By Zephyria The alarm rang in the dark dawn. Mu-hae opened his eyes wide, feeling like he hadn’t even been asleep.
As he slowly sat up, the blanket slid down, revealing Joo-oh, who was sleeping soundly beside him.
Lightly closed eyelids. A face with no marks, except for slightly disheveled hair.
He sometimes buried himself in the blanket like this. He would burrow into Mu-hae’s chest as if digging a tunnel, with only the top of his head peeking out.
Mu-hae wondered if it was stuffy for him, but he was rather relieved that he didn’t lie facing him.
Having Joo-oh’s face right in front of him as soon as he opened his eyes would feel strange.
‘He definitely lies apart when he falls asleep.’
Mu-hae got out of bed silently. He had to go down to the hideout soon for a conversation with Gu-reum.
He didn’t bother waking Joo-oh. If he noticed and followed, they would listen together, and if not, it was fine.
No matter what nonsense he spouted beside him, Mu-hae would ultimately make the decision, so it wasn’t bad to let the sleeping guy sleep.
“Umm. Jin Mu-hae.”
Of course, Joo-oh quickly woke up and called his name. He usually slept so deeply that he wouldn’t notice even if you touched him, but only at times like this did he open his eyes quickly at the slightest sound.
Mu-hae quietly speculated that it was because his sleep pattern was irregular. Occasionally, he had nightmares.
He couldn’t even remember what the dream was about, but when that happened, Joo-oh’s heart would pound like a hunted person.
Was he seeing past memories in his dreams? Teacher Jung said that could happen too…
“Jin Mu-hae smell.”
Joo-oh’s identity is still a mystery in itself. Even when Mu-hae formally registered his information in Goryeo City upon entering Jaegang District, he couldn’t write more than ‘a man rescued from an accident site.’
The suspicion that he might be an Experiment from Solar City keeps gaining traction with absurd hypotheses. Still, looking at it from a step back, it’s all just personal delusion.
In the first place, even the story that Solar City conducted such experiments is just an urban legend. Nevertheless, Mu-hae was certain that his past was not very pleasant.
Joo-oh, who woke up in the middle of the night, was clearly terrified. He trembled, not even knowing what state he was in.
He reached out wildly to grab Mu-hae. It wasn’t so much about finding ‘Jin Mu-hae’ as it was about finding ‘a person.’
“If you’re awake, get dressed. We’re going downstairs.”
“I’m wearing clothes.”
“Put on pants. Do you think that’s a dress?”
Still, it’s a relief that he quickly returns to normal after waking up. Even now, he was fluttering around in front of him with bare legs, without a care in the world.
Mu-hae bought a few more clothes for Joo-oh after entering Jaegang District, but when he organized them, they were all for wearing outside.
He said he had left all the shabby clothes he used to wear at home, and he very naturally and shamelessly stole Mu-hae’s clothes.
Mu-hae knows that it’s not that Joo-oh is small, but that he is excessively larger than average. Still, seeing the size difference like that made him feel strangely like he was taking care of an immature kid.
“Gu-reum will probably order us to do something again. Right.”
“Probably. He gave us something undeserved.”
“Hmph. It was originally Mu-hae’s.”
Mu-hae glanced sideways at the grumbling Joo-oh and closed his mouth, pretending not to hear.
Well, he didn’t know what others thought, but this wasn’t Mu-hae’s, but his father’s assets, who were no longer in this world.
Jin Mu-hae wasn’t on such intimate or comfortable terms with the deceased to be arrogant, saying that his father’s things were his son’s.
In fact, the gap he felt whenever he encountered these traces became even greater. Apart from the proud feeling, it was a completely different path from the person in his memory.
“It’s all Jin Mu-hae’s. This place too. The city too. Everything.”
Whether he knew it or not, Joo-oh was even fussing that Goryeo City was Mu-hae’s.
Is it because his small world starts and ends with Jin Mu-hae? It seems he firmly believes that everything revolves around Mu-hae, unfortunately.
“I get it, so stop messing with the night light and follow me.”
Mu-hae slowly moved his steps along the brightly lit stairs. The long staircase leading from the 3rd floor to the basement was, no matter how he thought about it, an inconsiderate entrance.
He guessed that this place wasn’t a place for all Return flight, but a cave just for his father and his friends in their youthful past.
Jin Mu-hae couldn’t help but imagine their appearance. Strong and ambitious young men who wouldn’t be out of breath with this many stairs and could go up and down anywhere.
Despite the screen taking up one entire wall, Gu-reum appeared again as a sound wave graph.
Although he hadn’t talked to him many times, the modulated voice was different each time. Mu-hae somehow felt like he was talking to a machine rather than a person.
―I’d like you to do me a small favor.
“Tell me.”
―I have something my aide dropped below Jaegang District. I’d like you to retrieve it.
‘Below’? If it’s below the city, does he mean underground?
“Is there a path there that I don’t know about?”
―Yes. It’s easy to overlook, but there’s a space for people to pass through under every city.
Mu-hae raised his eyebrows at the answer, which had no hint of playfulness. A path under the city, even if it sounded like a riddle, it wasn’t a difficult question and answer to understand.
Goryeo City has a sewer system that stretches like a net. Gu-reum must be talking about that.
He wondered how one could go in there and drop something, but he didn’t bother asking.
There had always been a problem with poor management, but he was the one who dropped the device attached to the Dome City ceiling. He must have been doing something big down there too.
He was just unhappy that it already felt complicated, even though he called it a small favor. Mu-hae stared at the fluctuating graph waves and sighed softly.
―Of course, there are surveillance devices inside, but we have a device here that can avoid them for a while.
That was fortunate, but it was a problem even before entering the place.
There was no way to walk through the Jaegang District, which was covered in CCTV cameras, and the entrance to the main sewer line.
Then, he had to find a suitable-sized pipe that was less monitored than the main sewer maintenance road and connected to it.
He didn’t know anything about this area… Mu-hae narrowed his brows and glanced at the ground.
―The weather will continue to be clear for a while, right?
‘Rainwater Tunnel.’
With a small hint, he immediately understood what Gu-reum was trying to say. There must be a large sewer pipe nearby that people could walk through.
As soon as Mu-hae unpacked his luggage here, he investigated the surrounding terrain. Near the artificial pond in the park, there would be a drainage channel made by embedding a large pipe so that a lot of water could flow, although it wasn’t a pipe made for anyone to go in and out of.
Comfort zone is a city where even a drop of rain and a little humidity are controlled by human hands.
There was no way it would rain enough to cause a flood, so even if they sneaked in there, a dangerous situation wouldn’t occur.
He received a rough layout of the nearby CCTV cameras from Gu-reum. Mu-hae was about to lose all his hair trying to find blind spots.
Still, the hideout’s facilities were a great help. He stared at the huge monitor panel and carefully carved out an effective route.
One dawn, after several days of ‘clear’ forecasts, the two moved in the dark. They were the only ones wandering around the park at that early hour.
“Haha. This is fun.”
Joo-oh laughed without a care in the world. From the moment he put on the orange jumpsuit, he was gleeful about what was so fun.
Mu-hae, who was also wearing the same clothes as if he were a maintenance worker, stared at him for a long time before leaving.
“Don’t talk nonsense. Just follow behind me.”
He gave a warning, but even before he said it, Joo-oh already knew how to hide his presence like a ghost.
He remembered all the routes they had looked at together and was moving without a single error.
Finally, Mu-hae, who had reached the entrance, put the key code he had received in advance on the lock.
The iron bars of the round Rainwater Tunnel, which was filled with water, clanked open.
“Wear this.”
“Okay.”
Mu-hae handed Joo-oh a piece of metal smaller than his palm, and pressed the button with the remaining piece against his face.
Beep. As the square device touched his cheek, it unfolded with a rustling sound and covered his lower face.
It was a gas mask that he had been given when he carried out a Company request. He was told that he could use it about six times, but thanks to various tricks to save the number of uses, it was added to Mu-hae’s equipment bundle like this.
Mu-hae fixed the flashlight on his shoulder and entered the tunnel.
The weather forecast in the Comfort zone, which blocks the sky, includes rain to supply water to the plants growing in the city and to control the humidity in the air.
However, heavy rain or showers had a slightly different role. The purpose of this pouring rainwater was more for cleaning than for water supply.
The sewage, which was mixed with all kinds of substances, was naturally connected to the sewage treatment plant. That was the passage the two had to pass through.
“It’s really damp and dark.”
Joo-oh’s voice was muffled by the gas mask. Mu-hae nodded without answering and hurried his steps.
Since there was no chance of flooding, the rainwater pipe was smaller and narrower than expected. The overall diameter was much larger than Mu-hae’s height, but it was difficult to move around freely.
Perhaps because they didn’t touch the water as much as possible even outside the Comfort zone, the feeling of splashing water with their toes wasn’t very pleasant.
Still, Mu-hae thought it was fortunate that there weren’t any strange things mixed in here, as it was under a formal residential area.
The sewer tunnels in the slums, especially in Sakdal, were places he never wanted to visit, even if Return flight’s grandfather had a job for him.
Just looking at it made him feel like he would get sick.