“……Ugh.”
Other people said it was not like this for them, but whenever my fever rose, it would climb without end and then suddenly plummet all at once, over and over again. Each time, chills would come rushing in, and no matter where I was, my body would tremble uncontrollably regardless of my will. This time was no exception. No, if anything, it was worse.
This is driving me insane. This does not feel like something that will be over after a day or two.
I had a feeling it would take at least a week to recover, even at the fastest. I even became anxious that if I closed my eyes like this, I might never open them again, so I forced strength into my eyelids, but it was no use.
Unable to focus, the outlines blurred and spread as though melting, and the ceiling dissolved. I tried to call Moon Seyoung, who should have been in the living room, but forget making a sound—it was difficult even to open my mouth.
It felt as though my body had caught fire, and I had jumped into water to put it out, only for the flames to burn even hotter instead of going out, heating the water along with them.
It was so hot I could barely breathe, and my body felt as heavy as though I had sunk into the depths of the sea. Without even knowing how far down I was going, I was simply being dragged endlessly deeper. The helplessness of standing before something as vast as nature itself. Unable to overcome that fear, I eventually closed my eyes as though giving up.
That was the day the child saw the world for the first time. Not as a metaphor, but quite literally, the first time he had ever seen the world.
CLUNK, CLUNK.
Every time the vehicle jolted violently, the children’s bodies bounced along with it. At first, a few of them could not hold back and burst into tears, and once they entered an unpaved road, the sound spread in an instant. The cramped interior of the vehicle filled with crying.
But the child did not cry.
To begin with, he could not understand their sorrow, nor was he in a position to understand even if someone explained it to him. Even if he could have, the child would not have said anything. After all, his attention had already been stolen by the vast sky and clouds spread above his head, and by the weeds growing wildly wherever they pleased.
“Hey, what are you staring at so hard?”
One of the researchers, who had repeatedly snapped at them to shut up and threatened to crush their vocal cords if they made one more whining sound, asked in a swaggering tone as though the crying irritated him. Even while cursing the entire time over the children’s sobbing, he looked uneasily at the one child among them who sat still without crying.
But the only things the child could understand were commands such as come here, hold out your arm, open your mouth, close your eyes, and stay still. No one had ever spoken such a long sentence to him before.
Because of that, the child merely blinked without understanding. The researcher repeated the same thing several times, then irritably struck the child on the head.
THUD!
With the rough sound, he pointed at his own eyes with his fingers. Only then did the child understand. Wiping away the tears that had leaked out from the physical pain, he pointed outside the window.
The researcher raised one eyebrow and shifted his gaze, then replied with a bored expression as though deeply disappointed.
“I thought it was something important.”
That was the end of it. Having lost interest, the researcher folded his arms and closed his eyes, while the child rubbed the place where he had been hit and turned his gaze back outside the window.
He wanted to leap into the blue sky and hug those fresh green weeds as tightly as he could. If he could see them every single day, he thought he might be able to endure even the pain the researchers caused him. It was the first moment a wish had ever formed inside the child.
Even so, nothing changed. The child himself did not know what had changed. A strange sensation merely lingered somewhere in his chest for a brief moment before disappearing. There was no one who could have recognized it.
Even if someone had noticed, it would not have helped the child. What they needed was an obedient test subject without a self, not a person who dreamed of the future or harbored wishes.
“We’re here! Get ready to get out!”
In the meantime, the vehicle that had been moving steadily seemed to have reached its destination. Unlike the researchers, who chatted with smiling faces about how horrible the trip had been and how they could finally rest, every one of the children trembled with faces drained white.
Beyond a wall so tall that they had to tilt their heads far back just to barely see the top, and past a heavily guarded area, there was no longer any sky or grass. Only the gray world they had always known.
The child’s interest faded in an instant. Only then did he look away from the window and straighten his head. When the vehicle stopped and the door opened, researchers in white coats peered inside with intensely curious expressions and began making a commotion.
“Wow……. I heard they were sending a lot, but is this not too many?”
“The more samples, the better.”
“We received the files, but I cannot tell who is who.”
“Exactly. Could you explain them one by one?”
The children who could understand the researchers’ words all hunched their shoulders in fear. Some cried and begged not to be taken out of the vehicle, while others resisted with all their strength, but no choice was given to them other than getting out on their own feet or being dragged away.
As the people who had ridden with him left the vehicle one by one, eventually the child was the only one remaining. The child, who had been watching the scene blankly, stood up without hesitation at the gesture of the researcher waiting by the door.
“This one is the last…… Huh? Then this one is…….”
“Heterospecies synchronization subject C11-404.”
“……He looks more normal than I expected. I heard the monsters consider him one of their own, so I imagined something that looked like a mixture of monster and human.”
“Director Park, you have quite the imagination.”
“Good grief, he was suddenly transferred here without so much as a photograph. Is it not understandable that I would think that?”
The man called Director Park complained lightly, then crouched down to meet the child’s eyes. His curved eyes and smile looked kind, but the way he gripped the child’s face and turned it sharply from side to side was closer to appraising an object.
“C11 is confirmed to be a pure human with absolutely nothing mixed into him.”
“Are you certain?”
“Certain.”
“……Then why do the monsters not attack him and instead treat him as one of their own?”
“Discovering that is your role, Director Park.”
“Good grief, do you think I do not know that? I was talking to myself, to myself!”
At the researcher’s rigid reply, Director Park complained lightly and shot him a sideways glance.
“……In any case, the monsters did not attack C11 even while he was still inside the womb.”
“Then did he inherit the trait from the mother?”
“No. We thought the same thing and tested it, but she died immediately.”
“Hmm……. So that is how it is.”
Director Park ran his tongue along the inside of his cheek as though thinking something over, then his eyes lit up like a child who had discovered a brand-new toy. He gestured toward a nearby guard.
“Could you have a cleaner stand by in Building M? Rather than wasting time carefully checking this and that in the name of caution, I want to confirm first whether the monsters truly will not attack him.”
“Are you serious?”
Unlike the guard, who answered that he understood and immediately spoke into his radio without hesitation, the researcher asked with a visibly flustered expression. Director Park shrugged as though asking what he would gain from joking about something like this.
“It is strange from the beginning that the monsters supposedly recognize him as one of their own and therefore do not attack him. Those things bite and devour one another, yet every single one of them refuses to attack C11? I do not know. I think there is a major flaw in your experiment.”
“……We also conducted tests with different subjects and did our utmost to—”
“No matter what you did, the place you came from was the Core.”
Director Park openly curled his eyes and sneered at the researcher. The man’s face, which had remained expressionless, twisted in an instant, but Director Park continued without caring.
“Everyone knows the monsters in the Core are half-formed failures that can be killed with a single bullet.”
“……That is not true.”
“What do you mean, it is not true? Even when something dangerous is brought in, it is D-rank at best, is it not? It is widely known that the cowards in Eden restrict the monsters allowed into the Core to D-rank because they are afraid something might reach their own territory.”
Director Park lightly patted the researcher’s shoulder a few times, then turned around and tilted his head. It meant that if the man wanted to watch, he should come, and if not, he could go rest. Understanding the meaning, the researcher clenched his molars and followed silently behind him.
Naturally, the child went with them. He did not understand what they were saying, what kind of conversation they were having, or even what emotions they felt, but he at least knew enough to follow along when the situation demanded it.