16. motivation (2)
When Lee Sang-hoon’s father died, he visited the funeral home.
It was a fortune.
I saw Lee Sang-hoon at a late age, so he was old enough, and he was bedridden with cancer for three years, receiving torture-like treatment and surviving.
Condolences gathered without a gap to set foot.
Next to the special room in the morgue that his father had occupied, there was a small general room.
It was dark and almost empty of people in the room, from which you could hear all the revelry next door.
The wreath was also from a company I had never seen before.
In the center of the half-lighted morgue, there was a portrait of a man who looked young at the time, and only those who looked like his wife and children below him listened to the noise coming from the next room with their heads down.
The contrast was so intense that it seems to have remained in my memory for quite some time.
What reminded me of the memory at the time was a word left by Kim Da-ram.
“They say the mortuary will be open until dawn tomorrow. It’s racist, but it’s a privilege in a way to open a mortuary at a university hospital in the current situation.”
“Are you going?”
“I have to go.”
Daram Kim replied with a sigh.
“I don’t want to go, but I have to go. He was my senior, the team leader, and the director. why? You came to my wedding and gave me a congratulatory money of 30,000 won. Shouldn’t you go?”
“At that time, was the minimum 30,000 won?”
“No, even then it was 50,000 won.”
“Ha, it’s Lee Sang-hoon as expected.”
“As expected, Lee Sang-hoon.”
For a while, we all smiled bitterly as we recalled the past.
It was Kim Da-ram who broke the silence between the interludes.
“Are you going to come too?”
“me?”
It’s okay to refuse
It makes sense and there is a reason.
But for some reason I couldn’t answer right away.
“That, that.”
“know. Any capsules on the way? It’s night now too. Come and fly the twin portraits. Just pray for peace from afar.”
I wanted to talk more, but the conversation naturally cut off.
I hung up the radio and sat in the air-raid shelter where silence flowed for a while, lost in thought.
A lot of thoughts came to my mind, but it felt like holding a rope made of sand.
Nothing caught on clearly.
I focused my thoughts on the nearest past.
Lee Sang-hoon asked me to have a drink.
Maybe that was a sign of reconciliation offered to me.
Or was it a request for help towards me?
More than anything else, what did he mean by the last word, the back of the head?
The dead don’t speak.
Therefore, Lee Sang-hoon will not answer my question.
Still, I decided to go find him.
I felt compelled to go there, as if my unanswerable questions would be resolved.
*
I moved through the pitch-black darkness relying on a single bicycle.
You can use a vehicle, but there are barriers I made on the road.
There was no other way than a bicycle to make a detour without making a sound.
My intentions, however, were thwarted by the approaching motorcycle roaring and flashing from a distance.
“What are you doing? at there?”
Showing caution and asking curtly, the man took off his night vision goggles and revealed his face.
We recognized each other’s faces almost simultaneously.
“what? Aren’t you Park Kyu?”
This is Seunghyun Baek.
Although he is one year older, he is a handyman for a member of the National Assembly who takes on all sorts of dirty and dangerous jobs in the rear under the name of a freelance hunter.
“Where are you going?”
“seoul.”
“I have a place to follow you.”
He stared at the light in the distance.
“Can’t you just let it go?”
“that is. I would like to, too.”
Baek Seung-hyun put a cigarette in his mouth with a bitter smile.
“Because I am not in charge.”
Seunghyun Baek’s walkie-talkie sounded frivolous and young, but sufficiently violent with noise.
“mister. what?”
I looked at Baek Seung-hyun quietly.
“Hunter?”
Baek Seung-hyun put on his three-lens night vision goggles again and nodded toward the light.
“One of our juniors detected you.”
“Sense it….”
Baek Seung-hyun snorted.
“They are real hunters. Different from the old ones like us.”
Eventually, I stood in front of the barrier I was trying to avoid.
There were no other options.
Today I’m going to pay my respects, not to pile up another corpse.
A group of people were standing under the light that could be seen from afar.
It was the military police who stood at the forefront.
they don’t matter
It’s the background, to say the least.
What matters is the three shadows standing arrogantly behind them.
They were wearing the same jacket, but on the top pocket of the jacket, there is a mark patch that depicts a roaring tiger baring its teeth.
Roaring tiger.
It is the mark of a new hunter who has been nurtured and trained in line with the latest doctrine that appeared about six years ago.
Hunters of our old era are called by the titles below.
“mister.”
A man in his early 20s who dyed his hair blonde called Baek Seung-hyun.
“So, what is this person?”
Behind him stood a yawning man carrying a large shield on his back and a woman constantly looking at her phone.
“Former Hunter.”
Although he did not lower his head, Baek Seung-hyun’s expression and attitude seemed to have already bowed his head several times.
“A former Hunter? Like an uncle?”
“hahahaha, yes.”
The man and woman standing behind me cast cold glances at me.
I know very well what emotions are in their eyes.
contempt and disregard
The blonde in the lead tilted her head with a puzzled look on her face.
“Why does a former Hunter leave the road intact and go back to a dark place? Not even a criminal.”
Baek Seung-hyun saw me.
The face that desperately endured the humiliation was trying to transfer irritation to me.
“To go to Seoul.”
I answered.
Baek Seung-hyun’s eyes widened.
A look like something big is about to happen.
I ignored him and continued talking.
“quietly.”
I turned my gaze to the blond man.
The blond man looked back at his colleague as if my actions were absurd, and smiled awkwardly.
“This man is really awake.”
“How long is it?”
asked stiffly.
The smile disappeared from the corners of the blonde’s lips.
The man wearing the shield wrinkled his forehead and the woman who had been staring at her phone raised her head.
A bloody current rushed between us like a sudden blizzard.
The blond man glared at me with shining eyes and pronounced it coldly.
“Two.Ten.”
“13 wait.”
Yes.
I am the senior of these friends.
That too is a senior like the sky.
But these young friends think differently.
“A jockey before the 18th class is not a senior.”
The man behind me interjected.
“Except for a very small part.”
they came to me
As promised, his eyes were softly illuminated like electric lights.
“Can’t you call someone who is no different than the soldier standing there as your senior?”
A fishy sneer formed on the blond man’s lips.
“mister. I’m sorry? Do you have any powers?”
He shook his head.
“Then you’re not a senior.”
Humanity, who had been fighting monsters for the survival of the species, was consistently on the defensive.
Around 30% of humanity disappeared, an anomaly was observed.
A part of humanity began to confront monsters using superpowers like magic.
Scholars have analyzed it as psychic energy caused by a high level of mental activity, and named it with the featureless name of authority.
The new power ironically resembled the enemy of mankind, the monster, but it was a predetermined future that the new blood with that power would quickly push the old hunters away.
These young friends are the predicted future.
“Since you went to the same school, you must be well aware of the dangers of that capsule, right? Go back.”
You can go back like this.
If you think soberly, that might be the most plausible solution.
But I felt like I couldn’t go back like this.
Why, these friends.
Are you denying the life I’ve lived?
It hurts.
It will inevitably be a big wound.
In a lonely air-raid shelter where you have a lot of thoughts, that wound may be able to rot even more by interlocking with old wounds.
In addition, Lee Sang-hoon’s invisible face appeared before his eyes.
The guy seemed to be talking to me.
Do it if you can
“You mean that capsule is the problem?”
then should i do it?
“What are you going to do?”
“Didn’t you say that I will let you pass if you take care of that capsule?”
“You are funny. What are you going to do with the old school theme? Try it sometime.”
The blonde stepped aside.
“If successful, Ji-hye will personally take this person to Seoul.”
“why me?”
The blonde grinned and the woman snorted.
utter disregard.
Thanks to you, the plate was laid.
The juniors who did not recognize me as a senior pushed the military and police back.
“Everyone, get in the car ahead of time. It won’t happen, but monsters might appear.”
Out of countless people, only Baek Seung-hyun was standing behind me.
With the motorcycle turned on and ready to move at any time.
“Thank you for your heart, but I don’t need it.”
“······Park Gyu-san.”
I looked back at him and smiled.
“You know who I am? senior.”
According to old combat doctrine, now abandoned, there are two ways for a hunter to deal with monsters in skirmishes.
One is to sniper by pinpointing the area where the defense force field is not spread.
The other is to engage in close combat with monsters.
I also told Chairman Poong-ho Je.
It is very difficult to approach monsters, but if you can approach it, there is room for improvement.
It’s true.
If you can enter the arena within the minimum distance to open the force field, if you have the spirit and skills to face the monsters you will encounter in it,
can kill them
“…”
He pulled out two axes.
This pair of axes, with both blades and handles painted black, is one of the few things I took with me when I retired.
“Fighting~! Senpai~!”
A mocking voice comes from behind.
He stared at the capsule quietly and swung an axe.
The moment the ax hit the target, two black spots appeared in the field of vision with a time difference like dead pixels.
This provides two pieces of information.
One is that he opened the half force field, and the other is the position to launch a counterattack with the half force field.
I hit my ax and blocked the blade of my ax that flew towards my neck with another axe.
Chaeng Kang!
Retrieve the ax and make a second attack.
The same two stains stained my eyes at different times, and my body moved like a single machine, attacking and defending at the same time.
After repeating the same battle several times, the whistle that had been coming from behind was no longer heard.
That is no longer an important issue.
A sucking vortex created a twisting space in front of me, spinning its spiral arms in front of me like the galaxy itself.
The time has come.
It is the appearance of a monster.
“Mi, crazy! You really woke me up!”
“It’s a monster!”
“Run away!”
In everyone’s astonishment, I watched the silhouette of the monster taking shape in the light.
An ancient statue with an elongated head resembling a human.
Are you a dancer type?
No, it’s a necromancer type.
The worst has been avoided, but it is not an easy opponent.
If it was a mid-range, it would be impossible to approach without a trained colleague.
But I’m at zero range from him and can engage him in melee.
It already foreshadows a definite result.
thud! thud! thud!
Receiving shockwaves that seemed to crush my heart and intestines, I waited for it to settle into reality.
It turned its head and glared at me, then swung its gray matter arm.
Two axes cut off his arms.
jump!
how many senses
What is the sense of destroying them?
The taste of the hand brought out memories that had been sleeping.
The dancing started.
The dance of death I learned, I did best, and now it has become a forgotten tradition.
Monsters are nothing in it.
At a distance of zero, where even the field of force cannot be spread, he is nothing more than an old tree waiting to be felled, wriggling its slow and heavy body.
As a last resort, he explodes the thorns extending from all over his body and glares at me, but my dance moves have already passed the traces of the thorns and are aiming for his head.
jump!
Two axes were driven into the monster’s head.
I feel his spasm in the hilt of the ax stuck in.
The only lullaby that once soothed my endless hatred.
“This is Professor…?!”
Baek Seung-hyun’s voice was heard in the silence.
thud.
The crushed, dismembered, and tattered monster fell to the floor.
White light rose from its body as if it were on fire, and the monster turned into white particles and began to disappear.
Taking a deep breath, he retrieved the two axes and turned around.
The juniors who did not recognize me as a senior were looking at me with astonished eyes.
A face I couldn’t believe.
It has to be.
Because they are of a different generation than us.
Because they were educated and trained in doctrines different from ours.
But they will know a little bit.
That there were warriors who dominated an era and protected an era.
“Should I burn it?”
The guy who opened the way for me with those days is waiting for me in the cold darkness.
*
“Oh, goodbye!”
The woman who gave me a ride hurriedly greeted me and left without looking back.
The corridor leading to the morgue was the same as that of Lee Sang-hoon’s father, Vinso.
The rich are enshrined in the same place.
But the atmosphere is quite different.
There were no wreaths filling the hallways, no mourners.
In the half-neglected darkness, an unknown young and gorgeous woman was guarding the mortuary with her head down.
Feeling a strong sense of déjà vu, I looked at the portrait of Lee Sang-hoon.
“Sanghun-ah.”
I definitely remembered it now.
He used to look like this
*
“Moving to Jeju Island is Lee Sang-hoon’s plan.”
Da-ram Kim came to the funeral home and called him out.
“If you are a senior, you would know what Lee Sang-hoon was thinking when he did such a thing, right?”
He nodded and recited the theory he had learned at school.
“…the strength of a crack is proportional to the number of people around it.”
“It was Lee Sang-hoon’s plan to put the best manpower in the relatively weak Jeju area and prepare for the future. As you know, monsters are a phenomenon that happened, not an army with an intention.”
“Isn’t that a plan he can carry out alone?”
“The president and the top officials also agreed. the problem is.”
She looked sadly toward the echoing street.
“All those who are not chosen are abandoned. It leaked out and it took me two months.”
“Why is he alone responsible?”
“Who is going to take responsibility for the loss of 10 million lives? Among the people who participated in decision-making, the lowest level has no choice but to take over.”
“Sanghun’s wife and son? I didn’t see it at the mortuary.”
“Already in Jeju Island.”
“Right.”
Daram Kim asked for a cigarette.
“Besides, Mr. Lee Sang-hoon, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but you put your name on the plan.”
“Lee Sang-hoon’s plan?”
“Lee Sang-hoon’s plan. Why? He must have known very well that if he used dumping, it wouldn’t end.”
“…”
I vaguely know it, but I can’t catch it.
“Oh, and one more. It’s not a big deal, but before Mr. Lee Sang-hoon died, he talked about his seniors.”
“what?”
“They say the back of your head keeps coming up.”
“The back of my head?”
“huh. When I was in school, I wanted to hit the back of the head that always stood in front of me and blocked my way.”
Was it like that
Well, I must have been nasty.
That’s why I blocked the road ahead.
“But before he died, he laughed and said. Now I think I can hit the back of the head properly.”
“Are there any new discoveries?”
Daram Kim looked around and sighed.
“well. After meeting Kang sunbae, he laughed lightly, and suddenly he started talking about it.”
“Kang Han-min?”
“sorry. Isn’t that a name you don’t want to hear?”
“no it’s okay. Because I trained mentally with the Skeleton-style unpopular training method.”
“Unpopular?”
I looked around.
Beyond, crowds roamed in droves through the darkness with no candles to burn, screaming the desperate word for survival.
A world is about to end.
I was there.