35. alma mater (2)
I couldn’t trust Minhee Woo, so I tried to communicate in a wasteland as far away from my area as possible.
“I am waiting there. I will send someone.”
The fate of those left behind after the National Committee member left for Jeju Island looked bleak.
In fact, Da-ram Kim, who was popular, went missing.
I searched for her name on Failnet, but I couldn’t find Kim Da-ram’s information even in the vast sea of information.
Minhee Woo was different.
There was still power.
A helicopter appeared at the meeting place to pick me up.
“Are you Park Kyu?”
“yes. It is.”
“Get on. Director Woo Min-hee is waiting for you.”
Did you also wear a coat of arms?
I wondered which institution he was in charge of, but seeing the soldiers’ tightly closed lips and avoiding eyes, I thought it would be better to ask him directly.
The helicopter took me to Incheon.
Currently, Incheon is the capital of South Korea.
Instead of destroyed and abandoned Seoul, almost all bases have moved here.
Most of all, it is probably the sea that has attracted people to Incheon.
There were numerous ships in the harbor, and people welded on each deck and prepared for departure by carrying cargo.
The destination is none other than Jeju.
The side of the National Assembly that took control of Jeju Island did not reveal any position in this regard, but the government plans to send a super-large fleet consisting of dozens of ships, not one.
Countless people were standing on the dockside watching the work or wandering around without any particular purpose.
At the end of the pier, there was a research facility without a signboard.
“Here.”
This achromatic concrete building seems to be the institution where Woo Min-hee is in charge.
Upon entering, I was greeted by a tidy interior with bright white lighting and white tiles without any blemishes.
“Are you Park Gyu?”
A woman wearing glasses I had never seen before greeted me.
“yes. It is.”
“My name is Soo-jin Kim, who was instructed by Director Min-hee Woo to guide Teacher Park instead.”
“Where is Director Woo Min-hee?”
“You are out now. He probably won’t be back by the end of today, so I responded instead.”
I followed Sujin Kim into the research facility.
Inside the laboratory, people in white coats were busy walking around with papers and laptops.
As an outsider, I didn’t know what was so busy, but it seems like a lot of work, seeing as he frequently makes phone calls and hits the keyboard excessively hard to fill the screen.
However, if you turn your head just a little bit, you can see people in groups of two or three holding coffee cups, joking around, or sitting in chairs and closing their eyes.
Is it a lot of work, or is it a place where you have to pretend to be a lot of work.
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Going further inside, there was a room with children of about middle school age. As we passed, curious eyes turned to us.
Waiting for the eyes of the children to leave, I asked Kim Soo-jin.
“Why are there so many kids?”
“These are the guys who were selected as the guard freshmen.”
“Guard?”
“yes.”
“I heard it will break down tomorrow.”
“That is the old school in Seoul. We opened a new school in Jeju Island and are nurturing children with Awakened aptitudes as new hunters. Our facility is an institution that finds, recruits, and protects talented children for that.”
“Then are all those children going to Jeju Island?”
“Some may go. Because I have to undergo several tests.”
“Something like a mental sensory test?”
“yes. You know that.”
Kim Soo-jin, who had never looked at me before, glanced at me.
There was a blatant displeasure in his gaze that he didn’t want to talk about anymore.
I didn’t want to make any noise, so I left it alone.
After that we had to walk quite a long distance without saying a word.
The smell of disinfectant became thicker the deeper we went into the facility, and the faint smell of corpses wafted through.
“Here.”
She led me into a dark room.
There were several researchers staring at the monitor with wide eyes.
They didn’t even turn their heads once we came in.
One corner of the room was packed with medical beds, and on each bed lay corpses with cloths covering their faces.
“They are zombies.”
Kim Soo-jin said without looking at me.
Maybe.
But why do those cold, stiff hands look so small?
The face of the boy who gave me the laptop flashed before my eyes.
Beyond the room full of corpses was a creepily silent hallway with many doors, each with a small bench.
A tall girl who seemed to be somewhere between high school and college was the only person sitting in the aisle.
When the girl saw Kim Soo-jin, she bowed.
“Are you on your way?”
At Kim Soo-jin’s question, the girl shook her head with an awkward smile.
Kim Soo-jin opened the door next to him.
“Here.”
A person was sitting at a desk in an upright position.
It didn’t take long to recognize him.
“Instructor.”
Jang Ki-young is Instructor.
In good shape with not a single scratch.
But something is strange.
Even when the door is open, even when I call, he doesn’t answer.
“Instructor?”
Called again.
The bewildered eyes that gave him the nickname Tiger Instructor were still the same, but the pupils beyond them were cloudy and blurry.
“…”
With a soulless face, my teacher took out a notebook and wrote something down.
His thoughts were never transferred to paper.
crunch
The pages of the notebook were already full, and the pen in his hand was already out of ink.
“ha.”
Kim Soo-jin, who was next to him, sighed.
“Again, there is no response. Please go back.”
“I want to hear some explanation.”
My gaze as I glared at her seemed a little bloody.
Seeing the shadow of fear cast over Kim Soo-jin’s face, who had been acting stiff all along.
*
Jang Ki-young, who was filmed on the closed-circuit screen, looked very normal.
He flipped through books while sitting at his desk, occasionally got up from his seat and walked around the narrow room with his hands behind his back, and sometimes lay down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling with his eyes wide open for a while.
“That’s how it happened.”
Jang Ki-young actually put into action the crazy thing he once told me.
Death – Mutation – Resurrection.
Unfortunately, his experimental attempts did not yield any results.
“This is the result.”
Sujin Kim handed me a sheet.
black.
It’s the same color as me and Suu.
I quietly looked at the gifts inside the closed circuit.
“At first it was fine. He talked and ate. But all of a sudden it got worse and it turned into that.”
“……is it a symptom of dementia?”
“It’s more serious. He is neither alive nor dead.”
I finally found it when I listened to Sujin Kim’s explanation.
Jang Ki-young’s fingers in the low-resolution screen are missing.
It seems that some of them were cut off because they were frostbitten during the last cold wave.
“So you’re both a human and a zombie at the same time.”
what is the difference between the two
Although they slaughtered countless zombies, it seems that the distinction between humans and zombies was not very strict.
As you can see, if a dead guy gets up and acts and attacks people, that’s a zombie.
The property of zombies I know is that something like a corpse moves around and tries to harm people.
Sujin Kim’s distinction was clearer than mine.
“A human corpse that continues abnormal life activities by causing mutations in the brain and organs in a state where heart and brain activity are stopped. That’s the definition of a zombie as far as we know.”
She showed me some video materials.
“As you can see, mutations caused by mutation factors are observed in Jang Ki-young’s brain and organs. Can you see the bump on this side?”
“yes.”
“But he is alive. My heart is beating and my brain waves are normal. Whether you take the so-called brain death theory or the cardiopulmonary arrest theory, Jang Ki-young is a living human being. But, as you can see, he is that shape and that type.”
I saw Jang Ki-young in a closed circuit.
He was sitting in his trademark straight posture with his back erect, staring at the air with sunken eyes and chewing his lips carefully.
Are you even angry?
If you are angry, what is your anger about?
If I were him, I would be confused.
The one he should truly be angry with is none other than Jang Ki-young himself, who has walked down the path of destruction on his own without gaining even a piece of the power he wanted.
Kim Soo-jin looked back at me.
“I called Park Gyu because he is an acquaintance of Jang Ki-young. Director Woo Min-hee pointed it out.”
She looked back at the file and added weakly with a shallow sigh.
“But there is no response. Park Gyu-ssi must have been unable to bring back the lost spirit of Jang Ki-young.”
“is that so?”
“There is nothing to be discouraged about. Did you see the girl sitting in front of you? tall.”
“yes.”
“I am Jang Ki-young’s daughter. They said she cared so much that she assaulted her ex-wife over custody, but she doesn’t even recognize her.”
I asked for some time.
There was something I wanted to ask my daughter.
She was still sitting on the bench looking at her phone.
I wanted to do something, but I saw the Failnet logo.
I respect you.
His light seems to reach here.
She was looking at the [Celebrity Status Bulletin Board].
“hi.”
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Greeted the girl
She looked at me blankly, then tilted her head, and soon had a surprised look on her face.
“oh?!”
“What.”
“Are you my father’s disciple?”
“I know.”
She tapped her phone hard and showed me a picture.
“Are you the one standing next to Dad?”
The photo showed Instructor Jang Ki-young, still in his 30s, and his students standing next to him.
“They say they are proud disciples.”
When I saw that picture, I laughed for some reason.
My posture standing next to Jang Ki-young may be too stiff, but Da-ram Kim, who seems to be in a bad mood, or Sang-hoon Lee, who clings to the prettiest female classmate in the meantime, or Min-hee Woo, who is standing alone and posing as a model, crosses her hands in an X shape. It was because it was so fun to see colleagues from memories such as Kong Kyung-min, who took a unique fighting pose, taking a seat while revealing their individuality.
At the edge of the picture, at the point furthest away from me and Jang Ki-young, Kang Min-min, with his head slightly lowered and a worried shadow on his face, stood with his shoulders hunched over and his distance from his other colleagues.
this guy
That day, you came to take a commemorative photo.
I thought you didn’t come
“Then you know my name.”
He looked at the pictures for a while and said.
“no. I don’t know. Dad showed pictures of his students, but never once told them their names. That savior Kang Min-min must be one of them!”
She suddenly opened her eyes.
“Ho, ho, are you Kang Kang Min-nim?!”
“no. He’s not that great.”
“Well, there’s no way such a great person would come.”
From the beginning, I had a question about dealing with the girl.
It was the fact that I couldn’t find the slightest bit of sadness in her.
“are you okay?”
asked the girl
“What?”
“Aren’t you worried about the instructor’s condition?”
“Not really. It’s a sign I haven’t seen since elementary school. You’re my dad’s disciple, don’t you know? That temperament hair.”
“……It was damn right.”
“see. It was more damn right for us. really. Ugh. You won’t know if you don’t get hurt.”
The girl put on a face full of joy and sorrow and patted her chest lightly.
“Why are you here?”
I asked without knowing.
“The communication here works well and the food is served well, but I want to go to Jeju Island.”
She handed me a sheet of paper.
It’s a mental sensory sheet.
Unlike her father, who couldn’t get out of the black color even after becoming that shape and that, his daughter’s sheet had turned a faint light pink.
“oh. It also changes to this color.”
“Sword – Blue – Red – Gray – White Don’t you know?”
“Wouldn’t it be better to go to hundred?”
“Yes!”
“Where are you?”
“Isn’t it between the enemy and the society? They say that gray is definitely a safe zone, but in my case, I also have a dad.”
She smiled bitterly and turned to the closed door.
“When Dad wakes up, he says he’ll put you in as a special exception. Someone named Woo Min-hee’s older sister.”
“Isn’t it more of an aunt than an older sister?”
“You look fine, but you seem to be doing well without any problems?”
“…”
After saying goodbye to the unknown girl, he went back to Kim Soo-jin.
“Now what about the instructor?”
At my question, Kim Soo-jin rolled her eyes and thought of an excuse.
“Please be honest. I am ready to accept any outcome.”
Sujin Kim said to this.
“I plan to dispose of it.”
“…disposition.”
“Even if you don’t dispose of it, it will soon turn into a zombie. I haven’t eaten or drunk and been like that for 4 days.”
Kim Soo-jin sighed and asked back.
“Besides, wouldn’t it be better to close your eyes forever than to wander like a specter like that?”
I couldn’t meet Woo Min-hee until the end.
I was able to self-objectify while sleeping in the excellent accommodation she provided and eating a decent meal.
That the existence of me is not that important to her.
just called
with a light impulse.
To her, I was just that much of an existence.
“Professor…”
Lying on the bed where the sun was shining through, I muttered my callsign, which everyone in the past had said with respect.
The man who gave me that name will soon be disposed of.
Coincidentally, Jang Ki-young’s disposal time is the same as the time my alma mater is demolished with dynamite.