By Zephyria 
Just the right amount of lukewarm air. The clean smell emanating from the sterilized furniture.
Someone touches my arm, and soon a dull pain courses through my veins.
My head, which had seemed to be asleep, slowly awakens. Buckta. Aberrant. Attack. And…….
“Keuk.”
With a jolt, Jin Mu-hae’s eyes snapped open. His body, which was about to move reflexively, twitched under the blanket and stopped.
“You’re awake?”
“…….”
“Stay still. It’s the antibiotics.”
Teacher Jung’s voice is as calm as ever. Of course, he rarely gets excited anyway, but such a stable attitude was only possible when he didn’t seem to have any particular worries.
Mu-hae was now lying in Teacher Jung’s hospital, in the treatment room. The crisis of the moment he lost consciousness must have passed completely.
“What happened?”
“Shouldn’t I be the one asking that?”
“What about him?”
“I sent him on a little errand. He cleared out the entire refrigerator in half a day yesterday, you see.”
Teacher Jung indifferently disinfected the wound, then shook his head and took off his gloves.
“How does someone go to an Aberrant field and get shot, I wonder.”
He seems to have already heard the general story. Joo-oh was the only one who was there with him in that situation, so he must have told him everything in detail.
“It’s about the Return flight, isn’t it?”
“……Probably.”
“Hostile forces……. It’s probably not just the Return flight they’re targeting. I’ve lived more than twenty years and heard all sorts of stories.”
“What about him?”
“I told you, he went on an errand?”
Teacher Jung replied lightly, knowing what the question was. His face, which looked somewhat younger than his age despite the large scar, seemed unexpectedly brazen and annoying.
The last situation that unfolded in Mu-hae’s mind was a desperate crisis. Aberrants in front, assassins behind.
He had no memory of how he escaped that situation and arrived in Goryeo City.
‘Aaaaaaagh-!’
‘Catch…… Keuaaagh!’
However, he did see a strange scene, whether it was a dream or reality. The precarious moment of the attack slowly came to his mind.
A hand tearing apart the body of a Class 1 Aberrant. A head being pulled off as lightly as if picking up a fallen object, and a person’s body shattering like a cheap puppet doll.
The most rational assumption is that he hallucinated under the influence of drugs. But somewhere deep in his heart, something is whispering that what you witnessed is real.
Unconsciously, his fingertips twitched. Now that the danger that had been strangling him had disappeared, the fear and discomfort he had felt throughout his body were targeting a specific object.
The human body is made of flesh and bone. It can become as strong and hard as possible based on innate strength and training, but that is only within the category of humans.
Humankind defeated its prey with stones and iron, fire and gunpowder, instead of hides. No matter how long you train your body, it will be crushed by a single boulder.
On the other hand, that day…….
“What are you thinking so hard about?”
“……Nothing. Just. I can’t remember the situation before I lost consciousness.”
That’s the same even if you add the variable of ‘Experiment’. Even after the discovery of energy that violates all sorts of physical laws, the human body has always followed those rules.
An arm as thick as a bamboo pole cannot break the bones of an Aberrant. Even if the whole body is made of muscles like a stone, the force that can be exerted per unit area is limited.
‘This one is and small.’
‘Don’t be fooled by the size of the Aberrant. Even if they’re the size of a child, they can play with four or five of us.’
Only creatures affected by Blue Energy exhibit abnormal physical abilities.
To tear apart a high-ranking Aberrant with bare hands means that one has already gone beyond the category of humans.
It might be more logical to think that humans are a drop in the bucket of Aberrants, rather than Aberrants being mixed with humans…….
“I heard you got hit with a Beast tranquilizer gun.”
“……No wonder. I was so sleepy.”
“You’re amazing for waking up in a day without any treatment after being hit by that.”
Teacher Jung cuts off his lengthening thoughts. Mu-hae pressed his throbbing eyes with his fingertips and leaned against the head of the bed.
“Who brought me here?”
“Joo-oh. He ignored the fact that he was supposed to be taken to the hospital from the entrance of the city and brought you here.”
“He carried me all the way here from Buckta by himself?”
“He has no problem with judgment. Even though he looks like that.”
He even covered Mu-hae with his own clothes, which were dripping wet from the rain, so when he first brought him in, he thought it was a corpse wrapped in some kind of cloth, and he clicked his tongue.
Of course, he shuddered, saying that it was all wet anyway.
“It was so damn heavy that I almost threw you off while taking off your clothes. Take care of yourself. How long do you think your youth will last?”
Teacher Jung threw a stinging piece of advice after checking the speed of the IV drip. Then he checked the time and muttered.
It’s about time he got here…….
“Jin Mu-hae!”
No sooner had he finished speaking than the fake doorbell chime rang. The sound of someone rushing into the hospital was clearly audible even inside the treatment room.
It was Joo-oh who appeared, kicking off his shoes. Smooth hair, an unblemished face without even a scratch.
His red eyes were filled with joy and relief. He dumped the luggage he was carrying on the floor and ran to Mu-hae as if flying and hugged him.
Mu-hae, who had hit his back against the head of the bed, let out a short groan. A fresh and sweet fragrance wafted through the air.
“I thought you’d be awake by now. So I came back really fast.”
“How?”
“Just. I had that feeling.”
The guy, who had been chattering excitedly, soon shut his mouth and pressed his head against Mu-hae’s body.
He could feel the pounding heartbeat from the body he was hugging.
“Get off. Let him get up.”
“Why? He needs to lie down.”
“He’s been lying down enough. He doesn’t seem that hurt. And…….”
Mu-hae looked at his bright face. The image of him covered in blood flashed through his mind.
“There also seems to be a story you need to hear.”
Click. He familiarly moved the IV stand and groggily raised the body that had been asleep all day.
“An Aberrant hit people.”
“And?”
“I carried Jin Mu-hae to the plane. I remembered how to get back to Goryeo City.”
Joo-oh slumped on the sofa and put a jelly in his mouth. Teacher Jung grumbled that he had told him to buy back the ingredients he had eaten, but instead he had brought back a bunch of snacks.
There was no sign of falsehood on Joo-oh’s face as he answered without hesitation.
He’s not a guy who’s talented at deceiving others. Could it be that his acting skills, which he had honed during his infiltration missions, were being used here?
Argos had harmed people at the scene. Joo-oh took the fallen himself to the place where the Small aircraft was parked, set the coordinates of Goryeo City as the destination, and returned.
Then, he received a call from the Company after hearing the news of the accident, and Joo-oh complained that the Company’s information was uncertain and too dangerous, saying that he had been messing around in an area where an Aberrant with multiple eyes was unlikely to appear.
That was the whole story that he had told after Teacher Jung’s intervention. And then he was hungry and ate a meal, and he was scolded for opening the refrigerator door and eating for a long time.
“There was nothing left to melt. Because I ate it all.”
“We decided to deduct it from your medical bill.”
Teacher Jung turned his head towards Mu-hae as if he didn’t want to interfere anymore.
A tangled wire puzzle was scattered in front of Joo-oh. The way he answered every question and solved the puzzle so quickly was so amazing that it kept lingering in his memory.
“You always tried to handle everything on your own.”
“Isn’t that what you let me do?”
“You should have told me that strange guys were after you.”
“I thought they were just a cult I met by chance, but I didn’t know they had such deep roots.”
NPS was just the tip of the iceberg. According to what he had seen and heard in Bay City, there had been a similar group near Solar City decades ago.
Judging from the fact that they erased Dmitri’s traces and attacked Mu-hae, it was clear that they were connected in some way, not just similar in ideology.
Teacher Jung’s face noticeably hardened at Mu-hae’s words.
“Mu-hae. As you know by now, the Return flight wasn’t such a rare group with a rare goal.”
“I guess so. After all, you used to have exchanges with Solar City, in the past.”
“If so, it’s probably right to assume that the opposite is also similar. What was just ‘rumors of crazy people’ when I was active may have become a group that’s hard to grasp now.”
Teacher Jung, who was about to add something more, closed his mouth as if he had had enough and walked towards the cabinet.
He was diligently organizing the divided treatment pads, but somehow he didn’t seem very busy.
“You know, when I got hit with the tranquilizer dart.”
Mu-hae said again, looking at his back.
“I remembered something. A very old memory. I still don’t know what the situation is.”
A table with fruit. Cookies. Milk.
Suddenly, strangers burst in. A gradually fading consciousness…….
It was something from when he was so young that his feet didn’t reach the floor under the dining table chair, but in any case, it was a kidnapping.
And he was found naked in a dangerous area outside the Comfort zone.
“Someone knocked me out and dragged me away. I don’t remember where it was or what the purpose was.”
“With such a vague explanation, I don’t know. Maybe you had a dream.”
Teacher Jung answered smoothly without even showing any signs of embarrassment. He didn’t know what kind of expression he was making, but he was as calm as if he had been preparing for a long time.
Joo-oh slipped him the jelly he was eating from the side. Of course, he wasn’t in the mood to accept it. Everything he gave him was either too salty, too greasy, or too sweet.
He had been in trouble because he had been trying to hug and rub against him for a long time, watching Teacher Jung’s reaction. It was a relief that he was now sitting still.
Thanks to that, he had a lot of things he wanted to ask, but half of them were scattered in the air. Even if he didn’t deliberately bring up the scene of splitting the Aberrant, he had to find out what the ‘prank that overlapped in a bad moment’ meant.
He didn’t seem like he would tell him willingly right now. This was also a feeling. He was focusing on the fact that he had come back alive, but Joo-oh was covering up the unusual memories that kept piling up with the same face as usual.