Stripped of the Five Senses (5)

A pale white lump, as if stricken by frost, moaned in the empty air.

I couldn't tell what it was at all until I heard the sound.

Couldn't tell that the thing caught in the wire was a person.

No—could that even be called a person?

"Please… help me…."

A woman, wound tight and coiled in the white ant line.

But she was far too small.

Only her torso and head still held the shape of a human; everything below her waist had unraveled into thread.

So she hung there like a half-knitted scarf, unraveling in loose strands.

Was that the contamination of the ant line?

"Save me… please."

The woman begging for her life was still young.

And already exhausted.

"Mom…."

When the woman finally broke into sobs, Kwon Mu-seop spoke in a calm, measured voice.

"I'm sorry. Your contamination has already progressed too far. Rescue is not possible."

"What do you—"

"Instead, I can offer you rest. Do you want it?"

His voice was solemn.

For the woman, that must have been even more despairing.

"I want to live…."

"We will be staying here for twenty-eight hours. Once we leave, you may remain in that state for a very, very long time."

"No! *sob*—!"

"I regret that I cannot save you. We will return three more times, roughly every nine hours. Please use that time to make your decision."

"Wait—don't go! Don't leave me here alone, aagh—!"

Kwon Mu-seop finished speaking and walked past the ant line.

The woman writhed and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠wailed.

She wept and begged him not to abandon her, but Kwon Mu-seop moved on in silence.

I watched his retreating back.

Somehow, it looked like a cliff standing alone against ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the storms of the world.

A voice drifted to me from beyond a comfortable slumber.

"Can we confirm the locations of the mercenary entities?"

Kwon Mu-seop's voice, coming from outside the tent.

"If any birds are observed, report immediately."

The moment I registered that, my eyes snapped open.

What time is it?

Six a.m. Time to get up.

I forced the drowsiness away and scrambled upright. When I unzipped the tent and stepped out, Kwon Mu-seop greeted me.

"Oh, you're up."

The kind of greeting a doting mother gives her lazy son.

Wrapped in a foil blanket, rifle braced on his shoulder, Kwon Mu-seop sat upright as he said it.

Oh no.

Seeing him stand the night watch alone filled me with profound guilt.

Kwon Mu-seop, meanwhile, spoke as if this were simply the natural order of things.

"It's not even four hours yet. You could sleep more."

"No, I've slept enough."

"Good work. Here."

Kwon Mu-seop poured something from a thermos and handed it over.

Warm soup.

I accepted it with a feeling hard to put into words.

The section chief no longer looked like a Christmas tree at all.

Every ridiculous item he'd been hauling had gone onto me, wrapped around me, covering me.

If I'd been dragged here alone, I would've been shivering under a single foil blanket right now.

Oh, Chief. Forgive this faithless one….

Overwhelmed with gratitude, I asked him, "Don't you need to sleep too, sir?"

I'd meant it as an offer to rotate the watch, but Kwon Mu-seop smiled and shot back, "You keeping watch for me?"

My will is overflowing, sir.

"Or are you trying to get the deputy promoted?"

"Surely not…."

At my scandalized expression, Kwon Mu-seop burst out laughing again, as if it were only a joke.

"I'm fine. While you were sleeping, I caught eleven more Ants."

Before I'd fallen asleep, we'd taken Ants Number 6, Number 8, and Number 7 and 9 together. Apparently the next-numbered Ants had kept coming to visit, and he'd picked them off one by one.

Total Ants taken down so far: fifteen.

Which left thirteen.

"We'll kill all of them except eight. At this pace that should take about two hours, and after that we keep moving, hunting for stone towers. For twenty-two hours, until we escape this place."

I nodded at Kwon Mu-seop's explanation.

Since we've got the firepower, why not just wipe out all the Executioner Ants?

Absolutely not. That would be suicide.

Ants don't just retaliate. They keep being born.

And they attack endlessly until their natural predators are gone.

Because of that habit, wiping out the Ants is strictly forbidden.

The next generation wouldn't trickle out one at a time the way they had so far—they'd swarm us all at once.

In theory, it would be fine to leave a single Ant alive and lock it up somewhere.

But there was no way to do that.

Dig a pit and trap it?

Why do you think an ant is called an ant? Because it knows how to tunnel.

Tie it up somewhere?

Those mandibles, which shear through human bones like chopping vegetables, would cut through any restraint.

The Ant is a formidable creature.

Like most living things, it simply can't do anything in the face of firearms.

That was why Kwon Mu-seop's plan was to thin the Ants to a manageable number, eliminating the risk of being surrounded—and after that, hold out using the stone towers.

I agreed with the strategy.

It wouldn't be easy, of course.

We'd be hiking up and down hillsides hunting stone towers for twenty-two hours straight.

And a stone tower might sit on a pleasant walking trail—or halfway down a treacherous cliff.

"You really should get some ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠sleep, sir…."

"Hahaha, I nap here and there. Don't worry. I rested plenty before we came in, too."

At that answer, I asked in surprise, "Were you lying on the couch all that time to build up your stamina?"

"No, that was because the deputy told me not to work you to death."

My guess had missed the mark, but somehow the truth made my chest tighten.

So this is how a common foot soldier ends up dying of loyalty to a commanding officer.

Because of kindness like this, impossible to forget.

Don't fall for it. Don't fall for it.

…What do I do. I think I've already fallen.

A halo was beginning to glow behind Kwon Mu-seop's head.

I stared blankly at that radiant light before snapping out of it—and hurriedly glanced around.

"Looking for something?"

Kwon Mu-seop asked as I scanned the surroundings.

Sir, you really can't see, right?

"Just checking where the surveillance cameras are."

"Need the bathroom?"

"No, I was wondering if what we're doing right now is showing up on a screen in the control room…."

Because the thought of my grateful little performance playing on a jumbotron somewhere was genuinely painful.

"The control room can't spare us a thought right now. On our side, it'll just be the deputy and the rotating comms team watching."

"That's a relief."

"Got a fear of cameras?"

"Wouldn't anyone feel self-conscious if they were being recorded in real time…?"

At my honest confession, Kwon Mu-seop let out a hearty laugh.

"It's fine, it's fine. Nobody bothers watching unless it's their own zone. What, do they think they're going to catch something good?"

A generous way to put it.

That would be reassuring—except it didn't land at all.

"And yet the Bureau people seem to know my every move remarkably well."

"Well, anything unusual does get shared around."

It sounded like a hand-wave of an answer, but it wasn't important enough to press, so I let it go.

Then a question occurred to me.

"Was my wandering around the Railroad Station shared too?"

"Hm?"

"It just occurred to me that Baek Sa-ra recognized me on sight."

Back when Baek Sa-ra was posing as a convict inside the Hospital that Hunts Humans.

She'd looked at me and played the Familiar card—"Ah, Seo Do-woon of the IOU-later debt!"

Which meant she'd examined what I did at the Railroad Station in considerable detail.

"Mm, that time the sharing was necessary. Morale purposes, for the staff."

And with that follow-up from Kwon Mu-seop, I felt it again.

The strange opacity of this man.

Kwon Mu-seop had a habit of smearing his explanations like this.

Like a snake slipping over a garden wall.

If he were built that way from the ground up, like Cha Si-eon, I could accept it—but the fact that he talks so freely and then does this makes it stranger.

A man of Kwon Mu-seop's caliber, not some idle fool—why?

If I asked him directly, he'd probably just laugh it off, like with that 200-million-won thing.

I mulled it over for a moment, then bent the question sideways.

"So is what you're doing now also for morale?"

"Hm?"

"Taking me on yourself, personally. I thought you might be overextending, but if it's just a performance…."

"Good thought, but I never got that far."

When I deliberately overlooked his deflection, Kwon Mu-seop erupted into another hearty laugh.

So I pretended not to notice and pressed on.

"Then what's the reason for going this far? Honestly, I'm not sure it's right for you to be leaving your post too."

"Do-woon, I've told you before—you don't need to worry. I've judged this fully and I'm acting on it."

"You also said your basis for that was gut feeling…."

"That's right. I love my gut."

He said it with a pure grin, so I couldn't tell if he was joking.

And the answers kept staying vague.

My own stubbornness began to stir, and I pushed to the end.

"So this tent and the thermos—you packed those on pure gut feeling too?"

"Yep."

"Then when will I be getting married, roughly?"

"You can't get married, because you can't get a girlfriend."

….

-Chief, Do-woon's face looks bad. He's staring at you like you're a con artist right now.

Yoon Woo-jeong must have been just as fed up with Kwon Mu-seop's dodging, because she cut in, unable to bear it any longer.

"Oh, that's the 'here he goes with the bullshit again' face? Fine, fine."

With the deputy taking my side, Kwon Mu-seop burst out laughing yet again.

Then, as if conceding something, he began.

"I told you before, didn't I? That sometimes you can see the special zones thinking."

This was what I'd heard at the first place I met him.

-There really are patterns and tendencies. Sometimes you can even see these things using their heads.

-If getting pulled into a special zone were truly random, more people should be taken from crowded downtown areas in broad daylight, wouldn't you say?

He'd said that—it's as if the zones select their prey.

"Honestly, the suppression weeks didn't used to be this hectic. But because we kept working the zones of the restructuring period, at some point their restructuring windows started overlapping."

"They overlapped?"

"Yeah. You'd have to read it as an attempt to split our forces. That way, at least one or two of them can pull off a successful restructuring. They've got brains too. Intent, and strategy."

Astonishing.

It was also a conversation from a territory completely different from what I'd been fishing for.

"So I tried to read the intent. Your getting dragged in over and over—that can't be random coincidence either."

"Can you really read intent? I can't sense it at all…."

"I told you. There was one other person like you, before."

He meant Agent Lee Seop.

"Back then we were too busy reacting to think about it. But looking back on it, I've come to feel that what happened to him wasn't just a matter of random chance either. Only, much too late."

So this time you read the intent and prepared for it?

As if he'd predicted we'd be dragged to this freezing place, he'd packed a tent and even a thermos?

If that were true, then Kwon Mu-seop's claim of good instincts was neither bluffing nor exaggeration.

But then—I had good instincts too.

Reading other people's intent was, after all, my former profession.

"You must have been close to him."

"Hm?"

"That agent you mentioned. The one whose situation was like mine."

Kwon Mu-seop stiffened for a beat.

"Did he have a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠girlfriend?"

At my half-teasing question, Kwon Mu-seop hesitated, then laughed. Then he muttered, in a reluctant tone,

"Not a girlfriend. A wife and kids—he'd gotten married early, of all things."

"How many children?"

"One daughter."

Kwon Mu-seop answered readily enough—and then heaved a sigh.

"Let's stop there, Do-woon. Anything about his personal file is dangerous."

Agent Lee Seop.

Severe contamination. Identity redacted.

Do not speak his name.

Do not mention him except when strictly necessary.

There was no way he didn't know those directives—and yet Kwon Mu-seop had answered smoothly, one thing after another, and only regretted it afterward.

Certain now, I opened my mouth.

"Section Chief."

"Hm?"

"Is that man's daughter Lee Sol?"

At my question, the smile drained from Kwon Mu-seop's face.