17. Taboo (6)
"Went and ran their mouth for nothing."
"Huh? He's still alive? Librarians really are built tough."
Nihila drew the pistol at her hip and racked the slide.
"Wh-why are you doing this... Please... spare me."
Jeon Taeho was crawling across the floor, begging for his life. Every frantic thrash he made to escape sent the pool of blood squelching under him.
Bang—
One shot cracked out, and the reports kept coming without a pause. Only when the slide locked back with a click did the gunfire finally stop.
Nihila kicked the heap of spent casings aside and opened her mouth.
"Jaehee... was it? Check for me. Dead, or alive?"
Asking me to confirm a man who was obviously dead—between that and the vacant look in her eyes, her humanity had clearly been worn down to nothing.
"So... I get it. Drop the small talk. That's what you mean?"
"How about this time, we actually go our separate ways?"
She looked down at me without so much as a flicker of expression, and I couldn't easily read what she was after.
"If I meant to end it here, I never would have started."
I wasn't about to be led around that easily either.
"Jaehee."
"You're set on seeing it through to the end? Then you'll survive."
At those words—you'll survive—I nearly turned to look at Hana and Seoyoon.
"I'll be straight with you. I'm no combatant. Even if I pulled together every soldier in this place, we couldn't kill you."
"The fight just now confirmed that well enough."
Nihila slid the cooled pistol back into its holster and propped her chin on her hand.
"Hana and Seoyoon, though—I think we could take them."
The smile she wore was faint, but the gaze looking down on me carried a deep, crushing pressure. At some point, two heavily armed soldiers had come to stand on either side of her.
"Thanks to you, I'm in a bind myself. You know that?"
Her face was smiling. The look in it was bitter.
"Rather than leave this half-finished for both of us, you look after your people, and I do what I came to do. How's that?"
One finger rose from the hand at her chin and wound a lock of that antique, light-brown hair around itself.
Unlike the first time, this offer was rational. The fact that she'd laid out the strength of her own forces—information she had no need to reveal—was itself a signal to think it through carefully. Meticulous. Cunning.
Of course, it could be a lie. We might clear this laboratory without a single sacrifice. But that was nothing more than a wish.
Just as the doubt and the conflict were sinking deeper—
"None of you have even killed a person."
The line drove in like a wedge.
Hana wasn't letting it show, but the Jangsanbeom's mental attack must have hit her hard. Seoyoon was still trembling violently, spilling words to herself. And in a situation like this, forcing our way through by killing people on top of it...
"Fine. We'll pull out here. In exchange, neither of us touches the other. That's firm."
"I told you. We have to move quickly."
Nihila turned away with a thin smile.
"Ah, right. We only leave each other alone for now."
"After all, you learned something you were never supposed to know."
"We might meet again before long. Try to stay alive."
The vast, pure malice riding her voice reached out to cow me. I'll kill you someday. Be afraid until then. That was the meaning. But something like that wasn't going to press me down.
"Hey. I said it before—drop the act."
"Right now, you're not the one letting me go. I'm the one letting you go."
Just before she vanished through the entrance, Nihila stopped.
"You wipe that neck and wait for me, Nihila."
She held back a soldier who had started to step forward.
"Oh my. You're even remembering my name? How thrilling. I'll be waiting."
Leaving that empty smile behind, Nihila disappeared into the dark under escort.
I put out the most urgent fire first.
"Hana! You okay?"
I rushed to her and checked her condition again.
"Yeah... I think I'll be all right once a little time passes."
Her lips and hands were shaking hard, but the light in her eyes hadn't gone out. Just as she said, time would bring her back on its own. I gave her head a light pat and turned to Cha Seoyoon.
"It's my fault... I'm always like this. I fail, and then I fail again."
"I'm sorry, you two. I couldn't protect you. It's because of me. Please, just stop now."
"Why am I always such a wreck... Me too, hk—hkk, hkk..."
Hands clamped over both ears, body curled in on itself, Cha Seoyoon was pouring the words out. Saliva spilled unchecked from her mouth, and her eyes were dying.
"Seoyoung, how far has the flooding gone?"
Calculating now! Give me just a moment.
One second felt like a minute. From somewhere far off, a sudden blast rolled in. Right on its heels came screams, the sound of something being smashed apart, gunfire—every kind of noise tangled together and pouring toward us.
So this was the work she'd said she had to do.
"S-save me! Please! I'm a librarian! A librarian!"
Kim Myeonghwan appeared in the entrance, clutching his side.
"L-Librarian Jaehee! Please, save me."
"I'm sorry. Everything I've done until now was wrong. Please, just save me! I don't want to d—"
In that instant a hole opened in Kim Myeonghwan's forehead, and a bullet whipped past beside me. My eyes met the soldier who had put it there. The soldier turned away without a word.
He was a villain, but watching him get cleaned up wasn't exactly pleasant. It didn't make me sad, either, and no pity rose in me. Jeon Taeho. Kim Myeonghwan. All I felt was that both of them had met the petty ends that suited them.
Librarian Jaehee, Cha Seoyoon has not been overtaken by the flood.
The drainage seems to have happened quickly, before her internal imagery power was entirely spent.
Now that I thought about it, that tracked. Even if you entered a Flooded Zone above your grade, you could hold out for thirty minutes at the least. Which meant Cha Seoyoon, right now...
Her mind had collapsed under the Jangsanbeom's roar.
"I'm sorry, kids. I... you..."
"I didn't want to be like this either!!"
"I'm sorry I got angry. But couldn't you let me go now...?"
"Cha Seoyoon."
I hauled the prone Cha Seoyoon upright.
"Cha Seoyoon!"
I caught both hands clamped over her ears and pulled them down.
"Jaehee...?"
"You're younger than me, and already Grade 4. I must look like a joke to you."
Cha Seoyoon's hands were cupping my face now. Unfocused, drooling—she was a miserable sight.
Smack—
I slapped her with everything I had. Hana, watching from the side, flinched, her eyes going wide. My hand went numb to the wrist.
A hollow laugh broke from Cha Seoyoon's turned face. Not a real laugh—a laugh salted with self-mockery.
"Pathetic, aren't I...?"
"I'll speak plainly. I am older than you."
Whether her mind had come back, or she'd simply let it go—it felt much closer to the latter.
"I envy you... Let's go back. Now."
Her twintails hung limp and forlorn. Cha Seoyoon undid them. She stared at the hair ties for a while, then scattered them weakly across the floor.
"Hey. Grade 6 Twintails."
Cha Seoyoon, who had been trudging away, stopped and glared at me.
"What? Grade 6 Twintails?"
"Having fun? Dragging someone through it all the way to the end?"
"Not really. I don't actually like cursing people."
The sight of her so drained sent anger surging up in me.
"But I do have one thing to say."
"You really look like a fucking idiot."
Hana, her face saying she had to stop this somehow, started forward to step between us. I stopped her.
"I know! You don't have to say it like that! I know!"
"You know?! Then good for you. So why do you look like that?!"
"When things don't work out, sometimes you bash your head in! Does that mean your life is over?!"
"You—! You only talk so big because you've never been smashed like that!"
"Have you ever been broken the way I have?!"
Cha Seoyoon screamed it, raw.
"You think I never have? I grew up without parents!"
"I grew up being called an orphan, and I nearly lost my comrades while I stood there helpless."
"You think I don't go through it too?"
"But I don't do it like you. I'd be too ashamed of myself."
Somewhere in the middle of it, Cha Seoyoon had clenched her teeth and was holding the tears in.
"So... what am I supposed to do... You're telling me..."
The harder her hands gripped her pants, the deeper she bit into her lower lip. Tears began to leak from eyes squeezed to their limit.
"I... I didn't want to be like this either."
"I wanted... to do well, too..."
It didn't last. The eyes that had been damming the tears burst like a broken levee. From her open throat, only a choked, hiccuping sound barely managed to escape.
Hana went to her and pulled Seoyoon into a tight embrace. The torrent of feeling pouring out of her ached in my own chest. I could faintly feel the weight of all the time she must have endured, and endured alone.
"What else is there? You do it until it works."
"When you wrapped that bandage, what were you thinking?"
I looked at the wounded place on Seoyoon's leg. Held in Hana's arms, Seoyoon ran a hand over it.
"And what exactly did you fail to do?"
"We got this far because of the information you've been carefully gathering all this time."
"Tell me to pull off even this much in a shithole like this, and I couldn't."
I meant it, and I waved a hand the way you shoo flies. After a good cry, she looked a little steadier.
"Hana, tie the twintails back for her. How do you even do this?"
"Give me the hair tie. Here—you gather the hair in your hand like this—"
Hana smiled and gathered Seoyoon's hair in her hands. Seoyoon was sniffling, her face a wreck. A wreck, but it looked a degree looser than before.
The moment one twintail was finished, Seoyoon's eyes suddenly went wide.
"Noona...?"
Noona? A voice I didn't recognize was coming from behind me.
"Noona!!"
Seoyoon shoved me aside and launched herself from the spot. She didn't even hesitate—just pushed straight past me. What?
"Yonghyeon? Yonghyeon, is that you?"
Seoyoon cupped a young, blood-soaked face in both hands and asked it over and over.
"Noona, you came to save us..."
Yonghyeon collapsed into Seoyoon's arms. Behind him were four more children.
Don't tell me...
"I knew you'd come... I'm glad I held on, no matter what it took."
"But, Noona, I couldn't protect all of them... I'm sorry..."
Yonghyeon's roughly trembling hands were scorched. His clothes were rags, soaked in blood, with traces of burning scattered all over them.
"It's all right. You did well. You did more than enough. Let's go back. I'm so glad... truly..."
I could feel life moving again through Seoyoon as she clutched Yonghyeon and sobbed. Seoyoon had come back to herself, and we'd gotten a few of the children out. Now we really had to leave.
"Seoyoon! Hana!"
Our eyes met without a word.
"Let's go!"
I took the lead and Hana took the rear, and we ran. We didn't stop. The burning laboratory fell farther and farther behind us.
We ran and ran, and reached the Yellow Zone. The relief of simply being alive let the tension drain out of my whole body. The cold night air cooled the sweat and brought my heat down.
I was getting my breath in order when Seoyoon came over. She'd stopped halfway through tying it, so it had become a sidetail. I tossed out a joke for no particular reason.
"Grade 6 Sidetail. What is it?"
Seoyoon let out a short breath of a laugh. Seeing her smile felt good.
"Thank you."
The sudden confession caught me a little off guard.
"This is when you just say thank you, right?"
Seoyoon didn't blush. She answered while looking me straight in the eye. I hoped that from here on, she wouldn't lose her nerve—that she'd hold her head up.
"Lady Nihila, what do you intend to do now?"
"If we report this as it is, they'll wipe all of us out too. I'll file it as a failed experiment."
Nihila smoked as she stared, empty-eyed, at the ruined laboratory.
"Have all the security teams tied to us been dealt with?"
"From the moment Han Jaehee broke in, we summoned every one of them and erased them along with the cleanup."
"Then, for now, the only Pandora personnel who know about us are Jaehee and his people."
Nihila was stroking a seal that bore the image of an inverted World Tree.
"Even if we falsify it, the Audit Team noticing is only a matter of time."
"Still. Han Jaehee's glitch—we've managed to take a move of our own."
Nihila swept her half-lidded eyes over the people who remained.
This is going to be a vicious fight...
She flicked the cigarette away with a soft tok. From the fallen butt, a small ember caught on a dry twig. Before the fire could spread—
"Let's go. There's a lot to do."
Nihila's heel crushed the butt.