A dragon, a dragon, a dragon…
Dragons had many characteristics.
Among them, the most famous would undoubtedly be their scales. After all, the word “reverse scale” was used often enough.
Of course, there were plenty of other things as well. Whiskers, deer antlers, and so on…
Naturally, these differed slightly from legend to legend.
But one thing, one immutable trait that remained the same in every legend, was…
‘…They’re cool.’
They were cool.
‘Honestly, I know this isn’t the time for that, but…’
I was jealous. I couldn’t help but feel that way.
I suddenly looked down at my own body.
The form of a woman, perfectly suited to winning people’s favor.
Compared to other mutants, I was certainly better off, but that didn’t mean I liked it.
How nice would it have been if I’d mutated into something cool, too?
‘…Forget it. Complaining won’t change anything.’
Rather, because I’d ended up like this… hadn’t I been able to create many opportunities?
I roughly shook off the thought and asked Captain Kim a question.
“Are there any health issues? The environment was…”
“…Yes. It wasn’t good. Thankfully, they say there aren’t any major problems. It’s thanks to you.”
Captain Kim bowed his head again.
By “thanks to me,” he was probably talking about the healing ability I had used on the child.
“……”
Well, there was a good chance my healing ability had helped.
In that kind of environment, it would have been easy to contract a serious illness.
But what I had done was only healing, nothing more.
The reason the child had been able to survive in there for over a week was…
‘Thanks to the mother. Or should I call it that act of absorbing energy? It seems that was what allowed the child to survive.’
I opened my mouth quietly.
“Captain Kim.”
“…Yes.”
Captain Kim had surely reached the same conclusion as I had.
An intuitive, far-fetched, and yet miserable conclusion—that perhaps some remnant of the mother’s human self had remained.
‘…It’s not completely impossible.’
The logic leading to that conclusion was weak, but I didn’t think the possibility was entirely nonexistent.
Of course, that possibility was extremely faint… but hadn’t Captain Kim’s child survived within an equally faint possibility?
The cases were different, of course… but that was what I wanted to say.
That even the faintest possibility could sometimes be real.
So there was one thing I had to ask him.
Whether, by any chance… his heart had broken.
Or if not that, whether it had become a little numb.
“…What will you do now?”
“What… do you mean?”
Captain Kim frowned as if pondering.
I was worried that the mother’s suspicious behavior might have numbed his heart.
It had been unavoidable, and it had been the right thing to do… but in the end, he had killed his own wife with his own hands, when some part of her ego may have still remained.
‘Of course, if that were all, I wouldn’t have brought this up.’
Also, Captain Kim no longer had a reason.
A reason to continue with us any further.
Until now, he had contributed in order to maintain his identity as a soldier.
In truth, he had been living only because he could not die. You could tell just by the way he had predicted, from the very first day of the incident, that the world would end.
But he no longer had to cling solely to his identity as a soldier.
Because now, he had a child.
Hiding those thoughts, I shrugged and continued.
“Well, to begin with, didn’t you decide not to participate in operations like this anymore? This one was practically the last.”
“…That’s true.”
“I never thought I’d be saying this to you, Captain, but wouldn’t it be all right for you to rest now? At least, that’s my opinion.”
Captain Kim pulled his beret down low.
“It’s not as if… I haven’t thought about it. I haven’t reached a conclusion yet, but…”
The families we were searching for were all grown adults in their own right.
In other words, people who could live on their own if left alone.
But Captain Kim’s child was different. A newborn who had only just come out of the womb.
A child like that needed a father.
Perhaps Captain Kim knew that too, because he couldn’t answer easily.
In the end, what he finally said was this.
“…Could you give me just a little, just a little time?”
I shrugged in response.
“Just answer me before it’s too late.”
Whether he came back or didn’t… it didn’t matter.
If anything, I only hoped he wouldn’t make his choice out of a sense of debt toward us.
*
Captain Kim left not long after.
That damn habit of flicking his fingers hadn’t gone anywhere, but now that I thought about it, the smell of cigarettes that usually clung to him was gone.
It was a surprisingly significant change.
If it was a change of heart… well, that would make sense. Though this seemed like an environment where it would be even easier to rely on cigarettes.
Well, anyway.
I was left alone in the hospital room once again.
If Captain Kim told the others I was awake, the rest of the team would probably come too… but for now, that was how it was.
“Mm…”
Was it because I had gone in and out of the Blackout Zone? Even the sight of the hospital room felt utterly fresh.
The LED light, long overdue for replacement, cast a damp glow. The faint medicinal smell of disinfectant and chemicals, and the silence born from the fact that not a single thing was crawling around.
For some reason, all of it felt pastoral.
Even though I was practically in the middle of a modern city.
‘…Is it because I went in and came back from that living hell?’
It had been better while I was inside.
I’d been so worked up that my vision had narrowed, and back then, divine power had been spinning at full force, protecting my mind.
But now that I had passed out from overload, there was no divine power left to protect my mind.
Looking back slowly on what had happened inside the Blackout Zone, there was truly nothing but horrific memories.
Endless darkness where I wouldn’t have been able to see an inch ahead if not for my halo. The smell of all manner of things rotting, and the scent of blood that simply would not leave my nose.
And wherever I went, the sound of things crawling around—whether they were mimic beasts or something else entirely…
There wasn’t a single thing that wasn’t dreadful.
It was a place that would be hard for even the most thick-skinned person to endure.
Now that I was looking back on it, it was even more horrifying.
‘…That damned bitch.’
At times like this, anger toward my younger sister surged up inside me.
How dare that bitch go out drinking in broad daylight and make me suffer like this?
The day I run into her in the Blackout Zone—that day will be the day of her memorial rites.
I’ll drag her in front of our parents and reveal every bit of suffering I went through because of her.
Then, after that…
Would there be an after?
No, before that…
‘……’
…Was she even alive?
After pouring out all that anger, emptiness washed over me.
My anger toward her was a defense mechanism.
Because I knew just how terrible the inside of the Blackout Zone was. Because I knew how optimistic it was to imagine someone surviving in there…
‘…I just want to be angry, at least.’
Because I only had two choices.
Get angry, or worry and grieve.
‘…Forget it.’
It was better not to worry about her for too long.
Right, so what if she had become a mimic beast? As long as she didn’t fuse with some other punk without her big brother’s permission, that was fine.
If only it could at least be like that…
‘……’
To stop my thoughts from going any further, I picked up my phone.
It seemed I couldn’t help having all sorts of thoughts.
Though I doubted anything good would come from continuing them.
Tap, tap.
I lightly tapped the phone screen and opened it. My gaze went first to the battery, rather than the large display of the current time.
‘…5%? Damn it, I didn’t charge it.’
The screen had dimmed automatically and was dark.
Since there was no way to charge it right away, I decided to make good use of the remaining battery.
‘…What should I do?’
First, contacting my parents was out.
They were probably worried, but I would trust that the military had soothed them appropriately.
Contacting them in the current situation would be burdensome all over again.
Then should I roughly check how the country was doing?
It didn’t necessarily have to be limited to the country. Since this phenomenon called the Blackout Zone wasn’t limited to Korea alone, I simply became curious about how the world was turning.
Just how badly would the world go to hell?
For now, society was still functioning thanks to information control, but once everything was revealed, what kind of pandemonium would unfold?
I immediately opened the search bar and…
‘…Huh?’
Was immediately stopped.
I could type into the search bar, but the search itself wouldn’t work. As if the internet connection had been cut.
Only then did I look more closely and saw the indicator showing that there was no signal.
Damn screen. With the brightness low and the light from my halo reflecting off it, it was ridiculously hard to see.
‘…Did a base station go down or something?’
It could be a temporary issue. It would probably come back soon.
But by then, my battery would be gone.
“Haa…”
Only sighs kept coming out of me.
If this was the case, there was no way to get information from outside…
Rattle.
The curtain blocking off the hospital room opened, and someone came in.
It was the doctor from last time.
He was walking in tiny, cautious steps while wearing a pair of dark sunglasses.
‘…I didn’t see those sunglasses earlier?’
And they were pixel sunglasses, at that.
They were something I’d only seen back in high school, cheap and funny novelty props.
The sight left me flustered, but well…
You came at just the right time.