Chapter 67. At the Fork in the Night
The man’s blood melted the exposed skin of the suit trooper.
As if he had been splashed with hydrochloric acid, flesh burned away and the soldier screamed.
The enhanced-suit trooper twisted his entire body inside the steel exoskeleton.
Several U.S. soldiers nearby, splattered with the blood that sprayed in all directions, were also injured and collapsed to the ground.
“Evacuate the wounded and hold them back so they can’t get close!”
The commander shouted his orders.
Tutatatatata.
Giiiiing.
As gunfire and the railgun’s firing sound rang out from all sides, the factory workers shuffling forward were shredded into rags.
But even with grievous wounds, they didn’t fall. Arms and legs severed, bodies riddled with holes, they still dragged their ruined flesh forward—an image that created terror.
“Aim for the legs!”
At the commander’s shout, the soldiers concentrated fire on thighs, calves, and ankles, and the roughly twenty civilians dropped to the floor.
But even then, they crawled forward tenaciously with both hands. Blood tears streamed from their crimson eyes, but their pupils were empty.
On the ground, the wounded’s blood pooled and gathered like puddles.
“Fall back!”
Chaerin cut down the necks of people who crawled toward them desperately even after their bodies became rags. Only when their heads dropped off did they finally stop moving.
“Master…”
Cheolmin was appalled by Chaerin’s ruthless hands.
To Cheolmin, who knew nothing, the people Chaerin killed weren’t monsters—they were innocent people.
But Chaerin only flicked Cheolmin a glance and silently kept taking heads.
“Even if you find and kill the one who cast the hypnosis, the hypnosis on them won’t be broken. They’ll attack us until they die. This is the only way!”
Before calling her Master, she had been the neighbor living across the hall. They had eaten together, met face-to-face every day—so this side of Chaerin felt utterly unfamiliar to Cheolmin.
But when he saw a Southeast Asian laborer crawling toward him like a zombie, nails dug into the floor, he realized there was no other way.
He was startled by how decisively and quickly she moved, but he sensed her response was correct.
Biting his lip, Cheolmin cut down the laborers’ necks with the intent of reducing their suffering in a single stroke.
“Everyone get out of here! Stay far away!”
When there were no more factory workers moving, Chaerin spoke while looking at the blood gathered on the floor.
But the U.S. enhanced-suit troops didn’t move even after hearing Chaerin’s warning.
Instead, they began collecting the victims’ blood—blood with acid-like properties—into containers, and placing the broken corpses into steel drums.
Bubbling.
At that moment, the thick, smeared blood on the floor began to boil up.
“It’s dangerous!”
Like a living creature, the blood on the ground clumped and moved in a grotesque way. It gathered into a large, ball-like mass, and sharp spikes were sprouting from the surface of the blood clot.
“Form a fire net and concentrate fire on a single point!”
The U.S. commander packed the unit together and poured fire into the blood pool that had turned into a huge, crimson sea urchin.
But the red sea urchin, with the nature of a liquid, repaired itself instantly even when pierced, and began spewing spike-like skewers in all directions.
The bodies of regular troops in body armor were easily impaled, and the suit troopers inside steel frames staggered from the impacts.
“Gather in the center! They’re coming from all sides.”
At Chaerin’s words, the startled U.S. soldiers activated their bio-radar surveillance gear, and dots with biological signals began converging around the factory.
They were village residents from the nearby homes, and there were hundreds of them. Every one of them had empty pupils, just like the shoe-factory workers who had died moments ago.
Lauren raised the pistol in her hand and aimed at the residents rushing in from every direction, and the fifteen Isu Gang younger brothers hardened their entire bodies with the Diamond Body Art, then surrounded Lauren to protect her.
Back at the lodging, I sat on the rooftop bench, drinking banana milk, lost in thought.
For the past five years, my life had been a daily routine with no major changes.
Most days were the same.
But recently, many things had changed. Especially after Bella arrived, truly many changes happened.
The biggest change was that I was feeling emotions comparable to an ordinary person.
No matter what happened, I never wavered or felt anything, but these days, when I saw Bella, I felt a lot of emotional agitation—mostly surprise, being dumbfounded, anger, irritation.
I replayed what had just happened.
Things had unfolded in a way similar to being rejected by her, but strictly speaking, I hadn’t confessed, so I wasn’t rejected.
She simply raised an iron wall on her own assumption. Nothing more than that.
So why was I this angry?
Naturally, I assumed Bella had feelings for me, and that assumption was neatly wrong. And the reason was my lack of empathy, the very thing I was trying to hide.
Bella said she disliked me because my social skills were worse than normal humans, because I was selfish and calculating.
I thought I’d overcome poor social skills, but apparently not at all.
As for being selfish, it wasn’t even worth discussing.
All life is fundamentally selfish. Claiming you act for others is all hypocrisy—or the babbling of fools who don’t understand the laws of the universe.
Being calculating—this isn’t a flaw, it’s a trait categorized as a strength, so why would she dislike me for it?
Someone like Chanhyeok hyung, who doesn’t calculate, acts impulsively, and performs useless virtue for the sake of showing off, is a type of person I can’t understand—and I can’t understand Bella’s heart that says she likes that.
If Bella had said she liked me today, I had no intention of accepting those feelings.
Bella stimulated my emotions too much, and as a result, I was losing my usual coldness. Little by little, I was becoming not myself.
But if I thought differently, these changes might be the process of becoming more like ordinary people. Humans give meaning to meaningless things, and even at a loss, they do stupid things because of feelings.
I turned on my phone and opened the coin trading app.
If you do things you normally wouldn’t, you gradually change.
Maybe the old me thought change itself was bad.
I had feared unpredictable results.
But humans grow through change.
If I also did things I normally shouldn’t, maybe I could change like ordinary people.
I was about to transfer 100,000 won into the coin app, but it felt like too much, so I transferred 50,000 won.
It was money the CIA paid because I reported about Bella again today.
Then I bought all of the coin Chanhyeok hyung had bought earlier.
They said it was a coin linked to the recorded movement of sunspots used to predict the sun’s motion, and also linked to the Nasdaq index—no idea what that meant.
This fake-looking coin was soaring like crazy right now. In an instant, my cash valuation that had been 50,000 won just seconds ago passed 70,000 won.
If I’d put in 100,000 won, it would’ve been 140,000… what a shame.
This coin would definitely rise until before 10 a.m. tomorrow.
Separate from my dislike of Bella, Bella’s words had never been wrong so far.
If you listened to her, there was no nuclear war, and you could even get Cheolmin hyung out when he was trapped.
I steeled myself and put in 1,000,000 won. The moment I bought the coin, the valuation that should’ve been 1,070,000 won became 1,200,000 won.
Was this dopamine?
A strange hormone I’d never felt before was secreted in my brain, and a fierce thrill surged through me.
I put in 100,000,000 won.
The balance that should’ve been 100,120,000 won was showing 113,000,000 won.
A mad pillar of flame was climbing straight up. I transferred the entire balance in my banking app—22,780,000,000 won—into it.
Normally, such a huge transfer wouldn’t happen, but drunk on the hormone called dopamine, I didn’t register it.
My balance should have become 22,893,000,000 won, but instead it moved differently.
The leading digit changed.
I rubbed my eyes.
Clearly, the first digit wasn’t 2—it was 1.
Unable to believe it, I blinked and looked again, and it changed to 8.
Eight hundred million?
But one unit was missing.
My balance, which had been 22.8 billion won, had become 8.3 billion won.
My hands trembled, and I couldn’t think of anything. Before I could do anything, the leading digit changed again.
It became 750,000,000 won.
Seven hundred fifty million—what Cheolmin hyung had earned earlier.
No.
I had to come to my senses. I tried to sell the coin to salvage what was left, but the balance had already become 210,000,000 won.
I dumped it at market price. The cash that converted to won and entered my account was only 200,000,000 won.
The word “stupefied” flashed through my mind.
When a person is hit with too much shock, they go hollow.
A hollow, “Heh-heh,” leaked from my mouth.
It was, without question, an emotion I had never felt even once in my life.
When the bubbling, foam-like emptiness passed, a raging fireball began to surge from deep inside my chest.
I observed the emotion.
Anger.
Killing intent.
Madness.
If I had to put it into words, it was something like that.
An impulse to tear everything in the world apart.
An impulse to shatter the planet called Earth into dust.
This was anger drenched in madness.
On the first floor, Room 102—Bella was sprawled out watching a drama, laughing loudly.
That sight poured oil on my anger.
I lifted my body into the air and went down to the first floor via the stairs.
At the counter, Chanhyeok hyung was staring at his phone in shock.
“My money! My money!”
Chanhyeok hyung was also in despair and didn’t even notice me floating like a ghost by the elevator stairs.
His despairing scream briefly brought my reason back.
Shared suffering?
Is that what this is?
They say joy doubles when you share it and sorrow halves when you share it—maybe it really is true.
Because of Chanhyeok hyung’s sorrow, my anger—just moments ago I wanted to burn the world—was cut in half.
So I changed my mind about ripping off Bella’s head.
Bella wasn’t at fault.
She had clearly warned me not to do coins.
I ignored it and caused this mess—that was my stupidity.
But that’s that, and I still had to soothe this anger.
This anger showed no sign of extinguishing and kept trying to burn me up. If this emotion fully swallowed me, I felt like I really would want to break the Earth into pieces.
I looked around for something to tear apart, and it seemed Chanhyeok hyung noticed me.
“Huh?”
I flicked away all the particles of light around me.
Then, since light could no longer reflect my form, I appeared as a black shadow. Seeing me like that, Chanhyeok hyung screamed, looking like he was about to faint.
“A ghost!”
Thinking I couldn’t cause a disturbance at my precious workplace while it was operating, I opened the front door and shot up into the air.
Focusing on the telekinetic field connected in all directions, I sensed Lauren, Cheolmin hyung, and even Chaerin fighting something messy.
I launched myself toward the north, where they were.