Chapter 241
Chapter 241
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Translator: crow
Chapter Title: 241. Landfill
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What lay before my eyes was a tall mountain.
It towered so high that it was shrouded in thick fog, making the peak impossible to see clearly.
No one would call something like this a hill.
It was just a mountain.
"It's high..."
Yoo Daon murmured, and Song Arin and Jang Chaeyeon looked up at it as well.
Unlike the three of them, sweat was beading on my palms.
I was anxious.
Eileen had lost her brooch.
There wasn't a single trace of his sister.
Even after coming this far, there was still no sign of his sister at all.
Could the manual have lied to me?
No.
That was too far-fetched.
The manual wouldn't lie to me.
If I'd asked it directly, it probably wouldn't have even opened.
So what should I do?
There was no choice but to climb up and find out.
All sorts of thoughts raced through my head.
What happens if you lose the brooch?
I didn't recall anything like "you die if you lose the brooch."
I slowly opened the manual so the others wouldn't see.
[Employee Manual]
[Church - ]
"You're checking it."
I jumped at the voice from behind and closed the manual. Eileen was looking at me.
"You're worried?"
"Are you okay?"
There was no need to say I was worried.
Anyone would worry about Eileen. The pain she'd endured must have been immense.
Eileen cast her gaze downward.
Her unreadable eyes dropped for a moment.
"I'm fine. Really."
She muttered the words like they were chewed up and spat out.
"I'm satisfied. I'm happy that I got to see my parents one last time."
"..."
"It's a miracle I survived this long to begin with."
Eileen murmured and looked at me.
"I've fulfilled my wish. So I'm okay now."
"..."
A hollow expression stared back at me.
A smile that seemed to forcibly suppress her emotions.
She didn't look okay at all, but I had nothing to say, and I couldn't very well tell her she didn't seem okay.
Instead, I changed the subject.
"What happens if you lose the brooch?"
"You can't perform your role."
Eileen answered.
"Now only Song Arin can play the role of Yuhyang."
"Is that really all?"
Eileen stared straight at me.
After a silence, she nodded.
"Yeah, that's it."
"..."
"Here's the entrance!"
As Eileen and I stared at each other, Yoo Daon snapped me out of my thoughts.
I looked where Yoo Daon was pointing.
There were stone stairs carved into the rock.
"Should we go up here?"
I opened the manual again.
[Employee Manual]
[Hill of Joy - Anomaly Response Team Kim Jaeheon Edition]
1. Don't make choices you'll regret.
2. Don't give up.
That was all it said.
It was completely different from usual.
No advice, no instructions. Just a mindset.
No matter how many times I reopened it, that was all there was.
"Let's go."
In the end, there was no choice.
"I'll take the lead."
Eileen stepped forward and positioned herself at the front.
"I don't have the brooch anyway. Without a role, this is the only thing I can do."
She gave me a hollow smile.
"That's fine, right?"
I could only nod.
*
It was raining.
Not just raining—it was pouring like the sky had a hole in it.
Park Ye-eun had brought raincoats, but there weren't enough, so only a few who needed to move the most got them.
I wasn't one of them.
And neither were the two walking behind me.
"Wow. Our clothes are gonna be see-through."
I started to turn at Song Arin's murmur,
"Look and you're dead."
"I'm not looking."
I turned back around.
How lucky Jang Chaeyeon was behind me.
"I'm fine, really..."
"You'll need to move more than me, Daon. I think you should wear it."
"Mmm..."
Yoo Daon, in her raincoat, looked at me apologetically but soon walked ahead, resigned.
"Tch."
Now that the urgent situation had passed, the burning pain in my hand started tormenting me again.
"Ye-eun."
"Yeah, oppa?"
Park Ye-eun, hood pulled over her head, came over to me.
"You're okay?"
"Yeah. Thanks to Daon unnie helping me out, I survived."
"Really?"
"For real. It was scary, but she's a good unnie."
She nodded and looked at me.
"But why?"
"Give me a cool pad."
"Oh."
Park Ye-eun seemed to understand what I meant.
She rummaged in her bag and handed me a cool pad.
"Don't hurt too much, oppa."
"What can you do? Someone had to."
"Still..."
"Should I ask Eileen, then? Or you?"
Even if it was Park Ye-eun, I didn't like it. And Eileen definitely would have—she probably thought I'd come here because of her request.
But I didn't want to make anyone else do it either.
"Anyway, I'm fine. If we just keep going—"
"Stop."
Before I could finish, Eileen reached out and halted us.
"Something there?"
She had already pulled out military binoculars from her coat and was peering ahead.
"The rain and fog limit visibility, but... a triangle? A cross? Something like that."
"I'll take point."
Yoo Daon strode forward at her words, but Eileen extended her arm to block her.
"No."
Yoo Daon blinked up at Eileen, her body blocked.
She looked at Eileen with eyes asking what the hell she was doing, and Eileen met her gaze steadily.
"It's dangerous."
"That's why I'm going."
"It might not end with just you dying."
"That's why I'm going."
"There could be mental attacks."
"You can't block mental attacks either."
"Here, the pro steps up."
"Even pros die the same way."
The two volleyed words like machine guns, and Song Arin, watching intently, clicked her tongue loudly.
The sharp "tch!" echoed through the quiet mountain.
"Hey. You two come here to fight? Can't stand not being the center of attention? Then hold hands, go back down all buddy-buddy, and get swept away by the waves. We won't come looking."
At her words, the two stared at Song Arin,
"You can't take point either. You'd die if hit."
"What'd you say?"
Jang Chaeyeon jumped in too, and the four voices tangled together.
Things were escalating.
"Here's how we do it."
I hurriedly gathered my thoughts and spoke up.
"Daon takes point, and I'll follow right behind her."
"Sounds good!"
"But—"
"Hear me out. Then Eileen and Arin follow, and Chaeyeon takes the rear."
"What about me?"
"You just hang back wherever."
"You're treating the pack mule too roughly."
Ignoring Park Ye-eun's grumbling, I pictured it in my head.
The optimal formation for each person's skills.
Yoo Daon smiled at my words, while Eileen looked down.
"Because I'm a civilian..."
"You are a civilian."
Surprisingly, it was Jang Chaeyeon who responded to Eileen's murmur, not Song Arin or Yoo Daon.
"..."
"People should always do what they can."
"..."
"Otherwise, they die. Countless people have died that way."
"But—"
"If you lack talent, acting according to what talent you have is an answer too."
Eileen closed her eyes briefly at Jang Chaeyeon's words, then opened them.
"Yeah. You're right."
Then she took her assigned position.
"Let's go."
Soon enough, everyone was in place.
Everyone except Eileen and Park Ye-eun had done this sort of thing before.
I pushed through the rain alongside Yoo Daon, scanning ahead.
"Stop when I say stop."
"Don't worry."
Yoo Daon looked forward, while I kept filtering out the pain in my palm and my headache as I walked.
"Huh, there really is something."
Yoo Daon murmured and took a few more steps, me following close.
Pushing through fog and rain, something soon came into view.
A triangle? A cross?
Neither.
It was junk.
Up close, their shapes became even clearer.
Discarded tires, a cross that might hang on a church roof, cars.
Countless pieces of junk littered the ground.
"It looks like a dump."
Yoo Daon was right.
A dump. That was the only way to describe it.
Just a haphazard pile of random trash.
"But for a dump, there are some weird things, huh."
Yoo Daon murmured, eyeing a massive roof.
"Feels like everything's been stripped off something."
"Yeah."
Her description nailed it again.
It was like things had been torn off something.
Untouched by time, the junk sat there.
A car that looked fifty years old showed no rust, preserved perfectly. Signs whose age was indeterminable but ancient retained their original colors.
Yoo Daon closed her eyes and sniffed.
"Smells acrid."
"Acrid smell?"
"Yeah. Like smoke or something..."
Listening to her, I scanned the surroundings.
The items around us seemed cut out of time, and—
"Whoa, Jaeheon, check this out!"
Yoo Daon interrupted my thoughts.
"What's up?"
"There's a house here too."
Yoo Daon tugged my sleeve and led me somewhere.
"This is..."
A house.
An apartment house.
"..."
"It's a house?"
Yoo Daon blinked at it.
"..."
"Jaeheon, you look pale."
Yoo Daon checked my face.
Of course I looked bad.
It was our house.
After the church sanctuary, countless bizarre things, and the village, what appeared before my eyes was our house.
The pain in my palm suddenly intensified.