By Zephyria “Ah, yes…!”
Yohan-ssi swallowed hard and recounted everything with utmost sincerity. However, he deliberately omitted the part where Park Seung-min and his mercenaries had intentionally pushed him into the Abyss. There was no evidence, and even if those men were caught, he doubted they would receive the punishment Yohan-ssi desired. He secretly harbored a resolve to get revenge later, whenever the opportunity arose.
“What kind of place is the Abyss?”
“It’s a truly, terribly, horrifying place….”
Trembling, Yohan-ssi confessed everything honestly, without holding back. A sky with no day or night, a ruined city and wild, untamed nature, horrifying monsters everywhere, a living Black Mountain that swallowed the monsters, a space with high contamination levels… Jeong Si-young, who had been listening impassively, asked,
“But how were you able to escape with almost no contamination? It must have been difficult to find food in such an environment.”
“Hyun-mook Hyung did something with an Eternal Stone. But I don’t know exactly what he did.”
Yohan-ssi lied, covering up the truth. In fact, he had received prior instructions from Lee Chan-ha regarding this. Surprisingly, Lee Chan-ha had been able to visit him in his dreams while he slept. It seemed she had used her extensive illusion abilities to communicate.
‘Yohan-gun. You were having quite the fun, weren’t you.’
‘Huh? Chan-ha Hyung? How did you know I was here?’
Yohan-ssi, bewildered, asked this in his dream, where he had been visiting a movie theater the previous night. Even then, he hadn’t realized he was dreaming. Lee Chan-ha smiled gently, then handed him popcorn and cola that had suddenly appeared, saying,
‘You will likely have an interview with Captain Jeong Si-young soon.’
‘Remember this well. I will tell you what you can say and what you cannot say….’
When he woke up after sleeping soundly, the dream’s content remained vivid. Thanks to that, Yohan-ssi was able to recount his experiences in the Abyss during his interview with Jeong Si-young without being overly nervous. The things he had to hide were clear: his purification ability, the Black Mountain that was made of Eternal Stone, and the state of his companions, whose bodies had undergone irreversible changes due to extreme contamination. As he continued his statement, Yohan-ssi gasped for breath and spoke with difficulty.
“And time flows faster there.”
He swallowed dryly, his stomach churning, and his tightly clenched hands were damp with cold sweat.
“I spent a year there before I came out….”
Jeong Si-young hummed. The content was similar to what she had heard before, but it sent shivers down her spine each time. Yang Yohan had only been missing for about fifteen days. If this calculation was correct, it meant Lee Hyun-mook and the others had spent ninety years there before returning. However, their accounts differed.
‘It felt like about 10 years.’, ‘Ah, Si-young Unni, long time no see. It feels like I haven’t seen you in about 10 years.’, ‘About 10 years? It feels like we spent around that much time there. But I didn’t count the days precisely, so I don’t know?’ , ‘It seems to have been about 10 years.’, ‘It was a 10-year period that felt like hundreds of years.’
Yang Yohan said one year, while the others said ten. Perhaps the flow of time in the Abyss was chaotic… As she noted this down, Jeong Si-young continued her questions.
“Then, how were you able to escape from there?”
This answer, too, could be fabricated without much difficulty. She replied that occasionally the Abyss spat out land it had swallowed, and he had managed to escape by staying on such a piece of land. Jeong Si-young nodded slowly. She then asked for detailed descriptions of the monsters they saw there and their other characteristics. As the long interview, nearly two hours in length, drew to a close, Yohan-ssi cautiously asked Jeong Si-young,
“Could I possibly contact my family?”
“Not yet.”
“Then, could you at least let them know I’m alive?”
“That’s not possible either.”
Yohan-ssi had anticipated that all information about the Abyss would be classified, but being told so bluntly, he asked dejectedly,
“Then, are my family members all doing well?”
“Probably not.”
At this, Yohan-ssi looked up in surprise, and Jeong Si-young frowned.
“They are in a state of missing persons, practically as good as dead. Who would be doing well? Still…”
Perhaps because Yohan-ssi had been cooperative throughout, or perhaps out of pity, Jeong Si-young spoke in a gentle voice for the first time.
“If you wait just a little longer, you will be able to see them soon.”
After the interview with Jeong Si-young, and following several days of various tests, Yoon Seung-ryong, whom he was finally able to meet, looked quite well. Unlike in the Abyss, his contamination level did not rise here, even without Yohan-ssi’s purification. The air on Earth lacked that unpleasant, viscous aura of the Flood.
“Our Yohan has lost so much weight.”
“I ate well and lived well.”
Though he answered spiritedly, Yohan-ssi, happy to see him, stuck close to Yoon Seung-ryong’s side. He subtly channeled his energy into the point of contact. Perhaps because he had pushed his abilities to their limit so often in the Abyss, he could now channel it without even a single Light Particle. Nevertheless, as if sensing something, a nearby soldier on watch tilted his head slightly and glanced at Yohan-ssi.
“What about the others?”
“They’re all doing similarly. But the Team Leader and Deputy Team Leader are quite busy, you know. They have a lot to discuss with the government.”
Yohan-ssi nodded. Although they had grown close after meeting by chance in the Abyss, they were originally people too busy and famous to ever meet. He tried to act nonchalant, but his emotions welled up, and he bit his lip.
“The Abyss… you were there for a very long time, weren’t you?”
Yoon Seung-ryong gazed at Yohan-ssi for a moment, then smiled without answering. Yohan-ssi swallowed the lump in his throat. He felt no sense of betrayal for being kept in the dark. If he had known that time flowed faster in the Abyss, he would have suffered even more. Knowing that they had hidden the truth because they didn’t want to burden him with their misfortune and wished for him to suffer less, Yohan-ssi spoke with forced cheerfulness.
“Actually, I was the youngest, right?”
“Ah, you just figured that out? I wanted to tease you a bit longer. Ho-young was having a lot of fun.”
Yoon Seung-ryong said playfully, ruffled Yohan-ssi’s hair, and changed the subject.
“Seeing Captain Jeong Si-young after so long, she looked like she’d been through a lot.”
“She did seem that way….”
Yohan-ssi agreed. It was no exaggeration to say that thanks to Lee Hyun-mook and Jeong Si-young, the people of Korea could barely survive. After Lee Hyun-mook and most of the Sunrise Team disappeared, talk even arose about the precarious state of public safety in Korea. Jeong Si-young, in particular, who had become Korea’s sole High-level Awakener, was often pushed to the brink of collapse from overwork.
Throughout her interview with Yohan-ssi, Jeong Si-young drank two cups of very strong coffee. It seemed she was drinking it not because she wanted to, but because she had to endure. While an ordinary person would have given up and run away, she was a person who endured solely out of a sense of duty to save people from Rifts and monsters.
‘Come to think of it, High-level Awakeners all seem similar.’
It wasn’t just Lee Hyun-mook and Jeong Si-young. High-level Awakeners in other countries also tended to have exceptionally good character. Without being forcibly conscripted by the government, they readily stepped forward to fight Rifts, saving and protecting people. One might expect at least one to pursue wealth and power by wielding their formidable abilities, but they did not. It was as if they were chosen based solely on their character… A rumor he had heard once suddenly came to mind, and Yohan-ssi asked Yoon Seung-ryong,
“By the way, is it true? That if you do bad things, your abilities disappear?”
“Huh?”
Yoon Seung-ryong, who had been happily sipping a sweet drink, scratched his cheek. His face seemed to be searching back through a distant past as he tilted his head.
“I’m not entirely sure… but I have heard of a few cases among those who committed murder or robbery.”
“Is there some kind of transcendent being on Earth too?”
Yohan-ssi, who had personally experienced the malice of a transcendent being called the Abyss, asked with a worried voice. Yoon Seung-ryong’s face also turned serious, realizing the implication of his question. But he soon laughed it off cheerfully.
“Even if there is, it seems to be on our side, for sure. Right? You are the perfect proof of that.”
Yohan-ssi’s cheeks turned red, finding Yoon Seung-ryong’s words, that he himself was proof as a Purifier, both plausible and a little embarrassing. He suddenly thought of something and asked,
“By the way, the test results… did everyone come out healthy?”
“Ah, of course! They came out healthy, though there are some Contamination Symptoms. Even if Chan-ha’s germophobia and the Elder’s temper issues are a bit problematic, those are mild for Contamination Symptoms, aren’t they?”
It seemed that what he had been secretly worried about had somehow been resolved. This was good news for Yohan-ssi, who had been anxious that the test results might be bad, leading to a government order for lifelong confinement in a Corrupted isolation facility.
After chatting with Yoon Seung-ryong, Yohan-ssi returned to his isolation room and was able to get his cell phone back. The inspector, speaking stiffly to Yohan-ssi, whose face had brightened, said,
“As I told you, you are still not to contact your family. All information regarding the Abyss is also classified, so it must never be disclosed until an announcement is made. Failure to comply with these instructions may result in disciplinary action, and you will be designated as a subject of contamination monitoring for the next year.”
He openly stated that there would be surveillance that completely disregarded human rights, but Yohan-ssi took it in stride. Since the Rift incident, the global population had decreased by nearly half. Faced with the need to survive a severe disaster, the governments of various countries frequently took measures that somewhat disregarded human rights for the sake of safety, and the public had grown accustomed to such measures. It was a bitter reality.
After the inspector left, Yohan-ssi sat on the bed and carefully opened his phone. It had been charged, likely checked during the contamination tests, and some communication apps had been deleted. Suppressing his urge to contact his family immediately, Yohan-ssi first accessed the internet.
The first place he went was SNS. Since he couldn’t contact them or meet them right away, he looked for his family’s accounts. However, there were no updates, not from his parents, whose posts were infrequent, nor from his brother, who posted several times a day.
He had imagined many times what his family’s reaction would be if he went missing. Though he often felt resentment and hurt, they were still his beloved family. Seeing that his SNS posts had abruptly stopped after the date he went missing, something welled up inside him. Feeling guilt and longing, he sobbed and gazed at his family’s photos for a long time before switching to a news site. The first article he saw was:
[“A Miraculous Return” National Hero Lee Hyun-mook Returns]
There were hundreds, even thousands, of articles with similar headlines. Despite Jeong Si-young’s angry warnings and even warning shots, the media had still rushed to announce it. Taking a deep breath, Yohan-ssi clicked on the article.