Chapter 2 - Rotation of the Night 2
Rotation of the Night 2
Episode 2
“Unexpected. You’re the leader?”
The soldier’s eyes gleamed. Several guffawed loudly. Before I could retort, the soldier holding the gem strode toward me and pressed his foot against my back.
“Looks like I could kill you just by stepping on you.”
The hard military boot pressed down on me. I gritted my teeth and didn’t react.
After a moment of that crushing weight, the pressure suddenly vanished, and I could breathe again. Then, the boot kicked me in the side.
I tumbled head over heels, crashing into the prone figures before coming to a stop. People scrambled away from me.
I tried to push myself up, but the belated surge of pain made me instinctively curl up. Laughter echoed in my ears.
“Oh, wow.”
“Wow indeed.”
“Doesn’t even scream. Is this something you’re used to?”
“Got some grit, though.”
“Kind, gritty. Not a character we have in our unit.”
“Why not?”
“Because we don’t need it.”
The soldiers chattered among themselves. Behind them, some casually smoking, others flicking blood off their weapons, I could make out a dim outline.
The corpses of enormous, mantis-like monsters. Not just one or two. Dozens of them littered the ground.
A chilling draft tickled my neck.
The dark sky. Countless stars shining with an eerie brilliance. And beneath them, soldiers casually disposing of giant monsters, exchanging jokes with ease.
To them, we huddled on the ground were less than insects.
This is the real hell.
Cold sweat trickled down my spine. Running from the monsters had been nothing compared to this. This was the real thing.
I held my breath, pressing myself flat against the ground. The others who had escaped with me were also lying motionless, not daring to flee.
The soldiers didn’t just kill monsters. They killed people too. Blood still flowed from the body of the man who had fallen before them.
A soldier, twirling the gem he’d taken from the man in his hand, frowned.
“We only needed that, but too many of them survived.”
The soldier next to him flicked his cigarette and replied expressionlessly.
“Yeah. Should we just kill them all?”
“I’m out. Just being called to a place like this pisses me off.”
“No need to report it, right?”
“Who’d care? Just more trouble for us.”
“Ugh, if this is how it is, they should have just died inside. Annoying.”
The smiles were slowly fading from the soldiers’ faces when the gem-holding soldier suddenly squinted at something.
One by one, the other soldiers followed his gaze. Among the huddled masses, a hand trembled as it rose into the air.
“I, I, I’ve played this game, before.”
The man said in a barely audible voice. The soldiers didn’t reply, only stared.
I quietly began to inch backward, still prone. Now was my chance, with everyone’s attention focused elsewhere. I had to get out of here.
The man stammered on.
“N-not just played it once, I was pretty, pretty good at it. I was on the rankings, I even did broadcasts of the game….”
“So you know what this is?”
The soldier asked, tossing the gem in the air. The man lowered his hand and awkwardly stood up.
He answered in a trembling but unwavering voice.
“It’s a High-Grade Fuel Core.”
“Then why did you come out empty-handed? Someone who knows so much?”
“I, I was too flustered…. If you give me a chance, I’ll do my best with what I know….”
“With information from ten years ago?”
Silence fell. The soldier shoved the gem into his pocket. The faint light it had emitted vanished.
The color drained from the man’s face as he stood awkwardly.
“It used to be fuel, but not anymore. It’s worth a lot more now. Do you know why? You don’t, do you? Because that game you played is just a shoddy copy of the past here.”
The soldier grinned.
“Too bad for you. It’s different from what you know.”
This was the worst.
I gritted my teeth and steadily retreated. My plan was to hide in the nearby bushes, wait for an opportunity, and then bolt. I didn’t know where to go, but anywhere had to be better than here.
“Pretty disappointed, huh? You were probably looking forward to showing off your mouse-clicking skills from your room. Want to try grabbing this?”
The soldier said, feigning kindness. He put the cigarette in his mouth, then skillfully pulled the bow he had slung across his back.
As the strap across his shoulder came loose, the name tag on his uniform was revealed. It read Kim Do-woon.
Kim Do-woon tossed the bow to the man. The man, standing awkwardly, barely managed to catch it. His eyes widened as he examined the bow.
“Shoot it.”
Kim Do-woon said magnanimously. The man handled the bow with trembling hands.
The sleek, black bow. Its form was simple, but the taut string shone as if woven from light.
Even I, who had never played the game, knew what it was. I’d heard the boys at school talking about how expensive one particular bow was.
I’d been told there was only one, but now I saw several of the soldiers carrying the same bow.
Some were tangled with other weapons and carelessly dropped on the ground, so they didn’t seem to be treating them as particularly precious.
A chill ran down my spine.
This place really was different from the game. Very different.
I’d thought that I’d logged into the game and ended up here, so this was the game world, but it wasn’t. It was the real world that the game was based on. And it was more than ten years more advanced than the game, making it much more difficult.
“Why? You wanted to, didn’t you? Go ahead, kill us all and run away.”
The soldiers snickered.
The man, terrified, clutched the bow, unable to move. He had long since lost his will to fight.
The man would die. And if I couldn’t escape this place, my fate wouldn’t be much different.
I was gritting my teeth and diligently retreating when—
“I heard there’s another leader? What were you doing while that woman was leading people out?”
He was talking about me. The moment I froze, the soldiers’ gazes locked onto me without hesitation. They seemed to know my location already.
Kim Do-woon pushed past the soldiers staring at me and strode toward me.
He came right up to me, knelt on one knee, and lowered his tall frame. His uniform, stained with blood and filth, dragged carelessly on the ground, and his sturdy upper body cast a deep shadow over me.
Before I could avoid it, our eyes met.
His face was smeared with red blood. Kim Do-woon furrowed his brow slightly. He stared at me, then roughly wiped his face with his sleeve. As the blood was wiped away, his features became clearer.
His face, framed by hair that was tousled like a young puppy’s fur, looked to be about my age. Faced with his carefree, playful expression, I quickly bowed my head to the ground. My chest pounded with tension.
“I’m curious.”
His voice was laced with amusement.
“Even the guy who broadcasts the game was too flustered, but how did you manage to lead people out? Are you a game developer or something?”
It seemed I wouldn’t be able to escape here. I’d been too conspicuous leading people out.
But I didn’t regret it. Baek Yi-hyun would have done the same. That kid wouldn’t have ignored others. Baek Yi-hyun would have….
Suddenly, my vision blurred. I bit my lip to hold back tears.
“Why aren’t you answering?”
Cigarette ash fell on the hand I had placed on the ground.
“Huh? We’re looking for him, you see. The guy who’s been copying our world without permission and distributing it as a game. Are you that son of a bitch?”
A puff of cigarette smoke scattered at the end of his sentence. A faint scent of green apples wafted by.
“You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, don’t you? Copying someone else’s world and selling it as a fake game. Must be nice to save on development costs. Thanks to you, there’s a hole punched through our dimension and yours, all because of that shitty game…. Aren’t you going to answer? I’m asking if it’s you.”
“No, I’m not.”
I managed to answer. Someone snickered.
“Then?”
“I just followed someone else who was leaving. I told people before I came out, and we came out together. I’ve never played this game.”
“Never played it?”
Kim Do-woon asked.
“What’s that supposed to mean? Then how did you get here? You must have logged into the game.”
“I logged in with a friend’s ID….”
“Why would you log in with someone else’s ID?”
The questions continued, but they were meaningless. They were just toying with me before killing me.
Reddish blood was spreading on the ground where he knelt. I couldn’t tell if it was blood from the monster corpses scattered on the ground or the blood of the man who had died earlier.
“I’m asking you. Why did you log in with someone else’s ID?”
“Because I missed him.”
I answered truthfully. I couldn’t cope with the grief after Baek Yi-hyun died. I had to do something.
I wanted to log in with Baek Yi-hyun’s ID and see his character, at least. I couldn’t bear the longing otherwise.
I was desperate for even the smallest trace. My parents had cleared out all of his belongings in their grief, so the only memory I could grasp was logging into the game he used to play.
My eyes burned. I held my breath and raised my head. Kim Do-woon’s face was right in front of me. I slowly repeated my answer.
“Because I missed my friend too much.”
“Wow.”
One of the soldiers clapped his hands. Someone whistled.
“Tears, I’m getting tears.”
“Friend? Or did you like him?”
“Looks exactly like someone who lost her boyfriend.”
The soldiers laughed loudly.
But Kim Do-woon was different. The amusement vanished, and his face hardened as he stared at me. He seemed about to say something, then abruptly stood up.
A cigarette butt landed near my hand. Kim Do-woon crushed it with his boot. His voice now came from above.
“I’m leaving. Take care of it and come back.”
“Leaving already?”
Someone asked, patting Kim Do-woon on the shoulder. Kim Do-woon glanced down at me, then turned away. He muttered.
“I’m tired.”
Just then, someone cursed under his breath in the distance.
“Hey, you son of a bitch, weren’t you supposed to be off today?”
The soldiers’ swaggering attitude vanished, and they all looked tense. I followed their gazes. It was too dark to see clearly. I narrowed my eyes.
At the end of the horizon, beyond the scattered monsters, I saw a blurry figure.
I was squinting, trying to get a better look, when Kim Do-woon grabbed me by the collar. He roughly threw me away.
When I came to my senses, I was right next to the huddled masses. All my efforts to move had been in vain.
Moreover, someone who was obviously a superior officer was coming. I couldn’t even think about escaping; I could only pray not to attract any more attention.
I buried my face in the ground, seeing nothing but the military boots that were instantly lining up in perfect order.
The organized silence passed, and into it, one pair of boots walked and stopped.
Like the other boots, they were dirty with blood and filth, but the details were much more intricate, and the end of a cloak trailed behind them.
Someone reported in a stiff voice.
“Gate 13, opened for the first time in two years and four months. Thirty-two survivors, one Initial Orb secured.”
After a moment of silence, a low voice rang out.
“Thirty-two survivors….”
The oppressive voice, as if pressing down on the space, paused briefly, then continued coldly.
“And only one Initial Orb? Is that supposed to be acceptable?”