Taesung (4)
Cold air swept through the streets. In the market, merchants pressed drugs on their customers whether they wanted them or not. Down the alleys, children gaunt as skeletons laughed up at the sky, and the smell of cigarettes came drifting in on the wind.
To any outside eye, a broken landscape. But in this world, this was simply what normal looked like.
"..."
I stepped out of the repair shop and stopped. Lebetri squeezed and released her prosthetic hand a few times.
— Clack. Clack. The sound of metal locking into place.
"I'm used to it now, Sapi."
I didn't answer. I only closed my eyes — and the world fell silent.
Endless darkness spread out in every direction. Everything was a black void.
And through it, countless threads ran crisscross. Each was the future — each a possibility without number.
I seized the nearest thread.
We cut through an alley, doubling back toward the tunnel we'd come in by. But a white-haired man is walking there.
"Rabbit ears... mid-monsterization, I see. [Return to ashes.]"
The words fall, and flesh burns away. I let go of that thread and grasp for another.
West — toward the mountain range. Movement across the rooftops. Lebetri's Linear Leap hurls us toward the mountains faster than any eye can follow.
We enter the range itself. Once we're over this mountain, I think, we'll be safe. The wind blows — and when I look back in its wake, the alley where people stood only moments before holds nothing but black ash drifting against the sky.
And the white-haired man is walking.
"Rabbit ears... mid-monsterization, I see. [Return to ashes.]"
Another failure this time, too...
I grasp for another thread.
Failure. Failure. Failure. This one, too — failure.
At some point, I stop even counting. The only thing I'm searching for is a way to bend fate — a way to keep Lebetri alive.
But at the end of every thread, the white hair is there.
And every single time, by pure chance...
I opened my eyes slowly. My throat burned as if scorched, and my skull felt ready to split. Something hot trickled from the tip of my nose. I wiped it away with the back of my hand.
Blood.
"Sapi...?"
Lebetri's voice reached me — and I hastily hid my bloodstained hand behind my back.
"... Let's go."
"What's wrong?"
"No time."
"..."
"Just trust me and follow."
Lebetri studied me for a long moment. The me of any other day would have deflected with some careless joke. But right now, I wasn't smiling.
"What's going on?"
"..."
"Sapi."
I answered very, very slowly.
"Don't ask anything. Just do what I say."
With that, I broke into a run, and Lebetri's footsteps gave chase behind me.
She didn't know yet — that the thing we were fleeing wasn't Red Jade's residence at all, but this city itself, warping into a labyrinth of death under Icarus.
Two figures plunged into the alley — I ran full-out on Sapi's heels.
"Sapi!"
Even with my lungs burning, I raised my voice.
"Explain!"
"..."
Sapi didn't answer. He just ran, eyes fixed on the path ahead, and all I could do was click my tongue.
There he goes again.
Even on the best of days, he never told me the important things all the way to the end. But this time was different. The tension rolling off his back was heavier than anything I'd ever felt from him.
"Left."
My body swerved into the left-hand alley on pure instinct. A heartbeat later, a roar shook the city behind us.
— KRA-KOOOM!!
Dust geysered into the sky. I whipped my head around on reflex — the street we'd been running down moments ago was buried beneath collapsed buildings.
"What the hell?"
Sapi spoke without so much as a glance back.
"Eyes forward."
We kept running. Then a wide road opened up ahead, leading toward the plaza, and I pointed at it, shouting on instinct.
"That way's faster!"
"No."
"Hah?"
"Focus only on me."
"..."
Irritation flared hot in my chest — but his voice was strangely, unnervingly resolute. In the end, I turned without another word.
A narrow alley. A road lined with a few corpses, wasted away by drugs. We'd made it only a few steps in when—
— Bang! Bang! Bang! Gunshots cracked out in the distance, one after another, and before long the air filled with screams and panicked shouting. My feet stopped without my permission.
"Don't pay it any mind."
Sapi cut the words off flat and hard.
"Keep running."
The longer we ran, the rougher my breathing grew, sweat sliding down my brow. Then Sapi abruptly raised a hand.
"Stop."
I stopped where he told me to — but I couldn't make sense of it, and I pressed him with a scowl.
"Now what..."
Sapi raised a single finger to his lips, and silence fell on its own.
One second... Two seconds... Three seconds...
Time stretched out, unnaturally long.
And then—
— Whooooosh. A fierce wind sliced through the alley. Riding on it, something black drifted through the air, and I reached out to catch it. It was impossibly light — yet the instant it touched my fingertips, it crumbled away into the wind.
"Ash...?"
I stared down at my hand, bewildered.
"Already..."
Sapi murmured the word. Then, still muttering low, he started running again.
A four-way intersection appeared. Sapi bolted right without a moment's hesitation.
"Right."
But my feet stopped dead.
"That's a dead end."
And it was true. I knew this path — I'd seen it in one of my loops, back when Dadan and that musclebound brute were hunting me down. Go in deep enough, and all the alley held was one enormous corpse pit.
Even so, Sapi answered without a flicker of doubt.
"I know."
"...?"
"Trust me."
I gave him a look that said I couldn't understand a word of this. But Sapi had never been wrong. Not once.
Tsk...
In the end, I followed him into the alley. And just as I'd expected, the way was blocked — massive buildings walled off any retreat, and ahead there was nothing but the vast corpse pit.
A hollow laugh escaped me.
"Hey."
But Sapi answered with that same hard certainty.
"Jump!!"
Is he really that desperate?
With that thought, I decided — for the first time in my life — to try trusting someone. I hurled myself toward the corpse pit.
In that same instant, the building sealing off our retreat came crashing down, burying the pit behind us.
The instant we hit the bottom, Sapi's voice rang out.
"Lebetri!!"
"I'm over here."
"You hurt anywhere?"
He demanded to know my condition, frantic.
"... I'm fine?"
"Thank god..."
Then he slumped against the wall right there, breath heaving — and only then did the question strike me.
Something's wrong... why... check on me first? That's not like him.
Blood was seeping from Sapi's eyes and ears.
"You..."
"No — I'm fine."
He answered before I could even finish. He didn't look fine at all.
Footsteps sounded from above the pit, and we held our breath. I glanced sideways. Cold sweat was running down Sapi's face.
But the footsteps simply passed us by.
The moment they faded, we pushed deep into the corpse pit — hundreds of bodies, and old equipment rusted long out of use.
"This place..."
"Where Taesung processes its corpses."
"Really?"
"Ah — found it. The drain hole's right here."
Sapi pried the hole open and crawled inside, and I followed him through.
And just like that, we were outside Taesung. We ran for a long while, nothing filling the wilderness but the sound of our ragged breathing — until, after a long, long run—
Sapi stopped. For the first time.
I looked back. Black smoke and dust hung over the city like a shroud. I doubled over too, hands braced on my hips, lungs heaving.
"Haah... haah..."
My heart was pounding like crazy.
"So..."
Once I'd steadied my breathing, I looked at him.
"... it's over now, right?"
He didn't answer. He only kept staring at Taesung. After a moment, he spoke quietly.
"Trust me."
Those two short words left me utterly flustered — and with them, Sapi leveled his gun at me.
"Trust me."
— BANG! The shot cracked out, and my body folded with it. Nowhere lethal — not the heart, not the head. But if this went on, I would die of blood loss.
And while I was still reeling from the sting of betrayal—
"Hold your breath. And trust me."
Sapi slid the muzzle into his own mouth and pulled the trigger. His head burst open. And he fell.
Hold my breath — when I don't even have the strength left to breathe...
"?!"
A monstrous aura was walking toward us. My body went rigid on its own; I couldn't pull in a single breath. I could feel the gaze of the one carrying that dreadful presence, fixed on the two of us.
"Already dead, are they?"
With that, the bearer of that fearsome aura turned and moved away from us. But I'd lost too much blood. Any longer like this, and I was dead.
"I told you to trust me, didn't I."
Sapi — who by rights should have had a hole punched through his skull — rose slowly to his feet and injected something into my body.
It's warm.
Back when we fought Aurora, he'd claimed to be a healing-type ability user. Before long, my body knit itself back together, and I could breathe easy again.
"Was this part of the plan too, Sapi?"
"We both needed to look dead."
"No — I mean all of it. All of this."
"..."
A brief silence passed between us.
"We just got lucky."
Even as he said it, blood was flowing from his eyes and nose —
Khk. Sapi coughed up blood.
"You okay?"
"..."
"What on earth did you just do..."
He gave no answer. Instead, he wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.
"I just pushed myself a little. That's all."
For a while, I said nothing. Normally I'd have laughed it off as empty bravado. But today, the laugh wouldn't come. Today of all days, I was genuinely worried about Sapi.
But he seemed determined to prove how healthy he was, because he immediately took another step — and a moment later his knee gave out, his whole body swaying. I caught his arm on pure reflex.
"I'm fine. I can walk."
"Not what you say while coughing up blood."
"It's nothing—"
"Shut up."
I forced his arm across my shoulders. And that smell that was uniquely Sapi's brushed the tip of my nose. Normally I'd have wrinkled my face at it. Strangely, this time, it wasn't unpleasant at all.
Sapi looked at me for a moment, then smiled faintly. Smiling like an idiot...
"So you trust me a little now?"
"Don't get the wrong idea."
I answered with my eyes fixed straight ahead.
"If you go down, I'm out my informant."
"Ha... is that so?"
Sapi didn't try to pull his arm away again.