ep13. The Island Where Blood Rains (4)

KWAANG—!

Cha Si-eon's knife punched through the jeep inside the photograph. In that same instant, the Faceless that had been hurling themselves at him lost their strength and dropped thudding to the floor — then went limp and began melting away.

Creeeak—!

With a faint scrape of friction, a seam that had never been visible split open into a doorway. We pushed it open, and light came pouring into the dim interior; beyond it lay a garden drenched in sunlight.

"Five minutes' rest. Then we enter the next zone."

At Cha Si-eon's words, all I could do was nod, dazed. The whole thing had swept past in the space of a breath. Those monsters with their severed faces had come bursting out just moments ago, and I had genuinely believed I was about to die — never did I imagine we'd dispatch them this neatly and break through.

Somehow the whole thing struck me as absurd, so I asked him:

"How long were you in this zone?"

"This was my eleventh time."

Not eleven minutes. Not eleven hours. Eleven times.

...So he really had been resolved to break out on his own. Outside, everyone was wearing themselves ragged with worry, not knowing whether Cha Si-eon was alive or dead — while the man himself had been striding calmly toward the exit, demolishing each zone's stage as he went.

Fine. I concede. Once again, Ms. Baek Sa-ra had it right.

I watched Cha Si-eon sitting there with his eyes closed for a moment, then let my gaze drift around us. It was a small, tidy garden. A brick path ran beside a flowerbed in bloom, and at its end stood a single door — the door that led on to the next zone. This garden was a corridor stitched between one stage and the next. For now it kept up its air of peace beneath a cloudless sky, but once the Blood Rain began to fall, this place, too, would turn into a hellscape.

I was gazing up at that sky when Cha Si-eon broke the silence.

"Seo Do-woon. You came out of Ant Hill on the 12th — is that correct?"

"Yes, that's right."

As I answered, I glanced over. His eyes were still shut.

"And your exact time inside, in hours?"

"Twenty-three hours and twenty minutes. I went in at one a.m. on the 11th and came out a little past midnight on the 12th."

"So you observed your rest period."

I had. To guard against contamination, anyone who came out of a Special Zone was required to rest outside for three times the length of their stay. My time in Ant Hill had been twenty-three hours and twenty minutes, and I'd been dragged here, to the Island, eighty-six hours after walking out of it. I hadn't planned it that way, but by the Bureau's book I'd observed the mandated rest almost to the letter. Whether to call that a mercy or a strange coincidence, though...

"The rest period between your escape from the National Theater and your entry into Ant Hill also appears to have been observed. Am I correct?"

"Yes, that's correct."

With that confirmation, my thinking tipped toward coincidence. And true enough, I had also kept the recommended rest period precisely between leaving the National Theater and entering Ant Hill. But was this really chance? Or was it — as Section Chief Kwon Mu-seop insisted — the deliberate work of something that was "the least hostile of enemies and the greatest of allies"? I wanted to write it off as pure coincidence. But look at my circumstances. Moments after Ha Yu-ju had pressed one snack after another into my arms, I'd been pulled into the very Special Zone where Cha Si-eon had vanished — hauled in directly in front of Team Leader Cha himself, no less. Dismissing all of that as simple chance might amount to denying reality...

"By now, the Bureau will have realized you're in here, Seo Do-woon."

"I'd imagine so."

I nodded along to Cha Si-eon's dry voice. The Control Team kept my location under constant surveillance. True, the tracking might have cut off the moment I entered this place — but if so, their first suspicion would fall on exactly here, the zone where communications had gone dark. They would catch on to my presence soon enough.

"Whether a rescue team can actually get in, though, I couldn't say."

"They will come."

Cha Si-eon pronounced it like a verdict over my mild grumbling.

"Which is why we must break out from our side first."

As though that had been his cue, Cha Si-eon pushed off the wall. His eyes reopened — still bloodshot. Red nearly to the point of a rabbit's; I had to wonder whether he was really all right. Well. He'd manage on his own. In this domain, he was far more the expert than I was. Besides, I'd already learned during the Kwon Mu-seop affair how foolish it felt to fuss over someone ahead of time, only to be proven ridiculous for it.

"Time's up. We move."

Cha Si-eon strode out ahead. All that remained for me to do was follow quietly behind him.

"In five minutes, we enter the next zone."

Cha Si-eon intoned it the moment we were clear of the zone, then — exactly as he had every time before — leaned his back against the wall and closed his eyes. By now even I had grown used to the routine, and I plopped down roughly on the garden floor.

Two hours had slipped by since I'd been pulled onto the Island. In that time we'd cleared nine stages, and it hadn't been especially grueling — because Cha Si-eon had been out in front, carving the road open. I'd thought I was simply boarding the Cha Si-eon bus after the Kwon Mu-seop bus, and that was, in fact, precisely what was happening. As expected, traveling with professionals really did have its perks.

Of course, Section Chief Kwon Mu-seop's doting and Team Leader Cha Si-eon's toting-me-around-like-luggage were two very different flavors of kindness. But weighed against the days I'd flailed through this place alone, half-certain I was going to die, either one was a bargain. And, hmm. I hadn't wanted to admit it if I could help it, but the time had come. Time to admit that Cha Si-eon was formidable on a scale that broke the specs.

The Island Where Blood Rains, freshly through its second awakening, had transformed considerably — exactly as the Bureau had anticipated. Every legacy pattern I'd read in the manual was gone. Only the shape of each space remained more or less the same; the hazards and the fine print of the rules had all been rewritten. And yet Cha Si-eon had already charted every one of those new patterns. Alone, slamming into them with his own body until he'd wrung the truth out of them. And here I'd assumed he was just some man who sat around being curt... He was the real thing...

Ms. Baek Sa-ra, I'm afraid the notion that Cha Si-eon keeps me in check appears to be a misunderstanding. However I look ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠at it, that man has no reason whatsoever to feel competitive with me.

Be that as it may, exploring a Special Zone at Team Leader Cha Si-eon's side was every bit as comfortable as it had been with Section Chief Kwon Mu-seop. There was just one snag — one thing that kept me from settling into pure relief.

"Team Leader Cha, how many times have you cleared the zones so far?"

"..."

I asked and was ignored. Cha Si-eon kept his eyes closed and his mouth shut, and I swallowed the surge of frustration and let out a sigh instead.

We had broken through nine zones in two hours: B, C, F, G, and I once each; E and H twice each. A, D, and J had yet to appear. This place held ten zones in total, and clearing one dealt the next out at random, which put the odds of any given zone surfacing at one in nine. So Zone A not showing up yet wasn't that much of a stretch. But that arithmetic was mine alone. Cha Si-eon had been trapped in here for three days. And Team Leader Cha cleared four zones an hour — he'd told me himself he'd run Zone E eleven times. So why couldn't he get out? Granted, he might have floundered early on while learning the patterns. He might have been pinned down while the Blood Rain fell. Even granting all of that, the numbers refused to add up. By now Cha Si-eon must have broken through zones dozens of times — perhaps far more — on his own. And if he still hadn't escaped, didn't that mean we had to consider the possibility that Zone A had been excluded from this random rotation altogether? Cha Si-eon couldn't possibly have missed that either. So why wasn't he saying a single word about it, the jerk?

I was shooting the silent man a disgruntled sidelong glance when it happened.

"Seo Do-woon."

Cha Si-eon called my name without warning and asked:

"Do you have any aspirin?"

Aspirin? Did he have a headache?

I fished the aspirin bottle out of my vest pocket and handed it over. Cha Si-eon twisted the cap off, shook out five or six pills, and dumped them straight into his mouth.

Whoa — hold on!

Startled by this flagrant display of pharmaceutical abuse, I asked:

"Team Leader Cha, are you feeling unwell somewhere?"

"I'm fine."

"Fine? Then why take that much—"

When I pressed, Cha Si-eon turned to look at me as though I were a nuisance. But even that look was somehow off. The insolence was the same as ever, yet the edges of it had gone blurry, unfocused, loose.

...No — come to think of it, that much was obvious. Cha Si-eon wasn't superhuman. However far off the charts he ran, he was still human. Team Leader Cha was straining past his limits right now, this very minute.

"Team Leader, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠if you're unwell, then rest properly. You're clearly overextending yourself."

"There is no time."

"The Blood Rain is still twelve hours out. Nothing is urgent this second — wouldn't an hour or two of rest serve us better? If you grit your teeth and collapse anyway, that's a far bigger problem."

"I won't collapse, so spare me the worry."

"Then why are you being so stubborn—"

"You think I'm doing this for my own sake?"

What was that supposed to mean, out of nowhere, this guy?

"If you can't grasp the situation, then simply keep up. That is how you help."

Cha Si-eon closed the matter unilaterally and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠rose to his feet, then began striding toward the next zone.

"Unbelievable..."

Ms. Baek Sa-ra, is Team Leader Cha Si-eon simply a man put together wrong — or is he truly, uniquely prickly toward me alone? Honestly, it makes no difference either way. I've disliked that jerk from the very start.