Chapter 28: You Can Survive and Return Alive (3)

Another door.

An empty room.

A room that was empty as if it were a lie.

Wallpaper covered in mold, a broken bed, a single armchair with its leather torn away.

That was all.

‘There aren’t many rooms with manuals and food…’

I stood in the doorway, observing the room.

I could sit down.

I didn’t even need to lie down.

Just sit.

Even if it was only for a minute, being able to close my eyes would be enough.

‘…Should I rest for a moment? I don’t think it’ll arrive at exactly that moment.’

My eyelids felt heavy, and my legs were trembling.

My body was already screaming for me to sit down.

Instinctively, I took a step inside.

Clank.

One of my knees nearly gave out.

Without any will of my own, only the weight of my body moved forward first.

Then.

Clank.

The familiar sound came from far away.

It wasn’t the noise of my feet or my failing legs.

It was an unpleasant vibration.

A sound echoing somewhere beyond the door, at the far end of the corridor.

Clank.

My heart hammered against my eardrums.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

I bit my lip and muttered quietly.

“…Damn it, how did it hear me from there?”

I let out a sigh and withdrew the foot that had been about to step into the room.

As I crossed the threshold back into the corridor, I heard that noise again—

Something dragging across the floor, approaching with a heavy and steady rhythm.

In the face of survival instinct, exhaustion didn’t matter.

Clinging to my sanity in the face of death, I turned in the opposite direction.

Walk.

To stay alive.

That was all I could do.

And then I stopped.

“What the hell?”

In front of me.

Beyond the boundary between darkness and light at the far end of the corridor.

Another sound could be heard.

Clank, Click, Step.

Clank, Click, Step.

A different interval from the Presence approaching from behind.

I turned my head.

Clank. Clank. Clank.

Again, 1.7 seconds.

An exact, constant, familiar interval.

‘The problem is…’

Something was also approaching from the front.

Click. Step. Click. Step.

“Ha, shit…”

As I pressed my back against the wall, a chill ran down my spine.

The tips of my fingers went numb.

The willpower I was barely holding onto felt as if it were about to slip away.

I held my breath and forced my brain to work.

What do I do?

Hide?

No.

Not that.

From the persistent way that sound kept following me, it was obvious that the Presence knew where I was.

If I hid, I would end up like the corpse split in half that I had seen upstairs.

Then fight?

‘I’m not Supervisor Shik.’

If even one of my superiors from Extraction Team 1 were here, perhaps I wouldn’t feel even a tenth of this crisis.

But if that Presence was something similar to a dimensional entity, I wouldn’t even be able to escape properly.

‘I need to find another way.’

My brain spun at full speed through the pain.

My body temperature rose.

My senses sharpened.

A state of rational panic.

Calculations optimized solely for survival.

Clank.

Click.

Step.

They’re getting closer.

They’re not far.

About fifty meters behind me.

About twenty in front.

In my left ear lingered the ghost of the past.

In my right, an unknown predator.

Then I noticed a small but unmistakable anomaly.

Among the presences ahead.

Another sound was mixed in.

Click.

“……”

Step.

“……?”

And between them.

“…Be careful.”

“No, if you go that way—”

A clearly different sound.

“……!”

Voices.

Human voices.

Clearly audible language.

There was an obvious difference from the Presence, which only followed me with those Clank sounds.

I made a decision immediately.

There was only one possibility.

The ones ahead were living humans.

Someone still breathing within this hellish space.

Even if they were monsters pretending to be human, it was worth confirming.

“…Good.”

I swallowed hard and ran with all my strength.

Through the corridor.

Past death.

Toward the direction of those voices that might be hope.

Beyond the corner of the hallway.

My rapid footsteps echoed against the walls and floor.

My sweat-soaked breathing.

My damp clothes.

The heat leaving my body.

As if they had sensed me approaching, something stopped on the other side of the corner.

An unfamiliar silence.

Not a monstrous, sinister, incomprehensible presence.

The presence of people.

And then, a conversation.

“Did you hear that?”

“Yes.”

“It’s coming. Get ready.”

Low whispers.

A man’s voice.

A woman’s response.

There were definitely people on the other side of the corridor.

People holding a conversation with shape and meaning.

I rounded the corner without hesitation.

And at that instant—

Whoosh!

An arm shot toward my throat like lightning.

The moment I felt the precise hostility contained within that hand, my body moved before my mind understood the situation.

“……!”

Training drilled into me thousands of times exploded through my spine.

Just before the force of his grip reached my trachea, I reflexively tucked my chin and slipped inside his guard.

With my right hand raised, I deflected his wrist and altered its trajectory.

Then I immediately drove an elbow straight toward the underside of his jaw.

“Ah.”

A low grunt.

For an instant, it seemed as though the other man’s balance had broken, but he shifted his hips backward and evaded the strike with his upper body.

In that fraction of a second, the man’s silhouette was etched into my retinas under the light.

A man wearing a suit.

Gray hair tied back halfway.

Sharp eyes like a bird of prey and a long scar running across his right cheek.

His right eye, gray and frozen like ice.

His left eye, brown and shining with interest.

Two eyes different in both color and focus pierced through me.

Aside from that peculiar appearance, he was undeniably human.

I immediately extended my hand and shouted in a hurry.

“Wait! I’m a person! We can tal—!”

A cry filled with relief and desperation at finally finding another human being.

But instead of an answer, what came back was a sharp sound cutting through the air.

Whoosh!

As if he hadn’t even heard my words, the man formed a faint smile and threw a punch.

A barrage of blows, much faster and more precise than before, rushed straight toward my face.

“Hey! Listen to what I’m tr—!”

I didn’t even have time to finish the sentence.

The tip of his foot struck my shin.

Taking advantage of my faltering balance, an elbow shot toward my temple.

I hastily raised my guard, but the heavy impact twisted my head aside.

‘This fucking lunatic…!’

He’s completely serious.

He didn’t stop after confirming I was human.

On the contrary, he seemed even more entertained by pressuring me.

I didn’t understand what was happening.

Nor why I had to fight a stranger in the hallway of an abandoned building the moment I saw him.

But one thing was certain.

‘He’s not the type who listens to reason.’

In a different way from the monsters that filled the company, this guy was completely insane.

I crossed both arms to reinforce my guard, but he kept advancing without pause, throwing blow after blow.

The heavy impacts crashing against my defense made my bones vibrate.

‘I can’t beat him by trading blows.’

I have to grab him and lock him down.

The instant he threw another punch, I lowered my body and caught his right arm, trying to turn it inward and restrain him.

Then—

“That’s enough.”

A woman’s cold voice froze the corridor.

A woman had stepped between us before I even noticed.

She sighed with an expressionless face.

Black hair neatly tied into a high ponytail.

Cold, sharp eyes.

Dry, tense lips.

“…He’s an ordinary survivor, Team Leader.”

The woman positioned herself in front of me and summarized the situation in a cold but firm voice.

I also stopped in a low stance, breathing heavily.

Even during that brief exchange, I had realized something.

For someone so crazy, that man fought absurdly well.

“…Haa… haa… I already said I was a person…”

Before I could feel relieved, the man who had been attacking me lightly shook out his fists and lowered his guard.

Beneath his half-tied gray hair, those heterochromatic eyes remained fixed on my wrist with an unpleasant gleam.

“Sub-Team Leader, are your eyes just for decoration? Can’t you see that?”

The man called Team Leader pointed at my right wrist with his chin.

The Relics of the Smiling Martyr.

What normally looked like nothing more than a red rosary was pulsing strangely under the influence of this place, emitting a faint warmth.

“…!”

The woman’s eyebrows twitched.

Her gaze shifted between my face and my wrist.

Then she looked at me with even greater hostility than before and muttered,

“…The Church of the Coming Feast?”

What the hell is that?

“Or the Erosion Alliance?”

And what’s that supposed to be?

Seeing the woman continue to jump to the wrong conclusions, the man let out a dry laugh and stepped closer.

His footsteps were much slower than before, but the pressure he exuded remained sharper than any Presence that had chased me.

“Wearing that stinking bracelet and pretending to be an ordinary survivor isn’t very convincing. Open your eyes properly too, Sub-Team Leader. He’s not one of them.”

Instinctively, I tried to hide my wrist behind my back.

But I stopped.

They had already noticed it.

There was no point hiding it.

“…It’s something I received by chance.”

“By chance?”

“Hah.”

The man snorted mockingly and frowned.

“Just from the way you’re dressed, it’s obvious you’re an office worker. You’re from Limited Company Where the Dead End Up with Ghosts, aren’t you?”

Hearing the name of my company in such an unexpected place, I flinched and looked up at him.

The man gave a cold smile, ran a hand through his hair, and sighed.

“Stop dancing around it. What exactly are you?”

“What else would I be? A person.”

The man narrowed his eyes as he looked me up and down.

Then he asked in a lower voice than before.

“Don’t tell me you’re one of Moon Ara’s people.”

‘…Moon Ara?’

It was a strangely familiar name.

It didn’t take long for the memory to surface.

— Moon Ara went out on external security business.

The first time I met Director Go Gyeol of the Audit Team in the prototype warehouse.

The fact that this man mentioned that name after confirming my affiliation meant one of two things.

Either she held an important position within Limited Company Where the Dead End Up with Ghosts.

Or she had a very complicated relationship with him.

‘……’

As my silence dragged on, the man’s heterochromatic eyes narrowed.

Distrust.

Hostility.

And barely perceptible anxiety.

I swallowed hard as my brain worked frantically.

Would it be better to pretend I didn’t know her?

Or act as though I knew something and shift the board?

“…Do you know Team Leader Moon Ara?”

Assistant Manager Son had said that the head of the Security Team managed the prototype warehouse.

That should be enough.

I answered as naturally as possible, acting as though I knew Moon Ara.

The man frowned.

“Do I know her? I know her very well.”

Just as he took a long step toward me—

Clank.

Clank.

The woman’s gaze changed.

The man’s expression hardened slightly as well.

“I think we should move first, Team Leader.”

The woman’s low, rough voice rang out coldly.

The man called Team Leader frowned as he sensed the Presence approaching from deep within the corridor.

Then he let out a sigh.

Driven by pointless stubbornness, I asked a question.

“Who are you people to know the name of our company?”

The black-haired woman furrowed her brows while looking at the rosary on my wrist with obvious displeasure.

Then she answered with an expressionless face.

“We are the Anomalous Disaster Management Department.”

The Anomalous Disaster Management Department.

The organization that had written the manual for escaping this hellish place.

— The people from the Anomalous Disaster Management Department have been sticking their noses into things too much.

— The Anomalous Disaster Management Department’s surveillance of the Control Zones has become much stricter. We won’t be able to go on assignments for a while.

— You mean the new heterochromatic one? He seemed to possess excellent blood.

It’s them.

The organization I had heard mentioned so many times at the company.

The one that was supposedly always interfering in our affairs.

It’s him.

The mysterious man who had caught Manager Batori’s interest.

A strange emotion mixed into the air.

It wasn’t joy.

Nor distrust.

It was the trace of an old and heavy enmity.

Clank.

Another metallic impact echoed from quite nearby.

“Let’s avoid that damn Presence first, and then we’ll talk.”

The man let out a sigh and immediately started walking.

The woman followed him.

I pulled myself together and quickly moved after them.

Limited Company Where the Dead End Up with Ghosts.

The Anomalous Disaster Management Department.

A company of monsters and government officials tasked with controlling monsters.

And an ordinary human caught between them.

What a shitty combination.