ep9. Flushing Out the Fakes (12)
“I'm sorry.”
Baek Sa-ra apologized out of nowhere.
“Because of my mistake.”
“Mistake?”
I turned it over in my head, wondering what mistake Baek Sa-ra could be referring to, and then it clicked.
She didn't mean the moment she approached Kim Hae-seong's smartphone without suspecting it would explode, did she?
“At the end there — I should have reacted more carefully.”
So I'd guessed right.
Baek Sa-ra considered this whole situation — being hunted by Alpha and Delta — to be the result of her own mistake.
But wasn't that closer to an accident than a mistake?
“That phone call earlier. Was it someone you know?”
“I don't know. But… probably, yes.”
Baek Sa-ra answered my question in a low voice.
Earlier, the man on the other end of the line had taunted her by digging up her past.
And apparently Baek Sa-ra had no idea who he was, either.
No wonder she looked so frustrated and cornered.
Watching her grave expression, I recalled something Jae-gyeom had said to me a while back.
Sa-ra noona's actually pretty lenient with the Page juniors.
Page (P.A.G).
Its official name was the Bureau-Affiliated Temporary Protection Facility for Rescued Minors.
A kind of shelter run by the Bureau until two years ago, before its sweeping reorganization.
Back when the Special Zones were expanding like wildfire, far more people were being pulled into them than today — or so I'd heard.
Families were even dragged in together, whole and intact, on a disturbingly regular basis.
And by the time the Bureau found them, in the vast majority of cases the parents were already dead, and only the children had survived alone.
Whether that was thanks to the parents' sacrifice and devotion, or to children's peculiar knack for adaptation, I couldn't say.
Either way — or perhaps both — the zones had produced orphans in staggering numbers.
But the Bureau couldn't send those children, rescued alone, back out into society.
Humanitarian concerns played their part, no doubt, but the bigger issue was that if those kids walked free, knowledge of the Special Zones might leak to the outside world.
And so the Bureau began operating Page.
The facility's stated purpose: to return the children to society with their mouths firmly shut.
Most of the children, true to that design, received their education and their treatment and longed for nothing more than a return to ordinary life.
But some of them chose a different path entirely.
They resolved to face down the very Special Zones that had torn their young lives apart.
The Bureau welcomed that resolve with open arms.
Children who had tasted hell early and survived its extremes were, for all practical purposes, finished personnel already.
So the Bureau created a special Page admissions track and aggressively recruited them.
Officer from a protection-facility background whom I knew personally? Three, at least.
Baek Sa-ra, Gwak Jae-gyeom, and Ha Yu-ju.
When I first heard Jae-gyeom's and Yu-ju's ages, I'd wondered how people so young had ended up in a place like this.
Turns out the roots went all the way back to here.
Considering all that context, the call that had come in earlier was probably tied to Baek Sa-ra's most painful memories.
And Baek Sa-ra seemed to believe that briefly losing her composure back then was what had cost her now.
“Don't blame yourself too much.”
I chose my words carefully, trying to meet her where she was.
“You had to check on Kim Hae-seong's condition anyway. There was no guarantee he'd have stayed harmless if you hadn't approached. And this was something they planned out deliberately. What could you have done about it?”
Baek Sa-ra looked at me for a moment.
Then her gaze slid down to my neck, and her brow furrowed.
“Otter, you really are a strange person.”
Why me, all of a sudden?
I mulled over what that could mean, and failing to find an answer, pushed back.
“You're far stranger than I am, Baek Sa-ra.”
Calling something strange meant it was uncommon.
By that standard, Seo Do-woon actually belonged on the ordinary end of the spectrum.
Baek Sa-ra, on the other hand?
An uncommon face with an uncommon job.
Uncommon combat prowess and an uncommon capacity for violence.
And on top of all that, an uncommon innate ability — the kind that could make grown men cry.
Anyone would say you're the strange one, wouldn't they?
I genuinely thought so, and whether she sensed my sincerity or not, Baek Sa-ra fired back with a flash of heat.
“You're far, far stranger than I am, Otter. Genuinely, hugely strange.”
A first in my entire life.
Being denounced as this strange of a creature.
And I'd always thought I'd lived a reasonably sensible life — so why?
When I could only stare at her, bewildered, Baek Sa-ra averted her eyes the way she had once before.
Then she murmured, quietly.
“Or maybe it's just that I'm confused.”
“Confused about what?”
“About being the same person.”
“……?”
“I'm the same person as you, Otter. And Kim Hae-seong, the orange one, and the black one are all the same person as each other. So lately I don't really know what a person is anymore.”
What kind of riddle was this supposed to be?
When I just looked at her, Baek Sa-ra let out an exhausted sigh.
Then she went on, her voice dropping even lower.
“In the zones, I've seen every kind of person there is. I've seen how far humans can go, and what depths they'll sink to. Honestly speaking, I'm not clean either.”
Was this something a Bureau agent said?
Or the account of someone who'd been a missing person inside a zone, watching and enduring it firsthand?
Maybe it was just my mood, but it sounded like the latter.
“But I learned that it can't be helped. The situation is at rock bottom, there's no order left, so everyone loses their minds just trying to live. Besides, humans are built so that one drop of their own blood matters more, hurts more, than someone else's whole life.”
“Is that what you believe too, Baek Sa-ra?”
“Yes.”
Baek Sa-ra answered without a moment's hesitation.
“I think it's true. Because that situation truly couldn't be helped. No one was in their right mind. Some adapted faster than others, and it only took an instant for everyone else to get dragged under along with them.”
Her voice, sifting through old memories, was calm.
As if she'd put enough distance between herself and those events.
But there are things in this world that only come into view once you've gotten far away from them.
“And yet the price those people paid afterward was just as unpreventable. It was a situation tailor-made for madness, and they were desperate to survive, I'm sure — but you can't just let an animal that's already tasted blood run loose, can you?”
The price. An animal that had tasted blood.
I was curious what story lay behind those words, but I didn't press.
I simply let Baek Sa-ra keep talking.
“So there's no right or wrong here. Everyone just does what they have to do, because they can't help it. If you're underestimated, you die. If you show an opening, you die. If you don't kill, you die.”
This, I felt like I'd heard before.
Right after we came out of the Hospital that Hunts Humans, wasn't it?
Back then too, Baek Sa-ra had made the same argument.
That this was a place where you didn't do what was right — you did what was necessary.
It differed somewhat from my own view, but I made an effort to respect her enduring conviction.
Then Baek Sa-ra added, of her own accord:
“…That's what I used to think. But lately I'm getting confused. Because of you, Otter.”
“Why would that be my fault…?”
“Because of you, I don't know what a person is anymore. Or where the line is.”
“……?”
“When someone like you exists, I wonder what on earth someone like that is supposed to be. And when I think that even a person like this carries that same nature inside them in the end, honestly, I can't tell anything apart anymore — and I don't even know who I'm supposed to ask about it.”
Baek Sa-ra's voice was quiet.
A stillness full of ripple and sway, like a field in the wind.
I studied her for a long moment before I finally spoke.
“Baek Sa-ra.”
“Yes?”
“If you put water on a fire, it boils.”
“……Yes?”
“What you're saying is that when conditions hit rock bottom, human beings show their underside, right?”
She gave a small nod.
“But that's true of animals too. When the environment turns bad, some species practice mass suicide, and plenty kill their own offspring.”
“So is that supposed to make it natural?”
“No. I think it's horrifying.”
Baek Sa-ra's head tilted to one side.
As if she couldn't quite follow where I was going.
So I elaborated, slowly.
“Ideally, none of that would happen — and in a way, that's actually the comforting part. People and animals alike go mad when circumstances are at their worst, which means, conversely, that when circumstances are all right, they can live perfectly ordinary lives.”
“Is it really that simple?”
“If it were that simple, nobody would ever suffer.”
“Then…”
“It's not simple. But there's an answer, so all we can do is try to move toward it.”
Baek Sa-ra stared at me blankly.
Half understanding, half not — visibly lost.
“So you don't need to look at a river or the ocean and think, that must secretly be scalding hot too. If you don't like boiling water, you turn off the fire. That's all.”
When I added that, Baek Sa-ra's gaze sank slowly downward.
“Editors must be good with words, I suppose…”
she murmured, head bowed.
Well, editors do have to be good with words.
Except those words weren't actually mine, so I confessed to the plagiarism with a touch of sheepishness.
“Actually, that's from a book.”
“A book?”
“Do Dead Bones Dream Too?, by author Na Bit. Have you heard of it? It was a bestseller the year before last.”
“No…”
“Ah — then shall I lend it to you? I'll lend it to you. I edited it, actually, and it's a truly wonderful book. It's a short story collection, so it's easy to read in installments, and it's SF but with a tender, emotional atmosphere and such delicate prose — female readers especially love…”
I was chatting along, pleased with myself, when I noticed Baek Sa-ra's eyes had gone perfectly round.
Oops. Was that too much?
I was hastily trying to smooth over my expression when—
THOOM-!
A tremendous crash sounded from outside, and the floor shuddered.
WHAM-! Tatatatata-!
A rolling barrage of thunder — and gunfire.
Had Response Team 3 arrived?
Tense, Baek Sa-ra and I strained our ears toward the noise.
We listened for a long while.
“Otter.”
Baek Sa-ra called to me, then said:
“Please lend it to me.”
“What?”
“The book you mentioned. I'd like to read it.”
Author, your marketing worked!
I was still savoring the moment when—
"Sa-ra! Delta is headed your way!"
Toward us?
Even if he came, we had the door locked right now, so…
That was the moment.
KWAANG-!
The door exploded, as if to mock my complacency.
The blast threw both of us backward, and our eardrums, ravaged by the roar, failed outright and left a shrill ringing behind.
Eeeeiiing-!
Then something came charging through the thick haze of dust.
It was Delta — come to finish eating me.
“Ugh…!”
Delta bared its fangs at me once more.
Damn it — why?
Why had I suddenly become the priority target?
Not understanding a thing, I desperately blocked Delta's face with my arms.
But brute strength was never going to be enough.
The instant Delta's canines were about to find the back of my neck again—
KWAANG-!
Delta's neck snapped sideways and it went flying.
What I saw next was a billowing skirt.
And then Baek Sa-ra, still shaking her head from the ringing, tapping her temple with a light tap-tap.
“Otter.”
Having given her head one more shake, Baek Sa-ra looked at me and said:
“This time, I'll try not to kill it. I'll take it alive for you.”
And for some reason, with a refreshed look on her face, she smiled beautifully and added:
“As thanks for lending me the book.”
A knife was flashing in Baek Sa-ra's hand — the hand that had just asked to borrow it.
It was a remarkably stark, and remarkably ironic, sight.