Jigwijusa (1)
Was it whatever had grabbed my forearm and hauled on it that threw off my balance?
I twisted my hips in a hurry and stretched my leg out wide. Thud. My foot didn't just land — it drove down into the earth with my full weight pressing through it. For a moment, I had something to push back against the pulling force with.
Even so, the strength dragging my arm was stubbornly relentless. Half against my will, I had to take a few more steps forward.
Whoosh!
The instant I passed through the archway, the air changed entirely. The testing hall had smelled cool yet somehow stifling; this place felt gentle and fresh all around.
"Let... let go of me!"
Of course, I had no spare attention to spare for the fragrance.
Only after being dragged two or three more steps could I finally steady my swaying upper body. The force of my resistance had all but equaled the force pulling me along.
Zzip, zziijip.
My staggering frame regained its balance. But the pull was so strong that my feet scraped across the grassy ground.
The weeds tangled in the earth snagged against my shoe tips, crushed flat and overturned as I went.
While all that was happening, I stole a glance at what was restraining me — something resembling a black tentacle.
Bracing my thighs and core, I laid my free hand on the trapped arm. Small mercy that only one arm had been seized.
Crack-crack-crack!
The captured hand yanked back on the tentacle coiled around me, while the comparatively free one pinched and tore at the part wound around my forearm.
Even that was enough to stop me from being hauled along entirely. I seized the opening and somehow unwound the thing from my arm.
...A power line?
Only then did I realize what the "tentacle" actually was. It was a power cable.
Grimacing, I unwound the coil of metal sheathed in black rubber. Whirr. At last the cable came free of my forearm.
I immediately backed away. Sure, it was loose now — but who knew when that cable might lunge at me again.
The archway—
Behind me, where I'd retreated, there was — naturally, as if it had never existed at all — no archway.
Swallowing the sigh that threatened to burst out of me, I kept the cable and my surroundings in the corner of my eye.
For now, the cable showed no sign of moving again. I checked its maximum length and put a little more distance between us.
The scenery I took in while doing so was clearly a different species from the inside of the testing hall. What surrounded me was a far more expansive concept than the corridor-garden atmosphere I'd left behind.
"...Ah, come on. Seriously."
Do you know the post-apocalyptic genre? Failing that, stories set in an age after the world has ended and humanity has fallen?
What I was looking at was exactly that kind of thing.
An annex building abandoned for anywhere from decades to centuries, so that part of its outer wall had crumbled and other parts had been devoured by moss and creeping vines. Through the collapsed wall, ruined interior finishings were visible, with weeds growing up thick between them — and above it all fluttered insects made of light.
A medley of the man-made and the natural, without so much as a single human being to be found no matter how hard I looked.
It had the air of a place that would look exactly like this if the annex were abandoned for a few decades from the time I'd taken the exam. At least, that was the impression I got.
No matter how many times I turned it over, this was not reality.
Don't tell me I've actually entered the Rear World? Not an artificial replica — the actual, real back side of the world?
The Rear World. It was the space behind the surface of the world where phantoms resided. Distinctly connected to the reality humans lived in, yet at the same time a separate world severed from it.
But because it was the world's back side, this place received the influence of the front-side world exactly as it was. That was why the annex remained standing, if in a slightly altered form.
A world different from reality yet the same, the same yet different. That was the Rear World.
No, but hold on. Yahui entering the Rear World is supposed to happen in the spring of his seventeenth year.
Wasn't it really too much that my entry got moved up just because I took the third exam? The deviation from the original plot I'd wished for was not supposed to look like this. Why, of all things!
This is honestly driving me crazy.
Still, figuring out my situation came first.
Keeping the power cable warily in view, I ran my thoughts at full speed. What I was thinking about was mostly episodes from the manhwa.
What was the Rear World survival method in the manhwa again?
There had only been a handful of episodes set primarily in the Rear World, so the available information was thin compared to the Gates. It boiled down to inference based on what the protagonist, Baek San, had gone through.
A rescue team came for him, right.
I remembered the plot going: he suffers all manner of ordeal in the Rear World, and then a rescue team shows up almost as an afterthought.
There were lines like, "Glad you didn't die," "How did you even get into the Rear World?" and "Why'd you run all over the place and make yourself so hard to find?" — something along those lines, if I recalled.
Then would it be best for me to hole up somewhere nearby too?
Given that a rescue team had come, and given that "why'd you run around and make yourself hard to find" line, waiting near the entry point seemed right.
And inside the building would be a bit safer than outside.
Thankfully, this wasn't as urgent as the Sudden Gate incident. The situation was already bewildering enough; not having even the luxury to think would have made it far worse.
I entered the annex in the direction leading away from the cable. There was no need to hunt for a door — going in through a collapsed wall did the job just fine.
"Lucky the seasons don't match reality. If it were winter here too, it would've been absolutely miserable."
Right now I was wearing only my relatively thin tracksuit set — the winter issue. Candidates were required to change clothes unconditionally for the sake of a fair exam.
Thanks to that, the current me was traveling with absolutely nothing. No padding to preserve warmth, no drinking water or rations, no weapon for self-defense.
I didn't even have the multi-tool knife I'd absentmindedly carried off while hunting the Lizardmen. The cause: I'd stowed it in a cabinet along with the clothes I'd originally arrived in.
A truly sorrowful state of affairs.
When can I expect the rescue team?
Since I'd vanished mid-exam, the academy brass would surely get a grasp of the situation quickly. But would that translate into a rescue team being assembled just as fast?
...Just in case, I should at least secure food and water. Or no — should I find a hiding spot first?
Rescue would take a minimum of several hours, and in the worst case, more than a full day.
Leaning against an interior wall, I ran through a few possible scenarios for the wait ahead. Once I did, the minimum list of things I needed to accomplish sorted itself out naturally.
This is the Rear World. Phantoms will definitely be prowling around.
Securing drinking water and food as the baseline. It was a chilly autumn day for now, but the temperature would likely drop after nightfall, so cold-weather preparations were necessary too. Just in case, I had to plan for the possibility that no rescue team ever came, and also...
Could this space actually protect me from phantoms?
I looked over the annex of the Rear World.
The building was shaped roughly like a gymnasium, and with the ceiling and walls punctured here and there, it felt a little precarious. Exposed, too, in a way.
Hmm. I'd be safer finding somewhere narrower and more enclosed than this—
BOOM!
A thunderous crash that turned my spine to ice came slamming down into my ears.
My body, slumped against the wall, lifted off its rear on pure reflex — poised to spring up and bolt forward at any moment.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Before long, a different kind of sound reached me, a different texture from the earlier crash. If the first noise had been something like a collision, this one was like something heavy making its way across the ground.
...Speak of the devil and the devil appears, huh?
I worry about phantoms, and an actual phantom shows up?
I moved while hugging the floor, keeping my body as low as a crawl. Closing the distance to the breached wall took no time at all. My eyes poked out through the gap.
"Ah."
And there was exactly one thing to see: a monster with the trunk of an elephant, the body of a bear, and the tail of a tiger.
...Life really is just brutal sometimes.
Judging roughly by eye, the thing's bulk was about the equivalent of two one-ton trucks parked side by side. Smaller than a house, and overwhelmingly larger than a passenger car.
I withdrew my head for a moment and grimaced at nothing. Not that I stopped thinking even then — that was only fitting, since "life is brutal" is not the same thing as "I don't want to live."
Doesn't look like an entity that showed up in the manhwa or the fanbook. What kind of phantom is that?
In the manhwa Codename: Baby, phantoms were born from folklore — that was the setting.
A mystery that began in the mouths of humans but was granted existence and reality in the Rear World — that was what a phantom was.
Was there ever a folktale featuring a creature shaped like that?
Also, most of the phantoms in Codename: Baby were based on Korean folklore.
I couldn't tell whether that was because the author was Korean or because they wanted to pander to national pride. But I did remember the setting that filled in the plausibility: since the Rear World was connected to reality, the phantoms born in each country and region necessarily differed.
In Korea, phantoms mostly drew on Korean folklore; in Japan, Japanese folklore; in China, Chinese folklore, and so on.
Korean folklore, a monster with that appearance... could it be a Bulgasari?
Anyway — a round of applause for my past self, who got so into enjoying the manhwa properly that he went beyond buying the fanbook and developed an interest in every folktale about yokai, monsters, and strange creatures under the sun.
Thanks to that, I could now make an uncertain guess at the thing's identity. My eyes narrowed a little.
If it eats metal, that would settle it.
Bulgasari (Do not kill him.). Also known as Hwagasari (Fire can kill him.).
It was a beast said to have devoured iron until it swelled beyond all measure — to the point of bringing down an entire nation. The name's etymology: "cannot be killed," hence Bulgasari; or "can be killed by fire," hence Hwagasari.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
While I held my breath in hiding inside the annex, the phantom I suspected to be a Bulgasari went around prodding at everything in its vicinity.
BOOM! Then one of its forepaws smashed down on a metal railing near a flower bed. The railing was ripped loose in one stroke and collapsed to the ground, and the creature's trunk curled around it and lifted it up.
Crunch-shatter.
When its maw opened, the blunt slab-like teeth crushed the metal that had entered its mouth — then shattered it like glass.
Gnash. The metallic grinding gnawed at my ears.
...Okay, that settles it. It's a Bulgasari.
It was very much savoring its iron meal. There was no way a thing like that wasn't a Bulgasari.
Chomp. Gnarrr-chomp.
Having confirmed the creature's attention was riveted on the steel railing, I swiftly swept my surroundings for escape routes.
There was nothing I could do about it. A Bulgasari's staple diet was iron, and the vast majority of modern buildings used rebar as a non-negotiable part of construction.
Which meant that, if things went badly, I might end up spectating the creature demolishing the annex in real time. From inside the annex, no less.
Better to be cautious early than to get careless and find myself unable to run at all.
A human life, as a rule, came in a quantity of one. There was nothing wrong with being thorough.
I checked the Bulgasari's position one last time, then moved to a breach at the precise opposite end.
The annex interior was thick with weeds grown up to my waist, so there was no need to detour. Going straight through the undergrowth was enough.
The question is, which way do I run?
Maybe because this had been a military installation, the whole area was laid out wide open. In other words: not many buildings, and none of them clustered tightly together.
And as I'd noted, most of those buildings had rebar in them. I had to assume that every single one was a potential target for the Bulgasari.
Therefore, if I wanted to hide inside a building, I needed to reach somewhere the creature couldn't follow immediately. Which naturally disqualified every building in the vicinity as a candidate hideout.
Should've memorized which road the bus took.
If I'd remembered which route the bus traveled, I'd at least have known which direction the city was in. Too bad.
For now, armed with nothing but the single resolve to put distance between myself and the Bulgasari, I crept along.
Thankfully, the annex screened me from its line of sight. The trade-off was that I couldn't see it either when the building blocked my view — but its footsteps were loud, so it wasn't much of a problem.
My legs ran cautiously along the pavement.
"Save me! It's going to eat me like this! I'm going to get eaten!"
Then, from the parking lot near the guard post entrance, came someone's desperate voice.
"Where in the world is my lousy partner?! That iron-eater is right nearby right now!!"
Naturally, the first thought that leapt to my mind at that cry was exactly one.
A person? No — there's no way there's a person here.
This was the Rear World. Humans couldn't exist here. If one did, it would most likely be academy personnel who'd deliberately entered to rescue me or run reconnaissance.
"Is there seriously nobody?! Please, somebody save me! I don't want to be eaten! I refuse to get devoured by the iron-eater!!"
But would anyone belonging to the academy be this much of a quivering panic? Not a chance.
So that thing was not human either. If I had to pin down its identity, it would probably be a phantom endowed with enough intelligence to speak a language.
...What do I do?
It wasn't that I had zero slack to help. The Bulgasari was still back there, after all.
But was it wise to approach an unknown phantom on my own initiative? What if it attacked me? What if that cry for help was itself a trap?
"Waaah, I've lost my partner, and now I'm about to lose my life too! And in the pathetic state of being devoured by the iron-eater, of all things!!"
What decided the direction of my hesitant steps was a single thought that surfaced right then.
It's in the parking lot. It could be devoured by the iron-eater — which, judging by the context, meant the Bulgasari. It can't move on its own. Then what is that phantom?
...A vehicle?
My legs whipped around toward the parking lot.
"If I have to die, I wanted to die crashing into those truck bastards... Waaah, my poor bike life, flowering and cut short..."
"A bike?"
"...Huh?"
My prediction had landed dead-on. The other party was a phantom, in the form of a two-wheeled vehicle. In other words, an object-type phantom.
"A kin...? No, a human? Ah — or not? A kin?"
"No time, so I'll be quick. Are you willing to cooperate?"
Traveling on a bike beat walking on two legs for speed. With zero capability to oppose the Bulgasari, putting even a little more distance between us faster was directly better for my survival.
"Cooperate... uh, yes! Absolutely! One hundred percent!"
"Can you carry me? I mean, you run, right?"
"Of course!! I can't move by myself if nobody's driving, but if you get on and steer, I can go anywhere!"
The other party was willing to cooperate, and our cooperation would benefit us both. That made this well worth shaking hands on.
I threw myself onto the bike at once.
"First time on a bike, though...!"
A means of travel I'd never once ridden — never even had occasion to ride.
And yet the moment I mounted the bike, my hands moved on their own and found the ignition button.
Vroom-vrum.
The engine turned over, and a pleasant vibration braced my body. My rear settled as far back on the seat as it would go, my legs found the angle with the least strain, and my hands and spine set themselves into a comfortable posture all on their own.
"Ready to open up the throttle? Even if it means losing your head over it?"
"...Ready, sure, but I'd rather keep my head attached, thanks!"
"Ahaha! Then let's go! Before the iron-eater gets here — quick, quick!"
I kicked the kickstand away with my heel and twisted the throttle. The next instant, the bike shot forward like a bullet leaving the barrel.
VROOOOOOM!!
"Wait, this sound—!?"
"GO!!!!!!"
Along with me, the massive exhaust roar thundered across the entire military compound.
Hruh?
Loud — very, very loud — enough to even ruffle the temper of whoever had been busy demolishing a building and pulling out its rebar for a snack.