Seoul Night (1)
A black sphere dropped from the sky. The bus ceiling crumpled like a sheet of paper. The driver sitting directly beneath it was crushed through his seat and burst, a mist of blood exploding outward.
BOOOOM—
A delayed shockwave shattered the windows. Thousands of rain-soaked shards of glass went flying.
The sky opened.
When I opened my eyes, the world was still red. And so was I. My entire body was soaked in blood.
While I struggled to sit up, the monster that had looked like a black sphere unfurled itself and flew off somewhere. I made a mental note: there were flying monsters.
"Urgh."
When I finally managed to stand on my crutches, half the bus was simply gone. I checked what was left of the back seats. Only one person looked like they might still be alive — the woman who'd handed me a tissue earlier.
I ditched one crutch and hoisted her onto my shoulder. My head was a mess, but I shoved it all aside. Right now, only one thing mattered.
Stay still, and you die.
Outside the bus, the six-lane road blazed with fire. Dark-crimson hail fell from the sky. The black, muscle-bound monsters dropped like cannonballs, each one punching a crater into the ground before unfolding back into its original shape like crumpled paper being smoothed flat. No two of them looked alike.
A centipede coiled round and round a building, plucking people out one by one like an anteater. A giant with three pairs of arms smashed fleeing humans like a game of Whac-A-Mole. A feline creature munched on fallen bodies, chewing them down without hurry.
Reality drifted away. I stood still and watched.
"AAAAAGH! AAAAAAAAH!!!"
"Sa—"
Screams. Death cries.
Squelch. Splatter.
The sound of a human being mashed like dough.
"AAAAH!"
A piercing scream from a kid in a school uniform. My eyes went to it without thinking. A boy, maybe middle-school age, shaking a torso that lay beside him, screaming his lungs out.
"AAAAH! Dad! AAAAAAAH!!!"
A lizard the size of a truck sat next to the headless corpse. Its lolling eyes rolled toward the boy, and its throat bobbed once in a swallow. I had a pretty good idea where the kid's father's head had gone. And where the kid's head was about to go.
Sure enough, the lizard snapped its jaws around the boy's head.
"——!"
The scream went muffled. The monster dragged the boy's body along, still clamped onto his skull. It wasn't that it didn't have teeth. It looked like it was playing with him.
"——! ——!!!"
The boy's torso writhed like a worm. Limbs thrashing, fingernails ripping out as they scraped the ground, bent fingers leaving five streaks of blood — and then a sound.
"Sa—ve me—!!!"
I thought I heard him begging to be saved.
"Ah..."
My body shuddered. I'd known the Gate would open. I'd known something dangerous would come out of it. I'd known it would probably be monsters, and that a lot of people would die. My body still trembled. But my head went ice-cold.
The monster hadn't noticed me yet. The distance was far enough. Judging by how it was toying with the kid, its intelligence was at least that of a beast — maybe higher. Creatures like that don't kill their prey right away. I didn't know how long until the boy died, but for now, he still had value as the monster's plaything.
I'm a cripple. I've got a woman slung over my shoulder. ...If I leave the kid as bait and run now. I could survive. I could save the woman, too.
I carefully took a step.
Thud.
Huh.
That's weird. Why am I laying the woman down on the ground?
Thud, shuffle. Thud, shuffle.
The monster was getting closer. I didn't even know why I was doing this. I'd told Moon Sangjun I'd become a hero, but that was just something I'd said to stay alive. So no matter what, surviving should have come first.
Shuffle. Shuffle. Shuffle.
But that thing wouldn't let the kid go. Because the world shouldn't be like this. Because just like I'd wrecked my own home when I became a dragon, that kid shouldn't have to die with his head ripped off by some monster that fell from the sky.
I limped toward the monster. When I got close enough to reach out and touch it, the thing finally looked at me. I asked the monster, its mouth still working around the boy:
Squeee?
The boy's body swayed as the monster tilted its head.
"I said, having fun?"
SQUEEE!
The monster's mouth cracked open, and thick pink drool spilled out. To me, it looked like it was smiling. A very familiar kind of sneer.
"Ha."
Hadn't I said that to save people, I had to be human too? Doing this right now was a little funny, honestly. But I didn't think I needed to be human right now.
A pounding heartbeat thundered through my skull. An unprecedented power, boiling like magma, raced through my veins and set my blood on fire. My hair whipped in the wind, and in the instant flames mixed with my breath — the falling rain changed direction.
The world was swallowed by silence.
......
The crackling flames. The screaming humans. Even the impact of the black hail falling from the sky seemed to vanish in that instant. Even the monsters chewing on people held their breath as the dragon lifted its head. And took a step.
CRACK.
That was the starting gun.
"SKREEEEE!"
"WOOOOOONG!"
"GRRRRRRRR!"
Ape. Cat. Dog. Dozens of monsters, regardless of type, charged the dragon. I didn't dodge. There was no need.
CRUNCH!
The upper half of the cat that lunged first simply vanished. I spat out the chunk of flesh in my mouth and raised a foreleg.
CRACK— SPLAT!
The giant that charged next was crushed like a pancake. Its crumpled spine punched into the asphalt, and black muscle burst like a water balloon.
The lizard that had been flung aside looked this way. It flicked its tongue at the kid it had dropped, smacked its lips, then turned and fled.
That one had to die. Now.
I spread my wings.
WHOOOOOOSH—
Everything beneath them went flying into the sky. And on the next wingbeat, they were slammed back into the ground. Feeling the corpses of monsters crushed and burst beneath me, I soared into the air.
The lizard was waddling away on its four short legs, scrambling in a panic. I gauged the distance and dove.
KRAAAANG!!!
The shockwave rolled out, and the lizard's back, pinned under my hind leg, was pulverized. It was tougher than the others — the head and tail were still attached. But it wasn't alive. I could feel that it was dead.
And behind me, I felt the centipede descending the building. I swung my tail.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
Dozens of the centipede's legs shattered. Nauseating green blood sprayed, but it was still moving. I seized its head in a hind claw and drew a light breath.
Then there was light.
KRAAAAA—
A beam of violet heat sliced across the sky. The surrounding asphalt seethed and boiled. Every nearby monster burst into flame. Concrete and rebar glowed white-hot and melted, and the centipede in the beam's path vanished without even leaving ash.
Killing monsters was too easy. It made all the worrying I'd done as a human feel ridiculous.
Something that looked like a black wolf lunged, splitting its mouth into four. I swung a foreleg, and a corpse split six ways was left behind. A writhing, caterpillar-like thing shot something at me. I puffed it away like dust, and it burned up along with the monsters around it.
Before I knew it, I was wearing a savage grin. The laugh spilled out.
UUUUU—
It was less a sound than a vibration. The big monsters flinched. The small ones froze. I slaughtered the ones that had stopped, still smiling. The monsters kept coming, and I kept killing. I tore them apart, smashed them, burned them to death.
Then, suddenly, I realized. There were too many monsters.
Beyond the sky, kilometers away, I saw a monster looking this way. Our eyes met, and I felt something. Fear. Wariness. Hostility. And yet, a strange sensation of being drawn to each other.
Things I'd forgotten came back to me. I flew up into the sky.
I could see the black monsters covering East Seoul Terminal. The ones leaping between buildings, the ones smashing cars as they ran down the roads. And far off, something so enormous it couldn't fit in a single glance, leaning out of the Gate. They were all looking at me.
I knew it instinctively. Just as I could sense the monsters, they could sense me. A flame that's too bright draws insects. To them, I was the greatest fire-demon in the world. And no insect ever gives up diving into the light just because it's afraid of burning.
FWOOSH!
I burned a charging monster and thought. Monsters are drawn to dragons. And people die just from the monsters gathering. The woman I'd laid on the ground would die. The kid the lizard had spat out would die.
I folded my wings and descended toward where the kid had been.
THOOM!
The kid was already on his feet. He'd even pulled the coat off the woman I'd laid down and was performing CPR. I stared, dumbfounded, until he noticed me and stumbled backward.
"Hii—ih?"
I carefully extended a foreleg. The kid examined the blood-soaked fur and the scraps of flesh caught in my claws with blank eyes. Then his legs gave out and he collapsed.
"Uh, uh..."
My body locked up. To the kid, I was a monster.
I drew a deep breath and roared with everything I had.
The ones crawling on the ground collapsed, legs and tentacles trembling. The ones in the sky spun and plummeted.
Just like before, I repeated it to myself. People can't tell me apart from the monsters. So if I wanted to save the kid and the woman in front of me, I couldn't be a dragon right now.
To save people, I had to be human too.
The power that had seemed like it would burn forever faded. Sparks scattered as my wings vanished. By the time the flames clinging to my breath stretched into pale smoke — I was human again.
I dragged one foot toward the kid. Then I toppled over.
"Ghk—"
I couldn't breathe. No — I was breathing, but it didn't feel like breathing.
The kid stared at me with dazed eyes. His huge pupils were unfocused, but he didn't back away like before.
"It's oka—y."
I wasn't sure that sound had actually come from my mouth. The voice coming from my stinging throat felt farther away than it should.
"It's okay, so..."
I didn't even know what was okay. But I kept talking as I crawled toward him. Apparently I didn't look okay to the kid.
"You're not okay."
He looked at me for a moment, then ran over with a set face and grabbed my arm. I was held like a paper doll in his grip. He tried to help me up, but I couldn't stand. My body felt light, but there was no strength in it.
"...Ugh."
The kid bit his lip, his gaze going to something behind me. I turned my head. A long trail of blood was seeping into the asphalt.
"That... is that mine...?"
"Probably."
"Am I... alive..."
"Yes. But it looks like you're about to die."
The kid took off his jacket and tied it around my thigh. Then he lifted me up. The little brat was about as tall as me, but stronger than I expected.
"...Wait."
"What?"
"The woman. The woman you were just looking at..."
Over the kid's shoulder, I could see her lying on the ground.
"We have to take her too..."
"We can't."
He adjusted his grip as he carried me.
"She's already dead."
"......"
I looked at the woman. Nothing had changed from when I'd carried her out. Just a little rain, a little blood.
"...She's dead?"
"Yes."
"...I see."
I wasn't sad. She was just someone I'd met on the bus a few minutes ago.
"Right..."
My vision blurred a little. The roar I'd poured everything into had worked on the monsters better than I'd expected. Even as the kid ran with me on his back, they couldn't charge us. I mumbled into his shoulder.
"The terminal... you know the basement?"
"What?"
"There's a back-room kind of place in the terminal basement... go there..."
"What? Okay."
The smallest monster I'd seen was a cat the size of a compact car. If we blocked it off well, they wouldn't get inside the building easily.
"Block the entrances with the fire shutters... close all the emergency exit doors..."
"Okay. I will."
"Good. I'm gonna sleep a bit..."
"Huh? You can't do that!"
The kid's voice went muffled.
"Noona!? Open your eyes!"
"...I'm not sleeping."
"Open your eyes! If you sleep now you'll die!!!"
I'm not... sleeping...