The Only Asset I Had
Surprisingly, humans were good animals. The world still teemed with heinous criminals, and people who seemed to specialize exclusively in every kind of garbage behavior were thick on the ground — and yet the overwhelming majority of humans were good.
The way a newcomer, anywhere you went, always turned flustered and useless was proof of that, if anything was.
A perfectly functional person collapsing in an instant into a timid fool — if you picked it apart, self-interest played some part, sure. But surprisingly, it wasn't really about their own safety.
In the end, it was fear of causing trouble for the group they'd only just joined that made their movements careful and their range of thought shrink down to nothing.
Hadn't there been stories like that, once? People confessing to crimes committed years earlier — looking back and saying that until then, living hadn't really been living at all.
Most of those cases came after the statute of limitations had run out, of course. But look at it another way: even when what they'd done had been perfectly forgotten, even after the law itself had let them go, humans still wanted to confess and lift the weight off their hearts. That was what being human meant.
Anyone who had harmed someone else through their own mistake — anyone at least normal, or close enough to the line — carried that guilt with a heart that hammered in their chest.
"..."
In ordinary society, I would have gone to the hospital, offered a sincere apology, paid a settlement, and tried to put my feelings into something concrete. At the bare minimum, I could have told myself it was the price of putting someone through that.
But now?
I was a human being of nothing. A little shorter than most, a little on the frail side, with no assets left whatsoever — physical or mental.
If it had still been before I'd surrendered — been stripped of — my private room, I might at least have offered that.
As it stood, the most I could do was gather up the daily garbage-cube rations and somehow turn them into a cake. That was the ceiling of what I had to give.
I felt a hand rise to my chest. It had been forced there, wrist gripped and guided, but the fingers moved in tiny adjustments as if fitting a puzzle piece into place, reading the curve and texture of my breast.
The person touching me had a left arm bent the wrong way — grotesque enough to need content-rating adjustments even in a horror film. The dissonance of everything else looking fine only made it worse.
My fault. Entirely, completely my fault.
"...Hhk — hh — hheuh... Heh. Heheh..."
I forced the sobs spilling out against my will into laughter. And that — like everything else I did — seemed to have been the wrong choice.
At least Jiwoo, who had been dazed and focused on my chest for a moment, finally shifted her expression and pulled her hand away.
"Ah — ah..."
"Um, Adm— I mean, Yeoreum? What's wrong? P-please, try to calm down..."
"N-no. I'm — I'm f-fine. Um. D-did you — by any chance — g-get hard?"
"—!"
Jiwoo recoiled a little, startled, but that thing reacting was obvious even through clothes.
It was a relief. At least I'd confirmed that her sex drive still worked. At least her body still answered mine — which meant I still had one usable asset left after all.
In two days, of the two people who had come to help me, I had shattered one ankle and one arm.
If we went back like this? If they returned more or less intact, sent two people the Colony needed straight to the treatment room, and I went back to standing around with nothing to do, reading the room and trying not to be noticed?
"I — I'll, heheh. Um — ghk. I-I've never d-done it before. But if it's just with my hands, m-maybe I could—"
I tried to sink smoothly to my knees, but my legs wouldn't take the weight properly, and I nearly pitched forward into the posture. Startled, Jiwoo started to bend down after me; I stopped her.
"...No. It's fine."
She shook her head a few times, then looked straight at me — Jeong Jiwoo, eyes level with mine.
Fear came first, too. This time luck had left it at injuries. I couldn't count on the same luck twice. It would have been cheaper just to drive me out with a few days' worth of food.
If that happened, people would deliberately stop talking about me. With their authority they'd deploy drones, raise buildings, and maybe even begin the great work of mining resources to send back to Earth.
I didn't know how many years it would take. But by then, wouldn't I be completely forgotten? A week of guilt, a month of fading memory — and a year later, the only proof I'd ever been there would be an empty bed.
That couldn't happen. No matter how much of a burden I was, I still wanted to live.
"N-no! I — I c-can do it well! N-no — my mouth, too! With my mouth—"
I couldn't see properly ahead anymore. I fixed my gaze on the silhouette still visible in the empty air and cried out like I was begging. Both my hands were still intact, so I could wring them together.
In that instant, something covered my entire face.
"This is. Actually insane."
A hot sensation bloomed from the crown of my head and flooded through my whole body — it felt like I'd been struck with something.
"Unnie. Then what does that make Jiwoo, huh?"
"Ah — ahh — n-no, it's not—"
The hand over my face was clearly Jiwoo's. I could feel that it was only one hand. Gripping my cheek and chin — a fairly humiliating hold — but she couldn't use the other one.
"...R-right. I'm really fine, and... once I get treatment I'll be okay. So please don't do this. All right?"
"Yeah, yeah. Get up. What are you even doing? If she was going to take it like that in the first place — wouldn't she have just blackmailed you from the start?"
"..."
A hand shoved suddenly under my armpits and I startled — then felt weightlessness. At some point I was standing on both feet again.
"Wow. Look at your face. Rest for a bit. You too, unnie. You too, Jiwoo. I was wondering what the hell you two were talking about for so long."
"..."
"Ah — sorry. About the tent — no. Um. You do it alone."
Unable to finish the sentence, Jiwoo glanced once at her own arm, and tears came again — but this time Minseo wiped them away.
I'd cried so much my eyelids stung a little.
And so, only after another full day had passed, we were found by the search team that had come to rescue us.
Putting it that way carried too much of a passive, shipwrecked-victim flavor — so saying we met at a suitable location via radio felt like the only way to keep the value of the effort we'd made from vanishing.
"Ah...!"
Naturally, I was the first to encounter people. I was the one walking at the very front.
Unlike us — filthy and worn — they were clean, people who looked like they'd set out only a few hours ago. The moment we radioed the coordinates, they must have run straight over without a second's delay.
"..."
Familiar faces walked toward us. Overwhelming gladness came first, of course — but—
"...Found them."
"Holy shit...!"
"Jiwoo!"
Unfortunately, those people weren't quite at that level. The gazes that clung for a bare instant scanned me up and down, then immediately broke away and ran to Minseo limping behind me and Jiwoo, white with pain.
"Shit — no, wait. Uh. Is that all the gear?"
"Yeah. I'm dead tired."
"What happened to the arm. No — how many hours has it been?"
"About... ten. Feels like it's completely gone, and the end's a little numb."
Jiwoo shrugged, then frowned. First aid had been nothing but a splint and immobilization, and she still looked composed — maybe medical technology had come further than I thought.
"I'm mostly fine. Right before we left the range — wait, actually, what about that? So?"
"......Mm. Let's just head back. This isn't the place for that conversation."
"...By the way — Yeoreum — no, Administrator? Maybe look after her a little too?"
I was standing blankly — no, actually panting hard, hands braced on my knees — watching them trade short exchanges when Minseo jerked her chin in my direction.
"Ah — i-it's f-fine..."
Now the concentration of gazes was unwelcome. There was also the guilt of being the only one unhurt.
So, well. We just went back like that. Minseo was carried on a stretcher; Jiwoo, who had no real trouble walking, and I walked alongside.
And so the escape ship we reached after so long felt overwhelmingly, tremendously like home.
It had been a forced march, after all — having thoughts like that was inevitable.
The problem was the eyes looking at me. Home was a place I could be driven from at any time.
"Ah — unnie...!"
"Administrator...!"
At least Soyeon and Dahyun came to welcome me.
Beyond that, no one sought me out. No one even offered a word when we passed each other in a corridor.
Hyejin, the woman who shared my room, even held a thread of open hostility.
Above all, I could read it in the air. Before, people's gazes had at best held nothing in particular. Now they carried clear, unmistakable contempt.