Encounter (4)
Encounter (4) — Rooftop of a commercial building, Guwol-dong, Namdong-gu, Incheon
"If we go up there, we'll be completely cut off!"
The pretty-boy's voice — one I was thoroughly sick of hearing — got my answer all the same. "Up there or down here, we'd be just as cut off either way!"
Kieeeeeeek!
With zombies already bursting out from every direction, there was nowhere left to hide. Judging by the sheer numbers making up this zombie wave, escaping under their own power had been impossible from the very moment the mutant started shrieking.
After a brief struggle, the pretty-boy nodded and traded a look with the gym rat. In the same breath, the whole group began sprinting for the building I was in. Four-eyes ran point, followed by the book-armor guy and the gym rat propping him up, with the pretty-boy and the woman trailing behind like an honor guard — though "guard" was generous for the woman, who was really just glued to the pretty-boy's side.
Kieeeeek!
The instant they set foot in my building, the zombies came flooding toward the mutant at a dead run. One slip in their timing and they would already have been halfway down the road to the afterlife. Then I caught a few of the zombies veering toward the building itself. With a touch of telekinesis, I flung the would-be intruders backward, hard.
THUD—
As expected, it still didn't work on the mutant — but against ordinary zombies, it landed almost too well.
Screech— BANG!
The rooftop door slammed open and four-eyes came tumbling through in a slide. Hah— hah— hah— Between his ragged gasps, his glasses fogged over completely. The rest of the group poured in behind him, and last of all the pretty-boy shut the door, wedging a chair against the iron frame.
"..."
A strange tension hummed between the group as they fought to catch their breath and me.
At some point four-eyes had gotten hold of the baseball bat the book-armor guy had dropped, and he jabbed it toward me with a shriek. "Wh-who the hell are you!"
The bat trembled in his grip like the man was having a convulsion, and watching it, pity beat out disgust. I raised both hands over my head, even waving them as if to say calm down, and showed him the friendliest smile I could muster. "Please, rest assured. You all seemed to be in danger, so I simply offered a helping hand."
The pretty-boy quietly lowered four-eyes' bat and planted himself in front of the group. I ignored him in favor of scanning the face of the woman pressed against his back, clinging well past the point of excess. Pale skin, small and exquisitely arranged features. And white thighs that looked springy and supple despite that thin, willowy frame — I fought for my life to strangle the erection stirring in my pants.
This is a goddamn jackpot.
Choking down the laughter that kept trying to leak out, I studied the pretty-boy's face. Well. He was handsome. End of report.
The pretty-boy, who had been turning me over for inspection from every angle like a specimen under glass, finally spoke. "...Do you live around here?"
"Ah! Now that you mention it, I never did introduce myself. I'm Han Guwon. I don't live here, though — I came from Hanmaum Apartment."
"I'm Kang San. We..."
The man, who had been opening his mouth to go on, bit the words back at his lip. "In any case, it's a pleasure to meet you."
He clearly wanted to give away as little as possible. He didn't trust me yet, in other words. The gym rat, sneaking careful glances at me, leaned in and whispered to Kang San. "San, there's no sign he's been eating or sleeping here. He hasn't been staying in this place long."
I eavesdropped on even that as I turned over what to do with them. Should I kill them? Wouldn't the simplest thing be to slaughter every last one and keep only the woman? It wasn't as though those men were of any particular use to me. Besides, the longer I watched that woman clutching the hem of Kang San's coat, the more my bloodlust came boiling up with jealous, passionate heat, like I was the one being NTR'd.
"Um... Mr. Guwon? If I could ask you just a few things."
"Of course."
Kill them? Spare them? I turned the question over and over, gauging how far my mana had recovered. And just as I still hadn't settled on an answer, four-eyes — breathing finally under control — rounded on the woman still gripping Kang San's sleeve and hollered. "Hyung, hold on! Forget that, we need to do something about that woman first!"
"What on earth are you talking about now?"
Under the hail of four-eyes' abuse, the woman bowed her head and began to shake. Her face was rigid with terror. Fuck... if this suddenly kicked off into a snuff show where the men's heads started flying, that woman would be out cold one hundred percent of the time. And I couldn't very well waste my virginity on the pussy of a woman who'd fainted dead away. I turned it over carefully — that actually didn't sound half bad — but no. I was against it.
Four-eyes, whose own life had just been lengthened by somebody's mercy without him even knowing it, raised his voice again. "That woman's the one who called the zombies, I'm telling you! She pulls this sudden 'we have to go outside' bullshit, we go out, and there's a mutant waiting! There's definitely a connection!"
"Lee Gyeongmin. Kill the volume first."
"Hyung! This time it's real! This is exactly why I said we should ignore all that nonsense about Awakeners and whatnot when they were spouting it! That bitch is a hundred percent a mutant! Why would you believe a pre-infected, I said!"
Awakener.
My eyes lit up at the familiar word. That woman — an Awakener? Except her physical specs were no different from a perfectly ordinary person's. I had clearly watched her earlier, clutching Kang San's sleeve as she fought to catch her breath. Did she never manage to put a single point into her stats?
Kang San checked on the woman fidgeting at his side, then answered. "Lee Gyeongmin. Shout one more time and I'll tape your mouth shut. And Ayoung-ssi isn't a pre-infected — she just fainted and woke up later than the rest of us."
"...Haah, and you're actually buying that. Anyway, we were never supposed to come out today. I told you to stay put and hold out longer at the library. And instead..."
The library.
Once again, that word — library — confirmed straight from their own mouths. Bless you, four-eyes. I barely managed to smother the grin that was bristling at the corners of my mouth, straining to break loose. The gym rat sidled up to the grumbling Lee Gyeongmin and slung an arm around his shoulders. "Gyeongmin. Let's watch the mouth, hm?"
"Uh, y-yes, sir. I-I'm sorry."
Still kneading Lee Gyeongmin's shoulder, the gym rat flashed Kang San a smile. Then he turned to me. "Good to meet you, hyung-nim. I'm Seo Taesan. That one over there, well, you've probably already worked out is Kang San. This friend here is Lee Gyeongmin, the friend who got hurt a minute ago is Kim Cheolsu, and she..."
Seo Taesan smacked his lips like the words left a bad taste, then said them anyway. "That woman is Yoon Ayoung."
And there it is — the single most useful piece of information yet.
Yoon Ayoung. Even her name was pretty. Fuck, normally this is the part where the protagonist scans the target with some information-detection skill the instant their eyes meet — that's the time-honored way to do it. Why do I alone have no Third Eye! Why the fuck do I alone have no Sage's Eye!
With Seo Taesan's intervention having quashed Lee Gyeongmin's meltdown, Kang San took the reins of the conversation once more. "Forgive my rudeness, but might I ask why you were here?"
"Ah, of course. Well, it's hardly a secret."
I gave a small smile, my gaze drifting between Seo Taesan and Kang San. Seo Taesan, having settled Lee Gyeongmin, had already drifted back to his post behind Kang San. So the leader of this pack was that pretty-boy, Kang San. Rolling my tongue quietly, I went on. "My food had run out and holding down the house felt pointless, so I was out doing a bit of 'farming.' Especially since I'd heard on the internet that there was a survivor group somewhere around this area."
At the words survivor group, Lee Gyeongmin's whole body flinched beside Seo Taesan. Wow. Seriously — if I were their leader, that guy's head would have come off with the very first swing.... Kang San, his poker face perfectly intact, traded a glance with Seo Taesan. "'Farming,' you say. Only, you don't seem to have a bag on you?"
"Ah, I lost it in the middle of being chased by zombies. It's also the reason I was standing on a rooftop like an idiot."
"And even in the middle of all that, you still chose to help us."
"Does a person need a reason to save another person? By the way — are Ayoung-ssi and Cheolsu-ssi alright?"
God, what a pain. I set a rule for myself on the spot. One more question I had to field, and I was simply going to kill them.
At my final question, Kim Cheolsu — thoroughly sidelined until now — finally raised his head. His savagely bent wrist was still swinging loose and useless at the end of his arm. Even grabbing at minimum strength, that's a dislocation on top of a fracture.
Only then did Kang San break off his standoff with me and step over to Kim Cheolsu. Yoon Ayoung moved to follow — and froze dead under Seo Taesan's frost-edged glare, unable to take a single step. I left them to it and looked back outside. The pack of zombies was still ringing the mutant like a bodyguard detail, parked square in the middle of the road. Those bastards needed clearing out first.
"Cheolsu, I told you, didn't I — not to go doing anything rash."
"Uuuugh... i-it hurts... m-my hand..."
"Haah..."
A complete gathering of children, this crew. I had watched them for all of a few minutes and understood them perfectly. Two trolls — no, was it three? A party that hauled its trolls around everywhere and barely scraped by on the two members who still bothered to act like human beings. A walking gloom generator. If I had been Kang San, I would never have brought those two out.
My mana had recovered enough to properly put my telekinesis to work now, and staring at it, I knew I had to choose between two targets. Did I spend this telekinesis on a human? Or on the zombies? If all I wanted was to rape Yoon Ayoung, that was well within my power even now. Humans — ones who weren't even Awakeners — could be crushed by telekinesis even more easily than zombies. But I was utterly certain that route would make turning Yoon Ayoung into my believer a great deal harder. It would be the exact same redline-spun blunder I'd pulled on that cult ajumma. Butcher someone's people and then come out with "You'll need to put your faith in me now" — who the hell replies to that with "oh, sure thing"? So: first, keep those bastards alive... and join them at the library. Once Yoon Ayoung was my believer — then I would kill them.
Having confirmed that the group's backs were turned to me, every eye fixed on checking Kim Cheolsu's condition, I stretched my hand out toward the mutant. Crushing it, tearing it to pieces — physical measures of that sort were wasted on that bastard. The moment my telekinesis gathered, the mutant caught wind of it and began to shriek. "BWAAAAAAAEEK!"
As the mutant set up its wailing all over again, I began to lift its body with the same feeling as when I had levitated before. My hand trembled, and the mutant's frame started to rise off the pavement. Get lost already, you bastard! I burned through every last scrap of my remaining mana and hurled the mutant off into the empty sky. "BWAAAAAAAAAAAH—"
As its cry faded into the distance, the zombies went berserk and began streaming after the sound. Seeing how the sudden roar had rattled Kang San's group, I shouted, urgency dripping from my voice. "Th-the zombies have started running in a different direction! If you want to get out, now's the only chance!"
"Move! Taesan, give Cheolsu a shoulder. Ayoung-ssi, please stay close. And..."
Kang San, busy shepherding his people, turned and looked at me. "Mr. Guwon — if you have nowhere else to go, how would you feel about coming with us?"
In a crisis like this, a grown man counted for a great deal as fighting strength. For the leader of a group, it was an opportunity he could never afford to pass up — all the more so when the man in question was a pleasant, easygoing young fellow exactly like the one I had been playing.
I looked at Yoon Ayoung and let a deep, unhurried smile spread across my face.