Bone and Flesh (1)
April 10th.
Dawn. The top floor of the Yumin Building.
"Urgh... Son of a bitch...!"
Thrashing through a nightmare of pure horror, Do Minhyeok finally clawed his way back to consciousness in his own bed.
His head pounded. His stomach churned. The aftereffects of being forcibly knocked out crashed over his entire body.
That bastard—what the hell even was he?! That clumsy, half-assed... insanely strong piece of shit!
How did he even sneak in? I didn't feel a single trace of him coming!
Don't tell me... he picked the Thief class? No. No way.
Brave Saga Online had no Thief class. It had existed in the very earliest days, but balance issues had wiped it out, with a handful of its skills shuffled over to Archer.
What was certain was this: before he could even get the feast to his mouth, someone had cracked him across the back of the skull and flipped the whole damn table.
"Motherfucker... Hey! You useless pieces of shit!"
Do Minhyeok wrenched open the office door and stormed out, bellowing at the top of his lungs.
If he didn't dump this humiliation onto his subordinates, he felt like he would lose his mind. No—what the hell had those idiots even been doing while that assassin (who hadn't even killed him) climbed all the way up here?!
"You dumb sons of bitches, you all sleeping like babies just 'cause it's dawn?! Want me to put you to sleep for good, huh?!"
Still roaring, Do Minhyeok stomped downstairs—to the floor where his closest officers kept their rooms.
But... something about the air was wrong.
"What... the hell?!"
Silence. A bone-chilling silence was all that answered him.
There should have been noise—the usual racket of the idiots under him—but not a single sound reached his ears. Considering the constant din they produced all day long, the atmosphere now was suspicious enough to set every nerve on edge.
He scrambled further down. Same pattern—shouting, calling for his men. The result was copy-paste identical.
Terror was starting to close in on him.
"You—you fucking bastards...! If you don't get out here right now...! Wh—?!"
As he descended another floor, still shouting desperately, a human silhouette finally bled into Do Minhyeok's vision.
Someone draped head to toe in a black cloak. Standing dead center in the hallway.
But the aura rolling off them was something no human should possess.
Goosebumps raced across Do Minhyeok's skin. The sense of danger spiked. Still, he forced himself to deny it.
"Hey, you little shit! You—the boss is calling and you don't even—answer...!"
The figure in the black cloak slowly turned to face him—and Do Minhyeok's words died in his throat.
Clack-clack-clack...
A skull. The hollow sockets of a skeleton were locked on Do Minhyeok.
Its gaunt frame was hidden beneath the black robe, only the bare skull jutting out as it stared him down.
"Ah... ah...?!"
A m-monster? How—how did it get all the way up here...
Those brain-dead bastards—what the hell were they doing instead of standing guard?!
"..."
Do Minhyeok's resentment didn't last long.
The skeleton glided closer. Sliding toward him without a sound.
"G-get away... Get the hell away!!"
At last, Do Minhyeok's eyes caught the monster information window floating above the skeleton's skull.
"H-hiiiiiiik...!"
The instant he understood what he was looking at, pure terror seized every inch of his body.
He stumbled backward. His feet slipped—and he went down hard in a clattering heap.
Even as pain shot up from his tailbone, he shoved it aside and kept scrambling to escape.
"St-stay back...! I said stay back...! Somebody help me—help meeeeeee!"
Do Minhyeok's death scream was pitiful beyond measure—nothing like the cry of a crime syndicate boss.
April 10th.
Morning.
Thud.
"Four portions."
"Oh my, thank you. Thank you so much..."
"It is only right. Think nothing of it."
As I set down the food and bottled water in Room 403, the oldest resident—a grandmother—came out to offer her thanks.
Last night I had brought more than twenty survivors from Daengdaeng Elementary School into our villa.
Getting them inside while the first floor stayed barricaded had been a real ordeal—hauling every last one of them up through a broken second-floor window, one by one, with my own hands.
'Waaah~'
'Kyaa... heehee...'
'Oh my...'
'Goodness me... young man... you're strong~'
Mostly kids, women, and the elderly, so the reactions had been pretty positive, at least.
By the time I finished and came back up, some of the women had been looking at me with eyes that weren't exactly ordinary. The kind of look you give a man who might just be strong enough to protect you—or so it felt.
"Well then..."
"Ah, young man! I nearly forgot..."
I'd finished delivering daily supplies to every floor and was about to leave when the grandmother caught me again. What now?
"About our Teacher Kim Seyeon... be good to her, would you? Give her a little comfort. Times like these, a solid young man like you needs to shore her up so she can get her strength back quick. We don't blame her one bit, but the teacher's got such a soft heart... You understand? I'm counting on you."
"Do not worry."
So that was the request.
I took it in without expression and nodded. I exchanged a few parting words with the grandmother and headed down—but inside my head, "without expression" was the last thing I felt. My thoughts were a mess.
Ever since Park Seeun had delivered that devastating truth, Kim Seyeon had shut herself in a room. My room, of course.
...I did not demand she stay there, okay?!
Originally I'd planned—with a faint twinge of regret—to put her in the room next door. But the other survivors had quietly pulled me aside. They wanted me looking after Park Seeun and Kim Seyeon personally.
'Um... your name is Jeong Hoon, right? Han Sora told me.'
'It is.'
'Th-thank goodness. My name is Seo Hyejin—wait, that's not important right now! Um... I think it would be best if you kept Seyeon unnie and Seeun with you. The only person who can really lift their spirits... no matter how I look at it, is you, Jeong Hoon.'
Faced with Seo Hyejin laying the whole board out for me like that, I pretended to deliberate for a moment—a very brief moment!—then nodded.
'Very well. I shall do so.'
'Thank you. And... thank you again for saving my life, and my companions' lives.'
Seo Hyejin had given me a faintly transcendent smile, even resting a hand on my shoulder as she offered her thanks with shining eyes.
I'd been wondering who she was—turns out she was the beauty I'd rescued from that orc den before. I'd only known her as an acquaintance of the victim named Minjeong. So her name was Seo Hyejin.
Hearing that gratitude made me feel like saving the survivor group had been the right call. Definitely not because there were a lot of beautiful women among them. Nobody would believe me anyway!
"...Haa."
So yesterday I'd relayed the message to Park Seeun and Kim Seyeon and urged them to rest on my bed. Kim Seyeon had nodded with a vacant look on her face, while Park Seeun had glanced between me and Seyeon a few times before accepting the offer.
And right now, the two of them were still on my bed, murmuring quietly to each other.
When the soft, hitching sound of someone sniffling reached my ears, my chest clenched on its own.
Shit. They say a woman's tears are a lethal weapon... but just hearing the voice is enough to shake me? That's Kim Seyeon crying, right?! How does a voice alone make a grown man's mind just... reel like that? I seriously need to check whether that woman has succubus blood running through her veins.
With those useless thoughts rattling around my head, I traded coffee with Han Sora.
Officially we were watching the street through the window for any movement. Unofficially, we were just resting bodies and minds worn thin by more than two days of forced marches.
Outside, the situation was every bit as ominous as it had been the past two days. The hostile presence had grown so intense that it wasn't just me anymore—other people could feel it on their skin.
For one thing, the number of zombies had visibly dropped, while the number of skeletons had climbed—and that alone was a visual gut-punch.
On top of that...
"There's another one going by. A S-Skeleton Knight... the level on that thing is insane. How can they just unleash something that overpowered? If I ever meet the GMs... n-no, the Administrators, I wanna grab them by the collar and—"
"I share the sentiment."
Han Sora whispered as she scanned the street beyond the window through a sniper's eyes. I nodded with nothing but pure sincerity at her rough phrasing.
And so we whiled away the morning—sipping coffee, nibbling on sweets, burning time.
And idle moments like these were exactly when Han Sora's shut-in chatter kicked into high gear.
"Um, Hoon oppa... this is an absurdly random question, but... a-also one that kind of cuts straight to the heart of things, and I wanted to ask..."
In that distinctive way of hers, Han Sora carefully broached the subject. Her gaze stayed fixed on the window the whole time.
"What is it?"
"W-wellll... Hoon oppa... with the power you have... what kind of purpose do you want to live for? What do you want to achieve?"
...Huh?
Where did this out-of-nowhere philosophical question come from?
"I-it might sound bad, but... r-right now Hoon oppa feels like... umm... a train that just keeps running forward with no destination? Like a KTX? That's the vibe I get. I-I'm not saying it to make you feel bad... it's just, with your power, Hoon oppa... wouldn't it be better to move forward with a more constructive purpose? Not just limited to saving the people right in front of you... I'm sorry. That was really all over the place, wasn't it?"
"..."
Han Sora's rambling delivery made my head spin—but the content underneath spun it even harder.
No. Honestly, it was a remark that punched straight through the center of my chest.
What do you want to do with this power?
Are these short-term goals of yours really enough?
...That was what Han Sora was asking me.
...That's right, isn't it? I understood you correctly, didn't I, Sora?
"It seems fine enough. More precisely?"
No—moments like this called for drawing the person herself into a deeper explanation.
I looked steadily at Han Sora, watching her light brown hair sway, and opened my mouth.
"Uh, yes?"
"Precisely. For example... what sort of purpose or goal do you believe would be fitting for someone like me, as I am now?"
"W-well, if you're asking me... uhhh...!?"
"...Hm?"
Han Sora's gaze had been flicking between me and the window—then suddenly locked hard on whatever lay outside.
Shock flooded her eyes. She lifted her right arm in a smooth motion. With the hand that wasn't holding coffee, she pointed at something beyond the glass.
Why was she suddenly acting like this? Had she spotted something?
I tore my eyes from her and looked in the direction she indicated.
And then I sucked in a sharp breath—pure, unfiltered astonishment.