The Door the Twins Opened
“……Ugh!”
When I came to, I was half-sitting up in a bed without any memory of getting there.
Beeeeeeeeep. A sudden ringing in his ears and a violent headache made Lee Seohyeok clutch his head.
What happened? The plan was going off without a hitch—
“Hah… hah… hah…!”
His memory had cut out midstream.
Vanished entirely at a specific point.
“We were—!”
They had been ambushed out of nowhere, sure, but they'd reworked the strategy on the spot, and with the seniors backing him up, he'd carried out his mission without a hitch.
We swept the whole surface level, then went down below.
He'd run into the occasional civilian along the way, but he'd knocked every one of them out cold, so no harm done.
The problem was… it happened on basement level 4.
At the end of the fourth basement corridor, he'd come up against a dead-end wall.
And there, he had discovered a gate of colossal size.
But… what caught Lee Seohyeok's eye wasn't the gate at all.
A gigantic hand that no sane person would call human.
A slender, elegant black hand with five fingers… had been there.
Half draped over the gap between the gate and the corridor, it had swayed, almost playfully, the moment it noticed him.
Sway, sway.
Hypnotized, his feet had begun to move—then a crawling sense of dread froze him in place.
Above the black hand, white letters had been carved in a script he couldn't read, and every time the hand shifted even slightly, the letters writhed along with it.
……Aside from the color and the writing, it looked so perfectly human that it was all the more grotesque for it.
I've been through dozens of dungeons, and I've never heard of anything like that.
And there, Lee Seohyeok had begun to confuse reality with hallucination.
……Could he have been swallowed by Moon Chaeyoung's illusions without even knowing it?
When did my ability get dispelled?
That had never happened before. Question after question piled up, until finally only one conclusion remained.
Fire. Car. Hospital.
Phone. Siblings. Money.
He didn't know why, but his mind had been crammed wall to wall with those words.
“……”
……That was his last memory.
He had watched, hollow-eyed, as the enormous swaying hand drew within arm's reach of him.
He'd been staring blankly as it slowly settled down over his head—and then, at some point…… he opened his eyes and he was here.
A hospital ward?
Going by the clothes, he was in some kind of emergency center gown.
“……Am I dreaming?”
“Seohyeok.”
Tap, tap. A hand on his shoulder—he reflexively threw an arm up to shield his face.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?”
At the familiar voice, Lee Seohyeok lowered his arm and hurriedly checked who it was.
“……Team Leader?”
Short hair cut close to a bob.
It was Moon Chaeyoung, dressed in the same hospital gown as him.
“You're…… alive?”
“Yep. Alive and in one piece. What on earth did you do, passing out alone by the back entrance? Howon found you first, and he's been carrying on like you'd died, putting on a whole dramatic display of—”
“I-I was at the back entrance?”
“Yep. Laid out flat on the ground behind the building.”
Impossible.
If he'd really passed out, he should have been on basement level 4.
Or else I should be a corpse.
Lee Seohyeok's face contorted at a present situation that refused to connect to his final memory in any way.
“They say your body's fine. But no matter how we shook you, you wouldn't wake up, so I called a healer. And got chewed out for it. Calling for a healer over someone who wasn't even injured.”
“……Ah.”
“Seohyeok!! Our maknae!”
“Oh, Seohyeok's awake?”
He was still utterly confused, but the arrival of Kang Howon and Choi Unseong drained the tension away in a hurry.
……Well, he was alive. That was what mattered.
“Are you all alright, sirs?”
Kang Howon, who had drawn close at some point, was checking him over, flipping his limbs this way and that.
“Yep, you were the only one who got wrecked. Us? Just a few scrapes. You're all right now, aren't you? Your head didn't take a knock or anything? And Seohyeok—your seniors bent over backwards so you could go home comfortable, and then you go fainting on the floor by yourself. Do you have any idea how badly that scared us?”
“That's—well, yes. Did you run into something weird while sweeping the area?”
“No way that happened. Our kid may be a little slow on the uptake, but his skills are top-notch—nothing like this ever happened before!”
“……Then wait. Don't tell me you've been slacking on your training lately?”
“Huh??? Is that it? Has our maknae been slipping lately? Getting a little seniority and now you're strolling through missions with your hands behind your back? So you got careless and fainted, is that it?”
……Ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous.
Lee Seohyeok surveyed his teammates with the detached eyes of a man who had seen the far side of enlightenment.
“Would I really pass out just because I've been neglecting my training?”
And yet, in the face of Lee Seohyeok's perfectly reasonable remark, Team Leader Moon Chaeyoung said, dead serious:
“Let's extend your training hours.”
“Aw, poor maknae.”
During his first year at the company, she'd coddled him as the maknae, glued to his side and fussing over him—but the moment he crossed into his second year, Moon Chaeyoung had let him run loose with terrifying abandon.
What was it again—something about how you have to raise kids tough?
Never mind that the only person in this group actually raising children was that man over there. That was the party line, regardless.
“Now that we've confirmed the maknae's fine, everyone clock out for today. You—recover fully here before you head home.”
At the team leader's dismissal, the seniors turned on their heels and vanished without a shred of reluctance, and Moon Chaeyoung excused herself, saying she had things to check. Lee Seohyeok lay back down on the bed.
……The moment his body settled, drowsiness seemed to come calling.
He'd just been through something bizarre, but the moment he registered that he was alive, it already felt like something from the distant past.
Come to think of it, I can't remember the last time I slept properly.
His eyes were beginning to flutter shut. The afterimage of that hand—swaying, swaying—flickered up, but crushing exhaustion swept over him in an instant.
A hazy warmth was spreading across his eyelids, reality and dream bleeding together at the seams—
“Oppa!!!!!”
“Hyung!!!!”
“Excuse me, is …-ssi here by any chance?”
Hm? That's a familiar voice.
Lee Seohyeok's eyebrows twitched. His consciousness, drifting toward sweet dreamland, was seized by the last shred of reason he had left.
“Oppa!!! Se…… hyuk!!!”
“Hyung!!! Are you dead??!”
Such young voices. Seoro and Seora, maybe?
“Mmgh……”
“What's with the kids? Oh my… well, isn't that something. Children come through the center ward pretty often these days.”
“Looks like kids from Bada Kindergarten.”
Hold on.
What did they say?
“……!”
He'd tried to tune out the voices, but the murmurs drifting over from beyond the curtain sent his body springing upright like a bullet.
It was pure instinct.
The feeling that his own flesh and blood was near.
And the feeling that they had gone and caused some kind of disaster…!
“……Hah!”
Lee Seohyeok's eyes went wider than they would have if a gun barrel had been shoved in his face.
Because beyond the transparent glass doors of the center ward, he could make out unmistakably familiar figures.
“Why are they—!”
Having completely forgotten that he'd been lying in that very bed moments ago, Lee Seohyeok vaulted off it and landed square on the floor of the hospital room on his backside.
“……!”
And before the embarrassment could even register, he was back on his feet.
Not the time for this. Not the time.
Gripping his aching lower back, he hurried toward the ward's glass doors. The automatic doors slid open, and sure enough, just as expected—the twins.
……What is this?
But the sight was so surreal that for a moment he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him.
The kids, caked head to toe in tears and snot, tucked under his arms, half out of his mind with exhaustion—
“Teacher, are you alright?”
Ridiculously enough, that was what came out of his mouth first.
Lee Seohyeok gathered up his sobbing younger siblings one at a time as they wailed at the sight of him.
The man's face was tomato-red, and the fresh, put-together appearance from that morning had been beaten into utter ruin somewhere along the way.
His hair's a wreck, and above all the sweat…… how much have you been through…!
Wiping the sweat streaming down his forehead roughly with his sleeve, the teacher caught his breath before speaking.
“…I'm not exactly alright.”
“I-I'm so sorry.”
If he could, he would smash his forehead into the corridor floor this very instant.
“Oppaaaaaa…… hnnnnnngh…… I thought you were going to die, sob! I thought you were deaaad…!”
“Uwaaaaaaaaah… hyuung, don't die! You can't die!”
“Hah……”
Oppa is alive.
Hyung is alive.
It was only after confirming his survival to the twins a dozen-odd times that he finally managed to escape the strangling grip around his throat.
And then Lee Seohyeok looked at the other party who was still strangling him.
……Apparently, he looked that way because he was so sorry he wanted to die.
His lips darting about as he weighed his words, Lee Seohyeok at last managed to dig up a serviceable apology and open his mouth.
“Huh? What are the twins doing here?”
But a woman with mulberry-colored hair popped up out of nowhere and cut him off.
“……Team Leader.”
At some point, Moon Chaeyoung had planted herself between the teacher and him.
“Oh, Seohyeok. You suddenly bolted out of there like a puppy that needed to pee, so I got worried and followed you.”
She said it without a shred of malice, eyes wide and ingenuously innocent.
“……I don't know what there was to worry about, but no such thing occurred.”
“Yep, I have eyes too, I can see that. Anyway, who might this be…?”
Moon Chaeyoung's palm gestured toward the teacher, who was standing there awkwardly.
Even in the middle of all this, he manages a smile…… how considerate of him.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
“I'm a new teacher at Bada Kindergarten.”
Lee Seohyeok's anxious eyes darted between the teacher and his team leader.
……Moon Chaeyoung was a good boss.
Cheerful, no grudges, good at her job.
But. But…!
Didn't he know.
That the woman was a human being who existed outside the bounds of common sense.
Never mind the whole business of skipping pre-mission briefings before deployment.
There's always a reason everyone complains about someone.
Lee Seohyeok had years of observing Moon Chaeyoung up close, after all.
A good boss—but whether she's a good person is…… another question.
He could put up with it, because this was the team he intended to be buried in, and she was his boss whether he liked her or not.
No.
He'd finally found someone who seemed capable of handling the twins—there was no way he could lose him like this.
From the warm consideration offered at their first meeting, to the phone call that never came even after the man had let his kindergarten burn down.
He could not afford to lose him.
“Team Leader.”
After agonizing over it, Lee Seohyeok made up his mind.
Get her out of here. Fast.
“Ah—wait, Seohyeok, hold on…… I feel like I've met this person somewhere before.”
“Yes, you must have met him in a dream.”
“……What?”
“Or perhaps you saw him inside one of your own illusions. You've never seen this teacher in real life, Team Leader. You won't in the future, either. Ah—that reminds me, wasn't it time for you to clock out? Thank you for your hard work today as well.”
“Have you always been this quick with your mouth?”
“And on your way out, please take my siblings with you. You can just set them on my bed.”
He tucked the twins—cried out and worn into sleep—into Moon Chaeyoung's arms.
“My, my…… you've gotten rather shameless. I didn't raise you this way.”
“……I'll see you tomorrow.”
By a stroke of luck, Moon Chaeyoung actually backed off there. Watching her give the teacher a brief nod and walk away, Lee Seohyeok bent his waist down in desperate haste.
“I'm so sorry.”
With the force of a man about to drive his skull into the floorboards.
Just—just I'm sorry about everything.
“I'm so sorry.”
Watching Lee Seohyeok, his forehead a hair's breadth from kissing the floor, I leaned back against the wall and slid down into a crouch.
The cool sensation of the wall spread slowly through my whole body, waking me up.
……Ah. I'm going to live.
“I'm fine.”
Once my head cleared a little, a natural smile came on its own.
Until a minute ago I'd seriously thought I was about to die—I couldn't even tell whether I was smiling or crying.
“But still, really…… I'm so sorry.”
Good grief, I was actually fine.
So what if I'd committed an act of leaving my workplace without permission—a breach wildly beyond my pay grade—and crossed the company corridor with a pair of seven-year-olds tucked under each arm?
Really, truly fine.
It was just a thought that came with feeling like I might actually survive, but this felt less like unauthorized absence and more like a field assignment, didn't it?
I don't know if they'd count a ten-minute trip as a field assignment, but it never hurts to pray.
“Are you really alright?”
When Lee Seohyeok asked, his face a portrait of remorse, I answered breezily.
“Really, I'm fine.”
The back of my neck throbbed like the devil, but it was nothing a smile couldn't smooth over.
Only after the look of distrust finally faded from his eyes did I haul myself up from the floor and drop onto the nearest bench. Lee Seohyeok sat down carefully beside me.
“How did you come to be here?”
“I was out at the playground during playtime when the broadcast went off. 'All injured personnel, Field Team Na, return to base.'”
“Ah.”
I didn't need to say the rest, and he knew it. Without looking, he buried his face in his palms like a man who'd already seen everything.
“I'm sorry.”
What now?
“As I keep saying, I'm fine.”
“But…… they're not usually like this. Ever since our parents passed, their attachment to me has gotten intense.”
“……”
“I told myself I'd fill the space our parents left, but looking at today, I don't think I've even managed that properly.”
I watched quietly as Lee Seohyeok fumbled his way through the words.
Even at a glance, he looked a good six years younger than me.
I couldn't tell whether he'd barely crossed into adulthood, or was a year or two past that……
A kid whose high school diploma's ink probably hasn't dried yet, and he's already this old and worn.
I had plenty to say, but for now I chose silence.
His shoulders were wound tight with tension, and he looked like a man holding his words in, and holding, and holding, until they finally burst.
The stories people find hardest to tell are always easiest to tell to a stranger they'll never see again.
I decided I would gladly be his bamboo grove.
“As you can see, there's a big age gap between my siblings and me……”
Even the rigid '-danikka' military politeness evaporated for a while.
“I was the youngest, and we're twins, so our parents doted on us incredibly while raising us…. And then suddenly they were both gone…. Ah—they died in a car accident.”
“I see.”
“Yes. They were both professors. They were heading home in a hurry after a seminar when the accident happened…. Back then, I'd just finished the college entrance exams, so I was out of my mind partying with my friends—I didn't even hear about the accident until long after.”
……That must have been rough.
Even as he dragged a hand down his tired face, the words didn't stop.
“They say a big truck overturned and caused the crash. I never even got to see my parents' bodies properly. My relatives stopped me. I still regret that to this day….”
But for the siblings I had left, he tried to stay strong and keep living.
The end of his voice cracked and trembled.
Guilt and grief hung heavy on every trailing, rambling sentence.
“I was lucky enough to manifest as an Awakened, so right after graduation I was able to get a job here. So really, all I've ever tried to do is give the kids an ordinary life with nothing lacking, but….”
It must be exhausting.
“…It's been kind of hard lately.”
Come to think of it, maybe the reason a kid who hadn't even been through his mandatory military service yet was straining so hard to keep up that stiff '-danikka' speech had something to do with exactly this kind of mindset.
The kid was trying to play the adult, that was all.
“……!”
Lee Seohyeok seemed to realize what he'd just let slip with those last words, and stole a glance at my face. His trembling eyes had already gone thick with self-blame.
Carrying burdens of responsibility and anxiety that I couldn't even begin to fathom, Lee Seohyeok needed to hear something steady—so I said it as plainly as I could.
“That's only natural. You're raising kids and earning money all on your own—if that didn't wear you down, you wouldn't be human.”
This wasn't comfort. It was the plain truth.
I'd heard that even Kwon Haeseong collapsed the moment he got home from work.
So what about Lee Seohyeok, who had to do the parenting after getting home?
“So there's no need to feel guilty about being tired.”
I could see the pale rims of his eyes slowly flushing red. I turned my head naturally and gazed out through the glass doors of the ward.
“Did you have breakfast?”
“……Ah, no.”
“Then, lunch?”
“Come to think of it, I don't think I've had that yet either.”
Damn company. Feed the kid first, then work him.
“……And you'll have dinner, right?”
Eat. Skip meals while you're young and you'll pay for it with ruined health when you're old.
“Ah, yes…! I'll eat when I get home.”
“Good. Then you and the twins are set to have another perfectly ordinary day today, too.”
“……Is that what you'd call it?”
“Yes. You said it yourself just now, didn't you? That you only want to give them an ordinary life with nothing missing.”
“……”
“Then you're doing it right.”
What's so special about ordinary?
Even sharing a single meal with your family is an ordinary thing of immense value.
I looked at Lee Seohyeok again. He seemed markedly different from the man I'd seen that morning.
Now that I look properly, he's a complete kid.
……Hah. This is exactly what shouldn't happen, though.
I mulled it over for a moment, then finally dropped the words in casually.
“If you ever have worries down the line, feel free to reach out now and then.”
“……Thank you. I absolutely will.”
……Hmm. No need to make it 'absolutely.'
I glanced at the clock and realized an hour had already passed since I'd arrived here.
Well, I've confirmed he's fine, so I should grab the twins and head back.
“There's still some time before pickup, so I'll just gather the twins and—”
The very moment I rose from my seat.
A sentence like a live grenade dropped out of thin air.
The target's understanding has increased.
■■■■ will be automatically activated.
100% complete.
— Lee Seora
— Lee Seoro
— Lee Seohyeok