-Perfectly Fine Zombies
* * *
“Now then, let’s get going!”
Cheon Danbi said, giving Gil a light pat on the shoulder.
“Noona, I’m sorry. I showed you such a pathetic side of me. A little while ago, it was honestly so hard that I couldn’t do anything. I know I shouldn’t have been like that…”
“It’s all right. You can find your strength from here on out. We’re here now. Let’s all bring this situation to an end together.”
“Yes. Let’s hurry. For the sake of the zombies, we need to end this quickly.”
Gil’s expression looked much more at ease, and his movements had become energetic. It seemed having his companions with him gave him strength.
As expected, Cheon Danbi was a step above me when it came to looking after people and soothing their hearts.
“That’s right. We need to end this quickly for the zombies’ sake, too. Otherwise, even perfectly fine zombies will start getting blamed for no reason.”
“Ah! That’s true. Let’s hurry. But what should we do about these zombies?”
Now Gil was even taking the lead and urging us on.
“I told the police to take the zombies we subdued, so leave them there.”
“Yes. Got it.”
We combed through the residential alleys, searching for zombies.
But perhaps because the mutated pigeons hadn’t come this way, most of the zombies here were perfectly fine.
Zombies that had been crouching in secluded corners saw us and, startled, tried to flee.
They already knew about the zombie incident, too, and were afraid the sparks might fly onto them for no reason.
“It’s all right. You don’t have to run. We’re only subduing zombies who are showing abnormal behavior.”
I said to the zombies.
But hearing that probably wasn’t enough to truly reassure them.
From a mage’s perspective, we were dividing and distinguishing between zombies showing abnormal behavior and zombies who were perfectly fine, but from their perspective, they were all zombies.
Also, though the zombies showing abnormal behavior moved differently from perfectly fine zombies, and their eyes were different as well, that was only when you examined them closely. At a glance, they were hard to tell apart. There was no difference in outward appearance alone, either.
Ordinary people who weren’t mages certainly wouldn’t examine zombies in detail and respond differently depending on the distinction.
“Please hide well until this is over. It’ll all be cleaned up soon.”
When Gil said that to the zombies, they mumbled and nodded.
For some reason, the zombies seemed to respond more to Gil’s words.
However, for zombies who lived on the streets without homes, there was no way they had anywhere suitable to hide.
The zombies instinctively sensed that they had to avoid people for the time being, but with nowhere to go, all they could do was crouch in the corners of back alleys or in the shade beside trash cans.
Even if the zombie incident was ended quickly as Cheon Danbi and Gil hoped, there was no guarantee that the perfectly fine zombies wouldn’t be blamed.
No, the situation had already become more complicated than we had thought.
When we returned to the restaurant street, the zombie incident had already entered a new phase.
“Zombies! Die!”
“How dare you try to bite humans! Know your place!”
“Let’s smash them to pieces!”
Male students had gathered around the zombies I had frozen earlier with ice magic and were beating them.
“Students, stop! What are you going to do if the ice breaks?”
“Hurry up and go home!”
A few restaurant owners tried to stop the boys, but there were also people who watched silently and egged them on.
“We should take this chance to drive all the zombies out.”
“Exactly. Customers get uncomfortable when there are zombies swarming around nearby.”
“Filthy, stinking things. We never should have accepted them on Earth in the first place!”
We hurriedly ran toward the male students who were committing violence.
But when I looked closely, ripples of concentric circles were spreading out ahead of us as we ran.
I quickly turned to the side and saw Gil glaring with his eyes lifted.
The mana waves weren’t very powerful. It seemed Gil had been swept up in emotion and was unconsciously creating concentric circles.
“Gil, get a hold of yourself! You’re sending out mana waves. They’re ordinary people. You can’t use magic on them.”
“…Ah! Yes.”
Only then did Gil withdraw the ripples of concentric circles.
In the meantime, Cheon Danbi, who had reached the students first, shouted.
“What do you think you’re doing? You’re damaging the magic the mage cast! This is really going to become a serious matter. Back away, now!”
“Stay out of this, ma’am! All zombies need to be smashed to pieces!”
“What? Ma’am? What part of me looks like a ma’am?”
Conversation wasn’t getting through to them, and even what little there was had gone in a strange direction.
Soon, I approached and stepped between them.
“Do you think you can break my magic?”
At that, the students stopped moving and looked back at me.
“Huh? Mage Oudin…?”
“That’s him. It really is!”
“Wow! The hero Mage Oudin came to our neighborhood!”
The male students who had been committing violence against the zombies suddenly became fans of the hero and cheered for me.
“Why are you trying to smash the zombies? Zombies are proper citizens of the Republic of Korea, too. Those zombies were affected by the mutated pigeons and are only showing abnormal behavior for a moment. They’re not monsters. Stop doing pointless things and go home.”
I deliberately spoke loudly so that not only the students, but also the adults who had been watching and cursing the zombies, could hear.
Perhaps because the words came from a hero mage, fortunately, no one tried to argue.
“The zombies attacked people first, that’s why.”
“All right. I’m usually nice to zombies, too.”
“But Mage, can we take a picture together?”
The students each grumbled a word or two, but when I stared at them silently, they eventually left the spot, shuffling awkwardly.
The adults who had gathered also slipped away one by one.
Only then did Gil let out a long sigh.
“Why are they really acting like that?”
“It’s just them venting their anger.”
“But even if people were bitten by zombies, no one died.”
“Exactly. The students got scared for no reason, so they’re acting like that.”
The situation didn’t stop there.
As we headed toward the main road, a scream rang out from a narrow alley between two restaurants.
“Please save me!”
A clumsy way of speaking. It was definitely a zombie.
We hurried over and found four men surrounding and threatening a female zombie.
One of the men was holding a lit charcoal briquette with tongs. He was about to throw it at the zombie.
“They say zombies have to be burned to death, right? I’ll kill you with this!”
“Go on, try biting us! Bite us!”
“What do you mean, bite us? We should attack first.”
“Let’s burn every one we see.”
The female zombie, who was crouched tightly, showed no aggression at all. Judging by her attitude, her eyes, and the way she spoke, she was a perfectly fine zombie.
But now I wondered what the point even was in distinguishing between zombies showing abnormal behavior and zombies who were perfectly fine.
Rash humans were already treating all zombies as one and the same.
“What are you doing? Move aside!”
I shouted before anything else.
Watching the scene before my eyes, I found myself feeling the same as Gil without realizing it.
Meaning, I wanted to use magic on humans.
The men whirled around in surprise.
“I’m a mage. Step away at once. That woman is a perfectly fine zombie. So why are you trying to attack her? If you act like that, how are you any different from the zombies showing abnormal behavior?”
When I said I was a mage, the men first moved away from the zombie.
Even so, they grumbled as if they were the ones being wronged.
“But the zombies attacked humans first!”
“I saw a zombie bite someone with my own eyes!”
“Then are humans supposed to just sit there and take it?”
I walked closer to them. Close enough for them to see my face clearly.
Only then did the men look startled. They had recognized me.
“Think of them as zombies who have fallen ill. No one has died. The mages will handle it, so don’t get involved.”
I spoke clearly, lending my words the influence of a hero and the authority of a mage.
At times like this, such things were necessary.
At that, the men soon took the lit charcoal briquette and disappeared down the far side of the alley. They were probably restaurant owners nearby.
The female zombie also staggered away after them. She didn’t even manage to thank us, too busy slipping away somewhere to hide.
“Goodness. This is really serious. From the look of it, there’s going to be another whole controversy about zombies, isn’t there?”
“Seriously. It might turn into a bigger uproar than the trouble the zombies actually caused.”
“The root cause is the pigeons. No, that’s not right. The real root cause and the true villains are the Vanaheim bastards who released mutated pigeons onto the streets! But the zombies are the ones who’ll end up getting blamed for no reason.”
“And after doing all this, they’ll sell golden apples as medicine that enhances life force, won’t they?”
Cheon Danbi and Ren spoke quietly between themselves.
Gil’s face had gone pale, perhaps because he was suppressing fear and anger.
My feelings were complicated as well.
Though the zombies had attacked and bitten people, it hadn’t been fatal. No one who was bitten died or turned into a zombie.
Even so, fear and hatred of zombies had surged, and in the end, it had reached the point where humans were attacking zombies.
In this world, zombies were beings who clearly possessed citizenship, but that was of no use at all.
“Still, it’ll gradually get better. When the dwarves were falsely accused last time, it felt hopeless too, but the mage resolved it in the end. It’ll be all right soon.”
“That’s right. It was the same for me, too. I was an experimental subject, and after I escaped, I was hunted as a missing person, but the mage solved it for me. Now no one can drag me away anymore.”
Cheon Danbi and Ren’s conversation abruptly turned in a positive direction.
It seemed that as they talked about worrying over the zombies, the conversation had naturally flowed in a negative direction, and they had noticed Gil’s face growing darker because of it.
Gil, who felt closer to zombies than anyone else, and us, who were thinking of Gil.
If people were connected one link at a time like this, they wouldn’t be able to hate so carelessly.
“Let’s go. We should head out to the main street now.”
I quickened my pace.
Order was being maintained by the police in the shopping district along the main road.
Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be any more zombies showing abnormal behavior.
But it seemed this place, too, hadn’t been completely free of people venting their anger at zombies.
A police officer was warning people through a megaphone.
“The zombies who were showing abnormal behavior have all been subdued by mages. The police are now taking the subdued zombies to the police station. The other zombies remaining on the streets have no issue whatsoever. Do not commit violence against them for no reason. If you do, we will have no choice but to arrest you.”
The message was delivered clearly.
Even when people saw zombies on the street, they took no action.
The people who had collapsed after being bitten by zombies were transported to the hospital by ambulance.
The frozen zombies were being loaded into vehicles and taken away by the police.
The street began to regain its usual appearance.
“It looks like things are getting settled now.”
“What a relief…”
Only then did Gil let out those words in a low voice. It sounded almost like a sigh.