The Hill That Steals the Five Senses (7)
The ant Kwon Mu-seop had caught came charging straight toward us. It was a big one, too, so once you knew its direction, hitting it wasn't difficult at all.
But look at it now.
Rustle, rustle, rustle, rustle—!
Ant No. 26 was putting on a dazzling display of footwork, weaving back and forth as it came for us. Its movements suggested some kind of restless agitation, and for Kwon Mu-seop, who couldn't see a thing, there was no way to respond.
Which was how the weighty rifle ended up in my hands.
I called up my body's old memories and settled into a firing stance.
Pfft—!
The suppressed shot cracked out, and the ant's body lurched.
Pfft-pfft-pfft—!
I kept the burst going, and the ant sagged where it stood.
What a relief……!
I eased my tension and took aim again.
Pfft— pfft-pfft-pfft—!
I fired where I predicted it would move, and the ant collapsed right on schedule. I thought that was the end of it—
Shaaaak—!
The ant spat a jet of translucent slime straight at us. The viscous stuff sailed effortlessly across forty meters and came pouring down on our position.
Chajajajak—!
My view was suddenly blocked, accompanied by a loud crinkle of foil. Chief Kwon Mu-seop had snapped open an aluminum blanket and caught the ant silk mid-air.
"Did any of it touch you?"
"No, sir. Not a drop."
Kwon folded up the foil with a sigh of relief. Spitting out that last wad of silk must have been the ant's final struggle. It lay crumpled and dead, and the ground around us was covered in a clear, sticky film.
I burned away the ant silk with my torch to carve out a path. Yoon Woo-jeong whistled over the comm.
Was I finally escaping deadweight status!
But apparently Chief Kwon still didn't trust me.
"Won't it be too heavy for him? That's a mountain trail, not a flat road."
"Still."
Even when Yoon Woo-jeong pressed the point again, nothing changed. Kwon Mu-seop's stubborn doubt left me so flustered I muttered under my breath.
"Chief, I'm really not that fragile."
"No, it's not that I think you're fragile, it's just……"
Kwon was trying to explain himself, but only trailing off into silence. The quiet stretched on, thick with awkwardness.
Chief, when you do this, all it does is make me sound even more fragile.
Kwon must have sensed how strange the mood had turned, because he finally gave up and came clean.
"The thing is, Director Kim Woo-in gave me a warning."
"Director Kim Woo-in, sir?"
"Yeah. Said if I worked you ragged like I did back at the Warehouse-Type Mart, he wouldn't let it slide this time……"
Huh? Seriously?
"Last week he pulled me aside and told me, 'Don't do any of your unnecessary stunts with the kid. Handle him with kid gloves.' He threatened me for almost a full hour. Said if you got hurt for no reason, this time he really, truly wouldn't let it go……"
"He is. He's terrifying."
Apparently he genuinely was scared—saying "wouldn't let it slide" twice like that. And here I'd thought Kim Woo-in was only ever terrifying to me……
Thank God that man chose to be a doctor.
If he'd gone into the business of doing the opposite of saving people, he'd have been far, far scarier.
"So that's why, Dowoon. You absolutely cannot get hurt. Understood?"
"……"
Watching Kwon earnestly press his warning on me, I finally understood something.
Why a chief with such outstanding skill and experience sometimes came across as hopelessly hapless.
Our chief really has no middle setting……
"Chief, I understand what you're getting at, but you don't need to coddle me that much. Just treat me like—"
I was about to say like you treat the other agents—and stopped myself.
On reflection, I figured I should choose my words carefully around a man with no middle setting.
"……I'll be careful not to get hurt. And I'll carry the rifle. This much is really fine, sir."
"Alright. I'll leave it to you, then."
Watching Kwon break into a beaming grin, I nodded again.
To think a superior with genuine skill and a good heart could look like the village idiot older brother.
If that counted as a talent, then it was a talent all its own.
Another eight hours slipped by.
We were now fifteen hours into the Hill That Steals the Five Senses. At roughly the halfway point, a mid-term assessment would have to say: smooth sailing. It hardly felt like being trapped in a special zone—it felt like going on a hike with your boss.
There had been a few close calls where our brand-renewal timing slipped and we had to catch an ant. But even that hadn't been particularly difficult.
And from here on out, it would only get easier.
Only four ants remained. The stretches we had to avoid had shrunk considerably compared to earlier. The stone pagodas we'd need for the remaining fourteen hours were plentiful along the easily accessible base trails.
All we had to do now was enjoy the winter mountain and run out the clock.
If I'd fallen into this place alone, it would have been a desperate, brutal struggle against the ants. And without even the Bureau's support? The hostile ants, the pagodas I'd have to stumble across blindly, the sudden killing cold—all of it would have been fatal.
But the Ant Hill, with Chief Kwon Mu-seop along, had been smooth in every possible way.
Even the condition of the woman caught in the ant silk.
"Can I ask you something……"
By the third time we visited her, the woman no longer screamed. She had grown far calmer, and now only spoke to us in a quiet, level voice.
"If I die here, will you pass everything on to my parents?"
"No. Information about this zone is never released to the public. Your family will be told it was a simple accidental death."
"Then what do you usually tell them?"
Tears spilled down the woman's cheeks, even as she fought to keep her voice steady.
"It can't look like murder. If it does, my mom—she's got a soft heart, she won't survive it."
"……"
"Suicide is out too. It would devastate her. I want it to look as natural as possible……"
"We can record it as a fatal slip while hiking."
"No, that won't work either. My dad loves the mountains…… Just make it something like a heart attack. Something nobody has to blame anyone for."
She spoke with surprising composure, even through her sobs.
Just as Chief Kwon had intended, she had accepted her death. And it seemed she had agonized over how best to use this final chance we'd given her.
"And I'm so sorry to ask this, but could you go to my apartment?"
"That's difficult if anyone else lives with you."
"I live alone. My parents are down in the countryside."
"Then it's possible."
"Please throw away what's in the drawer beside my bed…… Don't look at what's in there. And please delete my social media accounts too……"
Now that—I thought—is the important part.
Everyone keeps a Pandora's box somewhere, one they'd die of embarrassment to let anyone see—especially their family.
The woman must have found it a little funny herself, because between sobs she suddenly burst into a few dry, choking laughs.
Then she went back to weeping softly, murmuring on and on.
She was supposed to go on a trip with a friend next week, she said.
Watching her was too painful, and I turned my eyes away. That was when I noticed Kwon Mu-seop—and froze in genuine surprise.
Kwon was facing the woman squarely, despite being unable to see her.
Straining, even, to meet her eyes—as if that small effort was the last courtesy he could offer her.
"Thank you," the woman whispered, her body stained white with the ant silk. "I'm really sorry for the things I said earlier……"
"Don't be. You've been through so much."
The woman who had left her final wishes decided to hold on a little longer, until we escaped this place.
We turned away from her yet again, leaving her behind.
Compared to before, when her sobbing had chased us down the slope, it was a very quiet goodbye.
In fourteen hours, that woman would die.
She wouldn't die on her own—we would be the ones to help her along. A kind of execution.
No. Closer to a medical act of granting a peaceful passing.
Either way, it meant ending a life, and there was no way that could ever feel like nothing.
It was an experience I wanted more than anything to avoid.
"Chief."
"Yeah?"
Kwon, prodding the ground ahead with a wooden staff as he walked, responded to my voice. These days he managed fine on his own, without Yoon Woo-jeong guiding him.
Truly an astonishing veteran.
Trusting that experience of his, I let the question that had been filling my mouth spill out.
"If we destroy this space's core, what happens to that woman?"
"Is that really something we should be weighing?"
The pushback caught me off guard.
"I'm sorry?"
"The Ant Hill is a fully explored zone. If we break the core, all the sacrifice and hard work that went into mapping this place's rules becomes meaningless."
"……"
"And when a new special zone takes its place, more people will die. Even so—does destroying the core and saving that one person make it the right thing to do?"
Kwon Mu-seop's voice and tone stayed as gentle as ever.
Which was exactly why it sounded less like a question aimed at me, and more like one he was asking himself.
When the awkward silence had stretched long enough, Yoon Woo-jeong cut in.
Yoon Woo-jeong explained, her voice heavy.
Just as Yoon Woo-jeong said, the woman had barely her upper body left. Her arms and lower half had long since dissolved into the ant silk, become one with it.
The fact that she was still breathing at all was a miracle.
There was something conflicted in Yoon Woo-jeong's voice. Something that felt, too, like she was shielding Kwon Mu-seop from me.
So I asked nothing more.
The rest of our time continued to pass without incident.
If anything, it was the agents deployed for Intensive Suppression Week whose situation had turned into an outright disaster.
According to Yoon Woo-jeong's reports, Team 1 in particular was struggling against a concerted assault by the mercenary entities. Alpha and the Gardener had already emerged on the Island Where Blood Rains—and now the Big Cat had joined them, leaving the operation in complete disarray.
Worse, the island's Reorganization window would close tomorrow, and the team still hadn't even located the core.
So in a little while, they planned to throw their full force at the mercenary entities clogging the entry routes. And if they still couldn't break through, they would have to acknowledge the mission as failed and retreat.
Yet despite all that chaos raging outside, the Ant Hill where we stood remained perfectly, eerily quiet.
Just over nine hours remained.
Barring any variables, we would escape this place without a scratch.
Of course, my life had never once been that considerate.
A bird?
"What kind of bird?"
"If it's a crow, then that means—"
That bird had shown up here too?
I whipped around toward Chief Kwon Mu-seop in shock.
And then I was shocked all over again.
Kwon was smiling.
Canines bared, his face twisted into something unusually fierce for him.
Yoon Woo-jeong's voice was grave.
Once again, something utterly absurd was about to unfold.