A startled Tumanako hurriedly covered her mouth and nose with both hands, but those outside must have already heard the coughing. Tumanako stood frozen in place like a stone, unable to move an inch. Only after several seconds did she lift her head to look at us. I met eyes filled with terror. I could feel Nikita’s ribcage expand as she gulped down a breath in tension.
Just then, one of Baek Aeyoung’s feet shifted slightly atop my left shoulder. It was like testing how solid the ground was before crossing the street. I put strength into my entire body to keep my left shoulder horizontal. If my posture collapsed, Nikita or Tumanako would be crushed under the weight of me and Baek Aeyoung.
As Baek Aeyoung, who had been up near the ceiling, descended, the center of gravity shifted dramatically. Having placed her weight on her left leg, Baek Aeyoung reached toward her right ankle, and a span-long knife came down. Tumanako’s eyes, her hands still covering her mouth, grew as large as fists.
The thudding footsteps grew louder. Someone was approaching right up to the robot charging station. Along with a snickering laugh, a man was saying “I’ll pull them out” to another. The person coming this way seemed to suspect someone was hiding here, deliberately stomping with exaggerated steps. Tumanako, pressed against my calf, trembled violently at the approaching sound.
“It definitely sounded like a woman’s cough. I wonder where they’re hiding?”
It was Japanese. A man’s voice mixed with laughter. Because I was supporting Baek Aeyoung, I couldn’t see outside through the crack positioned below my line of sight. Baek Aeyoung’s ankles and legs gradually came down from above until she was sitting on both my shoulders as if riding a horse. It was more stable in terms of posture, and splitting the weight between both shoulders was more comfortable for me too. However, Baek Aeyoung seemed to find this height far from ideal for attacking the enemy.
Baek Aeyoung, perched on my shoulders, gripped the knife in a reverse hold and moved her arm once as if driving it down from above, then shook her head. At this height, Baek Aeyoung would have to attack from well above an adult man’s height, and unless she struck the skull vertically, the angle of attack seemed extremely awkward.
“I wonder where they are?”
The voice was heard near the charging station. Now Tumanako was practically panting with every breath. Baek Aeyoung resumed a proper grip on the knife and moved her arm as if slicing up at a throat from below. In this narrow space, both methods were difficult; unless Baek Aeyoung moved from above, she could barely even swing her arm.
Holding my breath, I spread my legs as wide as possible and slowly lowered my body. I should have exercised more. With a person on my shoulders, I maintained a squatting position and lowered myself until I was just short of touching Tumanako. Attacking an enemy while giving someone a piggyback ride didn’t seem to be easy after all.
I wasn’t the only one watching the tip of Baek Aeyoung’s knife as it moved every which way through the empty air. Nikita, who had been leaning back as far as possible to avoid getting caught in the attack, suddenly grabbed Baek Aeyoung’s right hand. Then she tried to wrest the knife away.
“!”
Startled, Baek Aeyoung’s body swayed, and the heel of her shoe struck my chest two or three times. Ugh! The sudden blow to my chest knocked the wind out of me. As I staggered, Baek Aeyoung above nearly crashed into the cleaning robot that was charging or slammed into the door. I exerted every ounce of my strength to keep Baek Aeyoung from falling off my shoulders.
Baek Aeyoung’s right hand, gripping the knife, trembled. Nikita, trying to wrest the knife away with both hands, and Baek Aeyoung, holding on with one hand, looked almost evenly matched in strength. A silent struggle broke out over the hilt. Baek Aeyoung glared at Nikita, grinding her teeth. Nikita’s eyes, illuminated by the cleaning robot’s light, appeared almost red.
If Baek Aeyoung had attacked Nikita directly with the knife she was holding, it wouldn’t have been snatched away. But Baek Aeyoung trembled and opened her tightly clenched fist. Nikita took the knife from Baek Aeyoung’s palm as though it were hers. Now those footsteps were almost at the door.
“Could they be hiding here?”
It was an excited voice, and the sound of someone gripping the charging station door was heard. I didn’t know who was outside right now, but seeing that they weren’t shooting the charging station from a distance, it seemed they really wanted to frighten whoever was inside and confirm.
If there was one thing I’d learned from carrying and actually using a gun, it was that at very close distances, the longer the gun and the heavier it was, the harder it was to maneuver. If they had determined someone was inside, simply shooting from a distance would be the safest method from the attacker’s standpoint. I couldn’t quite understand why they were trying to flush us out while scaring us.
If two people weren’t standing outside the cleaning robot charging station door, with one opening the door while the other aimed a gun inside, they were definitely exposing themselves to danger. One person would have to open the door with one hand.
Moreover, in this cramped cleaning robot charging station, I was the biggest and tallest person. Even if that person opened the door and fired, the odds of me being hit seemed over fifty percent. If I pushed the barrel aimed at me upward the moment the door opened, or since I was likely going to get hit anyway, if I pulled the muzzle toward me, wouldn’t the others be in less danger?
“Found them!”
With those words, light from outside flooded into the dark interior. My heart felt like it was pounding in my head from the tension. Goosebumps rose along my neck and down my back. I estimated where the gun muzzle would be, and the moment the door opened, I grabbed the barrel as it entered and shoved it upward.
If I had failed, I was going to block the muzzle with my body, but I was surprised at how easily it gave way. The man seemed never to have expected the person hiding inside to counterattack.
Baek Aeyoung grabbed the hair of the opponent who had thrown open the charging station door and pulled him toward her, and Nikita timed her stab to the man’s neck. The man, his neck shallowly pierced by Nikita’s first strike, tried to jerk back in surprise, but Baek Aeyoung didn’t let him. Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! The startled opponent wildly squeezed the trigger with his finger.
Fired at close range, the gunshots felt like they would burst my eardrums. A light ringing echoed in my ears. Nikita, who had approached close, repeatedly stabbed the knife into the man’s neck and pulled it out. Rather than being seized by fear or panic, she seemed to be trying to quickly open holes to make him bleed out faster. Blood splattered everywhere, and I had to endure it without moving.
Baek Aeyoung, gripping the man’s hair to keep him from retreating, kicked the chest of the flimsy, scarecrow-like man and leaped, driving her knee into his face. With a loud crash, the man fell backward. Since I had served as Baek Aeyoung’s foothold, I fell flat on my back as well, and after rolling across the floor, I frantically checked my body to find, thankfully, no gunshot wounds.
Beside me, Tumanako sat frozen stiff, holding her head with both hands, her face blank as if her soul had left her. Since she couldn’t move from that spot at all, I pulled Tumanako out of the charging station as if dragging her. Her feet not working properly, she staggered out like a baby learning to walk, and the outside was utter chaos. It seemed the people who had been hiding had jumped out at the sound of the gunshots and attacked the others.
Shin Haeryang was strangling a man’s neck wildly with a parachute cord, and when a man on the same side tried to shoot Shin Haeryang with a gun, Shin Haeryang used the man being strangled as a human shield. The fired bullets left bullet wounds across the body of the man being strangled as they passed through. Shin Haeryang used that man’s gun from behind the now bullet-riddled, slumping body to shoot the attacking opponent.
Sato had been caught by Vladimir before anyone knew it, and a woman with a gun on the opposite side aimed her weapon at Vladimir to help Sato. However, Seo Jihyeok approached from behind and grabbed the woman’s gun from behind her back, lifting it up.
“Huh?”
As the gun she was holding rose upward, the woman let out a startled cry and turned to see Seo Jihyeok, who had approached from behind. By the time Seo Jihyeok raised the gun above his own head, ownership of the gun had already transferred from the woman to Seo Jihyeok.
When I came to my senses, I began to remember names, at least matching faces to them. The opponent, whose face I couldn’t see properly against the backlight, was Suzuki Senru, and blood was endlessly flowing from his neck. On the floor, Yamashita Hikaru and Ichita Yuki had collapsed from gunshots, and Takahashi Yurie and Sato Ryusuke had their hands up.
Among the Engineer Na team members, Tamaki Yuzuru and Uehara Sumire were nowhere to be found.
Shin Haeryang, having pried the gun from the body of Ichita Yuki, whose neck he had been strangling, coldly asked Sato.
“Where did the two team members go?”
“What are you going to do if I don’t tell you?”
Without answering, Shin Haeryang fired at Sato’s feet, and Takahashi, standing right next to him, screamed in surprise. It was a careless shot that communicated he couldn’t care less if he accidentally blew Sato’s feet off. Seo Jihyeok slung the gun he had taken from Takahashi over his shoulder and answered.
“Hey. That gentleman is about to lose his mind, so answer quickly.”
“...They’re hiding around here, aiming for you. If you don’t want to die, surrender immediately.”
Vladimir, who had taken Sato’s gun, scoffed as if he found it absurd. Then he struck Sato’s face twice in a row with his large fist and knocked him to the floor.
“Didn’t Uehara Sumire and Tamaki Yuzuru run away?”
When I asked that, Sato, whose nose was bleeding, looked at me and frowned. Takahashi beside him quickly answered.
“Uehara complained that the gun was too heavy, then ran away while walking at the very back. As for Tamaki... he wasn’t given a loaded gun in the first place. That person’s gun should be empty, so you only need to find Uehara.”
“Didn’t they suddenly vanish right before your eyes?”
“...I wish they had disappeared.”
To Shin Haeryang’s question, Sato spat blood that had pooled in the back of his throat and said that. Baek Aeyoung, who had pushed aside Nikita, who was still stabbing Suzuki Senru’s body with a knife, snatched the gun and quickly slung it over herself. Then, without wiping her blood-soaked face, she looked at the knife Nikita, similarly covered in blood, held out to her, shook her head, and spoke.
“You take it. I’m giving it to you.”
It was probably the first time I’d seen Baek Aeyoung give anything of hers away. Baek Aeyoung gripped the gun and began looking around, on guard. She seemed to believe someone might suddenly jump out. Seo Jihyeok was much the same. However, Shin Haeryang raised the loaded gun and unloaded it straight into a vending machine.