Why Doesn't Anyone
Why doesn't anyone.
I should have checked the time before I threw my phone away. The date, at least. I know roughly half a year has passed, but I have no idea how long it's really been.
Always indoors. Always inside a tiny room. The most variety I ever get is an operating table with a lamp hanging over it.
Come to think of it, at some point I just blurred at the edges and became Yu Harin. The way sugar melts — slow, inevitable — the moment it meets a few drops of warm water.
How did it come to this? Maybe this is what happens when someone who should have spent their life selling their body in a back alley, living a suitably wretched existence, decided to get ideas above their station.
I was supposed to be the kind of person who spent their summers sticky with sweat and their winters watching frost-sharp wind rattle the windows — clinging to some man, drawing breath that didn't mean a thing. The kind of pathetic, worthless life where the only thing you hold precious is the fact that the hero who saved the world used to be your friend, once upon a time.
Meanwhile, the person in question has forgotten I exist. Surrounded by people. Worshipped.
I had a dream last night. A dream from a very long time ago. In it, I was just standing there, watching someone whose body glowed with light. I know who it was. My childhood friend. But I cannot, for the life of me, remember their face.
I remember every word they ever said to me. The fights we used to have. The cheap chocolate we ate when we made up. Their name. The way they held me after my parents died. That ridiculous promise that we'd get married when we grew up — I remember all of it, down to the sound of their voice. I can even picture the footprints we left behind, looking back as we ran through a village buried in snow.
I drew in a lungful of air that was strangely thick, sticky, reeking of something raw, and took my time steadying my breath. I had to cut the thoughts off.
I grabbed the bottled water sitting in the corner, dumped it over my head, and scrubbed at my face. Then I looked in the mirror again.
It was so sharp, so clear, that I found it more repulsive than ever. My eyes were drier than they had ever been, and up close they were bloodshot — but the red already native to them made it hard to tell. I looked like some lonely creature holed up in a corner, stacking reasons to die.
Where did it go? The vitality a sixteen-year-old is supposed to have, the brightness? All that's left is this exhaustion, this misery. What am I becoming? I called this a novel, but where am I, really? And who, exactly, am I supposed to be?
I've folded away a name I can no longer remember, and become Yu Harin. There is no way any affection for myself could still be left in someone like that.
What kind of person was I?
I can't remember.
I went to elementary school with Seojun! Attendance only mattered once a week — just enough to prove I was still alive — and every now and then I'd bring home a little homework, so the rest of the day was just play, I think. We'd roam the neighborhood hunting birds, gather firewood, draw pictures together, talk about nothing. All sorts of games. It was fun. It was so much fun. You couldn't even use the word compare for what I have now.
So then what did I do with my life? I can't remember what I used to do.
Well. I didn't really do much of anything before I ended up here. We didn't have the money for middle school, and by the time whatever my parents left behind was almost gone, they'd already stuffed me in this place.
But even so — when the last one left, when even Mom died of the plague, and I was slumped against the wall with no tears left in me — there was someone who held me tight and told me it would be okay. I think I spent more time carrying that in my heart than I ever spent actually living. That's why I wanted to see them again, no matter what.
Though if I think about how awkward it was when we met again — how the conversation kept dying, how even the old stories didn't seem to make Seojun happy — maybe I don't want to see him again at all.
"What are you thinking about so hard?"
I looked up. Team Leader Ju. So she's basically my handler now, is that it?
"I was wondering when I might be allowed to leave this place."
"I already told you. Once we can keep you under control and we've stockpiled a few more samples, you can wander around as much as you want. Just wait."
"I do not particularly want to be managed by you."
"I don't particularly want to manage a girl who's still school-age, either. Sensitive, difficult, emotional. Though I suppose that last part doesn't really apply to you."
Team Leader Ju stretched, grinning, and let the words unspool like she was getting something off her chest.
"We've got approval from upstairs. They said we need to manage you a little more... firmly."
"What kind of approval?"
"If you talk back the way you just did, we're cleared to hurt you. Just not enough to kill you. Then again, what we need isn't a functioning you. Just samples."
The moment she said it, a pair of cuffs dropped from the ceiling with a dull clank.
"Why did I ever think something like you was a person. A soft-hearted little girl, no less."
There's a flicker of something in her eyes. Hatred, almost. Was one of the guards who died yesterday someone she loved? The rims of her eyes are a little red — maybe she was crying. Or maybe she's just pleased she can finally deal with a nuisance without it being a nuisance.
I didn't want to breathe in the gas, so I walked over to the cuffs and pushed my hands in without a fight. A mechanical click, and my wrists were locked in an instant. But the gas was already rising from the floor.
I tried to climb the wall. Of course that didn't work. So I hammered the acrylic window in the steel door with the cuffs locked around my wrists, over and over, like I'd lost my mind. She laughed at me, fishing a gas mask out of the bag at her hip and fitting it over her face, piece by piece.
"Why— I put them on! You fu— hhgk, hhbl—!"
"I told you. All we need is the specimen, Subject 11."
The steel door opened, her voice coming through the mask with that distinctive metallic rasp. I hadn't even gone down yet. I couldn't breathe. I tried to get away somehow, but my body didn't have a single wound on it — they'd treated me yesterday, apparently — and my hands were bound.
I was about to bite through my own arm when she grabbed me by the hair, slammed my face into the floor, and crushed my head under her heel.
"You're so stupid you mistook our consideration for a right. That's why you crawled into a place like this."
I could hear every word, even as the gas pooled thick across the floor and tore through my body.
What happened after that is simple enough. The man they call the Department Head stood in front of me and tore me down, then took the weapons off the wall and stabbed me, hit me, over and over, like he was making sure I was dead.
They cut off my arms and put them back on. They cut off my legs and put them back on. They sliced my throat halfway through, and when my eyes rolled back and I blacked out for a second, my neck was already whole again. Remarkably so.
And the real problem, I think, was that through all of it there was no philopon, no cocaine, no heroin, no pethidine, no methamphetamine, no ketamine, no oxycodone, no codeine. Not even alcohol. I was sober.
They gagged me, then smashed a hammer into my face. The worst part was when they hit the gag itself.
When they cut you or stab you with a blade, you don't really see their face. It doesn't take much force to slice, sever, puncture a body this small. A hammer is different. The way they put their whole body into the swing — they looked like they were enjoying it. They probably were.
"Nngh— hhbl— hhkkeup!!!"
If your mouth is blocked, at least the scream doesn't come out. The ones I spat out afterward, drooling, raw with pain — those tore my throat open, and that made them so much worse.
The Department Head grinned as he burned me, piece by piece, packing the chunks of flesh that fell off into a pristine white box and carrying them off somewhere. Team Leader Ju was so excited she didn't even notice the blood soaking into her clothes, taking me apart, cutting, putting me back together, over and over.
How many days did that go on? It felt like at least a month. It might have been a single day. I'd pass out because I was sure I was dying, then they'd hit me with a stimulant and I'd wake up, then I'd pass out again, then another stimulant — all day, every day. The only reason I guessed time was passing at all was that every so often, Team Leader Ju or the Department Head would be wearing something different under their lab coats.
Was I a less valuable test subject than I thought? Or is a test subject just a test subject, and once you're no longer useful, this is how they dispose of you?
Which made me think about it again. Had I really done something so unforgivable? Those people locked underground asked for a cup of coffee, and the ones who refused them — wasn't that their fault? Looking at where I am now, those people really were... And the person standing in front of me — didn't they deserve to die? Or maybe every human being in this world who calls themselves a researcher deserves to die.
No more empty promises about letting me out. No sleep, not even for a moment. No snacks. No coffee. I fell into a novel, and nothing novel-like is happening. Someone always shows up before things get this far. Even if you're not the protagonist, it never gets this bad.
Why doesn't anyone.
My left eyeball, rolling across the floor, met my gaze. Even an eye that dry, that lifeless, still reflects something. I thought it was blood running from beneath it, but something clearer was mixed in.
Why doesn't anyone.