5
Chapter 5
I pulled out my phone without thinking to check the time.
12:36 AM.
I turned my gaze back to the streetlight-illuminated road, watching the fog that had begun to spread out coldly like dry ice.
I must have been glaring without realizing it, because the area around my eyes felt stiff.
However, the gaze of my squad member on the same Night Watch, Han Myeong-un—a man with a gentle and smooth impression—was consistently fixed on the couple making out.
As if he'd finally found some entertainment during a boring Night Watch, Han Myeong-un chuckled and slipped his phone back into his pocket.
But it wasn't long before Han Myeong-un, who had only been mildly interested, and I, who had been watching the fog, slowly stiffened our expressions.
"Mmph... mm... mmph..."
The couple, who I thought were just sharing a deep kiss, looked strange.
The movements of the middle-aged man and the fit young woman, who appeared to be fiercely embracing and kissing, looked almost grotesque.
Thud! Thud!
The middle-aged man was beating the woman's back.
He wasn't hugging her; anyone could see he was clenching his fists and hitting her hard enough to leave bruises.
He even stumbled backward, losing his balance.
On the contrary, the woman was clutching the middle-aged man's head so tightly it looked like a violent embrace, refusing to let go.
She supported the middle-aged man as he stumbled backward, propping him against the wall, making it look like they were kissing even more passionately.
The more she did, the more violent the middle-aged man's reaction became.
The middle-aged man dug his fingernails into the back of her neck, shaking her as if trying to tear her flesh apart.
I could see the skin where his nails dug in tearing and blood flowing, even from here.
"Ugh... mmph..."
Seeing this, Han Myeong-un hardened his face, gripped his rifle tighter, and stepped forward.
Han Myeong-un, despite his appearance, seemed to possess a strong sense of justice.
The fact that the page I received in the small auditorium came to mind at that moment was no coincidence.
I called out to stop Han Myeong-un from leaving.
"Mr. Han Myeong-un. The fog has rolled in."
"Pardon?"
"Sixth Rule of Survival and Engagement within the Restricted Zone. Rescuing civilians is strictly prohibited."
Han Myeong-un blinked a few times at my words before shooting me a look of contempt, as if I were trash.
Tsk.
Clicking his tongue loud enough for me to hear, Han Myeong-un adjusted his helmet and walked toward the couple again.
"What a fucking idiot..."
Han Myeong-un's mutter was loud enough to be heard clearly on purpose.
Objectively, Han Myeong-un was right. Unlike me, standing idly behind the sandbags and vehicle barrier, he looked like a heroic knight rushing to save a woman whose skin was being torn off.
His tall stature and friendly demeanor probably played a part, too.
At the very least, he wasn't cowardly enough to use the fog as an excuse and cite the sixth engagement rule to rationalize doing nothing.
However, even though I felt like a coward, I had no intention of following Han Myeong-un.
It was because the height of the fog piling up on the road beneath the streetlight looked like it was rising by the second.
If you've ever listened to a scary story with a blank look at first, only to get goosebumps when you belatedly realized the terrifying part, you would understand.
I might have thought it was just some random morning fog, but as the area around the road became damp enough to cloud even the streetlights, a cold trickle of sweat ran down my back.
At that moment, First Lieutenant Shin Han-gi's words came to mind.
[These characters were discovered within the restricted zone.]
I pulled out the Magic Special Lecture from my pocket.
Only after looking at the hand gripping the Magic Special Lecture booklet did I realize my hand was trembling uncontrollably.
Seeing my shaking hand made me realize I was suffering from a chill far worse than when I had tonsillitis.
I hastily flipped to the page containing the bizarre characters and symbols I had named "Chilmo."
Beneath my pale, blanched fingernails, the symbols drawn on the firmly fixed page and the densely packed interpretations on the adjacent page.
The realization I had been hoping to find after agonizing in my solitary cell was coming to me again.
It was instinct.
Like the ancient ancestors who faced the swaying eyes of a tiger in the pitch-black darkness beneath the night sky, where even the moonlight was insufficient.
I could see these bizarre characters, these strange symbols returning to their original forms under the streetlight that was crushed and swaying beyond the rising fog.
I could have called it an optical illusion.
It was a more natural explanation to say it was a hallucination arbitrarily created by my brain in a psychologically suppressed environment.
However, the moment the fog rose to the vicinity of my left hand holding the Magic Special Lecture and covered the page, my eyes saw the character I had guessed to be overlapping triangles and squares squirming and aligning as if it were alive and breathing.
"...."
-Gulp.
It was difficult to swallow.
Should I believe in proven science, or should I follow my uncertain intuition?
Should I consider my eyes to be mistaken, or should I realize the meaning of the moving letters?
I understood, just a little—very little—what my ancestors must have felt when they met the gaze of a tiger. The single thought of being eaten alive consumed my mind.
From now on, common sense warps. The prejudices and preconceptions I had built up over my lifetime would twist and melt away like stretched taffy.
Beyond this lies the curiosity that steps into the unknown, the recklessness that invites death, and the realm of madness that throws oneself into danger.
At that moment, I realized that the sweat seeping from my hand had soaked the page.
Only now could I see what the fully aligned symbol was.
Overlapping triangles and squares. A square, crumpled and stuffed inside a triangle stretched long to both sides, as if forcefully shoved in.
This wasn't a letter.
An eye.
Making humans, who can only see three, see four or more...
...magic.
"Blaaargh..."
I threw up the moment I realized it.
I collapsed onto the stacked sandbags with wobbly legs and a body drained of all strength.
I gasped for breath, struggling just to vomit.
Even though I hadn't eaten a single thing while staying in the solitary cell, some lump-like substance poured out of my mouth along with gastric juice, dropping with a plop into the fog that had now thickly filled the entire road.
But my eyes, my eyes that had already grasped magic, were burning like crazy.
The blood vessels in my forehead and head bulged, pounding and hotly cooking my brain with every pulse. A deathly nausea washed over me. Eventually, I reached the point of dry heaving even though there was nothing left to spit up.
However, in contrast to my hot head and burning eyes, I felt a chill seeping into my spine.
The shivering chill all over my body forced me to my feet.
And without even having the time to wipe the vomit from my lips, I instinctively loaded a live round.
Clack.
The fog had already risen to my chest. Beyond that, it was so thickly blanketed that I couldn't see properly.
Every time the blinking light of the crosswalk signal was crushed by the fog and flickered palely, all I could see was a damp shadow thrashing about beneath it.
The man and woman who had been positioned at the entrance of the alleyway were now three.
Replacing the now-limp middle-aged man, Han Myeong-un's back was flailing desperately.
The word 'flailing' might be too cute for this.
Han Myeong-un was stomping his feet frantically, like a person being strangled to death, like a person hanged by a rope.
I lifted my M16, shouldered it, and aimed at that spot.
I could see the end of the barrel shaking terribly, and though I hadn't even zeroed it properly so it wasn't sitting right within the iron sights, I kept my aim and watched quietly.
I couldn't even let out a single breath.
Then, from the one that had become three, Han Myeong-un's resistance finally met with success.
Streeetch!
Have you ever played with clay as a child? Or have you ever chewed gum until it lost its flavor, spit it out, and then mixed it with another piece to chew again?
Once mixed, it's hard to tear apart. Once tangled, it's practically one.
So, even Han Myeong-un, who had barely pulled his face out, had his melted cheek stuck to the back of the woman's head.
Flesh and flesh were one. Even from a distance, I could see the bluish veins beneath the flesh tangling and intertwining like a tangled skein of yarn.
Above all, the most certain change was that the middle-aged man's face was melting and mixing into the side of Han Myeong-un's face.
"Uwaaaah... ah..."
Han Myeong-un's mouth was no exception.
He was desperately trying to turn his mouth away, but Han Myeong-un's mouth had long been connected to the middle-aged man's mouth, which had begun to stretch and tear.
The middle-aged man's face melts, mixing with Han Myeong-un's face.
Han Myeong-un's left pupil was already overlapping with the middle-aged man's right pupil; their eye sockets had become one, and the pupils were overlapping and intertwining like the compound eyes of an insect.
Only Han Myeong-un's right pupil was staring this way, shedding tears like crazy.
With eyes filled with fear, pleading, and desperation.
Han Myeong-un screams, desperately rolling his unmixed tongue.
"Uhh-mah... ugh!!!"
I never moved. With my gun aimed, I merely watched what my eyes were seeing.
The melting silhouettes of the three people were visible even through the dense fog.
One connected head, three bodies.
"Uwaaaaaah!!!!"
Han Myeong-un's face was already intertwined.
He—no, the three who had now become one—tangled their faces together like bizarre Siamese twins, mashing their three mouths into one.
Han Myeong-un's desperately protruding tongue began to intertwine and melt into one as the tongues of the others forcibly wrapped around it.
"Aaaagh... agh..."
Even his vocal cords were no longer his.
Only Han Myeong-un's right eye remained his. He spilled tears, but I intuited that even those tears were no longer Han Myeong-un's.
A groan, not even enough to be a scream, scratching at his throat, was all that was left of Han Myeong-un.
And then, the head of the three, now united as one, looked this way.
With its dangling limbs hanging limp, it stood clearly, maintaining a bizarre gait.
Now I understood why we had all interpreted the same symbol differently.
It was a power that forced human eyes to see the unseeable.
I was looking into the future, seeing exactly how the monster would move.
The points where the thick fog blanketing the road rippled were glimpses of the future—the footsteps of the approaching monster.
As I traced those footsteps with my muzzle, the monster just stared at me in silence.
Then, the monster shifted again.
This time, Han Myeong-un's arm twitched limply.
A feint. The leg on the opposite side—the woman's—was going to move. The middle-aged man's limbs were sandwiched in the middle, acting as the core to keep it balanced.
The moment I swung my muzzle toward the woman, the three-legged monster stopped provoking me.
Instead, it just stood there silently, staring at me through the fog.
Cold sweat trickled down my skin.
With my eyes burning and my brain feeling like it was being boiled, I couldn't even fathom how much longer I could endure this agony.
Yet, with eyes that felt ready to burst and hands slick with sweat, I refused to let go of my gun.
I couldn't even tell if I was breathing.
I couldn't tell if the dampness was from the fog or my own sweat.
And finally, at the end of our standoff, the three-legged monster overlapped its faces until only the backs of their heads were visible, then dragged its limbs away and vanished into the fog.
There were no more screams. No more groans.
But I remained standing there for minutes, tens of minutes, with my gun still aimed.
Eventually, the fog began to fade.
By the time the blinking crosswalk signal became clear again, I was the only one left at the intersection.
Still frozen stiff, I kept my rifle shouldered, aiming down the road.
That is, until someone placed a hand on my shoulder.
"Mr. Baek Jemin, Mr. Baek Jemin!"
"..."
It was Kang Daniel.
Behind him, squad members were unloading from a truck equipped with a searchlight.
Kang Daniel glanced around before studying my complexion. Seeming to sense the bizarre atmosphere, he asked.
"Where's your Night Watch partner?"
"..."
"Where did Mr. Han Myeong-un go?"
I tried to speak, but my lips were frozen shut.
No, my entire body was just petrified. I was still shouldering my rifle exactly as I had been.
Belatedly, I sensed people opening their doors and stepping out of the nearby villas, throwing cautious glances our way after hearing the commotion.
But only one thought echoed in my mind.
I had to flee Seoul.
No, I had to leave this country.
End.