Next Time, Tomorrow Without Fail (1)
Next Time, Tomorrow Without Fail (1) — Over Incheon City
"...Cult Leader-nim."
Jeong Seonga, nestled in my arms, mumbled carefully.
Whooshhh—!
I had been cutting through the wind with telekinetic flight, well on my way to the Marin Hotel, and I lowered my head to look at her. Bright, sparkling eyes gazed up at me the way a pet looks at its owner.
"Can't we just... not go to the hotel? Can't we stay at the Sanctuary a little longer?"
She rubbed her face against my chest as she asked. Ever since she'd learned that everything I'd told her was true, she'd clung to me all the more. And the tearful reunion with her grandmother at the Sanctuary had been the final seal on it.
I looked down at her slowly — at the white believer's robe she wore, and at the way she kept pressing her face into my chest, drinking in my scent. Her warm breath kept tickling against me.
Like every other believer of the Guwon Cult, she had become someone I simply could not refuse.
"Why? Did you want to stay with your grandmother longer?"
"Grandma too, and... I miss the Sanctuary too, and... when we go back to the hotel, you're busy again, Cult Leader-nim..."
Keeping a careful eye on the road below, I answered her whining. "Then you should have just said you wanted to stay. Another hour or so would have been fine."
"But you said we had to leave in two hours, so how could I...?"
I thought back to how she'd cried and clung to her grandmother at the Sanctuary — and yet in the end, she'd walked over to me on her own two sturdy legs. Given the choice between a grandmother who couldn't let her go and my orders, Seonga had chosen mine.
I paused my telekinesis for a moment and hovered in the empty air.
"Good girl."
"Ah..."
At that one careless remark, she bloomed into a smile like a flower. The girl who had once trembled at my mere approach was gone.
"So what reward should I give our Seonga?"
"Anything, anything is fine. Just being able to see you like this is enough. Of all the days I've been alive, this is the happiest I've ever been."
Far from trembling, she looked up at me with luminous, brimming vitality. The more she depended on me, the more of that life poured out of her without limit.
"I'm happy too, Seonga — happy that you believe in me. And I want you to be even happier."
"Ah..."
I pulled the melting, trembling-voiced girl deeper into my arms. As I stroked the head of the girl nuzzling into my chest as if to burrow into it, I scanned the ground below thoroughly.
How do I keep missing one of them? This really is hard to find.
"They say happiness doubles when you share it. Seonga — do you want everyone at the hotel to die?"
"...No. Of course not."
"Right? So all the people at the hotel are coming back to the Sanctuary with us. Understand?"
I felt her head nodding against my chest. Good.
I hadn't invested all that time just to obtain a single Jeong Seonga. The main course hadn't even been served yet, and I couldn't exactly claim the survivors had been made into perfect believers either.
Smiling, I watched Seonga bury herself in my scent once more.
The survivors of the Marin Hotel. The hollows carved into their hearts were as wide as the punctured, split wounds on their bodies — and because of that, the space I could fill was far deeper and vaster than in ordinary people. And if women who obeyed and submitted to me like that also happened to be beautiful?
Wasting women like that on the rank-and-file of an ordinary cult would have been a colossal squandering of resources.
Plus, the executives haven't been getting nearly enough perks lately.
There wasn't a single person actually performing the duties their executive titles implied. The Guwon Cult currently had three executives, and twenty survivors rotating on shifts would be more than enough to assist them. And the leftover personnel would attend to me personally.
My plan was to remake the believers gained from the Marin Hotel into the cult's handmaidens — its court ladies. I snickered at the image: beautiful women I could reach out and use however I pleased, surrounding me at all times.
Good. For that fantasy to become reality, I need to claim Shim Soyoung completely first...
I resumed flight, sweeping my gaze across the ground below. After deliberately circling through Incheon for the leftover time I had before reaching the Marin Hotel, my eyes finally narrowed—
Found it.
I spotted it toddling down the road. My eyes glittered as if I'd discovered a jewel, and I reached out toward the thing.
A mutant with a grotesque body, its muscles stacked in layer upon overlapping layer. The moment it sensed my telekinesis wrapping around it, it began to bawl.
"WaaAAAaaah—!"
The moment it started crying, the zombies that had been idiotically wandering the road all snapped their heads up and answered the call.
"KeeeEEEeeek—!"
In an instant, zombies came surging toward it from every direction.
"...Cult Leader-nim?"
I soothed the girl staring up at me with startled eyes. "It's fine. The zombies are just crying kind of hard."
"It sounded... a little different. Not a zombie — a young child, maybe..."
WaaAAAaaah—!
I glanced over the mutant trailing faithfully behind me, tethered to my telekinesis, then met Seonga's eyes again. She was pressed so tightly against my body that she couldn't see what was happening behind us.
"There it is again! I heard it again!"
"No. That's a zombie."
I let my voice fall, hard and flat. The answer came out colder than I'd intended, and she flinched — then agreed at once.
"Y-you're right. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Cult Leader-nim. I must have misheard."
The fingers fidgeting against the chest of my cult robe were shaking. With my free hand, I stroked her hair until she gradually steadied — then I turned my attention back to the thing behind us.
WaaAAAaaaah—!
The nameless mutant child, wailing at the top of its lungs. It didn't have that swarthy face I'd seen at the Guro-gu special stronghold. I would have liked to know the names of both that mana-warping bastard and this one, but it was a name I'd learn eventually whether I pressed now or not. Besides, after circling the Marin Hotel specifically to hunt this thing down, I had no desire to kill it and go searching for another — not with no guarantee I'd find one.
I rose to the rooftop of a high-rise with a clear view of the Marin Hotel's front face.
WaaAAAah—!
I set the wildly wailing thing down there — its throat apparently tireless — and stared straight down at its two legs.
Crreeeak—!
"WAAaaaAAAaah—!"
With both legs bent backward at ninety degrees, the creature collapsed onto the ground and screamed even louder. At a volume like that, even an ordinary civilian like Seonga might have been in danger, so I hurriedly left it there and descended.
On the way back toward the Marin Hotel, I watched the wave of zombies pouring into the building, drawn by its cries.
Thoom! Thoom!
GRRAAAAaaaah—!
And in the distance, a familiar face came barreling through the horde. I ignored them all and surveyed the rooftop once more — the thing sprawled over the railing, bawling like an actual infant. From the Marin Hotel, it sat within easy telekinetic reach with a perfectly open line of sight.
Tap!
"There! Now, shall we go see your unnies?"
"...Yes."
Seonga nodded with a distinctly unenthusiastic expression. I smiled gently at her and took her hand.
I knew the fierce solidarity among the Marin Hotel survivors had been dissolving lately. No — "knew" wasn't quite right. I had, in effect, engineered it myself.
Those who have someone to lean on right in front of them do not go looking for a god. Stirring up their petty rivalries was, if anything, a perfectly natural stage of the process. And the cleanup afterward was hardly difficult; their infighting was destined to end completely the day I began finding it tiresome.
Brushing my thumb softly over the hand clasped in mine, I kept walking through the lobby.
Step... step...
We crossed the pit trap that had nearly swallowed Kim Haeil and me, and passed the pumpkin-shaped centerpiece marking the center of the hall. As we drew nearer the grand staircase, the sound of a commotion grew louder.
It wasn't the zombies in the pit, at least — I'd killed every one of those on the day Soyoung passed out, back when they were part of her simple trap.
"Why is everyone so calm?! A tess and Seonga both disappeared! We have to go rescue Seonga right now!"
"Soyoung, please, just breathe. The Cult Leader isn't a tess. He probably just stepped outside for a while."
A voice boiling over with heat, and someone trying to rein it in. I smiled warmly at the familiar timbre I hadn't heard in so long.
She was awake. Finally — finally — she'd woken up. And I'd finished my preparations barely moments ago. What were the odds she'd time her awakening this beautifully?
"Cult Leader-nim! Unni's awake!"
"Looks like it. Thank goodness."
We smiled at each other and climbed the stairs at an unhurried pace.
Step... step...
At the sound of footsteps ringing through the great lobby, the ruckus upstairs died all at once.
"Y-you son of a bitch—!"
A refreshingly honest curse, and then a black shadow launched itself over the edge above. I extended a hand toward her as she came rocketing down at me like a meteor — the exact same tableau as that day. The only difference was that this time, without even a moment's exchange of glances, she'd charged straight in.
"Uwaaaaah—! Again! Agaaaain!"
Taxidermied in midair once more, she roared. Savoring the face that pleased me even after all this time, I climbed the stairs slowly.
Step... step...
Arriving at the appointed place with her still floating beside me — the meeting plaza where we'd once held each other up. But where no one had come to find her during all the days Soyoung lay unconscious, now every survivor had gathered in the lobby for the first time in ages.
"Run! Everyone, everyone ruuuun!"
The exact same scream as that day — but the reaction was nothing like it. I looked out over the survivors who, instead of turning their backs and fleeing, were smiling brightly at me. I raised a hand to hold back the ones already hurrying toward me.
"D-don't! Don't lay a finger on them, any of you—!"
Shim Soyoung trembled with unfounded panic, glaring as she pinched her own nonexistent cheek-flesh into existence.
Wow. So pretty really does conquer all.
Even the sight of her shaking in fury registered as a fresh new charm.
"Why?! Why caaan't I win?! Whyyy?!"
She shrieked at me standing there with the most comfortable expression in the world. No matter how she rebelled, my right hand never wavered by so much as a hair.
She's gotten a bit stronger than I expected, too.
A hand gripper that had been too loose, tightened just a notch?
"Cute. I could lick those quivering cheeks too, you know."
I theatrically ran my tongue over my lips. Shim Soyoung, watching it happen with her own two eyes, convulsed with a full-body shudder.
"I'll kill you! I'll kill youuu—!"
Crimson mana smoldered up across her entire body, unfurling like smoke.
So that's it.
The reason a single awakener named Shim Soyoung had been able to carve through the horde and save all these women. The sensation of that hand gripper, one click tighter, pulled a laugh out of me. Shim Soyoung had grown stronger. Stronger than she'd been an hour ago.
I don't know the precise name for it, though. What should I even call this?
A power that grows with every defeat? No — too broad. A power that grows through humiliation and disgrace?
In place of the survivors, I recalled the story they'd told me of that day. Shim Soyoung, gathering the women who had abandoned themselves as though giving up on living. Before a wavering candle flame, she had spoken to them all.
Don't give up on yourselves, she'd said. She, too, had suffered setback after setback, but she had always, always risen again. From now on, she would be the one to lift the women who were struggling to their feet. Trials, in the end, only forge human beings stronger — that was what she'd told them.
I hadn't been there; I'd only heard the words. And still the scene played vividly before my eyes — because right in front of me now was a woman who, even with her mouth sealed shut, glared at me with pure venom.
Repeated defeat hadn't cowed her in the slightest. She still craved victory, relentlessly.
What manner of believer would that unyielding spirit become, once faith in me were mixed into it? I wanted to know, desperately.
I signaled to Seonga at my side. She gave a small nod and darted toward Shim Soyoung — and the moment she moved, the survivors behind me surged forward and ringed Soyoung in a tight circle. Then my telekinesis released, and Soyoung, freed, picked herself up and spoke to them.
"It's dangerous! Everyone, everyone hide somewhere!"
"Soyoung, let's stop this now. Okay?"
"Unni, calm down. The Cult Leader isn't a tess."
I watched Soyoung falter as the women closed in around her more firmly still, then reached a hand out toward the space behind us — and caught the baby mutant I'd left stranded atop the high-rise, beyond the glass outer wall.
"—WAAaaaAAAaah!"
Its cry swelled like a crescendo. Dropped with a thump in front of the hotel's main entrance, the creature wailed out its grief louder than ever.
"...Baby? W-wait. Why is that thing here all of a sudden?"
Soyoung's voice cracked with alarm. Oh. So the mutant's name is Baby? What a garbage name.
Shim Soyoung vaulted over the wall of bodies the survivors had formed and sprinted forward. But she still had enough sense to sort priorities, at least — instead of attacking me, she scanned the street ahead.
"KeeeEEEeeek—!"
The howling of a zombie wave answering Baby's cry. At the sound of the tide closing in, Soyoung's brow hardened and she glared daggers at me.
"You called them. Didn't you?"
"Ha— I'll admit I'm a 'tess.' But a zombie? Not so much."
At my taunt she bit her lip, kicked off the ground, and cleared the first floor in a single bound.
"Everyone, hide in your rooms and lock the door! Do NOT come out no matter what!"
At her shout, the survivors crept quietly back toward me. I called out as I watched her break for the lobby doors.
"If you ask for help, I might actually give it!"
"..."
Ptoo—!
She paused just long enough to glare at me, spat on the floor without a word, and kept moving.
Ooh. Spitting on holy water, are we.
I shrugged my shoulders where she couldn't see, and spread both arms wide.
"Cult Leader-nim, where did you go?"
"I want to go for a walk too, Cult Leader-nim~"
Flanked and surrounded by survivors piling on the aegyo from every side, I walked to a spot with an apparently excellent view.
"KeeeEEEeeek—!"
CRACK!
Out past the hotel's main entrance, a crimson comet was weaving through the writhing horde. Fists punching clean through the creatures' heads with nothing but the snap of her body's own elasticity. A leg extending in a long, languid stretch burst a zombie's skull; the rear of her dolphin shorts shifted with the motion, the swell of her backside straining against the fabric.
"...Cult Leader-nim."
Just as I was enjoying the view, one of the survivors whispered beside me.
"Oh — Hyemi-ya. What is it?"
"...W-well. It's just..."
She bowed her head deeply before me and spoke in a voice tangled up in grievance and embarrassment both.
"I'm next after Seonga. But right now... right now..."
I smiled gently and understood her heart at once. Right — the rotations kept turning, and this situation didn't look like it would end quickly, so of course she was anxious.
"It's fine. Just stay by my side for now. Come here."
"...Ah."
Go Hyemi beamed and melted into my arms.
"Mmm~ Mwah... mwah... smooch...~"
A nasal hum, and a damp warmth and tickle spreading across my chest. I glanced down to find Go Hyemi circling my nipple lazily with her tongue, eyes tilted up at me in a sly, curling smile as she giggled.
"Hehe~ thought you might be bored."
I stroked her head in commendation. "You can do it underneath."
"...Really?!"
Grinning ear to ear, she hurriedly undid the knot of my cult robe. "C-can I take the other side?"
"Shall I massage your shoulders? I'm really, really good at massages~"
The handmaiden-candidates swarmed in within seconds and each claimed a territory of my body. Keeping one hand sliding over their heads as they attended to me, I settled in to watch Shim Soyoung's performance.
CRACK! CRRAAACK!
A wolf's desperate battle, slaughtering the flock. And yet no one on the second-floor lobby — no one but me — was watching her at all.
GRRAAAAaaaah—!
A steroid-fed roar that felt like it would split the air. Moments later, following like a macro command, a salvo of light-streaked projectiles — and Shim Soyoung screamed straight ahead into them.
CRRAAACK!
Stone fragments rained down, kicking up a small cloud. Watching Soyoung smash apart a boulder bigger than her own body, the Steroid pounded the ground in fury like a tantrum being vented — boom, boom!
Only then did Soyoung register the Steroid, and her body flinched for an instant.
"Feels good, doesn't it, Cult Leader-nim?"
I nodded at Kang Jihye's question as she kneaded my thigh, and kept my eyes on the fight. The Steroid had begun grabbing the zombies beside it — the ones meant for keeping enemies at bay — and hurling them wholesale. Soyoung calmly intercepted the surrounding zombies and the incoming missiles both, waiting for her opening.
This was not the same unrestrained momentum she'd shown carving through ordinary zombies.
Right — the Steroid would be a handful.
From another awakener's perspective, it was a genuinely maddening mutant. Drift even a little out of range, and those uncanny throws came sailing in. But closing the distance blindly wasn't the answer either.
GRRAAAAaaah—!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Watching Soyoung tumble across the pavement after colliding with a thrown zombie, the Steroid beat the ground like a child expressing joy. The earth around it already churned to ruin, its grotesque muscles squirming obscenely beneath the dust. The Steroid was the vanguard of the zombie ranks and a living siege engine — a creature with no visible weakness at all.
"KeeeEEEek—!"
CRACK!
And still, Shim Soyoung stood up. She smashed the head of the zombie tangled around her, and rose to her feet once more.
Crimson mana rippled across her whole body. Watching that blazing fighting spirit, I smiled. That, I supposed, was the bedrock she was built on. Even after defeat, victory waits at the end — she may not have been a Joan of Arc sweeping all before her, but she forced her own will through until, in the end, she won.
"That faith..."
"Mmhm~? Yes?"
Go Hyemi looked up from where she'd been softly swirling her bright-red tongue, tilting her head at me. I didn't answer her, and I didn't look down either. I couldn't take my eyes off Shim Soyoung, now allowing the Steroid clean hits.
She stood up again. She believed — truly believed — that she would win in the end. That faith. If I wanted to have her, I would have to shatter that faith first. Just as those who have someone to lean on never look up at god.
The successful do not believe in gods. Achievements won through effort and one's very best belong to no one — they are theirs alone. So even if they stumble once, it's fine. A single failure is their own fault, a matter of their own mistakes. They correct the flaw, fix the error, and sprint silently back toward success.
But what happens when the failure repeats? When they keep analyzing what went wrong, keep correcting the mistakes — and keep striving, striving until they feel like dying, and still lie flat at the bottom? Then, like a man fighting for breath, they find themselves unable to stop a very wicked thought from raising its head again and again.
But that thought is not one that can be suppressed by deciding to suppress it. The harder you push it down, the more it springs back like a coiled valve, whispering:
What if this wasn't my fault at all?
I keep trying. I give everything I have. So why doesn't anything change? Is it really still my fault? Could it be that something else is broken instead? The world. The country. The people — isn't something, somewhere, wrong with all of them?
Only then do they go looking for their god. They come to worship a savior all their own — one who will flip this broken world back the right way around.
"HYAAAAT—!"
She loosed a battle cry as if to steel her own heart.
GRRAAAAaaaah—!
The Steroid roared right in front of her, showing off for all it was worth. The hero standing opposite the boss — I couldn't help a wry laugh at the sheer staging of it.
My fingers, watching their standoff, twitched — tik, tik — as I readied my telekinesis against every contingency. But my eyes were not on the Steroid. Gazing at Shim Soyoung's face, beaded with sweat in both my eyes, I smiled, deep and slow.
Today, I would give her the gift of failure.