“Hmm, I thought I had calmed him down well…… why is our youngest in such a bad mood?”
If there was one thing Baek Sihyeon did not know, it was that Baek Hyeonwoo was not human, and that as long as his threads were connected to a place, no matter how far away it was, he could know everything happening there as clearly as if he were watching from right beside it.
“It can’t be because I only rubbed our lips together a little…… Is he still anxious?”
Baek Hyeonwoo tilted his head with his arms crossed. He had watched the youngest since childhood, but just when he thought he understood what was going on inside his head, he became difficult to read again. Was it because he was human?
“What do you think? Hm? You were human, so you should know.”
Unlike the relaxed way he spoke as though asking for advice, the one his gaze rested on was in a truly horrific state. Hanging upside down, tightly wrapped in whitish threads, was a zombie with nothing left but its head. To be exact, everything below its head had been stripped of flesh and organs until only bones remained.
“It’s good that he relies on me because he’s anxious…… but I’m worried he’ll get stressed and become sick. Medicine can’t really do anything about that…… But if I tamper with his mind, I’m afraid I might control it wrong and drive him insane.”
“Grrk……. Grrrk…….”
At his muttering, the zombie repeatedly opened and closed its gaping mouth, but it was in no condition to give an answer, or even make a proper sound. Baek Hyeonwoo let out an enormously exaggerated sigh and tilted his head to the side.
“Right, what am I doing talking to a corpse?”
The moment he lightly waved his hand as though shooing away an insect, the zombie’s head burst apart with ease. Insects about the size of a thumb crawled out from among the shattered pieces that revealed a red interior like a watermelon, and their appearance was quite unusual.
At a glance, they could be mistaken for spiders. However, unlike ordinary spiders, they were pitch-black, and several large red eyes were embedded in their backs. In the place where a head should have been was something like a bundle of tentacles clumped into a round shape.
That was not all. Their long, pointed legs had multiple joints, and irregular protrusions and hook-like things repeatedly emerged from and withdrew into every segment.
They rapidly crawled up Baek Hyeonwoo’s body and burrowed into his mouth and ears. Some tried to enter through his eyes, only to be caught in his hand and rolled around like toys.
“What principle are they moving by?”
No matter what was done to them, they did not die unless their heads were destroyed. From Baek Hyeonwoo’s perspective, this was truly an incomprehensible phenomenon.
“What a headache.”
Zombies. Even Baek Hyeonwoo had never imagined something like this. Of course, while pretending to be human, he had also encountered various kinds of media. He had watched stories about monsters and ghosts with interest, thinking they had been made fairly convincingly, but when it came to stories about zombies, he had only admired the imagination of humans.
That was how absurd this situation was. It was the kind of thing even a nonhuman being would laugh off while saying, ‘Something like that could never happen,’ and yet it had actually occurred, so how could it not be bewildering?
“I hope the others find out the cause quickly.”
Tsk, Baek Hyeonwoo clicked his tongue and repeatedly tossed the insect, which had been thoroughly crushed in his hand, into the air and caught it again. It flailed its legs and whined as though telling him to stop, but he paid no attention and opened his mouth.
“All right, children. Let’s finish before sunrise.”
I can’t win against my younger brother’s stubbornness.
Baek Hyeonwoo added that and gestured, and soon, insects crawling out from the shadows quickly spread throughout the town.
While his insects diligently moved around the town gathering information, the first place Baek Hyeonwoo entered was a clothing store.
As the weather was gradually growing colder, he thought it would be best to prepare warm clothes in advance. Making clothes was not difficult, but he could not waste this precious time when only the two of them were together just to do that one thing.
“This one is no good, this one is no good either, hmm……. This one isn’t bad.”
But that did not mean he could choose just anything, so Baek Hyeonwoo examined everything carefully like someone who had come shopping. Other than a few things that needed to be worn immediately, he put everything else into bags and set them down on the floor.
“Take them back.”
The moment the order was given, one insect that had been crouching beneath the counter slowly approached. It looked similar to the insects that had spread throughout the town, but the differences were that it had several more eyes, its entire body gleamed as though coated in oil, and it was nearly the size of a large dog.
It climbed on top of the bags, firmly gripped them with two of its legs, and left the store while making a clattering sound. It disappeared from sight in the time it took to blink a few times, but Baek Hyeonwoo paid it no attention and headed somewhere else.
The second place was a supermarket, and the third was a bookstore. Nearly thirty insects were mobilized at the supermarket. Even the ones that had worked silently at first looked at Baek Hyeonwoo with expressions that seemed to say, ‘Again?’ when he set down the fortieth load.
“It can’t be helped. Daily necessities are important to humans.”
As he said that and gathered different kinds of dishes as well, they had no choice but to move diligently instead of wasting time expressing their complaints. The only fortunate thing was that what he took from the bookstore was not books, but a diffuser sold only there. As he left the bookstore, scattering information the insects had no particular desire to know about how Baek Sihyeon especially liked this scent, he stopped.
“Hmm? I smell a human.”
He had thought there were no living people left in the town, so Baek Hyeonwoo stroked his chin and looked down at the insects. When he silently scolded them for not searching thoroughly, they rapidly blinked the eyes on their backs as though they had no idea what had happened either.
“Fine, I’ll go myself.”
If someone had stayed completely still and remained hidden in one place, it was understandable that they had not detected them. Just how much of a coward were they to only start moving now? Hoping they would not be too noisy, Baek Hyeonwoo headed toward the place where the human scent was coming from, and his steps stopped in front of a flower shop.
The woman crouching among the various flowers and plants appeared to be the owner of the store. It seemed the zombies had failed to notice her because she had remained completely still among flowers with fairly strong scents. The reason her scent was leaking out now was probably because she had opened the door and looked around.
“Hmm.”
Flowers…….
The human mind was fragile, so it became stressed from moving too often, or even from not moving at all. In Baek Sihyeon’s case, he liked remaining in his nest for long periods more than other humans did, but that did not mean he never went outside. Had he not always walked around the garden at least once a day, saying he needed sunlight?
Thinking about it, the nest they had prepared was luxurious, but there were also parts of it that felt subtly bleak. Therefore, their new nest also needed a space where his younger brother could refresh his mood. To think he had only remembered that now. Baek Hyeonwoo muttered that perhaps he was unqualified to be a guardian and entered the store.
Jingle, the moment the cheerful sound of a bell rang out, the owner sharply drew in a breath and covered her mouth. The shadow leaking out from behind a large flowerpot was trembling so pitifully that Baek Hyeonwoo did not approach carelessly and spoke in the gentlest voice possible.
“Ma’am, I’d like to ask you something.”
She was so startled that the flowerpot rattled, swayed, and tilted to the side. The woman hurriedly caught the falling flowerpot, then cautiously stuck her head out. Her face and eyes were both badly swollen, showing just how frightened she had been.
“A, a person?”
“Yees, I’m a person.”
She looked up at Baek Hyeonwoo with a dazed expression, then looked around. Perhaps she wondered whether she had been trapped in a terrible nightmare, or whether she had been hallucinating……. But soon, she realized she had entertained a futile hope and twisted her face, only to flinch and look back at Baek Hyeonwoo.
The way she hesitantly stepped backward made it seem she had no intention of welcoming him simply because they were the same species.
“How did you…….”
“I was passing by and stopped in for a moment. Are you also good at growing plants?”
“Y, yes?”
“It doesn’t have to be anything huge. Just decorating something like a flower bed or a walking path.”
At the way he spoke as though he were truly just a customer who had stopped by while passing, the woman stopped being wary and nodded with a bewildered expression.
“That much wouldn’t be difficult, but why…….”
“Ah, I see. May I ask your name?”
“……Kim Hee, Kim Heeyeon.”
“Good. Ms. Kim Heeyeon, I look forward to working with you from now on.”
“Yes, yes? What do you meeeean! Aaaah! A, a monster!”
Kim Heeyeon only had time to make a confused expression at the conversation she could not follow at all. With a thud, what dropped from the ceiling was a gigantic monster resembling a spider.