KEG 22

“Is there a problem?”

At my question, Hunter Choi Gukhwa’s face crumpled, and tears welled up in his eyes.

“…Fuck… Fuck… Fuck!!”

“Calm down. Just tell me what you need…”

“I got pricked, fuck…!”

Hunter Choi Gukhwa’s words, heard amidst the tense situation inside the dungeon, came back to mind.

‘But the ones that got pricked by the thorns turned into monsters! They mutated!’

I looked down at his limping leg and saw golden dust reminiscent of the boss monster’s golden thorns clinging to Hunter Choi Gukhwa’s black pants. It glittered under the fluorescent light alongside the gushing blood.

“…Hey, Ha Seongho.”

He summoned the spear he used for attacks, which had black veins rising from it, and handed it to me.

“Can you kill me?”

Hunter Choi Gukhwa had made an absurd request.

It was a request that no one could easily grant.

“Calm down. You killed the boss, and as long as you get proper treatment…”

“I have to die in battle for my family to get the compensation money, you bastard!!”

Even as he spoke, I could see the green skin below Hunter Choi Gukhwa’s neck expanding its territory and crawling up to his chin.

“Hunter Choi Gukhwa is not dead yet.”

“My family can’t afford my medical and rehabilitation costs.”

Hunter Choi Gukhwa muttered gloomily.

When a severely injured Esper receives emergency treatment, the cost is astronomical and beyond imagination. While life-sustaining treatment in a hospice ward also incurs significant long-term expenses, combat emergency treatment resulted in a massive lump sum payment that couldn’t even be compared.

“It’s better for me to die than to make them suffer in this shitty world.”

In this way, a significant number of Espers injured in battle would either return to gates without ever properly recovering or go bankrupt.

If you go bankrupt in such turbulent times, there is no recovery. Whether one is an Awakener or an ordinary person, they are helpless and wither away.

“As long as you are alive, you can pay it all back someday.”

“Please… please…! Just do it!”

When I refused to comply, Hunter Choi Gukhwa exploded with rage. The tears welled up in his eyes traced a long trail down his temples and fell toward his ears, which were turning green.

“I will go get a healer.”

I stood up. It was wiser to call a healer as soon as possible rather than dragging out this emotional battle.

Clang!

“Don’t go!!”

Hunter Choi Gukhwa grabbed my trouser leg and clung to me desperately. The black spear he had let go of gradually lost its presence and became transparent.

“You said you work in a hospice ward! Can’t you tell just by looking that someone is dying?”

Just like the monsters in the dungeon, the hand gripping me had melting skin that revealed its bones.

“Just stab me! Please…! My spear can kill me! Kill me quickly. Otherwise… I….”

Hunter Choi Gukhwa’s cheeks, now completely green, began to melt. He was becoming something that was no longer recognizable as human.

However, his gaze remained clear.

No, it had been clear.

“…I… I don’t want to die as a monster.”

Espers instinctively feel murderous intent toward monsters.

To face death while transformed into the very thing they loathe most, is a fear greater than death to them.

“No, no… no…”

Hunter Choi Gukhwa repeated only the word “no” in unclear pronunciation. His body and tongue stiffened, and a pitch-black energy slowly seeped up through the whites of his eyes, causing him to gradually transform.

He melted further and became something that no longer even seemed capable of reason.

“…Hunter Choi Gukhwa.”

There was no more time to hesitate. I knelt on one knee and grasped his green hand. It was still warm.

“You are not a monster.”

Hunter Choi Gukhwa’s eyes turned completely pitch black. I couldn’t tell if he understood. In those eyes, only I was reflected.

Even as I looked at Hunter Choi Gukhwa, I kept seeing myself. Without knowing who I was speaking to, I delivered the last words he would hear in this world.

“You were human until the very end.”

With that, I made the sign of the cross over my chest.

[Skill activated.]

[<Dream Exile>]

[One Esper has been exiled.]

***

All the way back home after completing all the procedures, I stared at my palm. The wound from being torn by a crossbow arrow was no longer there.

My unwanted healing ability devoured the lives of others like a predator, then seemed satisfied as it made new flesh grow.

It wasn’t the first time I had killed someone with this ability. However, every time I used it, it evoked a different feeling.

I had learned that the value of all life is equal, but I was not treating them equally.

I had never considered that there was a distinction between those who deserved to die and people who didn’t, but today, I found myself in a contradiction regarding that very subject.

How should I have acted?

“You’re home?”

When I returned home, Baek Yejun was sprawled against the wall right in front of the front door. He looked splendid yet miserable.

“You look even more horrific today.”

Baek Yejun spoke to me, but I couldn’t tell if he was referring to my level of mental contamination or my appearance.

“Indeed.”

I simply agreed and sat in front of him, leaning against the wall. In the narrow entrance of the old building, our legs were intertwined, with nowhere to stretch. That sight reminded me exactly of that night when we held hands inside the gate.

“It couldn’t be helped.”

We just stared at each other for a while after the front door sensor turned off.

***

Uninterested in human stories, the universe once again set the sun in the Earth’s sky. And so, the night passed and morning came. Today, too, I woke up, washed up, and headed to work.

“Ahjussi, do you know how to solve quadratic equations?”

I was helping the nursing assistants unpack syringes and put them into [Read on]a sterilized basket when the youngest Esper in the hospice ward, struck up a conversation.

“I don’t know. I’m a middle school dropout.”

“It’s a middle school problem…”

The youngest Esper didn’t give up even after I mentioned I was a middle school dropout. As if he had a specific answer he wanted to hear, he stubbornly kept talking to me.

“Ahjussi, since you went to middle school, shouldn’t you know quadratic equations?”

“I only attended in name.”

“In name…?”

Just as he persistently kept talking to me, I, too, had been persistent in refusing to study. No matter how much I was beaten or what abusive language was hurled at me, I stubbornly refused to do it. Because I simply didn’t want to.

“Did you forget the formulas because you’re getting older?”

“I couldn’t solve them even back then.”

In my life, studying bid farewell at the very first dictation test of the first semester of first grade.

I was the biggest dummy in the classroom at the time, unable to distinguish whether the word “eokkae” (shoulder) was supposed to be “eokke,” (common incorrect spelling of eokkae) eojeokke,” (yesterday) or “okei” (okay). While some kid knew English and even Chinese, I hit a wall right from the basics.

“Then are you at least good at Korean?”

“I gave up on that first.”

“What about English?”

“…….”

The kid, who had been persistently asking questions, soon grinned and got to the point.

“Then I guess I’ll have to teach you~”

Then he explained the equation to find X, while I just nodded and continued unwrapping syringes.

“Did you understand? Then what is the answer to number 2?”

“Number 3.”

“It’s a short-answer question…”

Following math, he went on to Korean, English, and even science; he chattered incessantly about everything he had learned.

If he had come to the hospital to be admitted, he could have just been goofing off or playing video games, but he was a diligent kid.

“You really don’t know anything, Ahjussi. What are you good at?”

“Land navigation.”

“What is that?”

“Finding your way by reading a map with a compass without GPS.”

It was a skill I had practiced in my spare time during my military service to avoid being abandoned in the forests of Gangwon-do again.

“Don’t you have a cell phone, Ahjussi? Everything shows up on map apps these days.”

“You told me to tell you what I’m good at.”

He rambled on about learning and life, saying that people must always maintain a learning attitude and constantly improve. He spouted words that sounded familiar.

“Listen carefully if you don’t want to live a foolish life being deceived. Adults tend to think they know everything in the weirdest areas.”

“Yes, thank you.”

Satisfied with my rather bland answer, the youngest Esper picked up his worksheets and tablet, said “See you again!” and rolled his IV drip back toward his room.

I looked at the clock; it was 5:46.

It was almost 6 o’clock, time to get off work, and the next day was my one day off per week. As I crumpled the scattered syringe wrappers into my hand, I thought about what I needed to do on my day off.

Knock, knock–

I was emptying the things in my hands into the trash can when I heard someone knocking outside the window.

This was the 6th floor. There was only one person crazy enough to do that.

Bang!

“Hyung, you’re off work now, right?”

In the freezing mid-winter wind, Baek Yejun, dressed in thin clothes with his scarf fluttering in the wind, crawled in through the window. When I looked at his head, he had even stolen and was wearing my baseball cap.

“Let’s go buy a winter blanket. It’s cold~”

“You don’t need it.”

He couldn’t even catch colds, so why was he trying to go all out and buy a winter blanket when he could just sleep on the bare floor or the sofa?

I refuse to let his belongings accumulate in my house any further than this.

“Now that you’re raiding gates, you must have money. Go to a hotel.”

“I have to save up for you.”

Is he talking about my 2 billion won? I understand.

My white piggy bank.

“I need to go grocery shopping. Let’s go to the supermarket.”