Chapter 78
His greed was his nature and his means of survival.
Therefore, whether this overwhelming desire had clung to him from birth or whether he had instinctively acquired it to live his life was not a particularly interesting fact to Lee Jaehun. It wasn’t a story of any significant value.
Why delve into the origins of something that would be with him for a lifetime?
So, he would live a better life.
* * *
The atmosphere was calmly settled.
Under the darkening sky, illuminated solely by the red glow of the campfire, Yoon Garam stared silently. Silence brushed past her ears.
Suddenly, she rolled her eyes to look at Director Lee Jaehun.
“…….”
The figure of a person sleeping quietly came into view.
Whether it was because she was seeing him in this monochromatic world or because he had lost so much blood, Director Lee Jaehun’s skin was pale enough that his wounds were particularly noticeable.
He was clearly breathing, but it was so faint that it was hard to tell without close observation. His shirt, stained dark red, reeked of blood even at a glance, and his once-expensive-looking vest and suit pants were wrinkled from the ongoing chaos.
Nevertheless, his face was excessively peaceful, causing Yoon Garam to blink.
‘…He looks dead.’
She thought that when the time came, he might die in the same position as he was now.
She hadn’t known Director Lee Jaehun for long. But there was something instinctively felt—he seemed like the kind of person who, even if his whole body were set on fire, would lie on the grass and meet death rather than struggle. He would quietly die, just like now.
That was the kind of person she first saw in the flower shop.
“…….”
Biting her lip, Yoon Garam gently stroked the knit covering the back of her hand with her other hand.
She always wore clothes that covered her entire body. As spring was approaching, she wore a knit, but up until the previous winter, she had worn thick, long sweaters. Regular customers at the flower shop often wondered about Yoon Garam’s fashion choices.
No matter how hot it got, she wouldn’t wear shorts. She wouldn’t wear short sleeves. Even if she did, she would always wear a cardigan over them to the flower shop. She always made the excuse that she was sensitive to the cold, but she knew that people didn’t believe her completely.
Carefully, she lifted the knit to look at the bare skin of her hand.
“…Hmm.”
It was covered in severe scars.
She swallowed a sigh and quickly covered it again.
‘I should have had surgery at the hospital earlier.’
They were burn scars she had gotten in high school.
At the time, she had suffered severe burns and had to stay in the hospital for a while. The large burn scars covered most of her body and remained there to this day.
Her close acquaintances had urged her to get a skin graft surgery, but Yoon Garam hadn’t. She simply didn’t want to go through the trouble of removing the scars, which had turned into rough brown skin. She hadn’t shared this with anyone because she knew they wouldn’t understand.
However, given the current situation, she was starting to get a little worried.
‘I should at least wash up at some point.’
For some reason, her body wasn’t getting as dirty as she expected even after a long time, but she couldn’t keep huddling up like this. For hygiene’s sake, she needed to make an effort.
The small lake had been deemed safe, and she, along with others, had been checking for any monsters. If things continued as they were, it wouldn’t be long before she would need to wash there.
In that case, it was clear that washing alone was impossible. Her colleagues wouldn’t leave anyone unguarded while they were vulnerable in the water, and alternating between washing and standing guard would be cumbersome.
Inevitably, the day would come when she would wash with other female colleagues, and she wouldn’t be able to hide her scars then. They weren’t small enough to be concealed easily.
“…It would have been nice to have them removed earlier….”
A very small voice dispersed into the air.
She hadn’t seriously looked into whether modern technology could remove such large scars, but she should have visited the hospital more often. She should have at least gotten proper prescriptions. Being thrown into this world has only made her more self-conscious about her scars.
Seeing the scars themselves wasn’t the issue, but if someone asked about them, Yoon Garam would be quite troubled. She could always brush it off, but still.
“…….”
Her eyes fell back on Lee Jaehun, who seemed dead asleep.
‘…Is he insensitive to pain?’
Though she hadn’t known him long, Yoon Garam thought so. Lee Jaehun seemed quite indifferent to the many and varied pains of the world.
He wouldn’t act so nonchalant otherwise.
‘To his own state… and to mine.’
Yoon Garam scratched her ear slowly and curled up.
From what she observed, Lee Jaehun didn’t seem to value the pain he felt. He might be enduring it to appear that way, but his actions were full of incongruities.
He was like that when she first saw him in the flower shop. His shirt, which should have been white, was dark red on the shoulder, and she later learned his calf wasn’t in good shape either. Later, she heard from others that he got hurt saving Kang Mina from a monster.
He sounded like a very kind and good person when she heard the story, but just watching him didn’t give that impression. Besides the discrepancy between his actions and words, there was a peculiar aura about him. It was a sense of discomfort one might feel when staring at a broken porcelain doll in a horror movie.
And it seemed she wasn’t the only one who felt this unease.
Not only the four companions who left the company with Director Lee Jaehun but also Mr. Ha Sungyoon from the flower shop, Park Dayoung and Park Dahoon, who joined them at the park, seemed to know something.
Though Lee Jaehun’s actions were certainly sacrificial and noble, well…
‘…He scared me.’
Yoon Garam felt fear from him.
It was similar to the fear she felt from the monster resembling stained glass in the flower shop. The desensitized death of the crumbling thin glass and the eerie silence that Lee Jaehun exuded were very similar.
On the surface, everything seemed plausible. His words weren’t strange. Sometimes his manner of speaking was inconsistent, which was a bit odd but not terribly so. Lee Jaehun just seemed like an awkward, well-meaning adult who couldn’t honestly express his kind heart.
‘That’s why… the students follow him so well.’
Yoon Garam’s gaze returned to the two students hovering around Lee Jaehun. They seemed quite sensitive despite pretending not to be, so she thought it best not to make them uneasy.
She liked children in her way. High school students, on the verge of adulthood, weren’t much different. Yoon Garam appreciated their pure innocence and the energy it brought. Children instinctively knew who was good to them.
So, it’s not that Lee Jaehun was bad. He was kind and a good adult. The fact that he could provide care and a place to rest for those struggling meant he had the responsibility and capability.
But still, he was frightening.
‘It’s like…’
He seemed,
like he wasn’t human.
He felt like a cunning monster mimicking an ordinary human.
In his usual state, he was just a typical older man. Specifically, he seemed like someone who, unable to express his good intentions honestly, clumsily tried to show them. It made people smile unwittingly.
But sometimes, just sometimes, when he blinked slowly, brushed his lips with one hand, or rolled his eyes,
When he stared at nothing with a hollow, death-like gaze,
He looked like a doll perfected by a malfunction.
‘Do people become like that when they completely lose their minds?’
She wondered.
It seemed some of their companions had already noticed, even though Lee Jaehun tried hard to hide it. He was already too far gone to be considered sane.
He accepted pain as a value, not as pain. He calculated injuries as losses. Sometimes he stuttered over common knowledge or confidently spoke of something erroneous as if he knew nothing. It was hard not to feel uneasy.
Of course, as a stranger, Yoon Garam didn’t know why he had become like this, but one thing was certain.
“…He must have been in a lot of pain.”
He must have been in great pain.
“What?”
“His hand. He was in the fire for so long….”
“The doctor treated him, so it should be okay.”
“Right?”
He must have been in so much pain that he didn’t even realize it anymore.
‘That’s why he didn’t scream.’
Yoon Garam envisioned Lee Jaehun’s hand melting like candle wax. Though his injury wasn’t that extreme, it seemed severe to her.
His hand, red and oozing, looked hardly human. Or maybe too much so. No one would deny it if it were called a monster’s hand.
Unless he had lost all sensation, it must have hurt, but he hadn’t screamed. She hadn’t thought about it at the time, but Lee Jaehun had been silent the whole time his hand was in the fire. His face must have been blank, as if he didn’t even know what he was doing.
In retrospect, it wasn’t surprising.
‘He was like that at the flower shop.’
When his ankle was burning, he remained calm. Or, at most, brushed off the dust with a frown. If she had been in his shoes, she would have cried her eyes out, forgetting her dignity and age. It was a severe injury.
Such a person would probably face death in the flames with just a few grimaces.
‘It’ll be so silent.’
Suddenly, a black flame swept through her mind.
Under the dark night sky, she envisioned a log house engulfed in a brilliant, blazing fire. Even if someone were locked inside and the fire set from outside, blocking the door, they would likely die from smoke inhalation and turn to ash in utter silence. They might knock on the blocked door a couple of times, but if the locked window didn’t break, that would be the end of it.
For that reason, Yoon Garam felt as though Lee Jaehun’s very existence was like something that didn’t belong in this world.
‘How can something like that exist?’
It wasn’t as though she felt she was seeing something that shouldn’t exist, but rather she was bewildered as to why it existed and how it came to be. How much pain must a person endure to float so aimlessly in the void of the world?
If something so alien and silent were to burn in a fire, what would happen….
She suddenly looked up at the campfire.
“…….”
The sound of the crackling flames reached her ears.
In that moment,
She realized.
“…Ah.”
…Am I,
‘going crazy?’
Have I gone mad?
In her ears, she didn’t hear the sound of burning wood sticks, but the surreal sound of bright flowers distorting in the wind. It was an utterly nonsensical sensation.
Sharp, reddish fragments pierced her ears piece by piece.
She laughed.
―You will die.
“…Ha.”
Yoon Garam understood.
Back at the flower shop, if Lee Jaehun hadn’t helped, Dr. Ha Sungyoon would have died.
She felt this keenly. The image of her beloved flowers turning into monsters and trying to kill the person she admired wouldn’t leave her mind.
If she closed her eyes, her ears would ache instead. Sweet, achingly sweet whispers would cling to her, reminiscent of tasting the nectar from a flower as a child.
This sticky, stinging fragrance….
―You will die.
“…….”
―I will kill you.
Hallucinations.
Her own childhood voice echoed.
* * *
A few minutes later,
Director Lee Jaehun rose, coughing up blood.
“Urgh… Ugh, cough.”
“…….”
“Gasp, hic…”
He vomited a basketful of bright red blood.
Blood poured from his mouth, nose, and ears. One hand scratched the ground while the other tried to stifle the blood bursting forth. His voice, rough like sandpaper, gurgled out as he coughed.
His muddled gaze as he looked at them,
“…Director?”
His staggering movements as he stood,
“Get, out.”
He did not seem like those of a living person.
He no longer seemed like the ‘Director Lee Jaehun’ who had protected them.
“No, no, no, that’s not it….”
“Director.”
“Run.”
“…….”
“If you don’t want to die.”
…The sound of a dog howling came from nearby.
“Run, quickly.”
It was the sound of someone’s stage opening.
