ep3. Hunting Humans (4)
"It hurts like hell... just kill me already...."
Orange kept muttering like a broken radio stuck on one frequency.
Which meant that as I pushed his wheelchair, I got to suffer right along with him.
At the moment, I was circling the hospital with White, Orange, and Blue in tow.
Wandering around a space that had a monster in it was stressful enough on its own, and on top of that, Orange wouldn't stop whining, which set my nerves further on edge.
I was tolerating it because he was a patient—but then he abruptly picked a fight with me.
"Hey, Otter. What'd you do to end up here?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"I was just asking, what's with the attitude? Everyone told me except you, you pathetic loner."
When had this guy even seen me? Why was he acting like my personal schoolyard bully?
Did he never stop to consider that I could flip his wheelchair over at any moment?
It was so absurd I didn't want to waste breath on a long answer, so I gave him a measured reply.
"And what did you do, then?"
"Me? Oh, you're gonna flip when you hear this. Where I was, there was one of those lockers that turns stuff into money."
The moment I heard that, a chill ran straight down my spine.
Oblivious, Orange kept on gloating.
"First I was putting in stuff like watches, but then someone got squashed flat, so I tried putting him in? And it paid out pretty good. Insane, right? So I tried putting in people who'd died nice and intact, and the money just came pouring out. I printed money like crazy off that. Must've made around a billion won back then."
There he was. The piece of garbage Sol had told me about.
I clenched my jaw against the nausea.
I couldn't understand how everyone else had abandoned him, and yet he talked about it like it was something to brag about.
He'd done something deserving of divine punishment—how the hell was he this shameless about it?
Maybe thinking along the same lines, White gently reproached him.
"Mr. Orange, we're all being punished here for bad things we did. So shouldn't we at least show a little remorse?"
"Oh, screw that."
Orange scoffed.
Truly a shameless bastard.
When he'd gotten hurt, the first person to look after him was White, wasn't it? And not even a shred of gratitude?
That same shameless bastard came back around to needle me again.
"Hey. Now it's your turn. Spill."
I had zero interest in trading words with this guy.
Just then, White raised a hand.
Then, pressing her wheelchair close against the corridor wall, she whispered.
"Um—the Moving Gun is coming."
My heart plummeted.
Just as White said, at the far end of the corridor around the corner, the Moving Gun was drifting slowly toward us.
It was barely thirty meters away.
I grabbed Orange's wheelchair, ready to bolt right then and there.
But White whispered again.
"Should we follow it?"
"Excuse me?"
"At this distance, if we trail behind it, it won't notice. That thing's slower than you'd think."
Shocked out of my wits, I'd blurted out in formal speech without realizing it.
Orange reacted hysterically on behalf of my stunned brain.
"Why the hell would we follow that thing, you idiot! Did you forget what happened when it went berserk and slaughtered everyone?!"
For once, Orange had a point.
Just moments ago, three people had died when the Moving Gun went on a rampage—supposedly.
And these guys didn't even know what conditions triggered the monster's frenzy.
So instead of letting our guard down because it was slow, shouldn't the sane move be to avoid it as much as possible?
But White operated on a different wavelength from a coward like me.
"That's exactly why we should follow it. If you know where a hazard is, you can prepare for it."
Damn it. That also made a perverse kind of sense.
Even Blue, who had been silent this whole time, chimed in.
"That's right."
"See? What do you think, Mr. Otter?"
I... don't want to....
While I hesitated, Orange flew into a rage and screeched.
"Are you ignoring me? If your brain's empty, then shut your mouth, you stupid bitch! Do you have any idea what happens if I die?!"
At Orange's tirade, White let out a long sigh.
I figured the situation would end there.
But in that moment—
CRASH!
White abruptly seized Orange by the collar and slammed him down.
Then she vaulted out of her own wheelchair and pinned him to the floor.
"Gkkhaaah...!"
Orange squeezed out a strangled scream.
White had clamped her hand around his vocal cords.
Orange thrashed, but he couldn't shake off White, who was barely half his size.
She was holding him in some eerily perfect mount position, rendering him completely helpless.
Honestly? Deeply satisfying.
But this was no time to enjoy it, so I moved to pull White off him.
Then Blue grabbed my arm and shook her head.
In the meantime, White spoke in a mild, even tone.
"Mr. Orange, if you die, all of us are doomed too. But see, if you're going to threaten people with your own life, you need the courage to actually die first. You have a big mouth, Mr. Orange, but you don't actually want to die. In the end, all you can really do here is be protected. So why won't you read the room?"
"Gkk—!"
"Mr. Orange, do you not remember why you got the injection? You were voted in by majority because you were the most useless. Even with me here with my broken leg, you swept the votes. Do you not understand what that means? Even your own gang abandoned you."
"Ugh—ghk!"
"Now that you've finally become useful, they're keeping you around, and this is how you repay them? Keep this up, and we might strip away whatever limbs you've got left. All you really need is to still be breathing, after all. Do you understand?"
"Hhk... sniff..."
White's voice was as monotonous as a lullaby.
But the content was cruel enough to earn applause from Satan himself.
In the end, Orange went past the verge of tears and started openly sobbing.
White left him there and climbed back into her own wheelchair.
Then she turned to Blue and me.
"Sorry about that—would you two mind seating Mr. Orange again?"
They'd said the deeper the color of your armband, the more dangerous the person.
That was apparently a load of nonsense. These people were all just straight-up unhinged.
I watched anxiously, worried White might actually go chase the Moving Gun.
But Blue glanced at her wristwatch and said, "We're past the five-minute mark. Time to head back and rotate out."
Now that was a welcome sound.
Fortunately, White accepted this too, and we returned to the operating room.
Just then, Black and Red were heading outside, and White informed them, "The monster went toward the children's hospital wing."
"Really? It doesn't seem to be targeting Orange or anything, does it?"
"No. Apparently seeing your face doesn't mean it tracks your location."
"Got it. We'll keep tabs on the monster's position as we go. We've marked the finished sections on the Sotdae."
With a brief exchange of information, we swapped roles.
Since Orange had to keep making his rounds, Black and Red took him along.
They stared at the deflated Orange for a moment with odd expressions, then wordlessly wheeled him away.
After that, White, Blue, and I got to work on the excavation beneath the 999 Sotdae.
The goal was to dig through the stuff—clay or flesh, who could tell—and find organs that were still intact.
Raking together that squishy sludge was grueling work.
So I desperately distracted myself with other thoughts.
Like, say, the true nature of Orange that I'd just witnessed.
The "cruel but charismatic villain" is a fantasy that only exists in fiction; real-life villains are, for the most part, pathetic and incompetent.
Because genuinely capable people don't become villains in the first place.
And even knowing that, the reality of the villain from the Railway Station I'd finally laid eyes on was laughably, unbearably pathetic.
No charisma whatsoever—just a dim-witted loser who postured pathetically and got humiliated for it.
That was the true face of the villain behind those horrific atrocities.
"Mr. Otter."
"Hk—!"
Deep in my musings, I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sudden call.
I turned to find White watching me with her head tilted.
"Wh-what? What is it?"
"Earlier—I startled you, didn't I? I've been here so long, I think I've gotten a bit high-strung."
White gave a sheepish little laugh.
Not at all, you're totally fine, please spare my life.
I barely suppressed the urge to say exactly that and asked with forced calm, "How long have you been here?"
"About three hours."
Far longer than I'd assumed.
So had she already been through two full cycles of the Moving Gun's active and dormant periods?
Come to think of it, the order form had listed twelve survivors in total.
But only five of us were left now.
...Yeah, the spiciest flavor in this place was definitely the Management Bureau's.
Hey. So that's what they meant by 'drafting the survival manual,' huh?
But if you're going to use people like this, the least you could do is tell us something—anything—about the Moving Gun.
Why did they tell us nothing?
Worried that knowing more would give us time to think?
Worried we'd fight over who to sacrifice?
But at this rate, aren't both the survival rate and the efficiency tanking?
I don't know. Small-minded people like me can't understand how those devils think... wait. Hm?
Hold on. No way.
I swallowed a ragged breath as the thought brushed against my mind.
Then I snuck a glance at White's armband, and said, keeping my face carefully blank, "If you've been wandering around that long, you must know the layout of this place inside and out, right?"
"Roughly, yes."
"Then draw me a map."
"Excuse me?"
"I should learn my way around too."
At my request, White stared at me for a moment.
Through the gaps in her mask, White's eyes traced the gentle curves of a docile deer.
Praying those eyes wouldn't turn on a dime, I waited for her answer.
A few seconds later.
White's eyes crinkled into a thin smile.
"Fair enough. It would be terrible if you got lost."
White smiled sweetly, flipped over the order form I'd been handed, and began sketching a floor plan on the back.
"Here you go."
White passed me the map, finished in no time at all.
I took it and bent over, pretending to resume the excavation work.
And when White turned her back to me, I secretly unfolded it.
Ha. You've got to be kidding me.
The sigh escaped me on its own.
The 'special tip!' handwritten at the bottom of the order form.
And the label White had just written on the floor plan she'd drawn.
The handwriting was identical.
Ten minutes later, Black's group returned.
Black and White shared information the same way they had before.
A few rounds of that, and another thirty minutes had slipped by.
Nothing remarkable happened in the meantime.
Aside from Orange losing one of his ears.
It happened while Black's group was taking Orange around the hospital.
Apparently the wall had suddenly burst open, and one of Orange's ears went flying.
Anyway—other than that, nothing happened.
The Moving Gun was still wandering around on its own.
We still hadn't found a single intact organ.
And I was, at this moment, as anxious as a person could be.
The Moving Gun really was too slow to have hunted anyone yet.
Which meant if things kept up like this, it would go berserk soon enough.
How was I supposed to get through this?
Should I run? The surveillance was lax now anyway.
Even if I ran, could I possibly escape that catastrophe all by myself?
Would the rescue team maybe arrive a few minutes earlier than expected? Please?
Should I tell the others about this instead?
Or... should I sacrifice someone?
...Just thinking about it made my chest feel tight.
Plenty of people want to see a bad man cut down.
But ask most of them to carry out that execution with their own hands, and nearly all of them would hesitate.
Criminal or not, feeling the weight of another person's life is what's normal.
I was no different, and I had no desire to cross that line if I could help it.
I never wanted to become a broken human being like Orange.
Backed into a corner, I weighed my options second by agonizing second.
But as it turned out, I wasn't the only one harboring a hidden agenda.
We were on our way back to the operating room, having finished the hospital rounds with White, Blue, and Orange.
White and Blue, walking beside me, suddenly stopped dead and muttered to each other.
"What should we do?"
"Hard to say."
Blue had used formal speech—and White, casual.
Just as I was puzzling over the sudden shift in their speech patterns, something shot out from between the chairs and lunged at me.
I staggered back in shock, and Blue snatched the thing up and slammed it into the floor.
THUD—!
"Ughk—get off me!"
Shouted the man whose arm Blue had bent backwards slamming him down.
None other than Red.
Ignoring his struggling, Blue shouted to me, "Behind you!"
On pure instinct, I threw myself aside.
CLANG—!
An iron bar came crashing down on the exact spot where I'd been standing.
"Ha. You actually dodged it."
The one smirking behind me was, of course, Black.
He was gripping a scrap of pipe he must have picked up somewhere.
Waving the pipe idly, Black addressed Blue.
"Ms. Blue, step aside. There's a reason for everything happening right now."
Blue didn't listen, keeping Red pinned down.
So Black let out a sigh and turned to me.
"You. You've been keeping something from us, haven't you?"
Black pushed up his glasses and smiled—thin, and cold as a blade.
"For that monster to stop, one person has to die. Am I wrong?"
Damn it. He figured it out.
But so had I.
So it was you all along—Archimedes of the Railway Station.