Floor 10, the Shelter (2)
Ha Heijeong's second regression. Floor 10. A community of the dead.
Climbers have entered Floor 10, the Shelter. Within the Shelter, the dead climbers cannot see the living climbers.
It was disorienting, the way they came barging in all at once. Then again, I'd had a feeling that first question was heading somewhere like this, too...
I'd changed the subject because I suspected the Tower's automatic translation had mangled the meaning.
"You never know when any of us might die, so you'd better enjoy yourself while you can. Not that you seem likely to kick the bucket anytime soon... Look over there — they're already pairing up and heading upstairs."
Alexei jabbed a finger toward the door leading from the dining hall to the lodgings.
They didn't exactly look like couples, but the climbers were drifting toward that door two by two.
I'd been seeing plenty of it even before now. Even at this moment, climbers all around were making their moves on one another.
It wasn't hard to understand.
They'd been ripped out of peaceful, ordinary lives and dragged into the Tower of Trials without warning. They'd fought battles where lives hung by a thread, and in the waiting rooms they'd had to sit alone with the silence. There was no room for leisurely romance inside floors that ran on a timer, either. The loneliness and desire that had piled up through all of that must have been enormous.
And no doubt plenty of people had grown close fighting side by side.
"...Suhyeok, do you have time for that? You promised we'd talk about my armor today."
Ha Heijeong's voice was ice-cold. The look in her eyes as she glared at me seemed to say: go drink with Alexei and you're a dead man.
...Hm.
...Damn. It's a shame, but there's no reason to go flirting around with someone Heijeong can't stand.
It wasn't as if I was a slave to my lust, and after catching that look in her eyes, I dreaded the consequences.
"Sorry, I've got something to take care of with Heijeong."
"Aw, that's a shame... Hope we get another chance at the next Shelter. How about you, then?"
Alexei, still licking his lips, suddenly turned the question on Cole.
Cole, who had been sipping his beer, visibly panicked. He clearly hadn't expected Alexei to make a move the instant I turned him down.
"Ah, I'm sorry. It's not that I dislike you, but I'm—"
"Haha! Forget it, I'm only joking. Strangely enough, ever since Floor 8 I just haven't found myself interested in anyone else."
Perhaps that had been the whole point of him joining our table in the first place. Alexei chugged his vodka straight from the bottle and stood up.
When he thumped my shoulder, I turned my head and felt a light weight settle against me. The scent of his soap reached the tip of my nose.
...Ah. He just hugged me.
Stay calm. It's only a Western greeting. A Western greeting.
"Well, I'm off. Next Shelter, we're hanging out for sure."
Alexei released the hug, said it with a touch of feigned aloofness, and left.
I watched his back for a moment before turning my head again — straight into Ha Heijeong's blazing stare.
"What do you think you're doing?"
What? Me? I didn't do anything?
"What's what?"
"You've always... never mind. Forget it."
Ha Heijeong swallowed the rest. She seemed conscious of the others' eyes on us. Her expression was prickly with irritation.
It was a little absurd, honestly. Wasn't she the one who'd told me before that she wasn't on good terms with Alexei?
What's gotten into her all of a sudden?
I took a silent swig of beer.
Sensing the atmosphere turning strange, Hosu slid in with an oily smile.
"Hehe. What's gotten into our rank one and rank two, hmm? Come on, everyone, bottoms up! Harin, you have one too."
"Huh? Really? I can drink? You told me not to earlier."
"It's fine, it's fine. You're an adult now, so what's the harm..."
Seo Harin's eyes lit up, and Hosu nodded along — though his expression was far more bitter than his words suggested.
I had a feeling there was an unspoken might as well let her try everything she wants to hiding behind it.
Perhaps the alcohol had made him sentimental. In any case, his face soon brightened again, and we clinked our glasses together in high spirits.
We whiled away the time after that with idle chatter.
Then, after a while had drifted by, someone in the dining hall suddenly broke into sobs.
It was quiet crying. The one sobbing was a boyish-looking young foreigner.
"Hhic... Mom."
Come to think of it, the climbers had hardly ever brought up their families.
As if it were some unwritten rule, they'd avoided the subject without ever once discussing it.
The Shelter — a place where, even if only for a little while, you could let your guard down and rest.
At first, everyone had been overjoyed that Floor 10 was the Shelter.
But as their minds loosened over good food and drink, the things they'd buried for a while were bound to resurface.
More than two hours had passed since the drinking started in the dining hall.
It was more than enough time to start remembering the family and lovers they'd set aside while risking their lives to climb.
With that first small sob as the trigger, crying kept breaking out here and there from then on.
The ones intent on satisfying their lust had gone up to the lodgings long ago. Most of the climbers still in the dining hall were the kind who longed for people more than for flesh.
The crying sometimes came out as stifled moans, sometimes as skin-crawling weeping, sometimes as a heavy, quiet silence. The sound of ragged breaths gulped in between sobs grew louder, and the dining hall grew quieter.
And the quieter it got, the more some climbers forced out laughs or twisted their faces in displeasure at all the grief around them.
But whether they were trying to change the mood or simply couldn't bear it, before long they too went up to the lodgings.
Should I even call that a mercy?
No one in our party was crying. Strangely enough, Seo Harin wasn't either.
Granted, there wasn't a huge age gap between Harin and me... but she was still a student.
She only sipped her beer with a composed expression. Holding back tears was nothing to brag about, but I thought it was admirable all the same.
"...I'll head in first, if you'll excuse me."
Perhaps she couldn't stand the dining hall's crushed atmosphere any longer? Cole was the first of our party to rise, a gloomy look on his face.
It might have been a lover back on Earth he was thinking of.
"All right, Cole. Get some rest. Don't forget — you promised to look at my gear tomorrow morning."
"Oh, Cole? Could you take Dobby up with you, by any chance?"
Even amid all the sobbing, Dobby had been dozing in his seat for over half an hour.
Better to send him off to the lodgings with Cole than let him sleep like this.
"Of course. I'll take Dobby with me. Everyone, rest well. Dobby?"
"Kkiik?"
"Let's go to the room. You can sleep there."
"Kkiik! Goblin's going!"
Dobby rubbed his sleepy eyes, got up, and trotted obediently after Cole.
The way he left without a single backward glance suggested he was quite worn out. Well, he was still young — of course he'd need plenty of sleep.
Not long after Cole left, Hosu got up from his seat as well.
"Suhyeok, I'm going to walk Harin up and come back. You'll be here a while?"
"Ah, yes. I've got things to talk over with Heijeong anyway. Take your time."
"Harin, it's late. Let's go up."
"But I want to stay longer..."
"Seo Harin."
"Aww, okay. You two, I'm heading up first!"
"Sure. See you tomorrow."
Harin bowed her head politely, disappointment written all over her face. At the sight of such good manners, Ha Heijeong smiled and returned the greeting, and I gave her a wave.
At last, only Ha Heijeong and I were left.
"So. What was that earlier?"
"What was what?"
I asked while watching Hosu's back, and Ha Heijeong answered flatly. Her act of playing dumb was professional-grade.
"When Alexei came over earlier, you were all pissy at me."
"No, I wasn't?"
"Oh, come off it. You were totally irritated with me."
"I said I wasn't?"
Ha Heijeong turned her gaze away with a sulky look. Her cheeks were flushed red from the beer.
Hm. Judging by her reaction, apparently Alexei wasn't a bad person after all.
If he were, she'd have been calling him trash and worse ages ago. Most likely the two of them simply had some personal falling-out.
Something private and embarrassing, then — that would explain why she didn't want to tell me. The way she was flustering now fit, too.
"Aw, come on. Quit playing dumb and tell me. What happened between you and Alexei?"
"No, I'm telling you, that never happened?"
Anyone could see something was off. What was with her?
She had to know it herself. She could see exactly how she looked right now.
"Why not? Hm? Tell me. Why did you fight with him back in the first regression? I won't tease, promise."
"Haah... No. Nothing happened."
"You're really going to keep this up? You talk like you've been through everything, then clam up over one little fight. People fight sometimes, you know. Come on, tell me. Hm?"
Ha Heijeong pressed her lips tight and glared at me.
She didn't look annoyed, exactly. There was something faintly resentful in her eyes.
"Haa... fine. All right."
Ha Heijeong let out a long sigh and knocked back the rest of her beer.
Just like before we'd entered the Tower, she leaned her upper body toward me.
Her face was close. Flushed cheeks, fair skin, clear eyes. She didn't smell of kimchi stew the way she used to. A crisp wave of soap drifted near, laced with the faint scent of alcohol.
"That jerk's been pissing me off by looking down on me since way back! I'm a mage, and even though he's a mage too, he never once admitted I was stronger than him!"
"What? He looked down on a mage? That guy was straight-up scum!"
"Hehe. Having fun teasing each other?"
At the sound of Hosu, who had returned without any of us noticing, Ha Heijeong jolted and leaned back.
Hosu pulled out a chair with a puzzled look and sat down.
I'd expected him to be gone for a while... he was back awfully fast.
Apparently Harin hadn't broken down crying after going up to the lodgings.
Well, it was a little disappointing that I couldn't keep talking with Heijeong, but there was always later.
I raised my glass to Hosu with a smile.
—Aigoo, kids, life is hard. At my age, I can't exactly let my daughter see me fall apart...
Lying quietly in bed, Hosu's words came back to me.
After Harin had gone up, Hosu had drunk like a man unchained.
Before long he was completely wasted, lamenting with the rims of his eyes gone red.
In the end, Heijeong and I had to half-carry him up to the lodgings, and our conversation had to be put off until later.
He'd never let it show in front of us, but it must have been hard on him, too.
His wife was back on Earth, and the weight of having to protect Harin alone must have been crushing. That was what being a father was.
My thoughts about Hosu tumbled one into another, all the way to my own parents.
...Fuck.
All this time I'd tried my hardest not to think about it.
Loneliness makes people weak. Alone in that room, the walls around my emotions felt paper-thin.
Was this why everyone had gone off in pairs to the lodgings?
...I hope they're doing all right.
One little bit of alcohol, and I couldn't stop myself from drowning in sentiment.
I'd held it together back in the dining hall, and yet...
It felt like everything I'd been deliberately holding down had finally burst. The emotion was surging up from somewhere deep in my chest.
I fought to dam it, but in the end my vision blurred.
Feeling the warmth run down my cheeks, I turned my gaze to the window.
A red sky in flamboyant pastel hues, with stars spilling their light across it. Each star carried a light all its own. Through my tear-blurred vision, the starlight spread like watercolor on canvas. My eyes filled with starlights, every one of them different.
I had never seen this many stars in my life.
It occurred to me, all at once, that it looked like a sea of stars.
Back then... no. There are more now.
At twenty, I'd once gone backpacking alone through India. Even the Milky Way I'd seen over the Jaisalmer desert at night hadn't shone like this.
Orion... Leo... the Big Dipper...
I fumbled for constellations, dredging up that old memory — trying, deliberately, to shake off thoughts of my parents.
But there wasn't a single constellation I knew in that unfamiliar night sky.
Because it was somewhere other than Earth?
Or maybe there were simply too many stars to find them.
Damn it.
It was an excuse. It was my parents that kept the constellations from coming into focus.
And so I gazed into that sea of stars for a long, long while.
As the tears settled, so did the starlight. The night sky where stars burned above that reddish sky never grew tiresome, no matter how long I looked.
At some point, I felt my heart settle a little.
I wondered how much time had passed, but I didn't bother checking. I wanted to feel that stillness just as it was.
I reminded myself, once more, why I had to go back alive. I would see my parents again — smiling.
Hm?
That was when, from beyond the window, a strained moan drifted in — the kind a person makes when they're in pain.
The source of the sound was the room next door. Ha Heijeong's room.