One Step Back, Two Steps Forward
I popped the lid off the smoke grenade and hooked my finger through the ring beneath it. Word had it this thing was standard equipment for the annual fire drill.
Couldn't find the portable mic in the storage room, but this just so happened to end up in my bag.
Truly, today was shaping up to be a day of happy accidents in every possible direction.
The smoke grenade swung in a circle as my index finger traced it through the air. I deliberately twisted my mouth into a crooked grin. I needed to look as deranged as possible, after all.
"Hey, you squat little bastards!!"
I put my diaphragmatic breathing — honed through years of children's songs — to vigorous use. The voice was solid, ringing, and it brought everyone in that place to a momentary halt.
"Yes, you idiots standing there frozen, turning around~ Come on, take a look over here. What do you think this is?"
I had seen with my own two eyes that Kwon Haeseong's utterly absurd baiting actually worked.
Well then, I might as well put it to use myself.
One by one, the Vermon tangled at Kwon Haeseong's feet, the ones about to be kicked, and the ones already kicked airborne turned to look our way...
And so did Kwon Haeseong and the children.
The moment they recognized us, they shouted out in joy.
"Nam Taejae!!"
"Taejae, Teacher!"
"Nam Taejae's not dead!"
"Teacher Hwiyeon...!"
The four of them, filthy as potatoes fresh out of the ground, forgot all about the situation and welled up with tears of relief.
I barely held back the urge to nod sagely and raised my voice with perfect composure instead.
"This is a Vermon-exclusive extermination spray gas!"
"Vermon? What's a Vermon? Hey, Teacher, isn't that dangerous?"
"Sir, shh. Shhh."
Vermon.
The searchers of the maze garden.
And here, right now, I alone — the only one who could see the Status Window — knew their name.
Besides, watching these things charge in a fury after hearing Kwon Haeseong's taunts proved they understood human speech well enough.
Rolling the words [FIRE DRILL SMOKE GRENADE] in my palm, I continued my explanation with measured calm.
"Vermon-exclusive. I trust you understand what that means."
They would understand. Me and these blade-wielding maniacs, that is.
"One minute after inhalation, you'll foam at the mouth and collapse. Two minutes, and your limbs start twisting out of shape. Three minutes... well, I don't suppose I need to spell that one out."
Snick. I added a thumbs-up drawn across my throat for effect.
-......
"What even IS a Vermon? Don't tell me it's something like 'we all die together'?"
Ignoring the man clapping me on the shoulder to hurry me along, I narrowed my eyes.
-Uuuuh... Uuh....
The eerie wails subsided, and grave stares rained down on the smoke grenade clutched in my hand.
I deliberately said nothing more. Sometimes silence stirs up even greater turmoil than words.
-Uuuuuh.
-Uuuuuh?
Now they seemed to be conferring among themselves. Even without catching the details, it felt something like, 'Is that thing real?' 'How should I know?'
But the Vermon didn't move rashly. Honestly, this alone was enough.
Time to twist the knife a little.
A bluff, after all, is nothing without attitude.
"Ahh, I have no intention of standing here droning on about trivialities any longer. This thing is Ver-mon-exclusive, so it hardly concerns the likes of us. So... go on, do try your best to survive it, hm?"
And with those parting words, I yanked the pin off the grenade for all I was worth.
-Pssshhhhh.
The pin flew, sparks crackled, and red powder burst upward in a spray...
Then arced through the air in a graceful parabola and landed on the bare ground.
-Fweeee.
-Rumble, rumble.
Dead center among the Vermon.
-BANG!!
"Kwon Haeseong, RUN!!"
As if my shout were the starting gun, the pack of Vermon went berserk.
The man carrying Taejae brushed past me and bolted in the opposite direction. The red powder bloomed soundlessly overhead, spreading like fog.
The confused monsters collided with one another, toppled over, and shrieked all manner of noises as they scattered.
Straight line. Just run in a straight line.
Obviously, a smoke grenade was nothing more than a fire drill prop.
Which meant its vision-obscuring effect made no distinction between humans and monsters.
In the end, the only things I could trust right now were my senses and my memory.
-Thwap.
In an instant, I grabbed the forearm of a figure I assumed was Kwon Haeseong. From the other side, a low voice asked for confirmation.
"...Teacher Hwiyeon?"
"That's me."
A relieved sigh reached my ears, and soon a small body was gathered into my arms.
"Teacher, I can't see."
"That makes two of us."
Through the red haze, I could just barely make out two heads tucked against Kwon Haeseong's chest.
That was everyone accounted for.
"Let's run! That stuff won't last long!"
With my free hand I smacked Kwon Haeseong hard on the back and took off.
Away from the entrance — toward the other exit-and-entrance I'd spotted leading from the center of the maze garden, along the path to the iron-bar prison.
That was where we headed first.
Right now was the time for one step back to enable two steps forward.
"...!!"
My lungs burned and my legs had gone numb from running. Somewhere along the way, the man, Kwon Haeseong, and I had ended up running abreast, wandering the maze garden together.
Albeit with a light chase thrown into the mix.
-UUUH!!
A little while after the smoke grenade went off, the Vermon finally realized the magnitude of the con they'd fallen for — and their entire bearing changed.
From I'll beat you down to I'll kill you.
If they caught us now, it wouldn't end with a mere nick from those blades.
"Hey! You're field team, aren't you? You handled those thug monsters just fine earlier — how about you be the sacrifice here?!"
Apparently not winded in the slightest, the man had turned his babbling on Kwon Haeseong this time.
"......."
But this guy wasn't giving him any reaction either.
"Big guy! Can you not hear me? I'm asking if you'll sacrifice yourself!"
"......."
"Hey! You! Be honest! You're deliberately ignoring me right now, aren't you!"
"......."
Holding back a sigh, I opened my mouth.
"If this man sacrifices himself, who's going to carry three children while running?"
At that, the man glanced at Cheonji and Noah nestled in Kwon Haeseong's arms and finally shut his mouth.
Should've done that from the start.
-Padapadapadak.
-UUUH!!!
"......."
"What is that!"
Mid-sprint, the man gasped out between ragged breaths, eyes going wide with alarm.
"Hah... hah..."
I followed his panicked gaze with my eyes alone.
"......?"
The blue glow of the ore, which had until now flickered only at our feet, had somehow crept up to our waists.
"...It never ends, does it."
Just as Kwon Haeseong's steady voice suggested, the number of stones set into the maze walls had multiplied beyond all reason.
Nearly enough to carpet the ground entirely.
Our moving shadows reflected off the enclosure walls. It looked as if we were walking along the bottom of the sea.
Through all the countless forks in the maze, this one passage alone had been steadily multiplying its share of the ore.
As if it wanted us to come this way.
And at every crossroads, we had chosen instinctively.
The brighter-lit path.
And now we'd arrived.
At the end this path had been leading us to.
"It's a cave."
A dark, enormous cave.
"...I don't think the monsters are following us anymore."
The Vermon, who had hunted us like they meant to kill, had grown hesitant the closer we came to the cave. Then, seeing us step fully inside, they huffed and postured for a moment... and turned back.
"So what's the plan now, Teacher?"
The man set Taejae down and folded his arms with theatrical slowness as he asked.
"Before that, there's something I'd like to ask you."
Wait — Kwon Haeseong?
A voice flat and without inflection echoed through the cave. I forgot all about how badly I wanted to collapse on the spot and turned to watch the two of them square off.
"You... you're not a BOND employee, are you?"
What?
My head snapped up toward the man. The kidnapper bastard wasn't even a BOND employee?
Then why is he here?
At Kwon Haeseong's question, the man gave a small, awkward cough. Then Kwon Haeseong reached out and plucked the hat off his head—
...Drops of sweat fell, and the man's face was fully revealed.
Now that I looked properly, the state of him...
His eyes were ringed with deep purple bruises, and his cheeks were swollen tight — he'd clearly taken a beating from someone.
I gave the man a quick once-over, top to bottom.
His manner of speech had been off from the very beginning, now that I thought about it.
"Why should I have to tell YOU that?!"
Huh? He's blowing up at us?
Just like someone with something to hide.
Kwon Haeseong took a step toward the man. Sensing the charged atmosphere, I tucked all four children behind my back.
"Someone who isn't BOND personnel, wandering around inside company premises..."
"What? Hey, what would you know! I just... you know the outside security contractor, right? I'm from there!"
"An outside security contractor? Then give me the name, at least."
"Te-Tektik! Never heard of it? We're a major corporation!"
"Tektik... BOND doesn't use outside contractors. Security policy."
"What? Hey, you overgrown...! Frankly, you're the suspicious one here. You're not really a kindergarten teacher, are you?"
Lies weren't going to fly, so now he was trying to flip the suspicion around, was he?
A transparent play.
"I am... a kindergarten teacher, actually."
The man jabbed his index finger repeatedly into Kwon Haeseong's chest, smiling crookedly. He seemed to think he'd seized back the initiative.
"Ha..."
I was certain I had said it...
That if anyone dared go after Kwon Haeseong, I would take their side without question.
I let out a deep breath and issued the man a warning.
"That's enough."
Unless he wanted to lose even the few teeth still intact.
I didn't think Kwon Haeseong would throw a punch over something like this — but you never really know with people.
The man, however, ignored my warning entirely and shouted on, spoiling for a bigger fight.
"Teacher! You're still young, so you probably don't know — but this world is full of people like him!"
What on earth was he even saying?
I tilted my head sideways. I genuinely could not understand it.
For a deflection tactic... why did it sound so sincere?
"Do you have any idea what kind of body this is?! Have you ever seen an ordinary man built like this in your life?!"
Ah. It's about the build?
Well, no — I hadn't. But Kwon Haeseong was a physical enhancement Awakened, one specialized in raw power and strength among that type.
Of course he wasn't ordinary. He was an Awakened, after all.
"This guy is definitely the nastiest piece of work in the whole field team! First dungeon delving, now infiltrating as a kindergarten teacher — where does it end!"
"Excuse me, one moment—"
"I've lived my whole life and never seen an infiltration this sloppy! BOND is done for, finished. If they're using kindergarten teachers, they might as well send them to some gym or a mine."
...Was Kwon Haeseong about to cry?
"Honestly, let's lay our cards on the table. Fine — me? Not a BOND employee! But you're not a kindergarten teacher either, are you!"
So this was his idea of a truth confession.
Standing before a speechless Kwon Haeseong, the man thrust his own head forward, demanding the truth in return.
A petty brawl. In the middle of this situation.
I reached out to stop the man.
"Excuse me, first let's all just calm—"
"......."
In that instant, a wrongness brushed against the back of my neck. With the two of them still squabbling before me, an entirely different thought flashed through my mind.
Since when do children get this quiet?
...No. They don't.
Children who had held conversations in front of monsters had no business being this silent.
Whoosh. My head whipped around on pure reflex.
"......!"
I felt my blood run cold from head to toe.
...Three children lay sprawled on the ground, eyes closed.
I pressed a finger under one of their noses and listened for a heartbeat — it seemed they had simply fallen asleep. Panicked by the sudden turn of events, I called for Kwon Haeseong, but—
"Teacher Haeseong."
"......."
"Teacher Haeseong?"
When I turned back, neither Kwon Haeseong nor the man was anywhere in sight. I clenched and unclenched my trembling hand, and slowly lowered my gaze, which had been angled upward.
And there they were... both Kwon Haeseong and the man, collapsed on the ground.
As if dead.
"......."
I turned my head again. Something flickered, faint and indistinct, against the cave wall where water dripped in slow beads.
A shadow.
A shadow.
And at the end of that shadow stood... a human hand, so enormous it was almost impossible to believe it belonged to a person at all.
Whatever it was, it was advancing toward us — and it was delighted to do so.