Chapter 85
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Accomplice III
Shin Noah
Since the Last Strike Force included not only Awakened Ones but also many ordinary people, Busan immediately after they were swept away was desolate like a ghost town.
Even with the [Open for Business] sign hung up, not a single pedestrian passed by when I looked out at the street. Noh Do-ha and I simply sat on the bench in front of the workshop, watching the scenery.
"……."
"……."
"Hmm. Would you like some coffee, Workshop Master?"
"Ah. Yes. If my assistant makes it, well, anytime is fine……."
The silent scenery of the streets didn't feel awkward.
Rather, the days I had spent trying to somehow maintain vigor and normalcy despite it being the end times had occasionally felt strange.
Streetlights with no people passing.
Crosswalks with white stripes all torn away.
Broadleaf street trees. Aurora of sunlight. Cicadas not yet extinct sending out sirens to find mates also not yet extinct.
"It's summer……."
Noh Do-ha murmured as she sipped her café au lait, her breath rising like transparent smoke.
The world was peaceful, as if it had barely regained its original form.
9 AM, 11 AM, lunch. The menu was steak I cooked myself. By 1 PM, 3 PM, 5 PM, not a single customer had visited Noh Do-ha's workshop that had always been bustling.
The sun had set.
The eyelids of the night sky were sunset-colored.
A world that should have fallen asleep long ago had spent the past 8 years dawdling and resisting waking up late, and finally was quietly closing its eyes.
'Perishing together just the two of us like this wouldn't be bad either.'
That was when it happened.
Amidst the reclining Buddha of the sunset lying alone quietly nodding its head, suddenly, footsteps reached my ears.
My ears perked up.
"Well, I suppose it's about time to close up. Hmm. Today was a complete business failure. You must be happy sucking honey……. Hmm? What is it, Assistant?"
"…Someone is coming this way."
"Oh……?"
The sound grew clearer. But the footsteps were strange. Thud-thud- tap- thud-thud- tap, something overlapped with the footsteps.
It was the sound of a cane.
"Ah."
I stood from the bench and prepared to welcome a customer. Sure enough, a familiar old man was making his way around the intersection, leaning heavily on his cane as if poking at summer itself.
I quickly approached and supported the old man.
"No, Elder! What brings you here today! Did you walk all the way from Bansong-dong to here?"
"Oh my, our assistant young man is still in Busan. Hmm? Why are you still here? Hm? Oh my, Teacher Noh Do-ha is still here too. What are you young people planning to do staying like this? Hmm? What are you……."
"……."
Supporting the old man into the workshop, Noh Do-ha was already wearing her white doctor's coat as usual from inside her workshop. She adjusted her monocle and raised the medical chart.
"Isn't this patient Shin Su-bin from Bansong-dong. What brings you here……?"
"Mmm. It's nothing. Just, this, this ankle brace keeps creaking since last week. It's old……."
"Hmm. You were fiddling with it again saying it was uncomfortable and it got misaligned. Didn't I tell you absolutely not to touch it. I suppose my words sound foolish to you……."
"No, oh my. That's not it-"
"And if you think the brace is misaligned, you should come get it repaired immediately, what could be so busy that you put it off for another week……?"
"Sigh, I'm sorry. Teacher. What should I do, I'm so sorry about this. Hmm. How about it, will it take a long time? If it takes long, just forget it."
"No. It'll be done in 10 minutes……."
Noh Do-ha took out tools and repaired it by tapping and tightening the misaligned parts of the auxiliary device. And she chatted about trivial personal matters with the patient, back and forth.
Just like always.
Clang- the sound of a hammer was heard.
"……."
Quietly. I went to the workshop entrance and checked outside.
A strange noise was present in the night sky that the sunset was pulling down.
Instead of starlight, red spots flickered like scratches, and instead of the Milky Way, veins shaped like blue arteries pulsed.
Void transformation of the sky. No, void phenomenon of celestial bodies beyond the sky. It was proof that the world's end was truly not far away.
'…Not good.'
Even the sunset was being infected in real-time. The sunset that had initially been dyed in crimson and yellow light began, little by little, to have a thick viscosity as if the pitch-black night sky were shedding blood.
If I said the sky feels like an experimental beaker with red solution dropped into it, would it be readily understood?
The void was transforming to surface, light to mucus, clouds to blades, earth to Milky Way.
A phenomenon where, if powerful anomalies were left uncleared, they would arbitrarily merge and fuse together becoming masses.
Nut, the goddess of night. An anomaly and void whose cause I could hardly deduce at this time. A world-ending scenario that occasionally appeared.
This world's night was striding forward, swallowing the city.
Soon, beings on the surface would fall into eternal sleep. At most, less than 10 minutes from now.
"Workshop Master, now it's about time-"
"Assistant."
I turned around. Noh Do-ha was coming out of the workshop with the patient.
Our eyes met.
A pair of black islands floating in the middle of a white sea were looking at me.
"Please escort patient Shin Su-bin to his home."
"……."
Brief glances were exchanged, and more silence than that was conveyed.
"Do you have iron rods in your ears? Assistant. I'm telling you to escort the patient home and return. Damn. The roads are rough enough as it is, if he falls on the way, will you take responsibility……?"
"Yes. I understand."
"That's right……."
Noh Do-ha smiled faintly, heh.
"If you're my assistant, you should do that……."
The old man kept saying next to us, oh my, I'm fine, I can go alone, but Noh Do-ha was unshakeable.
I lightly lifted the old man and walked.
"Sigh, I'm really fine. Teacher Noh Do-ha thinks too much about patients to a fault…… ohhhhhhh!"
The reason the old man switched to soprano at the end was, of course, because I had deployed qinggong.
The old man looked around with round eyes. The street scenery was passing by in an instant. I emitted aura to protect the patient's body.
Tap. Tap. I moved by stepping on collapsed building walls and traffic lights and such.
'If I move as fast as possible to transport the patient to his home in Bansong-dong……. And then return to the workshop, barely 5 minutes. If that much, if lucky, barely before the world ends……. No, but when the void will reach the workshop's location is a variable.'
"Young man."
While I was moving using qinggong, the old man suddenly spoke from my arms.
"Yes?"
"Let me down around here."
I blinked. To take the old man to his home, I still needed to move for another 4 minutes.
"That's not necessary. Elder. I will escort you."
"Oh my, it's fine. It's fine. Is the house important? The road home is what's important. My ankle brace is fixed now, so I want to walk the last part on my own feet."
"Ah."
"I've lived in this neighborhood my whole life. My elementary school was around here, and this was the road home. For decades I just went back and forth on this road. Me. Today I walked out because I didn't want to die inside the house, but there was no one. But I didn't know Teacher Noh Do-ha would be at the workshop. Really. She's a truly thoughtful person."
"……."
"Thank you, young man. You're worried about Teacher Noh Do-ha, right? Then this isn't your road. Let's both go our separate ways."
I set the old man down on the downhill slope of the hill road. The old man went oh my- oh my- and tapped the asphalt road with his cane.
It was a one-lane road that Noh Do-ha had installed in Busan at her own expense long ago.
The old man leaned about 30% of his body weight on the cane and waved his hand.
"I'm fine, so go on back."
"…Thank you."
"Thank you for what. I'm the one who's grateful……."
Dragging the oh my- tap, oh my- sounds like a shadow, the old man went down the hill road.
The sound of cicadas rang out. But from beyond the concrete forest, the cicadas' cries decreased by a span, two spans, three spans, continuously.
It was tightening.
The world's night.
"I'll see you next time. Elder."
I bowed my head, then changed direction. And I moved even faster than when I had been carrying the old man.
The workshop's rooftop.
When I joined, it was merely a 2-story building, but over the past 8 years, through repeated extensions and renovations, it had reached 5 stories—on top of the 'Do-ha Workshop' where not a speck of interior design sense could be found, painted with Korea's characteristic green waterproof paint.
"Oh……."
Noh Do-ha was standing still. Holding a wine bottle and wine opener in her hand.
Tap. Landing on the rooftop like a butterfly, Noh Do-ha looked at me as if it were natural. Even though this was the first time I had used qinggong in front of this person.
"You returned faster than I expected. Did you properly escort patient Shin Su-bin……?"
"The elder said he wanted to walk the final road on his own feet. I had no choice but to let him down."
"Ah. Hmmm. I didn't think of that……."
Pop- the cork of the wine bottle came off.
Noh Do-ha threw the cork with the wine opener outside the rooftop wall.
"One glass……?"
"If it's from the Workshop Master's collection, I won't refuse."
"Hmm."
Roll- the red liquid, wine with the same viscosity as the wine-colored sunset currently dyeing the sky, flowed down the glass.
"Cheers. Well, anyway, to something……."
"Cheers."
Clink.
The glass rang refreshingly. The glass containing red wine looked exactly like a fuchsia bud suspended in the void.
We looked at the city's sky beyond our wine glasses side by side. The sky too had transformed into transparent glass material, so it felt like seeing glass-beyond-glass.
Now 5 minutes until destruction. At most 6 minutes, perhaps.
"Assistant."
"Yes."
"Actually, I know how to make weapons……."
I looked at Noh Do-ha. Noh Do-ha wasn't looking this way.
"Yes?"
"Weapons. Weapons. Equipment? Anyway, that thing. You know how in games that old men play, when a character gets a weapon they become stronger and such……. As you know, my ability is [the ability to make limbs feel like one's own body even when replaced with parts], but hmm. This actually applies just as much to other equipment, not just limbs……."
"……!"
My eyes widened.
That's right. Human arms and legs were the very first tools and implements. Then, if Noh Do-ha were to create a sword or spear that could be called an extension of an arm?
"Body-Sword Unity……!"
"……? What does that mean……?"
"Ah. Hmm. No……. It just means it's amazing, in general."
It was difficult to convey my admiration to a pure-born, voluntarily, innate loner completely unrelated to subculture (this person hadn't even watched a single Marvel movie).
"…Why did you hide such ability, Workshop Master? Then you would truly be a born blacksmith. You could have built a position where Tang Seo-rin would watch with caution, Cheon Yo-hwa would court you, and warlords would tremble."
"Hmm. I just told you the reason……. If word spreads that I can make kickass weapons, isn't it obvious that those damn Awakened bastards who already bother me would come even more enthusiastically to grind their damn……?"
"Ah."
"But if I knew the world would end like this, I should have made a weapon for at least one person. They probably wouldn't spread rumors to others……."
"……."
The sky was dyed. Red.
And as if a guillotine blade was falling, pitch-black night followed. Arteries and veins extended across the entire sky, their light mimicking the Milky Way pulsating.
"…Then, please make one next time."
"Hmm. I will, well. It's damn annoying. But since we're going to die anyway, I suppose I can accept that much annoyance now……."
"Definitely."
"Yes. If I don't want to make it, try begging me to make it anyway……."
Clang-
From the far side of the rooftop, near the intersection traffic light, something breaking was heard. A noise like steel being crumpled.
It was a somewhat playfully ridiculous sound, but the result was not ridiculous. All 'scenery' beyond the traffic light was eaten by the night sky.
Clang, claaang. Clang-
Crosswalks and buildings were submerged in the night's void one by one. Like an apple with a bite taken out, the upper parts of buildings were sliced away.
300 meters, 250 meters, 180 meters, 120 meters. In an instant. From all directions, the pitch-black night was greedily devouring space and encroaching.
The embrace of the world had now narrowed to barely accept only our two people's breathing.
"Assistant."
"Yes."
"Thank you for――."
Crash.
The last sound heard was the wine glass Noh Do-ha was holding. Or perhaps it was my wine glass being bitten and eaten by the night sky's teeth and shattering.
A half-moon was carved into the glass.
And the world closed its eyes.
I'm an Infinite Regressor but I'm Telling a Story