking with sobs.
“I, I should have died… Sob, sob.”
Her aunt alternated between crying and praying.
Sehyun stared at her hand silently. Her aunt’s hand, illuminated by the lamp on the bedside table, was rough, unlike it used to be.
But the concern and worry contained in that hand remained unchanged.
“Aunt… Cough.”
Sehyun coughed softly, cutting herself off, and her aunt looked up abruptly. Tears welled up in her wide eyes and spilled down her cheeks.
“Sehyun! Oh, Sehyun!”
“I, I’m okay.”
Her aunt’s face, which had been twitching with worry, crumpled instantly. The hand that was holding Sehyun’s hands slid up her arm and embraced her tightly.
“…I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I sent you to such a dangerous place…”
Jungwoo, who had been sleeping soundly, woke up at the sound of his aunt’s heart-wrenching sobs.
“What’s that noise… What, what! Sister!”
Seeing that Sehyun had regained consciousness, Jungwoo jumped to his feet, dashed out of the hospital room, and shouted,
“Doctor! My sister, she’s awake!”
***
Perhaps thanks to Jungwoo’s frantic commotion, the doctor arrived sooner than expected. He briefly examined Sehyun and asked a few customary questions.
“Fortunately, your condition is improving. But we can’t be complacent, so let’s observe your progress for a few more days while you’re hospitalized. We’ll run some tests tomorrow. Please let me know if you experience any discomfort at any time.”
Sehyun asked,
“What about the cost of the tests? How much will it be?”
Her aunt quickly replied, “Don’t worry about that!” but Sehyun kept her eyes fixed on the doctor’s mouth. The doctor gave a slightly awkward laugh and said,
“Since it was a disaster caused by a Hole occurrence, the government will cover all hospital expenses.”
Jungwoo added,
“They said we’ll also receive compensation because they misjudged the Hole occurrence timing. So don’t worry, Sister. The test fees, hospitalization fees, and everything will be covered!”
They better be lok