By Zephyria 
Seeing him scared after so long makes me angry for no reason. Mu-hae relaxed his clenched jaw, feigned a smile, and retorted.
“But what a pity. I don’t have that data on me right now.”
“Then you’ll have to go get it. Fortunately, it won’t take long, will it?”
Hawkins gestured towards the stopped Small aircraft and continued.
“While you’re gone, your brother can stay with us. That way, you might hurry a bit more.”
He’s saying to leave Joo-oh as a hostage. All the sweet talk about Bay City citizenship and residential areas was apparently a lie, how brazen.
Joo-oh already looked so anxious. I glanced at him and saw him muttering to himself.
“That’s right. I have it now.”
Handing this dimwit over to them and going all the way to Goryeo City? That’s absurd.
“You’re talking nonsense. What if I abandon this baggage?”
“If you were going to do that, wouldn’t you have quietly pretended to accept the offer? Besides, he’s quite clingy for just a piece of baggage.”
Hawkins’ eyes narrowed slightly. As soon as Mu-hae saw his reaction, he felt the blood in his body turn ice cold.
A chilling sensation swept past his temples…
“The world must be ending to see such a sight. We even offered to wash your identities to try and understand. We said we wouldn’t care what you two did in a place where no one knows about your family.”
“……”
“You’re the one who rejected the consideration. You seem like a graduate school dropout with your clumsy understanding of Blue Theory. Taking your half-baked brother… it’s the end of the world.”
Hawkins’ mouth was now clearly twisted in disgust. Mu-hae almost closed his eyes, forgetting how serious the situation was, at the sight of him acting like he’d caught onto some forbidden relationship.
“Well, personal preferences are none of my business anymore. Send your brother over here before I see something nasty.”
A mercenary next to him approached and lifted Joo-oh up. A hard gun barrel touched Mu-hae’s head with a metallic thud as he tried to stop them.
Surprisingly, Joo-oh didn’t struggle or tremble. He just looked back and forth between Mu-hae and Hawkins with a serious expression.
However, from some point on, his red eyes were fixed on the gun barrel. The look in his eyes, filled with displeasure, was somehow chilling.
“Come on. Hyung, save me. Say it.”
“No.”
“If you don’t listen, your disgusting Hyung will be in danger.”
“Hawkins is disgusting.”
Even in the midst of all this, he’s talking back so clearly. He doesn’t seem as intimidated as someone who was scared should be.
Soon, the gun pointed at Mu-hae was lowered, but instead, a blade touched Joo-oh’s neck.
“Should I give you about seven hours? There’s no place to rest here, you see. If you don’t hurry, your brother will have a hard time.”
Mu-hae didn’t frown at the tight deadline. He’s survived until now because he’s calmer the more dangerous it is.
“I don’t really have a choice, do I? Just one question. The rewards you offered as conditions, were you really planning to give them?”
“Of course not.”
Hawkins’ usually gentle face broke into a mean smile. All the proposals that had made him feel hopeful for even a night were complete lies.
Good. Now I can really destroy everything without hesitation. Mu-hae felt the veins on his forehead bulge as he raised his hands and slowly approached the Small aircraft.
Pshhh-!
The door of the aircraft closed, and soon takeoff began. Inside the Small aircraft, rising vertically, Mu-hae watched Joo-oh and Hawkins’ group moving away.
Hawkins must have thought this was far enough, as he shoved the body he was holding to the side. Watching Joo-oh run towards where the Small aircraft had been, Mu-hae felt a strange tingle in his heart.
This is it. A sharp gaze turned towards the door of the Small aircraft. Mu-hae took out the bag he had pushed under the seat and put something like a hood over his shoulders.
He immediately moved as far away from the door as possible and covered his head with the bag…
Kwaang-!
A small explosion occurred, and the aircraft shook violently. The door, its lock broken, fell off to the outside in tatters.
Mu-hae escaped the crashing Small aircraft and jumped into the air. Whoosh! An emergency parachute deployed behind his back, significantly reducing his falling speed.
He already knew that NPS was suspicious before he even took off. There’s no way he would have boarded a plane provided by those guys without preparing for any eventuality.
Tang-!
A bullet fired upwards luckily grazed his ear. Judging by the slow speed and poor accuracy, it’s a Taser.
They don’t seem to be trying to kill him. In that case, there’s no harm in trying. Mu-hae folded the parachute halfway and rolled on the sandy ground with a thud.
Bang! He quickly pulled out the gun from inside his cardigan and pulled the trigger, causing one of the mercenaries to fall. The other quickly turned and ran towards Joo-oh.
If Joo-oh is taken hostage again, he won’t be able to move. Fortunately, the weapon the guy had, which he glimpsed in a flash, also looked like a Taser.
Rather than blindly shooting towards Joo-oh, Jin Mu-hae threw himself at the mercenary.
Joo-oh, who had been standing there blankly, gaped as if asking what he was doing. No, now that he looked closer, it seemed like he was saying something instead of just moving his lips. He must be temporarily deaf from the aftermath of the explosion.
Tang-!
“Keuheok…!”
As expected, electricity struck his body like lightning. Mu-hae’s eyes rolled back for a moment from the strong shock that stiffened his spine.
“No… I don’t usually ride planes again and fight right away. Why did you get hit by the Taser yourself? I can do it.”
Funnily enough, he could hear properly again only then. With Joo-oh’s resentful nonsense as background music, Mu-hae slammed the head of the mercenary who was grabbing his neck.
Soon, the gun spat fire, and the remaining guy fell as well. He staggered to his feet, feeling nauseous and wanting to vomit.
At that moment. Kwaak!
His side felt as hot as if it had been burned.
“I brought two fighters because of your size anyway. If I had known you could fight better than the mercenaries, I would have hired two or three more people.”
Mu-hae lowered his gaze and saw a syringe gun filled with drugs.
At the same time, his legs gave way, and his body collapsed onto the sand.
Hawkins’ face came into view in his blurring vision. Annoyingly, his neatly tied hair was perfectly in place.
“You’re a really annoying guy. If Sidrov hadn’t died, I wouldn’t have had to argue with someone like you.”
The way he muttered like a sigh sounded more like a person in charge than someone’s secretary. A thought that made his heart sink flashed through Mu-hae’s muddled mind.
‘Did I ever mention that Dmitri died?’
“Oh. Haven’t I told you that he’s dead yet?”
Hawkins sighed softly and sat down by his head. He didn’t look flustered, even though he spoke as if he had made a mistake.
“It can’t be helped. If I can’t use you, I have no choice but to bury you completely. If everyone who knows disappears, they’ll eventually find out on this side.”
The man muttered as if he wanted him to hear, then took out a small cylindrical glass tube from his pocket.
Floating in the viscous liquid inside was a Crystal Blue that glowed blue.
“Do you know? The Earth had already ended before I was even born. The plants withered and died, and the water sources were contaminated. When problems arose on the earth, the atmosphere couldn’t do its job. Somewhere, it was burning in the scorching sunlight, and somewhere else, the cold wind was so strong that people froze.”
“……”
“Even experts said it was hopeless. Unless an energy source that could minimize pollution and generate enormous power with a small amount, something that would only come out of a child’s imagination, appeared, humanity was destined to perish soon. But, ta-da.”
An object smaller than two segments of his index finger brightly illuminated his distant eyes. Hawkins turned the tube over a few times, then continued as if he were dreaming.
“‘Blue’ violates all the energy laws that have existed so far. The more you delve into it, the more ridiculous the substance becomes. Such a miraculous thing appeared at the moment of humanity’s crisis, as if it had been watching. Watching over us… yes. Like a divine being.”
Hawkins’ eyes trembled slightly. His excited eyes already had pupils that had grown black.
He held the object in his hand preciously and gently gritted his teeth. His gaze, which had been looking into the distance, had already shifted to Mu-hae.
“But humans always think about what they’ve lost before what they’ve received. Even after going through such a crisis, they don’t realize anything. They enjoy the warm air inside the Dome even in the middle of winter, and they complain whenever they get the chance. Aberrants appeared because of Blue. It’s so, so scary. I wish Blue would disappear.”
His neck became prickly at the accusatory words. Even in his confusion, Mu-hae knew that the target was Dmitri.
A corpse abandoned carelessly in the unfamiliar Buckta came to mind. It seemed that his end was not an ordinary accident after all.
Had he sensed victory? Hawkins was lost in a trance and kept rambling on about what he wanted to say. He was now holding the tube containing the Crystal to his chest.
“Even a toddler knows that Aberrants appear in the Crystal Zone. But the principle behind it has not been accurately revealed to this day. It’s like magic. Like Blue, something that shouldn’t exist in this world is created naturally. Like balancing the entropy, a very powerful and beautiful intelligent being…”
As he listened to the crazy talk, his mind gradually faded. In his last moment, Mu-hae struggled to lift his head.
In his swaying vision, Joo-oh was standing in the same spot as if he had been nailed there. His face was pale as he looked up at the sky.
Just as his eyelids were about to close, a sensation as cold as making his legs twitch covered his body. But even with the warning of his instincts, his powerless body could only drop his head.
“I needed a sacrifice anyway. It worked out well somehow.”
Hawkins’ voice decorated the end of his memory.
“Meat skewers. Jin Mu-hae. Bed. Stroking my head.”
A man who seemed slightly out of his mind muttered as he looked at the sky. With each word he uttered, his eyes, which had been blank and unfocused, became clearer.
“Ears too. Face too. I like Jin Mu-hae’s hand smell. Cake Jin Mu-hae bought me. Pie.”
He wasn’t normal from the first time he saw him, and it seemed he had gone crazy after seeing his Hyung collapse.
It was a shame since he had a decent physique. Hawkins told him not to worry about him and dragged the fallen man to tie him to the vehicle.
“Where are you taking him?”
He was startled by the question that came from behind him. He was definitely over there, but he didn’t know when he had approached silently.
Hawkins showed a light kindness with the composure of a victor.
“The world’s resources are limited. I’m using surplus humans in a useful way.”
If you run about 500 meters, you’ll come to an area where Aberrants appear. The Crystal Zone is much further away than that, but the Aberrants here are particularly intelligent, so their range of activity has expanded because humans don’t come near them.
Since he’s going to be a lump of meat anyway, using him as food is a return to the world. He didn’t explain it in detail, but for some reason, the dim-witted man seemed to understand Hawkins’ words at once.
Click. The man tilted his head to the side. His red eyes, which seemed like a color impossible for humans, took on a mysterious light as if they were being sucked in.
“It was a bit unexpected this time too. But Jin Mu-hae wasn’t hurt much. I was just going to let you go.”
The idiot was running his mouth without a weapon, so Hawkins shook the gun he was holding and gestured for him to get lost.
But then.
Screech-!
Ominous cries echoed one after another from beyond the forest.
Was it because they made too much noise? Aberrants were flocking to the beach.