Chapter 19
[You have escaped Cheongak Mary Hospital.]
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Only after I saw the message window saying I'd escaped did I feel relieved. I still couldn't read the text below it, but this should be enough.
My journey, during which I had no idea what the hell was going on, was finally over.
I was utterly exhausted and in pain. It felt as if everything I'd gone through at the hospital had become a terrible trauma, gnawing away at my mind.
I'd come here to escape the vampire in the first place, but I'd gotten caught up in something utterly absurd. A vampire, the Bureau, and a bizarre hospital? Was I really getting hit with the triple whammy? This was seriously not okay.
My delicate heart had been shattered, and my pure soul stained black.
And yet, the reason I could stand back up was...
"...because I survived."
When I was a security guard, I put someone in the black room. And then there was Mr. Kim Seonghan, who, despite being in that state, gave me all kinds of advice to save my life.
I had survived and returned because of all those sacrifices.
So there was something I had to do.
I decided to go to Daeseong St. Mary's Hospital. I had to deliver Mr. Kim Seonghan's ring. After that... well, I had the wages I'd received while working as a guard, so I would somehow have to keep living on the run.
"That fucking vampire bitch. Seriously."
Come to think of it, I felt like I'd been in the hospital for a really long time... How much time had passed?
As I thought that, I took out my phone.
Strangely enough, some of my belongings had been returned.
Had they returned my belongings when they discharged me?
"Huh? What?"
Time... huh?
I'd only been at the hospital for three days?
"..."
It had definitely felt like...
No.
What had all that time I'd spent been?
I'd worked as a security guard and also spent a long time as a patient.
But it had only been three days?
"What the hell."
Had all of it been a hallucination or an illusion?
No.
That couldn't be.
The stitch marks on my body, the ring on my finger, and the 'bizarre medicine' in my bag all really existed. It definitely wasn't some mere hallucination.
Did time also become bizarre because it was a bizarre space?
This seemed to be the only explanation.
Well, it was actually a good thing.
As long as not much time had passed, that was enough.
It was better than ending up listed as missing for no reason.
But even so, nothing had been resolved.
In the end, the moment I got out, I had to go back to living on the run to escape the vampire.
I'd crossed one mountain only to find another waiting. At that point, I felt a fierce anger boiling up inside me. I had to kill that vampire bitch somehow. Even if I couldn't wage a holy war like last time, I had to do something.
If I couldn't kill that monster bitch, I'd have to keep living on the run. And in the process, I might run into the Bureau again.
Ah, come to think of it, I'd lost all the items I'd initially stocked up on, like the crosses. I'd stored them all in the Cheongak Mary Hospital security booth, so there was no way I could get them back.
I should restock.
With that in mind, I searched for Daeseong St. Mary's Hospital. It was a large hospital in Gangnam. The route passed through the neighborhood where my studio apartment was, though... well, maybe I could buy some crosses there and bring them along.
For now, I got on a bus.
* * *
I had a horrible dream.
A group of nurses with their eyes and mouths sewn shut entered my hospital room and tore off my limbs and dug out my organs with their hideous hands. It was an extremely horrifying and disgusting dream.
I died somehow, but horrifyingly, my regression point was inside the hospital room, so there was nothing I could do.
Even though it was a dream, I thought about it.
Where was my regression point now? And if something went terribly wrong and the regression point became fixed at a point where I was doomed to die no matter what before long, what would happen to me?
"Gasp!"
I woke up covered in a cold sweat and found that we'd arrived at the terminal. I shoved those horrible thoughts aside and got off the bus.
It was a familiar neighborhood.
It would be great if only the vampire weren't here.
I had no intention of going to my studio apartment or the subway station. I went straight to a Christian store. No matter what, I needed at least a cross to defend myself. You never knew when the vampire might appear.
So I entered the store, and then...
"Hmm?"
There was a clerk at the counter whom I hadn't seen before.
There had usually been a middle-aged man with long hair slicked back, but now a blonde foreign woman was standing in his place.
Her blonde hair and blue eyes were striking. A Western clerk in the neighborhood Christian store was a little unusual.
Our eyes met, which made things awkward, so I gave her a casual nod and looked around the store. I just needed to buy some crosses and leave.
One, two, three.
No... three wouldn't be enough.
I needed a few more.
Different kinds.
Ones I could wear around my neck and arms.
And ones I could pull out quickly.
I could buy several small ones so I could throw or scatter them at any time, and one large one to use as my main weapon if necessary. Should I buy one that contained silver, too? Last time I'd asked, she'd brought one out for me. I'd just gotten paid, so I could afford it.
I was aware that this strange fixation on crosses wasn't normal, but I couldn't suppress the urge.
Still, you never knew.
Maybe I could kill the vampire with these.
If I killed that bitch, I could live without ever having anything to do with this hidden world.
"Excuse me. You have silver crosses here, right?"
She looked Western—would she understand me?
When I asked, the woman stared at me for about ten seconds.
"Excuse me?"
Her gaze was making me a little uncomfortable.
"We do."
"Give me one of those. And ring up all of these, too."
"..."
After I set down the large number of crosses, she kept staring at me.
It was admittedly suspicious to buy this many crosses. Even during the round when the Bureau had beaten me up, the middle-aged clerk had stared at me like that.
"You buy this many crosses?"
"Huh?"
"Has a vampire shown up somewhere?"
No.
Why does she speak Korean so well?
More importantly, a vampire?
"Ah, no. Of course not. I'm just buying them. I need them for some interior decorating."
"Is that so?"
Her mentioning a vampire for no reason made me feel guilty. She was probably just joking because I was buying so many. But she's blonde... Isn't that a little suspicious? The vampire back then had been blonde too.
"..."
There was no resemblance. And there was no way a vampire would be in a Christian store. This was just needless suspicion.
"Here's the silver cross."
"Yes."
"Do you go to a church or cathedral? Are you a devout person?"
"Why do you speak Korean so well?"
"It can happen. Is it strange?"
"Everything is fascinating, really. As for church, well... I'd like to attend faithfully."
I wanted to belong to a large organization and be protected, if possible.
"It's good to go. Keep at it."
"Yes."
She was surprisingly personable for a foreigner.
After paying, I left the store. What a strange woman. Was she a foreigner who attended a Korean church?
Anyway, having filled my bag with crosses made me feel a little safer. I did want to stock up on garlic too, but carrying garlic to my benefactor's hospital would be a little much.
Ah, but the strange medicine in my bag made it feel a little heavy.
I couldn't throw this bizarre medicine away. I had even less intention of eating it. Whatever happened, I'd have to carry it around with me... Wait a second.
What would happen if I fed it to the vampire?
I was quite curious.
If I got the chance, I should try using it as a weapon. Maybe this inhuman lump of flesh could completely wreck the vampire. It'd be pretty cool to stomp on a vampire choking on the medicine, blue light blazing from my eyes, and ask if she wanted to have a horrible time.
After that, I took a taxi up to Seoul.
* * *
It was a little after lunchtime.
I, Kim Geunhong, had set foot in Seoul.
Daeseong St. Mary's Hospital was in Gangnam, but I got off around Yeoksam-dong so I could look for somewhere to eat too. It would take about thirty minutes to walk to my destination, so I planned to find a restaurant along the way.
Since it was a weekday and a little after lunch, there weren't many people on the streets.
"So this is a metropolis."
The massive buildings lining both sides of the main road displayed an overwhelming grandeur. Modern fortresses built with immense capital.
A single building was worth an astronomical amount.
But I didn't feel particularly impressed by the concept of money anymore. Just a short while ago, I'd used a regressor's knowledge to make an enormous amount of money.
And beneath this world, there were things like monsters and the Bureau.
In a world like that, there was no need to obsess over buildings. That might be different for an ordinary person with no connection to the hidden world, but for someone like me, survival was the most important thing.
Perhaps the secretive powers behind the groups that built and traded these massive buildings were the ones controlling the Bureau.
I had to be careful.
This was Seoul.
Since it was the central area where nearly ten million people gathered, there was a high probability that the Bureau bastards had it under their control. This was a place where, if you let your guard down even a little, you'd get robbed blind.
I pretended to be an ordinary person and wandered through alleys and such, looking for somewhere to eat.
But then.
"Hmm?"
I saw someone strange.
ㅡStep, step, step.
A man hurried along with a bizarre gait. At first glance, his face looked extremely strange... What the hell? Was it twisted? It didn't look like he was making a funny face; his face really seemed to be twisted.
Like someone had photoshopped his face, blurred it, and stirred it around.
Maybe I'd simply seen wrong and imagined it, and he could just be someone with a physical disability, but...
I felt a deep unease.
ㅡStep, step, step.
The man walked quickly with that bizarre gait, and I secretly followed him to prove that this unease was just excessive suspicion born of my imagination.
No.
It couldn't be.
There was no way I'd gotten caught up in something strange again.
A vampire, the Bureau, a bizarre hospital, and now something else strange?
That made no sense.
ㅡStep, step, step.
The man entered a small alley. It led behind a large building beside the main road, but perhaps because of the time and location, there was no one else around.
The man stood in front of the building wall and looked around in a highly suspicious manner.
ㅡWhoosh! Whoosh!
He turned his head all the way to the right with all his strength, then twisted his upper body excessively and turned left with all his might.
It looked like an extremely bizarre piece of performance art.
After doing that, the man quickly backed away from the wall, and then...
Just like that, with all his strength...
ㅡWhoosh!
He kicked off the ground and launched himself at the wall.
Naturally, he should have slammed into it and fallen over. That was reality, and that was how things were supposed to be. Amid my mounting unease, I hoped that future would come to pass, but...
ㅡSlip!
The man went straight into the wall...!
"W-what?!"
What was that?
What the hell was that?
"A supernatural phenomenon!"
Another supernatural phenomenon!
A person passed through a wall? No, in this case, did he go inside the wall? He had entered as if the marble exterior wall of that huge building were water!
Unless I'd gone mad and hallucinated it, this was undeniably a supernatural phenomenon.
"Fuck...!"
Why did I keep running into this kind of bullshit?!
I shouldn't have followed him!
I followed him because I wanted to believe this wasn't a supernatural phenomenon, only to see something I shouldn't have. I didn't know what would happen next. I had to run right now.
"..."
With that thought in mind, before I fled, I cautiously approached the wall the man had entered.
I needed one final confirmation.
Confirmation that what I'd seen was a hallucination or delusion.
ㅡGulp.
Slowly.
I reached out and touched the wall.