Sword of Faith (4)
Sword of Faith (4) — Gongseong High School Rooftop
I arrived at the Gongseong High rooftop in a single bound and looked down at the student.
There sat a school chair he apparently used when resting, with a bottle of water and some rations placed beside it. And an aluminum baseball bat that looked like it was meant for self-defense.
“Looking for me?”
“…Hiiiik!”
The boy, who had been scanning the stadium through his binoculars, jolted in shock and dropped them. I caught the falling binoculars with telekinesis before they hit the ground.
In that instant, he snatched up the bat and scrambled to put as much distance between us as he could.
“Wh-who are you?!”
His face, darkened with a layer of grime, was rigid with tension. Without a word of reply, I floated the binoculars back to him. He took them slowly, with a wary look on his face, and I watched him with eyes that glittered.
This kid wasn't startled at all — not by a man flying through the sky, nor by binoculars drifting on their own. The only thing in him was wariness toward the stranger who'd suddenly appeared. My narrowed eyes swept through every corner of his history, and at the faintest trace of mana I caught myself smiling.
“You're an Awakened one.”
“…Yes. And you're obviously an Awakened one too, sir.”
“Haha. Sir, you say.”
With a hearty laugh, I descended to the rooftop floor. “I'm not 'sir.' I'm the Cult Leader of the Hanmaum Guwon Cult.”
“……I've never heard of that religion.”
“Naturally. It's a new truth forged from the ashes.”
At my answer, the boy slipped fully into guard mode, and I gave him a benevolent smile.
“Your name?”
“……It's right here.”
He gestured with his chin at the name tag pinned to his school uniform.
Kim Haeil.
Even after confirming the name on the tag, I beamed and asked again.
“Your name?”
“……Kim Haeil.”
“All right, Haeil. What ability did you awaken?”
The conversation flowed along with an unnatural smoothness, and with every exchange, Haeil's shuffling retreat carried him closer and closer to the rooftop door.
“…Isn't it, like, the unspoken rule not to tell strangers about that kind of thing?”
A voice that seemed determined to stay calm — and eyes that were anything but. The trembling, anxiety-riddled eyes of a boy who'd been rolling around in this hell suddenly went wide and locked onto me.
“…Huh?”
His entire body had been frozen in place by my telekinesis. I examined him slowly. Underdeveloped muscles, and a baseball bat clean of so much as a single bloodstain. He was far too poorly equipped to be cracking zombie skulls with one decisive swing. I shook my head.
He wasn't the one I was looking for.
“Fine. That's your prerogative.”
I dismissed Kim Haeil's protest with a light nod and walked toward the rooftop door. Ignoring the boy trembling like a leaf as I drew closer, I opened the door and stepped inside. Only then did the telekinesis release him, and Kim Haeil hurried after me with a flustered look.
Footsteps echoed alone through the quiet hallway. Apart from the occasional bloodstain, it was remarkably tidy, and I remarked on it as we walked.
“A physical-type Awakened cleaned this up very neatly, I see.”
“…Excuse me?”
“Where are your friends? Over there?”
“…Excuse me?”
I pointed toward the nearest classroom.
[3-10]
Class 3-10, the closest room to the rooftop. Inside, I could hear the slow, ragged breathing of several people. I felt Kim Haeil's grip tighten around his bat, then loosen, then tighten again — the conversation happening inside was impossible to read, and an Awakened one who so obviously outclassed anything he could handle was about to walk, perfectly casually, into their refuge.
Kim Haeil stood frozen, torn between every possible reaction, while I simply opened the door to Class 3-10.
Screeeech—
At the sound of the door, every pair of eyes inside turned to me.
“…Who's that?”
asked a student slumped against the wall. The ten or so students who'd been hanging there listlessly rose slowly to their feet. In their hands: monkey wrenches, hammers, baseball bats — presumably scavenged from the PE storeroom and a toolbox.
“Uh… guys. Um… maybe we should all just calm down first….”
Kim Haeil hurriedly stepped forward as the atmosphere grew ugly, and I saw the hostility in their eyes soften, if only a little, when they recognized him.
“Haeil. Who is that guy?”
“Uh… that's… a, a pastor?”
“……A what?”
“No, I mean… ugh, I'm losing my mind.”
While Kim Haeil fumbled through a gentle explanation that the intruder was some kind of insane Awakened beyond anything they could control, I calmly surveyed the classroom. A filthy floor that looked like it had never once been cleaned, littered with trash. Desks and chairs shoved against the walls, and beside them, stacks of rations piled high.
And on a silver pouch, that familiar phrase. I nodded to myself.
“…M-maybe we should just do what the pastor says.”
“Wait, wait. …What did you say? A whirlpool at the stadium? Flying? Your bodies just—stopped?”
Watching Kim Haeil struggle and the students fail to understand a word of it, I raised my right hand — partly to help his explanation along.
“…Huh?”
Every weapon clutched in their hands swept across the room and gathered at its center. Crrrk-crrrk— Slowly they clumped together, molding themselves into the shape of a sphere. An iron planet drifting gracefully through the air at my command.
The students stared, mouths hanging open, and I flicked my left hand. A single baseball bat collided with the planet orbiting the classroom.
Thud—
With a soft impact, the planet shattered, and the weapons flew back to their rightful owners. Crrrkk-crrrk— The scattered weapons let out a metallic groan as they settled into the students' hands. Gazing at their weapons, now covered in deep, fresh dents, the students creaked their heads up.
Fear had flooded their eyes as they looked at me, and I smiled slowly.
“Didn't any of you grab sulfur or hydrochloric acid from the science lab? Those would've come in handy too.”
“Who'd do that? That stuff is completely useless. Of course…”
The standoff having dissolved into nothing, the students sank back into their seats and gestured at their weapons.
“These are just… toys.”
Having said their piece, they simply flopped down onto the floor. It was far too alien a reaction for people whose hideout had just been invaded by a stranger. Granted, I'd knocked the wind out of them with a little stunt — but was that really all it took to reduce them to this?
I looked over the classroom once more. Food still stacked in abundance, and bodies noticeably fleshier than any of the survivors I'd come across so far. These were people who hadn't known hunger at all — and yet the air was heavy. Soot-dark faces, slightly parted lips, vacant eyes.
It was a scene where dread set in before the dirt did. Not a single word of conversation; a strange silence had settled over the room once more. I turned to Kim Haeil, who was watching it all with an uncomfortable expression.
“…Not a single girl, I see.”
“I don't know why you'd ask that, but our school isn't co-ed. Of course, at the shelter there were women gathered with us too….”
Cutting off the answer of a boy now looking at me like I was deranged, I asked again.
“You were at the shelter?”
“Uh… obviously. The shelter was right there — why would we stay at school? We were the first ones the military rescued.”
The ones the military had rescued first had holed up in their school all over again. The rough shape of it came into focus, and I smiled faintly as I pressed him.
“And yet you were all gathered together?”
At my words, Kim Haeil drew in a sharp breath and looked toward the stadium.
He was remembering the day the shelter collapsed. Gunshots ringing across the stadium, soldiers screaming. His friends gasping and running, the howls of the zombies closing in behind them.
'Kieeeek—!'
And the screams of the women who'd escaped the shelter alongside them.
'Kyaaaaak—! Guys, help meee—!'
They hadn't looked back even once. They'd just run for the school. As the zombies' cries faded into the distance, a small ripple of relief spread through them — and barely able to deny that relief, they manufactured themselves a reason. A reason why she had to die. Why they all had to.
“Anyone who couldn't run fast got eaten, I guess.”
A flat, dead voice, and a bitter smile spreading across Kim Haeil's face. The moment I met that smile, a flash went off in my head. I suppressed the laugh that threatened to burst out and rummaged through my inventory.
They were hungry.
And not just a little.
They'd been starving — not for food, but for something else entirely — and staring at the arsenal crammed into my inventory, I clicked my tongue quietly. I remembered now: I'd emptied all the food out of it before leaving the Sanctuary. I pulled up the shop window and bought out every eye-catching item of food in it. Jokbal, tonkatsu, fried chicken, jajangmyeon, sweet and sour pork…
As the delicious smell spread through the classroom, the students rose slowly to their feet, glancing between the food on the floor and me.
“No need to look at me like a pack of starving puppies. Come on, everyone, gather round.”
“…Whoa. Holy crap.”
As they took their seats, I kept purchasing everything the shop window offered. With every new dish that materialized on the floor, the students' eyes grew brighter — for the first time since I'd arrived, their eyes came alive.
“Whoa! Dude, you're seriously insane.”
A student grabbing a chicken drumstick with grimy hands let a piece of meat slip from his mouth. I nodded toward the rations at the back of the room.
“So the one who brought all that food is Jinheon, then?”
“Uh….”
The student froze mid-bite, as if he'd blurted out something he shouldn't have, and the atmosphere soured. The others stopped chewing, stopped moving, only their eyes darting around. I pulled out more chicken and smiled brightly.
“If I'd come here planning to do something to you all, surely I'd have picked an easier way. Wouldn't you say?”
“…Th-that's true!”
I held out a drumstick to the student who'd first mentioned Jinheon's name. Snatching it with a trembling, black-stained hand, the boy hurried to change the subject.
“That's right! Jinheon's an Awakened too — the badass type, like you. I mean, nothing like you, obviously.”
“Hmm. Shouldn't he be eating with us?”
“Uh… he's not here right now.”
…Not here?
“Where did he go?”
“Said he was going to check out Yeongjong Island. The food's been running low.”
…Yeongjong Island?
The most famous island in Incheon — home of Incheon International Airport.
“Why there?”
“It's the only place left where you can still hear gunshots.”
Gunshots meant an armed group was still active out there. This student, Jinheon, had apparently set out to ask that group for help — or possibly to join them outright and secure food that way.
“How long has he been gone?”
“Uh… a week, maybe?”
“You moron, it's only been five days.”
“What'd you say, you little shit? You were asleep the whole time, shut up.”
Handing each of the squabbling students a drumstick, I organized my thoughts. My first target, the Awakened named Jinheon, was a bust. There was no telling when he'd come back here. I'd liked him, too — every move he'd made looked sharp.
Still, I'd gained the food stockpile remaining in the classroom and ten young male students. Hardly a loss. And there was still Kim Haeil, an Awakened — ability unknown, but an Awakened nonetheless.
“Whoa! It's been forever since I've had jajangmyeon.”
“Hey, you got any chopsticks?”
“Are you brain-dead? Quit talking shit — your hands are already filthy anyway. Just shove it all in like me~”
“Dude, don't stick your nasty hand in the kalguksu!”
Watching them wolf down the food I'd given them like starving animals, I smiled.
They were hungry.
And not just a little.
I cast Deficiency Perception on them. What I saw was a deficiency common to every last one of them — not a hunger of the body, but a profoundly spiritual one.
“You were starving pretty badly, weren't you?”
“Ah, heheh— you bet.”
“Eating like that won't fill the hunger I'm talking about. Not even a little.”
Everyone, as a child, dreams of being special. They believe they're different from the rest, certain they'll walk a path no one else ever has. And then disaster swallowed these boys whole, and all they could do was run. Run, and keep running. Hide in corners, shamefully lean on someone else. That wasn't the self they'd dreamed of becoming, was it? To keep beating down the self-loathing that gnawed at them, they'd bite their lips and square off against zombies —
“…But you couldn't kill zombies with toys, could you?”
Their weapons, spotless without a single fleck of blood. They were already refugees who'd lost the will to fight.
And then there was that genuinely special someone — the Awakened, wielding powers they'd only ever fantasized about. The self-loathing they felt looking at him. The envy.
And the jealousy.
“You were terrified of the Awakened, and at the same time you envied them to the point of madness. I can see all of it. I'm the only one who understands you.”
The shared longing of these runaways — beaten at their school first, then at the shelter, then beaten at their school all over again.
Awakening.
“School taught you to death how to succeed in society. It never taught you how to survive the end of the world.”
Everything they had been preparing in order to become adults had turned to foam on the water. What they needed right now wasn't good grades. It was real power — the kind that would let them stop running.
That was their true deficiency. The one I would have to fill.