Chapter 20
He kicked away the variant charging again with its mouth open with his intact foot and ran straight in the opposite direction. But every time he stepped on the ground, blood surged out in pulses, so he was only luring the variants instead.
Even as he ran quickly, Baek Jin struggled with all his might to break the bracelet. Feeling repeated frustration, he ran for a long while, and only when he sensed nothing behind him did he hide behind a large tree.
“Hah, ha. Ha…….”
Sweat that had run down wet his face. Barely catching his breath, he rolled up his jeans. A fist-sized chunk of torn flesh dangled loose. He immediately tore the hem of his short-sleeved shirt and tied it together with his jeans so the flesh wouldn’t fall off.
“Ugh!”
Every time he tightened it so the hem wouldn’t come loose, the pain was felt in full. The pain showed on his face, his teeth clenched.
Just then, he felt a vibration in his pocket. When he hurriedly took out his phone, a missed call from the call that had been cut off earlier showed. Had calls been coming the whole time he ran? The number 14 appeared beside the red number.
With a trembling hand, he made the call. Before the ringtone even began, Seo Young-woo’s voice came.
– Are you okay?
Baek Jin bit his lip tightly at the sorrow surging up.
– Are you hurt anywhere? I’m coming now. Just wait a little more. “……” – If you’re in a situation where you can’t speak, don’t answer.
Tears that finally burst flowed down his cheeks. Baek Jin scrubbed at the corners of his eyes with his forearm.
“I’m not hurt. There are a lot of civilians at the restroom near Shelter 2. There are little kids too.” Adding that they should be rescued first, Baek Jin forcibly swallowed his tears at the call that ended with the words that Seo Young-woo would go that way soon.
Had he ever relied on another person in his life? Feeling his emotions crumble helplessly, he wondered if he was this weak a person.
Among people who always used him, the existence of the man who was the only one who worried about his safety had, without Baek Jin even knowing, been quietly growing larger in his heart.
Those ordinary words, the kind anyone could say, when he heard them through Seo Young-woo’s mouth, felt like words that existed in the world solely for him.
So he could not stupidly sit down and just wait to be rescued. He did not want to show Seo Young-woo the state he was in, mauled by a variant, so even if it took a little longer, he had to move somewhere safe.
At that moment, he felt something running below his nose. When Baek Jin wiped his nose with the back of his hand without thinking and saw the skin smeared with blood, he stopped where he stood.
“…….”
The nosebleed dripping down showed no sign of stopping. Before long, the calf a variant had bitten grew heavier and heavier, and even bending his knee became difficult.
Little by little, the feeling drained away. Baek Jin, stopped on a leg that had gone completely stiff, swallowed dryly.
He had no idea how far he had come, but there was nothing to be seen around him.
Swish, swish.
Listening to the very small noise, like something crawling through the grass, his eyes darted busily. As Baek Jin scanned for a tree he could climb, his eyes met a young girl sitting up on a branch about as high as an adult man’s height.
She could not have been more than ten years old. He could not tear his gaze from her face as she clutched a smaller child tightly and trembled with fear.
Baek Jin slowly lifted the corners of his mouth and showed her a smile. Then he put his index finger to his lips. The child nodded.
The silence, with neither gunfire nor the sound of wind, was chilling to an awful degree. Baek Jin stood still in that spot, even holding his breath, and quietly let out a breath.
In the end, his left leg locked up completely. But if he had been alone, he could have escaped even if he had to drag it. If only the tree the children had climbed had been a little higher, a little thicker.
Baek Jin lowered his gaze and looked down at the bracelet. If he said it had been unavoidable, to save the children, would they understand, even if something went wrong with the bracelet……
But he knew better than anyone that the world never gave him a chance.
The urge to run away alone kept surging up. He did not want to hurt anymore. He wanted to become someone who survived, even if it meant stepping on others.
“….”
His face, twisted in anguish, gradually smoothed out. Even if the world abandoned him, if he saved the children, would that man, the one who saved him every time, not praise him?
Then Baek Jin bent down, groped around him, and caught hold of a large rock. His eyes crumpled for a moment, full of thought, but he began to strike mercilessly at his right arm and hand, the ones wearing the bracelet.
***
“Requesting a transport vehicle. Requesting a transport vehicle.”
Seo Young-woo, who had radioed headquarters, kicked the variant corpses that had fallen at his feet into one place. The mucus that touched his combat boots stretched stickily.
“Ugh. Oh, fuck……”
“That bastard did it himself and he’s the one gagging.”
Choi Yu-rim shook with disgust at Jay, who was dry-heaving at the sight of the variant corpses.
“The smell, the smell is so bad, ugh.”
Kim Jeong-won, walking over from the opposite side, glanced at Choi Yu-rim, who would not leave Jay’s side and kept nagging, then soon turned to Seo Young-woo.
“Shelter 2 is finished being cleared as well.”
“Good work. On your way back, check again whether there are variants around. Tell them to check again even if it is not our sector.”
“Yes, understood.”
Only after watching a civilian transport vehicle enter the open ground by the restrooms did Seo Young-woo check Baek Jin’s location again. It had moved farther away than before, so he seemed to have moved while fleeing the variants, but it was a place the soldiers were already clearing.
He could not abandon his sector for Baek Jin alone. To the leader of Team AXIS, no life was more precious than another. Superb physical condition far beyond a civilian’s, in his twenties, male. So he could not go running just because he was worried. In a field where civilian rescue came first, Baek Jin was the very last in the rescue order.
Seo Young-woo shouted at his gathered team members.
“Don’t bunch up, move now!”
When a mop-up operation was nearing its end, the first to tire were always the awakened. Standing at the front, killing every variant in sight, and controlling panicked civilians was no easy task.
The finishing work was the soldiers’ share, but Seo Young-woo felt he could not return to headquarters until he had checked on Baek Jin with his own eyes.
While he was checking his remaining magazines and packing extra ones, Hwang Ji-hun walked over with a sulky expression.
“Team Leader, aren’t we having a team dinner today?”
“Hey, the work isn’t even finished. What team dinner?”
“At this point, it’s almost finished, isn’t it!”
At the sight of Ji-hun, who had come back drenched in sweat and was suddenly whining about a team dinner, Seo Young-woo
“Wrap it up within two hours and return.
“Is the Team Leader going back to headquarters first?”
“I’ll look around the area more.
Seo Young-woo was the only guide among the team leaders. But his stamina rivaled most espers, and his marksmanship was so outstanding that no one worried about him walking off alone.
“He went pretty far.”
Still, he was glad the signal had stopped along the way. As he walked, checking whether there were any civilians, his heart grew more and more impatient.
‘That can’t be done.’
The major had refused his request to disable the bracelet’s function, even briefly. His reason was that if Baek Jin used his fire ability in the park, it could cause even greater damage. The other teams, too, apart from telekinesis ability users, had pulled out to places other than the park, so insisting would not have changed anything.
Walking on, taking the blazing sunlight full on, Seo Young-woo stopped short when he saw smoke rising in the distance.
There was no reason for a fire.
He hurriedly checked his watch. It was not precise, but smoke was rising from the place where Baek Jin’s signal appeared.
His steps quickened. Soon Seo Young-woo was running, forgetting even to check his surroundings, and dashed on recklessly.
Bang, tatadang.
A bullet lodged in the forehead of a variant blocking his path. Seo Young-woo, calmer than before, pulled the trigger every time he saw one of those damned crocodiles.
The closer he got to where the smoke was rising, the more a disgusting stench and mucus covered the park. In some places, there was barely room to step, enough variant corpses to form a small hill.
– Team Leader! Smoke spotted near the lake.
“On my way. It is not a big fire. Requesting support from the soldiers in charge of the center.”
– Yes. Confirmed.
The more corpses there were, the fewer crocodiles Seo Young-woo had to deal with himself. But the variants, which should have been shot or twisted by telekinesis, were burned crisp.
The bracelet should definitely be working.
Seo Young-woo’s brow furrowed more and more. How had he used his ability? As worry and anxiety mixed and his heart grew unbearably impatient, a terrible stench drifted in from somewhere.
Smoke was rising from a mound piled with variant corpses. Without so much as a small spark flying, it was burning fiercely, entirely within one space.
Seo Young-woo immediately shouted Baek Jin’s name.
“Jin-ah!”
His watch beeped as if to announce his arrival, but no one was there.
Then a bracelet, stripped off on the grass, caught his eye. Seo Young-woo picked it up, shoved it straight into his pocket, and only then called Baek Jin.
Unlike he had expected, a ringtone sounded close by. Following the sound, he found a child hiding up in a tree, clutching the phone Seo Young-woo had given Baek Jin.
When the children saw someone had come, they burst into tears. First he lifted the children down from the tree, held them, and met their eyes.
“It’s okay. It’s all over.”
He barely suppressed the urge to press the child about where the phone clutched so tightly had been found. Just then, Seo Young-woo saw soldiers running over from the opposite side and signaled them.
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