Chapter 19
[You escaped from Cheongak Mary Hospital.]
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[#$%#$^]
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I finally felt relieved only after I saw the message box saying I had escaped. I still couldn't read the text below it, but I guess this is enough.
The journey of complete nonsense was finally over.
I'm extremely exhausted and in pain. Everything I went through at the hospital feels like a horrifying trauma gnawing away at my mind.
I came here in the first place to run from a vampire, and instead I got dragged into some absurd mess. Vampires, the Bureau, a cursed hospital? What, I have to go through all that? If I were going to get screwed over, I'd rather it be by Triple-Stage Disease; this is seriously not it.
My delicate heart was shattered, and my pure soul was stained pitch-black.
Even so, the reason I can stand back up is
...because I survived.
The time I locked someone in the black room while I was working as a guard. And Teacher Kim Seong-han, who, despite looking like that, gave me all kinds of advice to save my life.
Thanks to all of those sacrifices, I made it back alive.
So there's something I have to do.
Let's go find Daeseong St. Mary's Hospital. I need to deliver Teacher Kim Seong-han's ring. After that, well, I still have the wages I earned as a guard, so I can somehow keep living on the run.
That fucking vampire bitch, seriously.
Come to think of it, I feel like I was at the hospital for a really long time... how much time has actually passed?
With that thought, I took out my phone.
Some of my belongings had been returned to me.
Did they pack my things when they discharged me?
Huh? What?
Time... huh?
It had only been three days since I came to the hospital?
...
It was clearly what it felt like in my head.
No.
What was all the time I spent there, then?
I worked as a guard and also stayed there as a patient for a long time.
And yet only three days had passed?
What the hell.
Could everything have been my hallucination or delusion?
No.
There's no way.
The suture marks etched into my body, the ring on my finger, and the 'weird medicine' in my bag are all real. This is definitely not some illusion.
So in this bizarre space, even the flow of time got bizarre too.
Looks like this really is it.
Well, honestly, that's a good thing.
If a long time hasn't passed, then that's all that matters.
Better than ending up reported missing for no reason.
But even so, nothing's actually been solved.
In the end, the moment I got out, I have to run from the vampire again.
I climbed one mountain only to find another one. At this point, I felt a violently boiling rage. I have to kill that vampire bitch somehow. Even if I can't launch another crusade like last time, I still have to do something.
If I can't kill that monster bitch, then I'll have to keep living on the run. And in the process, I might run into the Bureau again.
Ah, come to think of it, all the cross-like items I had stocked up on are gone too. I had left them all in the guard office at Cheongak Mary Hospital, so there's no way I can get them back.
Let's replenish those.
Thinking that, I searched for the location of Daeseong St. Mary's Hospital. It's a big hospital in Gangnam. I do pass through the neighborhood where my studio apartment is on the way there... well, maybe I'll buy some crosses there and head up.
For now, I got on the bus.
* * *
I had a terrible dream.
Nurses with their eyes and mouths sewn shut came into my hospital room in a group, and with those hideous hands they tore off my limbs and dug out my organs. It was an extremely horrifying, disgusting dream.
I somehow died, but to my utter terror, the return point was inside the hospital room, so I couldn't do anything about it.
It was a dream, but I thought:
What is my return point right now? And if something goes horribly wrong, and the point from which I'm absolutely forced to die soon gets fixed as the return point, what happens to me?
Gasp!
Covered in cold sweat, I woke up to find that we'd arrived at the terminal. I shoved the horrifying thought aside and got off the bus.
A familiar neighborhood.
If only there weren't any vampires here, it would be nice.
I had absolutely no intention of going to my studio apartment or the subway station. I went straight to the Christian supply store. No matter what, I still needed at least a cross to defend myself. You never know when a vampire might show up.
And then, when I went into the store.
Hm?
I saw an unfamiliar clerk at the counter.
ㅡclack, clack, clack.
A man walking briskly with a bizarre gait. At a glance, his face looked very strange... what? Was his face twisted? This wasn't me messing around as a joke—it really looked twisted.
Like Photoshop, or rather like someone had blurred his face and smeared it all around.
Maybe I just saw it wrong and was mistaken, or he could simply be someone with a physical disability.
A deep sense of unease washed over me.
ㅡclack, clack, clack.
The man walked quickly with that bizarre gait, and to prove that this unease was just excessive suspicion born from my imagination, I secretly followed behind him.
No.
That can't be it.
There's no way I got mixed up in something weird again.
After vampires, the Bureau, and the cursed hospital, something weird again?
That makes no sense.
ㅡclack, clack, clack.
The man turned into a small alley. It was a path leading behind a large building next to the main road, but because of the time and location, no one else was around.
Then the man standing in front of the building wall looked around with a thoroughly suspicious air.
ㅡswish! Swish!
He turned his head fully to the right, then twisted his torso excessively and looked back to the left with all his strength.
A scene like an extremely grotesque piece of performance art.
After making that move, the man quickly backed away from the wall and then.
With all his might.
ㅡwhoosh!
He kicked off the ground and hurled his body at the wall.
So naturally, he should have slammed into it with a bang and fallen over. That's reality, that's what's right. I expected that future to come while my anxiety kept expanding, but.
ㅡswoosh!
The man went straight into the wall...!
What, wh-?!
What is it?
What the hell is this?
A bizarre phenomenon!
Another bizarre phenomenon!
A person passed through a wall? No, in this case did he go inside the wall? It was as if the marble outer wall of that giant building had turned into water!
If I wasn't insane and seeing an illusion, then this was clearly a bizarre phenomenon.
Fuck...!
Why do I keep running into this kind of bullshit!
I should've just not followed him!
I wanted to believe this wasn't a bizarre phenomenon, so I followed him and ended up seeing something for no reason. Now I don't know what's going to happen. I need to run right now.
...
With that thought, before running away, I cautiously approached the wall where the man had gone in.
I needed one last confirmation.
Confirmation that what I saw was an illusion or a delusion.
ㅡgulp.
Slowly.
I reached out and touched the wall.
notes
Aligned the title to the Apocalypse part numbering and restored every missing line. Kept the clerk gender-neutral where the Korean only specifies 'the woman,' and normalized a few small phrasing/repetition issues in the wall-scene lines.
schema field names should not be in finalLines
oops
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