By Zephyria 
“I didn’t know… it was that bad.”
“Because I didn’t want you to know.”
“You weren’t always like this.”
“I’m reaching my limit. My body can’t endure it anymore.”
He explained as he turned off the video on the monitor. He paused for a moment, as if hesitating, then sighed as if he had made up his mind.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but CEO Gil comes from a quite prestigious family.”
“Yes, that he was born and raised in Central.”
“Naturally, there were plenty of people who kept a close eye on him. That’s why he was the first to be dragged away when the incident happened.”
It was rare for Teacher Jung to tell stories of the past. Despite his complicated feelings, Mu-hae focused on every single word.
Feeling Joo-oh’s gaze, Mu-hae glanced at the back of his wounded hand and packed the storage device away with an indifferent expression.
“The discovery and the handling of it were carried out quite quietly. Except for the ringleaders and a few dangerous individuals, most got off with minimal punishment. But it was different for your father and CEO Gil. They weren’t released even during the investigation phase for several months.”
There was no change in his expression, but the look in his eyes shifted. Eyes burning silently. Since Teacher Jung was a man who could be stern even with a smiling face, this level of expression was close to anger.
“He already had a hereditary disease. By the time I brought him back after all that hardship, he was already so broken that it was difficult to do anything.”
“Then, even before that…?”
“No. He was healthy. If that incident hadn’t happened, he would have remained healthy.”
Teacher Jung kept his explanation brief, but it was easy to imagine the pain that followed.
CEO Gil grew weaker and weaker. Despite the care of his friend, he bore the weight of time more heavily than others.
Tap. Joo-oh touched his hand from the side. His eyes seemed to be sparkling.
His face was flushed, perhaps thinking that he could be of help. He looked as if he were suppressing excitement, just like when he went to Bay City or infiltrated an unfamiliar place.
“But why suddenly this guy…?”
“It’s not sudden. I’ve been investigating whenever I had a chance. It’s fair to say that everyone I could get close to became a sample.”
Mu-hae’s eyebrows twitched slightly at the unexpected revelation. ‘Me too?’ When he asked with his eyes, Teacher Jung answered with a look. ‘Of course.’
‘No wonder he was collecting other people’s DNA in the hideout records.’
If that were the case, stealing Joo-oh’s blood or hair wasn’t particularly suspicious behavior.
The problem was that Joo-oh was not an ordinary human. A creature that swallowed food endlessly and transformed into black smoke when it lost its reason. An Aberrant of a kind he had never seen before, three meters tall with a sharp tail.
Knowing this fact alone made him act defensively. In the first place, was it okay to use something like that on a human like CEO Gil?
“Problems could arise.”
“For whom? That child? Or CEO Gil?”
“Both.”
“As I said, it won’t harm Joo-oh. As for the other side, they aren’t in a position to be picky.”
This was also true. According to Teacher Jung, CEO Gil didn’t have much time left.
Tap. Joo-oh touched his hand once more. He seemed anxious to jump in.
“Can I help?”
Eventually, he joined the conversation without permission. His voice, filled with anticipation, was so docile that it felt like Teacher Jung was taking advantage of someone who didn’t know any better.
“Yes. The results were always disappointingly minimal, but for the first time, it reacted to your plasma. That deficiency, finally.”
“I didn’t know. That this kind of thing worked.”
That was why Teacher Jung had strangely mentioned blood while they were listening. Instead of secretly drawing it under the guise of a check-up, he had asked while openly radiating the intent to use it.
It was to ask for permission. Not out of consideration for Joo-oh, but for Mu-hae.
Knowing how protectively Mu-hae looked after his housemate, he had given a warning before the actual extraction.
“Still not doing it?”
Joo-oh even stomped his foot slightly and tugged at Mu-hae’s arm. It felt like a light touch, but his shoulder felt stiff as if it were being pulled out.
Mu-hae frowned and calmed the impatient youth. As he glanced at the cupboard, Teacher Jung quickly found some snacks and handed them over.
With a piece of chocolate in his mouth, Joo-oh made a satisfied humming sound and rubbed his head against Mu-hae’s shoulder.
“He’s not an ordinary guy. I’m not just talking about physical strength.”
“It doesn’t matter. I told you, I’m not in a position to worry about that. If it’s effective, I’d be willing to try it even if I had to catch a Beast or an Aberrant.”
‘It’s because he actually is an Aberrant.’
The words he couldn’t bring himself to say swirled in his mouth. The truth that could not be revealed anywhere was swallowed back down into Mu-hae’s throat.
The youth, who had been rubbing his head against his shoulder, leaned in and whispered into his ear.
“This route is a first, too.”
“What?”
“It’s really a first. I think it’s because I’m here.”
He said something incomprehensible again. Every time this happened, big and small changes occurred in Mu-hae’s life.
So, this time too, some change would likely twist the situation that had been flowing naturally.
“If you’re okay with it… do it.”
Finally, permission fell from his tightly closed lips. Perhaps it was an inevitable result.
Just as Joo-oh, whom he had met late but had become infinitely precious, CEO Gil was also an irreplaceable and important presence to Mu-hae.
“Great!”
Joo-oh’s mouth curved into a wide arc. There wasn’t a trace of a smile on Teacher Jung’s face, but a sense of relief seemed to subtly emanate from him.
“Let’s go to the bed.”
“Yeah!”
The excited youth hurriedly took off his outer coat and ran to the spot where he had been sitting. On Teacher Jung’s desk, which he followed, lay a twisted piece of a wire puzzle.
Mu-hae gripped the piece of metal, feeling a mix of relief and worry. The metal, cold as if it had never been in a human hand, awakened his cluttered mind.
The wire puzzle, curling like an earthworm hit with salt and ending in a square bend, looked malicious just by looking at it.
Flick. He shifted his gaze and saw the pad, whose screen was still on.
[SHELL]-G (D2)vSUN
Perhaps because he wasn’t looking at it straight on, for a split second, he thought he saw a shape similar to the wire puzzle.
He tried to ignore it, but his brow furrowed. Mu-hae stared blankly at the code tilted at about 70 degrees and dropped the object he was holding.
Clang!
‘…Shapes?’
Teacher Jung had said this wasn’t a formula. He also said it was a problem Mu-hae could solve regardless of his computational ability.
Was that why? In the cipher where he hadn’t found a single clue all this time, familiar shapes began to appear.
[SHELL].
Square.
(D2)
Circle.
vSUN
And a triangle.
It wasn’t a random thought. The markers were written in order too coincidentally to be a fluke.
As soon as he stepped away from mathematical thinking, the Sigil of Return revealed itself with frustrating ease.
‘SHELL-G.’
The shape of a boundary represented by a square. The Comfort zone, the home of humans, and specifically, Goryeo City.
Then D2 would be a clue for a narrower range. D could be the initial of a word, but it could also be a signal representing order or position.
If it were the fourth district belonging to Goryeo City…
‘Central, the Production District, the Official Residential Area, and… the Slums.’
The naturally following guess shone the moment he saw SUN. Mu-hae felt his mind light up.
He already knew one expression regarding the sun or the day from the moment he encountered the Return flight.
The sun falling (v) downward.
‘Where the sun sets.’
“West.”
As he muttered it aloud without realizing, Joo-oh immediately looked back.
His gaze scanned Mu-hae, the pad in his hand, and then a direction somewhere in the distance.
His red eyes curved into a smile, narrowing almost to slits. He looked proud, as if he had noticed his companion’s discovery.
“Will it take long?”
“No. It’s almost done.”
Just as he said, Teacher Jung soon walked over with a blood collection tube. Since he had medical knowledge, he probably handled it himself, but he drew a damn lot of blood.
“I assume you found it.”
“Yes.”
“Then go and look for it.”
Joo-oh approached, flicking away the alcohol swab that didn’t even leave a red trace despite the blood draw.
His arm was perfectly fine, to the point where it was hard to find where the needle had just been inserted.
“Tell me if you need more.”
“I will.”
When Teacher Jung stroked his black hair, he became triumphant as if he had received a reward.
Mu-hae picked up the outer coat Joo-oh had thrown off and slid it onto his arm.
“Where is it?”
“Goryeo City, west of the slums.”
“Jin Mu-hae is smart.”
From then on, the youth clung to his arm and began to hum a tune.
* * *
The slums were an outer zone where no support from Goryeo City reached.
Though they were called districts for convenience, they were essentially leftover spaces remaining outside the residential areas.
Naturally, it was the narrowest and most remote of all districts. The residents here belonged to the lowest stratum of Goryeo City’s ecosystem.
The funny thing was that even in this dilapidated land, far removed from the eyes of the security force, a hierarchy still existed.
‘Starlight Road would be better than this.’
There were tiers even in the slums. Just as the layout from Central to the residential areas worked, the closer a neighborhood was to the inside of the Dome City, the better it became.
To make matters worse, the west was the most marginalized area among the slum villages divided into east, west, south, and north. If one were pushed even further out from there, it was practically no longer a place where people lived.
“Jin Mu-hae told me not to go alone.”
“That’s still the case now, so pull your hood up properly.”
Of course, even in such places, humans stubbornly established roots and survived. The outskirts of the western slums were closer to a zone of workshops committing silent illegalities and temporary shelters for criminals.
Since they couldn’t attract the attention of Central, they simply avoided causing conspicuous accidents, but the source of most unauthorized drugs circulating nearby was here.
Mu-hae slipped into the dark alley, his threatening physique fully exposed.
The street, without a single streetlight, was as dark as pitch. Chillingly, he felt a gaze watching from the inside of an over-extended building that was little more than a ruin.
229 – I Became an Aberration in a Dead Game