KEG 107

“How am I supposed to get out of here….”

Everyone who could have tear out the flower was gone.

I brought this on myself.

That bastard who looks down on and insults others is actually the biggest fool of all.

Crack… crack–

I placed my hand on the flower by my ear and tried to pluck it again. But I couldn’t do it.

I tried again and again, but kept failing. It was around the time my number of failures had exceeded double digits.

Perhaps the rift in the sky had met the horizon somewhere, because at some point, rifts began to appear in the ground as well. I stared at the pure white space that had appeared beneath my feet.

“Where does this lead?”

I had no idea.

It could lead to yet another illusory space. unauthorized copyIf I took a wrong step, I might end up lost in a dimensional rift.

It was a moment of decision that directly threatened my life.

“When haven’t I risked my life before?”

Think quickly, act fast.

I jumped into the pure white space.

And what unfolded before me was…

“A temple?”

It was the passageway of a temple, its walls covered in black moss and winding wild plants.

A foul, fishy stench stung my nose, and an unpleasant sensation enveloped my entire body, that distinctive feeling of being submerged in the ocean, accompanied by cognitive distortion.

“Looks like I’m inside a gate.”

If that was the case, it meant the village of the black flower wasn’t a gate.

I finally understood why the Hunters hadn’t come here. The village visit our sitewas a hidden dungeon with strict entry requirements.

I walked down the temple corridor in the direction the wind was blowing.

Along the path, corpses holding cameras, corpses wearing tactical vests, and monster remains were scattered. It was so quiet that it seemed both monsters and people had been wiped out completely.

“Is the raid over?”

The giant flower was dead. The raid on the gate was over as well.

The peace felt strange.

“Judging by the state of the corpses, it doesn’t seem like they’ve been dead for very long.”

Perhaps because I’d just come from a place where the timeline was warped, my sense of time was all messed up.

I looked at my palm, which I’d clenched so hard that its graphite-like interior had been exposed. The black interior was still visible.

I was still in “villager” form.

“I guess I’ll have to pull out the flower after all.”

I needed something to turn me back into a person with flowing blood.

I kept walking through the temple. Before I knew it, I saw an exit where the night sky was visible.

Beyond the exit lay a field blooming with dark red flowers.

“It’s blood.”

Upon closer inspection, I saw it was dark red stains on white flowers.

Enough blood to soak this vast plain.

I was sick of flowers.

I walked forward, flowers crunching under my feet with every step.

As I walked, I saw someone lying in the flower field.

A man with white hair wearing a dark-red wreath on his head.

“Are you alive?”

When I spoke to him, his eyelids lifted as if a princess in a fairy tale were waking up.

“Were you alive?”

My question was met with another question. No one answered, but that was answer enough.

“What’s that on your head?”

“No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t get there~”

When I asked about the wreath, Baek Yejun replied with a smile.

At least Lee Yuksam had managed to stand in the flower field, but Baek Yejun hadn’t even been able to get there. I guess even among S-class individuals, there were different tiers.

“Please pull out the flower. I want to go home.”

I said this to Baek Yejun, who was crouched down next to me. Baek Yejun looked up at my face without doing anything else.

Feeling frustrated, I took his hand and guided it toward the flower by my ear.

“If saving people is your job, could you save me too?”

That’s Baek Yejun’s job. Just as I clean, Baek Yejun saves people.

“Then who’s going to save me?”

Baek Yejun asked.

“Why are you asking me that?”

“Because I thought you might be able to answer.”

I didn’t know.

How could I give an answer when I didn’t even know what was needed or what kind of danger he was in? The necessary measures would vary depending on the situation.

As I remained silent, Baek Yejun moved the hand I’d brought over to pluck the flower and brushed it across my cheek.

“Hug me.”

“Will you pull it out if I hug you?”

“Comfort me.”

“I need help.”

Baek Yejun’s hand fell limply to the floor.

“I need you, Hyung.”

I looked at him for a moment.

An appearance that was both dazzling and pitiful. His clothes, dirty and expensive, were so stained I couldn’t even tell what color they were originally.

Scars, still healing but pockmarked all over his body. A dazed expression, as if he weren’t in his right mind.

A look of exhaustion that he only occasionally showed in front of me.

“I need you too.”

I pulled Baek Yejun, who was lying on the floor, into my arms.

I couldn’t become human again on my own. I desperately needed the help of this battered bastard.

As I hugged him, Baek Yejun responded by wrapping his arms around my waist and the back of my neck and nuzzling his head against me. When Baek Yejun acted like this, it meant only one thing.

He wanted to go home.

“I’m hungry.”

“Me too.”

“Let’s go out and get something to eat.”

“Okay.”

Baek Yejun placed his hand on the flower by my ear. A headache struck, and sparks flashed before my eyes.

As I stood there for a moment, I recalled the words Baek Yejun had mouthed back when I was in the village.

“I’ll wait for you.”

Baek Yejun repeated those words once more as he plucked the flower.

And so, I died in that dark-red flower field.

***

Paradise Hospital closed its doors.

My source of income was gone.

How am I supposed to make a living now?

“Hyung, are you a bum now?”

Baek Yejun approached me as I lay in bed staring at the ceiling and started a quarrel.

“Guess you’ll have to beg me now, huh?”

“The ward hasn’t completely shut down yet.”

I wasn’t a full-fledged bum yet, I was only half a bum.

“As soon as the special disaster zone is lifted, I can go back to work.”

Areas where a gate had spawned were designated as special disaster zones. For a while, they were off-limits to the general public and underwent various decontamination processes.

The ward’s patients were dispersed to various hospitals to continue receiving treatment, and the medical staff were also scattered and assigned to places where help was needed.

“Aren’t you going to work?”

“I was disciplined.”

Baek Yejun claimed he was disciplined, but media coverage of him was very limited and carefully curated. It seemed the Association had intervened to downplay the scale of the damage and exaggerate Baek Yejun’s achievements.

“I heard the government intervened this time because there were aspects of the incident that could have caused a public scandal.”

The Association manipulated incidents to suit Awakeners. The media simply took their word for it and reports it. The government let everything slide without proper oversight.

The three don’t keep each other in check. They’re all in cahoots.

“What kind of deed would an S-class have to commit to receive such severe disciplinary action?”

The footage captured during this incident had been deleted.

When I recalled that situation? where everyone except Baek Yejun was wiped out, I understood why.

“The extermination process itself wasn’t the problem.”

“Are you saying the total wipeout wasn’t the problem?”

Baek Yejun nodded in affirmation.

He didn’t kill people.

If that was the case, it must have happened purely through combat, but was this flower monster really that strong? Strong enough that even Baek Yejun took a whole month to exterminate it.

“The fact that Hyung came back alive was the real problem.”

Baek Yejun lay on top of me, with his head on my chest and his ear close to my heart. After listening to my heartbeat as if to confirm something, he spoke again.

“They killed all the suspected mutants, but it seems having someone return caused some trouble.”

“Are you saying they massacred civilians?”

“That’s how they’ve handled it all along.”

Once a person has turned into a monster, there’s no going back.

However, I dealt with it early on and tenaciously survived in that ‘mental space’ to return. The government was not pleased with my existence.

Upon my return, the fact that I had gone to village was treated as a sign of mental instability. They simply claimed I’d been in a coma for a month. So I was kept in a quarantine hospital and eventually discharged without any further action.

“While you were bedridden, the Association kept [Read on]trying to take you away, so I argued with them a bit. Then they told me to take a long break.”

Baek Yejun looked at me as if to ask whether he had done the right thing.

If it hadn’t been for this guy, I would’ve been dragged off somewhere while still lying in bed. It might have been thanks to Baek Yejun that I had been able to see the Light of Life at the village.

In that case, I should thank him.

“You did well.”

After I said that and ruffled the back of his head a few times, he seemed pleased and rubbed his head against my chest.

“I cleaned the house while you were away too.”

“Yeah.”

“I saw the canned peaches were running low, so I restocked them.”

“Yeah.”

Baek Yejun listed off his accomplishments over the past month.

He did the laundry, changed the light bulbs, and got rid of the bugs on the window sills. These were definitely things visit our site I would have had to do myself if Baek Yejun hadn’t. It was a step up from the days when he’d just laze around in bed without even cleaning.

But on the other hand, I wanted to scold him rather than praise him. If he was capable of doing these things, why didn’t he just do them from the start?

Even though I wanted to praise him wholeheartedly, my twisted thoughts made me look down on Baek Yejun.

“I guess you really had nothing better to do.”

In the end, a rude remark slipped out.

I guess I’m the kind of guy who, once you pull me out of the water, demands a reward.

“I just did it because I wanted to.”

Baek Yejun lifted his head and looked at me. His hair, tousled and static-charged from rubbing against my chest, fluttered in the breeze.

“Up until now, I’ve just lived doing what I had to do, but when I’m with you, I find myself wanting to do other things.”

“If you’re a human being, you should at least clean up after yourself.”

“I guess I’m not human.”

Maybe because it was white, his tousled hair looked just like dandelion fluff.