By Zephyria Awkward and embarrassed, somewhere on my body itched for no reason. As he rubbed his arm, Yohan’s heart leaped as he looked at Lee Hyun-muk. The other person smiled so warmly that his eyes crinkled, it was the handsome smile often seen in videos just before falling into the Abyss.
“I was just teasing.”
The heat rising on Yohan’s face began to burn even more.
“You can call me whatever you want, comfortably. Of course, I prefer being called by my name. It’s been a long time since anyone called me by my name. Everyone just calls me Team leader.”
This was bad. Looking at Lee Hyun-muk’s smiling face, Yohan couldn’t help but think, for some reason, that this was just terribly bad.
Unconsciously, he found himself stealing glances at Lee Hyun-muk’s lips, and suddenly he wanted to eat an apple, swallowing hard. Lee Hyun-muk, his face still holding a smile, looked at Yohan quietly and asked in an exceedingly gentle tone,
“Why, Yohan-ah?”
“No…. It’s just, um….”
Being called Yohan-ah so gently was just as ticklish as calling Lee Hyun-muk Hyun-mook Hyung. While Yohan was sweating profusely, the smile slowly faded from Lee Hyun-muk’s face. It wasn’t a negative change. As if deeply focused, Lee Hyun-muk said in a low voice,
“I feel like something warm, like hot water, is flowing out of your body right now.”
“Hot water?”
Though embarrassed and shy, he couldn’t tear his gaze away from Lee Hyun-muk’s face. Lee Hyun-muk placed a hand on Yohan’s shoulder.
“When I touch you like this, it feels like it’s melting hands that have been frozen all winter. You probably don’t know how good this feeling is….”
Wow, no, I think I have a rough idea of what that feeling is…. Now, not just his face, but his entire body was flushed with heat. Suddenly, a courage he didn’t know where it came from surged, and Yohan grabbed Lee Hyun-muk’s hand. Even though he said he felt like hot water, the other person’s hand was warmer. To the startled Lee Hyun-muk, he said with a flushed face,
“If it’s like this, will it be warmer?”
As if the hot water comment was true, Lee Hyun-muk’s eyebrows, the corners of his eyes, and his lips relaxed languidly.
“Yes, it’s warmer now….”
Lee Hyun-muk, holding his hand as if it were something precious and rare, slowly pulled his hand away. As he rubbed his cheek against the back of his hand and closed his eyes tightly, Yohan could do nothing. It was a moment when a strong desire to make the other person warmer surged within him….
Screeeech! Screeeech!
The sudden piercing sound jolted Yohan back to his senses. When Lee Hyun-muk opened his eyes again and let go of his hand, he felt a strong sense of regret. The mood had been quite good…. And before they could even check what that sound from outside was, the door burst open. Yoon Seung-ryong, clutching something strange in his hand as if grabbing a handful of hair, blurted out,
“We need to move.”
Yoon Seung-ryong led them, telling them to follow, to a place near the Black Forest, an hour away. After that, the expressions of the three soured instantly.
“Team leader, have you ever seen anything like this?”
“…No.”
From somewhere deep inside the Black Forest, a gap had opened, and from it, something like giant pustules or blisters had grown in a line. Inside them, something unpleasant and disgusting liquid swirled. Even without bursting them open, they instinctively knew what it was. Yoon Seung-ryong, keeping a considerable distance and even averting his gaze, pointed with the tip of his spear.
“My gut feeling says it’s a Flood.”
“I see.”
Even as they spoke, the gap widened slightly, and the blisters slowly grew within it. It wasn’t as massive a quantity as they had seen in the Ruined City, so neither Lee Hyun-muk nor Yoon Seung-ryong seemed greatly affected. Still, Yohan, feeling uneasy for no reason, tugged at the collars of their clothes.
“If that’s what it is, we should keep more distance.”
The two men turned to Yohan and readily stepped back. Yoon Seung-ryong, hands on his hips, chuckled.
“Ah, of course. If I turn back into a Centipede Monster, our Yohan would be in big trouble.”
He spoke as if a child was praising a grown-up for a commendable act. Even though they were only two years apart in age…! Yohan bristled inwardly, while his anxious heart made him look back at the blisters. Just looking at them made his stomach churn, so he too unconsciously averted his gaze.
“Did it fill up the Ruined City so much that it’s now pushing its way here?”
“It might be, but in my opinion, this direction of progression…”
Yoon Seung-ryong pointed with the long, sharp tip of his spear towards where the blisters were growing. At its tip, barely visible, was a house, clearly their current dwelling.
“It seems to be heading towards our place. I wonder if this is just a coincidence…. That’s what’s bothering me. It’s a phenomenon I’ve never seen before.”
“It would definitely be safer to move our dwelling further away.”
After a moment of thought, Lee Hyun-muk reached a conclusion. On the way back, Yohan’s expression was glum. After entering the house and rummaging through his backpack to pack food, he sighed. The painful memory of having to leave behind the supplies he had diligently collected from the convenience store surfaced.
“It feels like such a waste to think about leaving this behind again.”
“No! Why would we leave it? We’re taking it all with us!”
Yoon Seung-ryong, helping Yohan pack, jumped up and said sternly. Yohan, however, pointed to a large hiking backpack.
“It doesn’t look like it’ll fit in the backpack at first glance. And dragging it around in a cart is too much of a burden.”
“Now, now. Yohan-ah, watch this.”
Yoon Seung-ryong hugged a mountain of canned goods. Then, he shoved them into some point in the air, and something invisible to Yohan’s eyes crumpled, and the cans suddenly disappeared. Yohan covered his mouth with both hands.
“N-no way!”
“That’s right! We can fit it all! We don’t have to leave anything behind!”
Yoon Seung-ryong exclaimed triumphantly, pulling out the cans he had put away. And he had every right to be triumphant.
“Wooooow!”
We don’t have to leave the food behind! Overjoyed, Yohan jumped up and down, spinning around the room with Yoon Seung-ryong. His gaze towards Yoon Seung-ryong sparkled intensely. The past days, when he had to abandon all the hard-earned supplies and anxiously counted how much food was left, flashed before his eyes. Furthermore, Yoon Seung-ryong’s ‘pocket’ was quite spacious, capable of fitting even a mattress. A comfortable place to sleep was also secured.
“Ah, right. I caught some fruit earlier, shall we eat it before we leave?”
Yoon Seung-ryong, who had been stuffing away all sorts of luggage, remembered something he had forgotten. Coming out into the yard with him, Lee Hyun-muk was already there, having decapitated and prepared the ‘fruit.’ It seemed these were the things that had been screeching earlier. After purification, what appeared in their place was a large tangerine.
“Hey, was this Jeju Island? There are pigs, and tangerines too. It would be nice for dessert after dinner.”
After eating a few tangerines and packing some, Yoon Seung-ryong suggested.
“Since we’re going anyway, let’s raid the supermarket too.”
Yoon Seung-ryong’s eyes burned with the determination to take all the edible things in the vicinity. Naturally, there was no reason to object, so they immediately rushed to the supermarket. Thus, laden with several sacks of rice, a pig-mole, and various other foods, they left the Black Forest marshland.
“He sleeps like a human…”
Yoon Seung-ryong muttered expressionlessly, resting his chin on his hand. His gaze was fixed on Yohan, who was sleeping soundly on the mattress, his breaths soft and rhythmic. Even though Lee Hyun-muk and Yoon Seung-ryong were looking at him, he was so oblivious that he showed no signs of waking.
Yohan was positioned in the very center of the mattress. The position, squeezed between the two large figures of Lee Hyun-muk and Yoon Seung-ryong, seemed quite burdensome, but both of them pretended not to notice and didn’t give up their edges. It was because they wanted to keep Yohan in the safest position at all costs. That’s how highly they valued his purification ability. No, it wasn’t just valuable. It was a miracle they had witnessed in this hell.
“Wow, it’s really been a long time since I felt sleepy.”
Despite saying he was sleepy, Yoon Seung-ryong showed no signs of sleeping. After confirming Yohan was completely asleep, he positioned himself as close as possible. The purification ability that leaked out even when he was conscious flowed out even more freely when he slept, making him unconsciously stick close to Yohan. In fact, the area around where Yohan slept was becoming clean and pleasant, as if it had been wiped clean.
“I wish, I wish we had come here sooner…”
Muttering expressionlessly, Yoon Seung-ryong subtly slipped his fingertips between Yohan’s back and the mattress. He wanted to hold Yohan in his arms, but Lee Hyun-muk didn’t seem like he would allow it. With Lee Hyun-muk’s hawk-like, stern gaze fixed on him, Yoon Seung-ryong grumbled inwardly.
‘Would I really eat him or something? I’m full right now…’
Of course, he didn’t say it out loud. Lee Hyun-muk, who had been silent since Yohan fell asleep, replied,
“It’s fortunate we came now. And unfortunate for Yohan.”
“Well, that’s true…”
It was the warmth they found after being abandoned naked in the dead of winter, unable to die or live, crawling through the muddy snow like insects. Not just any warmth, but a heat that melted their frozen, twisted limbs and returned them to normal. The mud cave, which they had previously considered somewhat comfortable, now felt indescribably repulsive. This human-shaped warmth before their eyes was so precious, so irreplaceable, that they felt they would rather die than return to their former lives. And Lee Hyun-muk must have felt the same.