Take Me With You
Take me with you.
Thud-thud-thud-thud.
I was racing up the stairs as the underground began to collapse around me.
"Hurry up!"
Choi A-rin shouted down at me from the top of the stairwell.
"What are you doing here?"
"You weren't coming out, so I waited."
She must have come back down out of worry when I showed no sign of surfacing even after time had passed.
We scrambled up the last remaining steps and managed to escape before the underground fully caved in. The others who'd gotten out with us looked like they couldn't believe their own feet were standing on solid ground again, practically beside themselves with relief.
I stood watching them quietly. Choi A-rin came over and sat down beside me.
"So what now?"
It wasn't as if I'd pulled them out without a plan. I'd already thought through what came next, so there was nothing to worry about.
Except—
"Just wait a little. Someone's coming."
Besides me and Choi A-rin, only three others had made it out safely.
That's not many.
From what I'd heard, the other test subjects had been so adamant about staying that there was no way to bring them along. I hadn't accounted for that. That was on me.
Which was why—
"It's fine. It's not your fault."
She didn't need to wear that look. When I said it, Choi A-rin's head dipped in a small nod.
It had been a race against time. There hadn't been a moment to spare for persuasion, and forcing the ones who refused to leave could have put everyone already with us at risk. There was no room to drag unwilling people out by force.
I was still turning that over when a voice came through my earpiece.
"Boss, they're here."
"Got it."
I stood up at the signal.
"Choi A-rin. Hero Association people are about to show up. Give them this."
I held out a document envelope. She took it, staring at me blankly.
"What is this...?"
"Hand it over and they'll handle the rest. See you around."
There was no official warrant out for me, but the Hero Association had been hounding me in all but name, and running into them was the last thing I wanted. I'd planned to leave the papers proving these people's situation and get out—
Her hand clamped down on my sleeve and wouldn't let go.
"I'm going too."
"What...?"
The answer was so unexpected I heard myself ask it back like an idiot.
"Take me with you."
"......"
A beat of silence.
And then—
"Boss! They're almost here! You need to go now!"
"Haa... Fine."
Long story short, I handed the documents I'd meant for Choi A-rin over to the three who'd escaped with us, and then—unable to break her stubborn insistence on tagging along—I fled the scene with her in tow.
Choi A-rin trotted ahead of me, humming through her nose like she was having the time of her life. Both her hands were full of spare clothes and assorted daily necessities. There must have been something important in there, because when I offered to carry them she refused with a ferocity that left no room for argument.
"Going to the Association would've been way more comfortable."
"You said two guys live there. It's probably a total disaster. I'll clean it up."
I'd said the same thing enough times that she stopped answering properly and just redirected the conversation.
Eleventh floor.
The elevator let us out at the apartment Park Jae-hyun and I used as a base of operations—neither particularly stylish nor particularly run-down, just an ordinary place of ordinary size you could find anywhere.
I left Choi A-rin standing behind me and set my hand on the doorknob, only for hesitation to catch up with me at the last second.
"It's kind of a mess in there. You sure you're okay with that?"
Maybe she found my dithering unbearable. From behind me, Choi A-rin reached past and turned the knob herself.
"How bad could it possibly—"
She stepped through the doorway and froze on the threshold, looking thoroughly stunned.
"Haaawn. Boss, you're back?"
Park Jae-hyun emerged from a heap of scattered trash, squeezing his way out of whatever pocket of space he'd claimed. Judging by the yawn, he'd only just woken up.
"This is Choi A-rin. The one I mentioned on the phone."
I introduced the still-slack-jawed A-rin, who hadn't quite recovered from the shock.
"Ah— a-ah, h-hello."
Jae-hyun peeked only his face out from the trash pile and managed a greeting. The guy was fine at everything else, but his social skills were catastrophic—he could barely speak to someone he'd just met.
The greeting finally snapped Choi A-rin back to herself. She bowed her head in return.
"Hello. I'll be in your care for a while."
Then she started scanning the room, eyes moving over every corner like a building inspector on a bad day. Under that stern appraisal, Jae-hyun and I both stood frozen, not daring to say a word.
"You two... how exactly have you been living in a place like this?"
"It's a little messy, sure, but is it really that bad?"
I tried a mild objection to the harsh grading.
"That bad?! Is this a home or a landfill?!"
"H-hieek!"
Jae-hyun let out a pathetic squeak and nearly jumped out of his skin at Choi A-rin's sudden volume. Not that I could call him pathetic for it. I'd flinched too.
"Both of you, get out. Stay out until I say you can come back in."
"We're the ones who live here, though—at least let us help—"
"Out."
"...Yes, ma'am."
We just left.
How long were we banished outside? Twenty, maybe thirty minutes at most.
"Whoa."
The second we got permission to come back in, Jae-hyun and I let out the exact same awed sound at the exact same time.
It hadn't been long at all, and yet the place had been reborn beyond recognition.
Was this apartment always this big?
Lately, living just the two of us, the space had started to feel cramped. Now it felt like there was room enough for three without breaking a sweat.
"Come in and sit down. I'll cook something. I saw some ingredients when I cleaned out the fridge—mind if I use them?"
"Yeah, go ahead. Are they still good, though?"
"Borderline."
We traded that back and forth as we started to take off our shoes—and beside me, Park Jae-hyun was watching the whole scene with tears in his eyes.
"Boss... how long has it been since we had a real home-cooked meal?"
"I cooked for you last time."
"Did you...?"
"You little—you sat there eating it and saying it was good."
Come to think of it, I might have hit him pretty hard in the head that day. Don't tell me—
While we were going at it beside her—
"Get in here already! And if either of you can cook, come help!"
"Yes..."
"Hieek! S-sorry!"
What was I supposed to do with this guy.
I shook my head at Jae-hyun and went over to Choi A-rin's side to help prep the ingredients.
"You're better at this than I expected."
Why did everyone who watched me cook say that.
I wasn't top-tier, but I had a decent amount of experience under my belt.
"Of course I am. I've been living on my own for over ten years."
"How old are you right now?"
"S-sixteen..."
"So you've been living alone since you were six?"
Choi A-rin looked over at me with a face full of barely suppressed laughter.
"Let's just move on."
I'd already learned the hard way that saying things like that only left me with bruises. Going another round would just hurt me all over again.
While I recited a quiet little poem of resignation in my head, Choi A-rin lined up the ingredients and started layering them into the pot in careful order.
"Why are you so good at this? Didn't you say you've been locked up since you were ten?"
She shouldn't have had many chances to cook in a long time, and yet her hands moved with an almost unnatural ease. I had to ask.
"Even before the facility, housework was my job."
The answer came back with the weight of a bleak home life behind it.
"...Maybe we should just cook quietly."
I was starting to think this whole category of conversation was a bad match for both of us.
"Whoa! This is amazing!"
Park Jae-hyun cried out in pure bliss and tore into the stew Choi A-rin had made like a man possessed. She watched him with a proud little hmph of a smile.
"Hey. If you eat like that, people are going to think I never feed you and just work you to the bone."
"You gave me money. You did not give me food."
He said it while chewing a mouthful of stew, and once the words landed, even I had nothing to say back.
"Um... c-could I have just one more bowl...?"
Jae-hyun had already cleaned his plate. The bold eater from a moment ago vanished the second he had to speak, shrinking into sudden meekness. But Choi A-rin seemed to have already adapted to his habits; she just smiled, refilled the empty bowl, and passed it over. Jae-hyun took it and went right back to devouring it with the same desperate joy.
We traded small talk through a meal that was, in its own way, almost warm. While Yeon-chan and Jae-hyun—well, mostly Jae-hyun—handled the cleanup, Choi A-rin went to shower and change.
Close to an hour later, she finished and stepped into the room to find Yeon-chan and Jae-hyun already done with the dishes and hunched over the computer, deep in something that looked important. She quietly took a seat in the corner and let the day settle over her.
This is completely unreal.
Impossible things had kept happening, one after another. A hand reaching out at the exact moment she'd thought it was over. Being rescued—and then a warm meal on top of it.
Maybe it was only after the shower, with her body gone soft and heavy, that the tension finally let go of her completely.
Her head dipped.
Choi A-rin dozed off without meaning to, slumped against the wall.
"Nn... mm."
She didn't know how long she'd been out, but sunlight was still coming through the window, so it couldn't have been that long. When she shifted, something slid off her shoulder with a soft rustle.
A blanket...?
She looked down. It was the one Yeon-chan had been wearing before she fell asleep. She pulled it back around herself and looked up—
Yeon-chan, who'd been working the computer so intently earlier, was nodding off in his chair.
"Hoo..."
The sight pulled a quiet laugh out of her before she could stop it.
"You should get a good look while you can. Days like this don't come around often. The boss barely even dozes, let alone actually sleeps."
The voice came from behind her. She turned and found Park Jae-hyun peeking only his face out from behind the refrigerator.
Anyone else might have commented on how bizarre he looked standing like that. But after a full day of calibrating to Jae-hyun's particular brand of social terror, Choi A-rin didn't bother questioning it. Besides, something in what he'd said snagged her attention too hard to waste breath on anything else.
"He doesn't sleep?"
"I'm not sure since when, but even before he met me, he was already running himself ragged."
She didn't ask where.
She already had a pretty good idea.
"Places like... today's?"
She asked it with a small, stubborn hope that the answer would be no.
"Yeah."
The reply crushed that hope without mercy. Jae-hyun's face carried a bitter little smile, like he felt the same way.
"He's a little weird, but he's not a bad person."
As she listened, Choi A-rin's gaze had already drifted back to Yeon-chan.
"I know. I saw."
The sinking sun caught him full-on, and the backlight made it look as if Park Yeon-chan himself were glowing.
And then the next day arrived.
"You bastard! You absolute bastard! After everything I did—!"
"You little punk, checking how old your intel is is the bare minimum! No wonder every place we hit was packed. How do you screw up something that basic?"
Choi A-rin tilted her head, watching Park Yeon-chan hold Jae-hyun in a handstand with his legs locked in place, administering what could only be described as torture.