By Zephyria 
Mu-hae unrolled the blanket that had been wrapped tightly around Joo-oh, as if he were a cocoon. The face that finally emerged was flushed red—his cheeks, the corners of his eyes, and his forehead alike.
Impulsively reaching out to touch him, Mu-hae felt Joo-oh let out a small whimper and nuzzle against his hand.
Damn it. After acting like this, he’ll probably scurry off and tattle that I touched him. And he’s the one who provoked me first.
“Why don’t you go and tell them that Jin Mu-hae dragged you out of the blanket, too?”
“I didn’t tattle. I was explaining Jin Mu-hae’s condition.”
“You never fail to have an answer.”
He lifted him up and sat him beside him. Joo-oh, being so long that his feet already reached the floor, fidgeted and kicked his legs for no reason.
“I’m not going to see it through to the end.”
“……Okay.”
“I’m just going to look into it. To see what exactly you found that caused all that fuss.”
“Right.”
As Joo-oh leaned his head on his shoulder, a pleasant warmth transferred. Mu-hae repeatedly fiddled with the dry hair of the man who hadn’t shed a single drop of sweat despite being wrapped so tightly in a blanket.
Truly, this was a conclusion that his past self would have found hard to believe.
The fact that he had almost reached the end of the Return flight, and his decision to give it up because of a single Aberrant he was supporting.
No matter. His past self wouldn’t have known about Joo-oh, the Jaegang District, or the secrets of his birth anyway.
In this world, information is power, and the current Jin Mu-hae is wiser than he ever was in the past. He was full of the will to defy the universal perceptions he had once silently accepted.
* * *
“Yeon, neul, gil, il, o, yeol.”
The letters, arranged in order, finally held meaning. A hand large enough to cover a human head slowly scanned across the pad.
“If it’s ‘yeol,’ are 1 and 0 separate? Or should I see it as ten?”
“We’ll find out soon enough if we search the addresses. Anyway, the numbers at the end are just details, so the front numbers alone should be enough to hit the right street.”
First, they had to scout the neighborhood called Yeonneul Path. According to what Hwang-jae had told him, it would be a secure residential area that was difficult for anyone other than authorized personnel to enter.
Thanks to being part of the Defense Force, there was no risk of suspicion regardless of where he wandered, but such a district was a different story.
There would certainly be walls surrounding it, and security systems would be active at every accessible passage.
“Around here?”
“Probably. It’s quite far from the Defense Force headquarters.”
“You’ve never even been near here?”
“If you weren’t there, I wouldn’t be either. The guy who follows me wherever I go.”
It wasn’t an empty boast; Joo-oh was the kind of fellow who had actually crawled into the ceiling of a high-end restaurant. Come to think of it, there were times when Joo-oh had gone for walks without him, but the number of times he had wandered off without Joo-oh was countable on one hand.
At best, he had recently locked him at home to go in and out of the Jaegang District, but that was only for ingredients that weren’t sold near Starlight Road.
Joo-oh had devoured those ingredients greedily and then escaped through the window to whisper ghost stories to Teacher Jung…….
“…….”
“When should we go?”
He felt somewhat wronged. Noticing the subtle change in expression, Joo-oh asked quickly.
Since tomorrow was a workday, wandering around the central area wouldn’t look particularly suspicious.
Were there any decent convenience facilities near the estimated location? No, they would likely have facilities exclusively for themselves inside rather than providing a space for everyone right nearby.
“Will we get caught even if we sneak in?”
“Ultimately, we have to rummage around inside. A guard working in a place like that would quickly distinguish a stranger who hasn’t been authorized.”
“But we’re the Defense Force now?”
“Is there any reason for the Defense Force to be loitering there…….”
Was there? At first glance, there wouldn’t be, but if asked if there was absolutely no connection, that wasn’t true either.
Just as owning a factory in the production zone doesn’t mean one lives there, there would be central residents among those who had at least a toe dipped in the Defense Force.
Park Young-chan’s family was a prime example. Besides them, if one traced the connections up through the higher-ups, Councilors or sponsoring foundations were bound to appear.
If even one of them lived in this neighborhood, there was a way to brush off a one-day visit even if they were caught once.
“Can you draw some attention?”
“From the Defense Force?”
Joo-oh nodded with a confident face. Judging from past experience, he had an exceptional ability to capture people’s attention.
That made him useful, but it also made him unsettling. A petty voice inside Mu-hae whispered that if there was anyone who showed unusual interest in him, he would remember them all and suspect them for a long time.
“This sounds fun.”
Whether he knew that feeling or not, Joo-oh looked excited again.
From the next morning, Joo-oh groomed his hair meticulously. He draped even finer clothes over his already good frame, and after biting Jin Mu-hae’s arm a few times, his expression brightened as if something wonderful had happened.
He wasn’t polished to a shine as he had been when taken to the donation event, but this was enough for him to sufficiently capture the gaze of others.
“I’ll head to the administrative office around lunchtime, so if there’s anyone loitering, hold them for a moment.”
The status of an insider was truly a great thing. Mu-hae could pass through the most important security of the Defense Force without lifting a finger, using the excuse of reporting for work.
The Tamjeunggwan had been dragged to prison just for trying to set foot inside. Recalling the past when he suffered from boredom, Mu-hae became even more satisfied with this well-treated job.
As mealtime arrived, the workers left their seats one by one. Only then did he calmly walk down the hallway to find the administrative office.
“Ten minutes?”
“Five. Maybe even sooner.”
“No problem.”
Joo-oh, who had already devoured enough bread, cereal, and fruit juice for five people, thumped his chest as if to say trust me.
If Joo-oh said it was okay, it really was. Recalling this eternal truth, he slipped into the office.
Finding the seat of someone with less seniority was easier than Joo-oh eating a hot dog from a temporary stand in under a minute.
The monitor, which had returned to standby mode, was locked, but this could be easily bypassed with the temporary authorization he had obtained while requesting training equipment.
‘Central…… Central…… fifteen people.’
He searched for central residents in the personnel database. Just by knowing their identities, he could narrow down the upper class who had direct connections to them.
Searching further for residents of neighborhoods geographically close to Yeonneul Path, there were three. Among those related to the “big shots” he remembered from attending various meetings and events, there were about five.
“Oh! Hello.”
“You’re Joo-oh…… right? What are you doing here?”
“Jin Mu-hae said he has something to talk about regarding the training equipment request. He just went in.”
“Ah, everyone should be away from their desks at this hour.”
The sound of a cheerful conversation drifted in from outside. It was a very direct signal that someone had arrived.
Mu-hae hurriedly organized what he had found in his head and headed toward the door as if nothing had happened.
Joo-oh’s chattering voice bought him that fleeting moment. Listening closely, it was a story about a uniquely shaped leaf he had seen in front of the Defense Force building while coming to work today.
The other person was accepting that trivial and utterly useless chatter with great delight. It was strange that even words that Mu-hae would usually ignore with a disinterested look sounded interesting to him now.
It felt like only yesterday that Joo-oh couldn’t even speak properly; did he have this kind of talent?
“It seems no one is here. I’ll have to come back later…… Ah, hello.”
He joined the conversation as if he had just stepped out after a quick look. The employee’s expression became ambiguous upon seeing Mu-hae walking out from the inner administrative office.
‘I’m sorry, but even if you have business, you shouldn’t just enter without permission or a request.’
He could almost hear the words reaching the tip of the employee’s throat. However, when Joo-oh smiled sheepishly and pulled out that leaf—who knew when he had picked it up—from his pocket, the employee’s attention shifted back to him.
“I thought of a geometric shape when you said heart, but it really is a heart.”
“This is the right atrium. This is the artery.”
“Wow. It’s even more realistic because of the veins. By the way…… isn’t the instructor eating?”
“I stopped by to check something briefly before my meal, but it seems I timed it poorly.”
Operation cleared with ease. Mu-hae pulled the fellow, whose steps had become cheerful at the thought of eating again despite having had plenty of snacks, close to his side.
To maintain his expression, he had been repeating the story Joo-oh had been rambling about in his head, but strangely, it was boring as hell.
“Did you find it?”
“Yeah. I’ll need to look into it more, though.”
He might not remember a dozen-page thesis, but a few simple pieces of information were no problem.
If he searched and cross-referenced his memories until the end of the workday, a useful clue would emerge.
* * *
As expected, most of the connections were concentrated in the administrative side rather than among the Defense Force members.
It was perhaps a natural result. No matter how good a job the Defense Force was, people from prominent families who directly became members and worked with their bodies were rare, with Park Young-chan being one of the few.
Having been summoned to various Defense Force events for a while, he managed to filter out plausible candidates.
Only after using Joo-oh to strike up small talk did Jin Mu-hae indirectly learn that an older relative of a target, who was likely in their forties, resided in Yeonneul Path.
“What’s so funny that you’re beaming every time you speak?”
“Jin Mu-hae told me to do it, but you’re getting mad at me for no reason.”
“I just told you to play along. And I’m not mad.”
The fact that the full map of the central area was not public meant that the zone not revealed by Mu-hae’s access rights was one of his destinations.
It was quite vast, but he had some inkling of where it was.
“Is that all wall?”
“Seems so. The people living here probably have no need to go outside.”
1-5. Naturally, the wall near the estimated point was equipped with CCTV and sensor devices. It seemed security facilities had been installed at the entrances as well as every surrounding point.
Unlike Mu-hae, who was seeking another way, Joo-oh simply tilted his head and stared intently at one spot.
“I think this is the way.”
“What?”
“The camera isn’t moving. There’s no light.”
“Maybe that’s just the model.”
“There’s no sound of it running, either.”
It sounded like nonsense at first, but it was a realm Joo-oh could perceive. If what he said was true, there seemed to be a problem with the sensor monitoring that area.
No, perhaps it wasn’t a problem, but had been manipulated that way. He approached slowly and clung to the wall, but there was no alarm or response of any kind.
“Come up.”
“Okay!”
Whoosh, the two large men leaped over the wall like nimble weasels. A stone wall several meters high was nothing more than a light vaulting horse before this level of physical ability.
As they pushed through the bushes, a cozy sight immediately came into view.
The residential area, complete with a small park and even a lake, was close to a paradise unlike any general residential zone he had ever seen.
“Jin Mu-hae.”
“…….”
“Jin Mu-hae?”
“……Yeah.”
Watching the fountain spray water in an irregular rhythm, Jin Mu-hae suddenly realized that this scenery was not entirely unfamiliar.
249 – I Became an Aberration in a Dead Game