(Side Story) Zombie.
(Side Story) Zombie.
Yoo Min-seong flinched when Ga-in grabbed him and pulled him through the door.
Ga-in, who had been spraying odor neutralizer around the area, closed the gate and then closed the iron door beside it once more.
"....."
Ga-in drew a dagger and regarded Yoo Min-seong coldly.
"Were you bitten or grazed?"
Yoo Min-seong raised his hands as if he had no intention of resisting.
"No..."
Ga-in looked Yoo Min-seong up and down, then slipped the dagger back into her belt.
Seeing that, Min-seong spoke seriously.
"There were a few situations where I might have been exposed... Could you lock me in a room for a day? If my personality changes, kill me."
"I think it'd be easier to just kill you now...?"
Yoo Min-seong got chills at the sight of Ga-in loading a crossbow and slowly nodded.
"You're right... Once you turn, you'll probably fight back..."
Ga-in stared at Yoo Min-seong, then frowned and muttered.
"How the hell has a pushover like you survived this long... goddamn..."
After that tense day passed, morning came quickly.
For his voluntary quarantine, Yoo Min-seong had tied his own arms before falling asleep.
Ga-in kicked Yoo Min-seong awake.
"What is this?"
Yoo Min-seong woke up, checked his surroundings, then looked at his own body and answered.
"I thought... this might put you at ease..."
"Idiot..."
Ga-in handed Min-seong some food and headed outside.
"It's still dangerous..."
"Why don't you just shut up and eat?"
He wanted to say it was still dangerous outside, but the sheer exasperation in Ga-in's voice left Yoo Min-seong unable to finish his sentence.
"....."
Then Ga-in, who had been checking the area through the window, headed outside.
Kwak In-gu spotted Ga-in and greeted her cheerfully.
"Ga-in! Why were you out all night?"
"Don't worry. I'll die after you do, old man."
Inside the Field Mice building, the older group members laughed at Ga-in's remark.
"What a devoted daughter! A devoted daughter!"
Kwak In-gu scratched his head and cleared the way, saying,
"Go eat~"
"Yeah."
As if the spot by the window was Ga-in's designated seat, the people eating shifted over one space each.
Ga-in sat by the window with her food, and unlike yesterday, she ate while looking out at the landscape beyond the window, where zombies were piled up.
"Should I cut down some Trees..."
The room fell silent at the quiet hint that Ga-in wanted a war.
"".....""
"I worked hard to gather those..."
Myeong-cheol, who was eating beside her, said with a laugh,
"Still, thanks to you, we didn't use a single expensive thing~"
"Yeah."
Ga-in was stuffing her mouth full of food and staring outside when Kwak In-gu approached.
"Ga-in, let's go to the interrogation room together after you eat."
"Yeah."
The two knelt in the torture-chamber-like room with the floor hatch.
They visibly stiffened the moment Kwak In-gu appeared.
Kwak In-gu sat naturally in a chair, propped his chin on one hand, and looked at them.
"Names."
Min-ji, who was kneeling, answered Kwak In-gu's command immediately.
"Min-ji! I'm Lee Min-ji!"
"I'm Kim Ji-seong!!!"
Kwak In-gu gestured for Min-ji to turn around, and Min-ji turned while still on her knees.
Kwak In-gu lifted her shirt and checked her back.
After pulling her shirt back down over her clean skin, he did the exact same thing to Kim Ji-seong.
"Wanderers?"
""Yes!""
"And you know each other...?"
"That's right!"
They answered without a second of hesitation, as if determined not to tell a single lie while sitting here.
The floor hatch was plainly designed to open, and zombie noises rose from underneath as if announcing what waited below.
Myeong-cheol stood beside Kwak In-gu and whispered in his ear.
Just then, Ga-in walked in, apparently finished with her meal.
The moment the two spotted Ga-in, their eyes shook.
""Kanga...roo...""
"....."
Kwak In-gu snapped his fingers to draw the terrified pair's attention away from Ga-in.
When Kwak In-gu looked in one direction, the two followed his gaze.
They saw equipment identical to what Yoo Min-seong had been using.
"".....""
"Recognize it?"
Once again, Min-ji spoke up without hesitation, faster than Kim Ji-seong.
"We were the first to find the outsider who recently entered the area. That is the same kind of gear he was wearing."
At those words, Ga-in thought of Yoo Min-seong.
"....."
"Is that so? Is that all you know about the outsider?"
Min-ji shook her head as if there was more and was about to answer, but Kwak In-gu held up a hand to stop her.
"Why are you so quiet?"
When Myeong-cheol manipulated a button, the floor beneath Kim Ji-seong shifted.
As zombie cries grew louder beneath the partially opened floor hatch, even Min-ji beside him recoiled.
And then, Kim Ji-seong spoke rapidly, desperate to survive.
"He was trying to enter the Grasslands, so I said we should bring him along and see what we could get out of him!"
"And."
"That guy went into the Eagles' territory, so we moved even faster, but he'd already reached the stadium."
When Kwak In-gu looked at Min-ji, she continued the account.
"He was about to approach the Eagles without any fear, so we urgently tried to stop him... but the match had to start at that exact moment."
Now, the two took turns speaking, gauging the situation.
"Because of that outsider, we got marked by the Eagles, and we were even thinking about leaving the territory."
Kwak In-gu listened to the entire story, from their decision to enter Field Mice territory because of Yoo Min-seong through their capture, then nodded.
"Ga-in, what do you think? Sounds real, right?"
"Yeah."
Then Ga-in looked at Kim Ji-seong.
"And...?"
"...!"
Kim Ji-seong had stayed with Min-seong until the very end.
But he concealed from the Field Mice—who despised betrayal—that he had ultimately abandoned Min-seong.
Kim Ji-seong, not knowing how much the Kangaroo Rat, Ga-in, already knew, racked his brain and spoke.
"There was... an enormous number of zombies gathering here."
Kim Ji-seong, carefully gauging their reaction, continued.
"I'd never seen anything like it... zombies piled to the third floor rushing in like a tidal wave... Min-seong and I split up to reduce their numbers, and I don't know what happened after that..."
Kwak In-gu checked with Ga-in, and Ga-in nodded as she spoke.
"That's a lie... Hold them for now..."
"...What? It's not a lie!!!"
Following Kwak In-gu's decision, the two were isolated, and only Min-ji was placed in a secure room.
When Ga-in yanked the door open, Yoo Min-seong shouted.
"Don't just walk in! Say something first! What if I've turned?!"
"...What the hell is he talking about?"
Ga-in looked frail, carrying her ever-present backpack and wearing clothes that seemed roughly made but fit her perfectly.
Min-seong sighed at Ga-in's indifferent reaction and said,
"It could be dangerous... We should be careful."
Ga-in glanced at Yoo Min-seong once, then started moving as if she had things to do.
As she began preparing food, Ga-in asked Yoo Min-seong,
"Can you move?"
She was asking if he could run, because to evade zombies that started tracking the smell of blood from 50 meters away, you had to sprint.
"Yeah. I can run."
Ga-in took out her dagger and cut the ropes binding Yoo Min-seong's arms.
"Eat. We're leaving."
Yoo Min-seong must have been hungry, because he wolfed the food down.
"You're... with the Field Mice... aren't you?"
Ga-in ate, meeting Yoo Min-seong's eyes.
"Eat."
The two finished their meal in silence and started moving.
When Ga-in knocked on the rooftop door, an old man opened the eye-level hatch to check outside.
When he spotted Yoo Min-seong through the hatch, the old man spoke coldly.
"I'll let you live just this once, so get lost if you don't want to die."
But then a small hand came up from below, and the old man swung the door wide open.
"Ga-in~!"
"I'm back."
Yoo Min-seong was bewildered by how Ga-in's presence essentially gave him a free pass.
From what he'd heard from Min-ji and Ji-seong, to get in here you had to be bound, have everything you were carrying confiscated, and only then could you enter...
But the old man in front of him wasn't particularly wary of Yoo Min-seong at all.
Yoo Min-seong carefully offered a greeting, but the old man treated him as if he were invisible and handed some candy to Ga-in.
Following Ga-in as she accepted the candy and entered, Yoo Min-seong assessed their numbers: four young women, three young men, and everyone else was middle-aged or elderly.
Upon entering a room, he found Min-ji tied up.
"Min-ji!"
"What! How did you get here!"
Seeing the pushover Yoo Min-seong's happy reaction, Ga-in untied Min-ji.
".....?"
Min-ji realized from Yoo Min-seong's reaction that Ga-in intended to release her, and she looked him over.
Kwak In-gu suddenly appeared from behind, and Yoo Min-seong shrank back, intimidated by his large frame.
"Ga-in~~ You're back~?"
Kwak In-gu lifted Ga-in up and tried to rub his face against her, but before he knew it, a large spike was in Ga-in's hand.
"Put me down."
Seeing Ga-in's look, which conveyed her absolute intent to slam the spike down the moment he rubbed his face against her, Kwak In-gu quickly set Ga-in back down.
"Fine..."
Ga-in slotted the spike with a clink into the thick silver bracelet she wore.
Then Kwak In-gu made eye contact with Yoo Min-seong, and his usual icy expression instantly returned.
Reading Kwak In-gu's demand to know who the stranger was, Ga-in said as she walked out,
"A pushover."
The people who had been wary of Yoo Min-seong heard that and nodded, dropping their guard.
Only Myeong-cheol, who had once been called a pushover by Ga-in, scratched his head.
As they moved rooms, Ga-in opened the door to the interrogation room where Kim Ji-seong was, and Yoo Min-seong flinched hard.
"....."
Kim Ji-seong rapidly assessed the situation.
Min-ji was somehow already free beside them, while Yoo Min-seong was perfectly fine after being cared for by the Field Mice.
Realizing it was now too late to keep lying, Kim Ji-seong said to Yoo Min-seong,
"I'm sorry... please... save me..."
When Myeong-cheol moved to open the floor hatch, Kim Ji-seong blurted out in protest.
"I'm sorry! I didn't want to risk my life for an outsider!!!! I wanted to live!!! I mean it..."
The floor panel was slightly open, and the sounds coming from it made Yoo Min-seong realize what was down there; he yelled out,
"What are you doing? You can't kill someone so casually!"
Kwak In-gu, watching Yoo Min-seong pull Kim Ji-seong away from the opening floor panel to save him, looked at Ga-in and said,
"He really is a pushover, huh?"
"Yeah."
Ga-in went over to Myeong-cheol and took the device that operated the floor.
Seeing that, Yoo Min-seong quickly took the controller away and set it down in an empty spot.
Then Kwak In-gu's cold voice rang out.
"That seems beyond your authority... Bring it here."
"...No."
Kwak In-gu grinned and drew a short sword about 30 centimeters long.
"Yeah?"
Here on the outskirts of the Grasslands, Kwak In-gu was the leader of the Field Mice.
Only Min-ji and Ji-seong, who knew his legend, flinched and kept their mouths shut.
As Kwak In-gu approached, Ga-in spoke to Yoo Min-seong, who had taken a fighting stance.
"Your reason...?"
"He may have betrayed me once... but he saved me many more times than that..."
Yoo Min-seong said this while looking at the bound Kim Ji-seong.
"He was getting by just fine before he ended up here because of me. He's tied up now because of me too."
"So?"
"If letting him join is too much... I'd like you to help him move to another territory..."
Ga-in nodded wordlessly and pressed the button.
The floor hatch opened, and the shifting floor sent Kim Ji-seong falling with a scream. Yoo Min-seong immediately grabbed a weapon and jumped in after him.
Min-ji screamed beside them, then looked into the basement and stared dumbfounded.
There wasn't a single zombie down there; the zombie sounds had been coming from a recorder.
"He's kind."
"Yeah, he's a pushover."