Ch.114Snapshot (4)

“Let’s get him down first. We have to.”

While we were talking, Chen was still hanging from the drawer.

Heo Yoon pulled over a footstool from the corner of the hardware store.

“Dabin, stay where you are. I’ll do it myself.”

Heo Yoon climbed onto the footstool by herself.

Even when I offered to help, she shook her head in refusal.

“I have to do this.”

Her voice was firm.

I had no choice but to step back.

“Alright.”

Instead, I kept staring at the words written on the wall.

There was definitely something there.

I had the feeling I was missing something incredibly simple.

[THEREISNOHOPEHERE]

Five characters neatly written on the wall.

Even as Heo Yoon was taking care of the body, I couldn’t take my eyes off those words.

“Huff, huff…”

Heo Yoon finished her task, breathing heavily.

The man called Chen who had been swinging from the ceiling was now lying peacefully on the floor.

I looked down at this man who had once been alive, my head bowed.

“What do we do now? We can’t take him outside.”

We were discussing what to do with the body.

Aside from the space-time limitations, this floor was identical to reality.

Normal people, police, and administrative systems definitely existed here.

Two women carrying a corpse out of a hardware store? We’d definitely attract attention.

Heo Yoon peeled her sweat-soaked hair from her face.

“I don’t know. But we can’t just leave him hanging.”

“True. That’s true.”

“Let’s go back for now. We need to talk with the others.”

Even as she said this, Heo Yoon walked deeper into the hardware store.

She came back with a blanket and covered the body.

“There. That’s better.”

With her lips tightly pressed together, Heo Yoon headed toward the store’s shutter.

“Let’s go.”

I was the one who couldn’t leave easily.

[THEREISNOHOPEHERE]

Why? For what purpose did someone leave this message?

It was too big a secret to figure out from just five characters.

No. Before that, I was missing something very simple.

I didn’t want to leave until I figured out what it was.

“Dabin. I said let’s go.”

“…”

The face of Chen, now covered under the blanket.

The final impression he left flashed quickly through my mind.

“Wait a moment.”

I stopped walking.

It really was a simple problem.

Like a machine missing a tiny screw. That’s what was missing.

“This person Chen. Where did you say he was from?”

Heo Yoon just ran her hand through her hair, looking confused.

“What do you mean? Are you talking about the time before he entered the apartment? Or…”

“His country. His nationality.”

‘Where the teacher came from.’ Heo Yoon muttered softly before answering.

“Hong Kong. He was ethnically Chinese but British.”

“Then he would have used Chinese or English.”

“Yes. But why?”

I pointed to the words written on the wall.

“This is written in Korean.”

“What?!”

“He didn’t know how to write Korean, did he?”

“No. He never needed to. Because… everything was translated.”

Heo Yoon’s voice grew louder.

If what was written on the wall was just a pessimistic last message, it wouldn’t have been written in Korean.

Because Chen was a foreigner.

We had been missing something so obvious for a while.

It was because of the “translation system” that existed in the apartment.

“Inside the apartment, everything was translated, so there was no need to learn other languages. That’s why we missed it.”

“Yes. That’s exactly it.”

There’s a memetic agent called “Babel” spread throughout the apartment.

This meme, deliberately spread throughout the apartment, ensures its safety in people’s memories while translating foreign languages.

Not just speech, but also text and expressions.

For a while, it had been so natural that we’d forgotten about it.

“Wait. But aren’t the words on the wall also translated? They could have originally been written in Chinese or English.”

“That’s not possible.”

I picked up a T-shirt from the floor.

In the middle of the white T-shirt, stained with red spray paint in places, there was a hole cut in the shape of letters.

Korean letters, of course.

But since this was just a shape, not characters used to convey meaning, it wasn’t subject to translation.

“Now you see why he went to the trouble of cutting letters into a T-shirt.”

“To eliminate that possibility… Then the teacher had planned all this. He wanted us to come here and figure something out.”

“Yes. It’s almost certain now.”

I closed my eyes briefly and used the Librarian’s search system.

“There is no hope. Translated into Chinese, that would be meiyou xiwang.”

I continued translating and searching, looking for hidden meanings.

“Wait. I think I need to write it out. Do you have a pen or something?”

“Here.”

Heo Yoon immediately handed me a piece of chalk.

“The teacher had it. I found it in his pocket earlier.”

Crouching on the floor, I wrote out the Chinese characters.

没有希望

“Got it.”

The characters began to writhe on the floor.

Some other interaction was occurring as the newly written characters were being translated by the automatic translation system “Babel.”

!@$%^&*#@

Like corrupted characters in a badly saved file, the white chalk letters covered the hardware store floor.

!@%#^$&%*(*%&^$%#@!

#@$^$&%$^%#@#2#%@

!%*(*%&^$%@%#^$&#@!

#@$^$^%#@#2$&%#%@

!@#^$&%*(*%%&^$%#@!

#@$^%#@#2#$^$&%%@

And then.

Thud.

Something fell from the ceiling.

Thud.

It was a piece of wriggling flesh.

As if freshly cut from a living creature, it was still white because the blood hadn’t drained out yet.

Plop, plop, plop.

I tried to move aside, but Heo Yoon grabbed me.

“Stay still.”

What made her not avoid the falling blood and flesh was her feelings for Chen.

Someone she wanted to believe in.

A person she always depended on, like a parent.

At the same time, something strange was happening to Chen’s body under the blanket.

The blanket suddenly began to writhe as if alive.

Heo Yoon slowly approached and pulled back the blanket.

“…”

Heo Yoon couldn’t hold back and began sobbing again.

Under the blanket was still the dead Chen. But his skin had collapsed inward.

The corpse was hollow, with only skin covering an empty void.

Then what was falling from above…

I immediately knew whose flesh it was.

Someone who had paid too high a price.

As the tissues left his body, Chen’s corpse gradually shrank like a deflating balloon.

At the same time, blood poured down like rain.

“So. Dabin. What is this?”

Heo Yoon gripped my hand tightly, her face drained of color.

Her voice was calm, but I could tell she was trembling.

Without turning away, I faced the falling flesh.

“I don’t know how, but he offered himself as a sacrifice.”

The last thing that fell from the ceiling was a small camcorder.

I bent down and picked it up.

“He did all this to pass this on.”

Chen had sacrificed himself.

To deliver the video in this camcorder to everyone.

“Why go to such lengths?”

“To share it with everyone.”

What’s contained in here is probably the most dangerous information.

The most powerful memetic kill agent.

Just hearing and understanding the information would make a person melt down and lose their form.

But by sacrificing himself, Chen had stored a tiny fragment of information here.

So that everyone could hear and understand it.

“Normally, such information couldn’t even be stored in a device like this. He made dangerous information safe.”

“And the price for that was this? Dying alone in an empty place, being butchered? What information could be that important!”

Heo Yoon often lost her temper and raised her voice.

I silently bowed my head and looked at Chen’s remains, now just skin.

The emptied corpse, already in a terrible state, was slowly disappearing.

The pungent blood covering the floor. The pieces of flesh hanging on the hardware store shelves.

All gradually fading away, dispersing into dust.

I don’t know what kind of person Chen was.

I’ll have to ask the others when we get back, but I’m guessing he worked for the Foundation, probably in an important position.

Similarly, I don’t know what method he used.

This doesn’t seem like something that could be achieved with just one person’s sacrifice.

He had stored a small amount of the most dangerous information in the camcorder.

He even arranged for us to come here by slightly altering fate.

“Why on earth…”

Heo Yoon collapsed on the floor and began wailing again.

Wishes sometimes come with cruel prices.

***

When Heo Yoon first entered the apartment, everything had grotesquely changed.

In the words of later survivors, her timing was unfortunate.

She would step onto what looked like a normal corridor, only for sparks to fly and singe her clothes.

When she finally found a doorknob and placed her fingers on it, her flesh would be sliced off.

At night, she would hear sobbing. When she peeked out, children with bright smiles would pass by like mirages.

Just three days after entering the apartment.

Heo Yoon couldn’t believe in anything anymore.

The only thing she could trust was herself.

She could control her own body. She could move as she wished.

So. What could she do here?

Strangely enough, luck was on her side as she made all her preparations.

A rope and a chair. Even a suitable hook.

Heo Yoon placed her chin on the noose and cried.

The chair beneath her feet.

If she jumped off now, she could end everything.

Just as she was about to give up everything.

Regret washed over her.

Regret brought fear.

I can’t die yet.

Unfortunately, at that exact moment, the chair collapsed.

The chair that had once firmly supported Heo Yoon instantly turned into pudding and flowed onto the floor.

She fell.

The rope roughly tightened around her neck, cutting off her breath.

Even then, Heo Yoon didn’t give up and struggled.

Just a little more.

If she could breathe just a little more.

She could do anything.

Just as her consciousness was fading.

Someone appeared and cut the rope.

That was the first time she met Chen.

***

Back in Heo Yoon’s studio apartment.

More than twenty people were crowded into the small room.

In the center of the circle sat Chen’s camcorder from the hardware store.

“First, I have something to ask Robin. About the person named Chen.”

“Chen…”

As Heo Yoon mentioned the name, Robin showed a very troubled expression.

Was he such an important figure?

Heo Yoon continued without stopping.

“Yes. Before he went missing and was found here, he had been surviving in the apartment with me.”

“…”

“Chen was probably someone who worked for the Foundation. That’s why I’m asking you, since you said you’re part of the Foundation’s leadership.”

Heo Yoon asked in a monotone voice, as if her emotions were depleted.

“What was Teacher Chen doing before he entered the apartment?”

“The fact that I have to reveal such confidential information makes me realize the gravity of the situation.”

Robin began answering with a sigh.

“Dr. Chen. He held a high research position within the Foundation and was also the developer of the Chen-Mozgus Procedure. He was a highly trusted individual. In my timeline, he was still performing his duties normally and had no particular connection to the ‘Professor.’ I can’t think of any reason why he would approach the apartment…

This is confusing.”

Everyone in the room thought the same.

And they would continue to think so until we turned on the camcorder.

As everyone was lost in their own thoughts.

I reached for the camcorder.

“Let’s turn on the camcorder first.”

“Not here. It would be safer if people with strong resistance watch it one by one, in order.”

Robin’s suggestion was certainly reasonable.

Since we don’t know what’s on the camcorder, we should proceed as safely as possible.

So one person at a time, in order of resistance strength, would check the video.

“No.”

But this time, I couldn’t agree.

Robin is from the Foundation. Moreover, a person belonging to the leadership.

If there’s content in the camcorder that would be disadvantageous to the Foundation, he wouldn’t hesitate to modify or delete it.

Everyone watching together. All of us checking the video together.

That’s the true meaning of Chen’s sacrifice.

“Right here. We all need to watch it together.”

“It could be dangerous.”

“No. It will be safe.”

“Can you guarantee that?”

“…”

I took a deep breath and prepared my next card.

“I guarantee it with my authority as a Librarian.”

Silent shock spread across the room.

The authority of a Librarian who manages the Wanderer’s Library is not something to be invoked lightly.

Robin knows this too. Someone at the Foundation’s leadership level would have to know.

After hesitating briefly, Robin finally took a step back.

“I suppose there’s no choice. Let’s check it.”

I reached out and picked up the camcorder.