Ch.92Reuse, Reduce, Recycle Movement (3)

Thud, thud.

With each step, pebbles crunched beneath my feet.

The surroundings were an immensely vast wasteland.

The air was dry, and the temperature slightly cold.

Thud, thud.

There were no traces of people.

Thud, thud.

How much time had passed?

No matter how far I walked, nothing changed. Only the appearance of the artwork around me was different.

Beside me, Choi Serim was panting and wiping away sweat.

As if we were lost in a desert.

“…”

“Dabin. Is this the right way?”

“I don’t know.”

There’s definitely a possibility we’ve been dragged into some strange space.

A trap where no matter how much we walk, we can’t escape.

But I can’t rashly execute anomaly observation.

We might simply be lost.

Thud. Thud.

“D-Dabin. Over there!”

In the distance, I could see a person hanging from a tree.

Looking closer, it was made from cut-up plastic bottles.

Thin plastic pieces had been assembled into a human shape, with the neck connected to an old rope.

It looked almost like…

“Huh?”

“Kuhak!”

“Noona!”

Choi Serim suddenly clutched her throat and collapsed.

“Keheuk, heouk.”

The world flickered again.

I could see its true form.

The absolutely not normal, real landscape of this place.

Human bones on the ground.

Each plastic bottle contained something round.

Human eyes.

I felt someone forcefully grab my throat.

“Kuk!”

I couldn’t breathe.

Was it true that when you’re being strangled, you faint because blood flow is cut off?

The pulse that had been beating up from my heart was cut off near my throat.

Not enough blood.

Each brain cell screamed for oxygen.

Even in the midst of this, my consciousness was hazy.

Like being thrown into flames while heavily anesthetized on an operating table.

I struggled to hold onto consciousness through the burning pain.

I felt like I would faint at any moment, but that was due to fear. My body could still move.

I just needed to stay conscious.

“Hreup!”

Tears had already welled up in my eyes.

Looking up at the sky while clutching my throat, it was red.

An old string gripping my neck.

A shadow loomed overhead.

The shadow of a person hanging from the tree.

But parts of the body had been replaced with waste materials.

Metal bottle caps occupied where eyes should be.

Cans covered the hands, and discarded slippers had melted onto the dusty feet.

The neck, where the rope was tied, was decorated with a necklace made of woven yogurt containers.

It was becoming increasingly difficult to stay conscious.

“No. Nooo…”

Words escaped without my realizing.

Even in my oxygen-deprived haze, my arm throbbed.

The mouth of a plastic bottle was stuck in my arm.

Like a blood-sucking creature, large and small plastic bottles began attaching themselves to my forearm.

“Aaaah.”

Gulp-

Gulp-

As they compressed and expanded repeatedly, bright red blood filled them.

Is it possible to suck blood through such a wide opening?

Blood bubbles continuously formed on the surrounding skin due to the pressure.

“Heh.”

And I was laughing.

Now I can go up.

I can remain forever by abandoning flesh and blood.

You can’t bury people in the sky.

Funerals are for the living, not for the dead.

We believe the afterlife is in the sky.

Plastic looming over my head.

The feet of someone who died before me.

The string wrapped around my neck.

I didn’t know at first.

This was the oldest form of funeral.

Abandoning all flesh and returning to nature.

The flesh and bones discarded before departure are recycled and become part of the landscape.

They become soil. They become wind. They become nutrients that nurture others.

And nature always changes.

The Anthropocene.

Discarded plastics and glass bottles, traces of humanity, remain in the strata forming a new landscape.

Gradually, my body feels lighter.

“Hehe, heh…”

The relief that everything is now over, and the satisfaction of completing a very difficult task.

I was smiling, becoming one with the waste materials.

Crash!

With one kick, the tree collapsed.

It wasn’t a tree.

Just a crude structure made of waste materials.

Wooden chopsticks wrapped in black slime.

Ice cream sticks covered in sticky sugar.

Wooden furniture with nails protruding from the joints.

As the structure collapsed, everything hanging from it fell down.

Pieces of plastic bottles.

A man’s corpse decorated with waste materials.

My body and Choi Serim’s body.

Thud!

At the same time, whatever was choking me disappeared.

“Heouk, heuk. Heouk…”

I savored the sweet air while gasping for breath.

As if I had really been hanging in the air and then fallen, I felt my feet drop to the ground.

I barely managed to regain my senses at the last moment.

Lying there, I turned my head to the side.

Choi Serim was panting with blood on her face.

“Noona. Are you okay?”

Choi Serim silently nodded.

“Let’s be careful from now on.”

We shouldn’t carelessly touch the “artwork” here.

I just nearly died, but I also learned something.

“These collected waste materials. They seem to drag observers into their artistic world.”

“Artistic world?”

“Yes. Each artwork has something it wants to express, right? That’s the purpose of art. The supernatural characteristics have intervened in that.”

“I see…”

“Just now, we almost experienced exactly what the artwork depicted.”

I barely managed to sit up.

I tried to look for the man hanging from the tree, but he had already disappeared without a trace.

“…”

“…”

Choi Serim stroked her own neck.

Red marks were already appearing on her fair neckline.

It was Choi Serim’s voice that broke the silence.

“Then, Dabin.”

“Yes.”

“Could this place also be inside an artwork?”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because the same scenery keeps repeating.”

Choi Serim swallowed and continued.

“Do you know how perspective is expressed in art?”

“Yes. Of course I do.”

Before coming here, I had been drawing like crazy.

I know better than anyone how to express perspective.

I recalled the most typical scene I had learned, a tree-lined street.

In reality, the lines extend in parallel. But from a perspective view, the two lines appear to tilt toward each other.

Trees standing along the lines gradually become smaller until they finally converge and disappear at a single point.

But what about it?

“Like this, the lines extend infinitely and then converge and disappear at the vanishing point.”

As she said this, Choi Serim pointed to a very distant place.

Nothing is visible at the end of the endlessly extending open space.

“So, this is also inside a drawing created that way? Is that it?”

“Yes! Dabin, you’re smart!”

Choi Serim suddenly tugged at my clothes.

Not pulling hard, just gently tugging.

“Noona?”

I could hear her breathing close by.

Choi Serim was exhausted. That made her want to depend on others.

“You did well, Dabin.”

As always, emotions manifest differently in different people.

Sometimes they appear as actions opposite to one’s original thoughts.

In Choi Serim’s case, her desire to depend on others manifested as caring for them.

“Hmm? Don’t you like being patted?”

“No. It’s just…”

“Come here.”

I quietly tilted my head.

Swish, swish.

I felt a gentle touch on my hair.

Choi Serim leaned close to me and praised me in a soft voice.

“You did well.”

“We’ll be able to get out of here soon, right?”

“Let’s find everyone else and quickly get to a safe place.”

The brief peace ended.

As if we couldn’t waste any more time, Choi Serim tried to stand up.

“Noona. Wait a moment.”

Choi Serim stopped in her tracks.

I held her hand and wouldn’t let go.

“You said this place is like a drawing with a vanishing point, right?”

“Yes.”

“There’s one more thing.”

The artworks here draw viewers into their world.

The open space we first saw was also a massive artwork.

“We’ve figured out this much through our conversation.”

“Yes.”

“If we think a little more, I think we’ll find the answer.”

Let’s slowly review what we’ve seen.

“When we first came here, why didn’t anyone notice anything strange?”

“What do you mean?”

“Anomaly observation. I can do it, but Haewon and Hyunmin can do it to some extent too. This is clearly an unusual space, but at first, no one noticed.”

When we first arrived, it seemed like a normal space even to me.

If there had been something strange, I would have detected it immediately.

But the truth was different.

This is a very dangerous space filled with anomalies.

An infinitely extending open space.

Sometimes it bewitches people to “recycle” their bodies.

So which was wrong?

“Well, I’m not sure, Dabin.”

“The answer is that both were normal.”

Anomaly observation functioned normally.

It’s also true that this is an abnormal space.

But there’s a saying:

‘In a crazy world, being normal is crazy.’

It’s about the standard of reality again.

Having an infinitely extending open space clearly contradicts common sense, but within an artwork, it’s natural.

That’s why anomaly observation couldn’t find anything.

This ability detects parts that violate the “reality” in which one exists.

I was pulled from one “reality” into another “reality.”

Like what happened recently on the 7th Floor.

“Then, this should also be possible.”

“Dabin?”

“Hold onto this. Show it to the others when they arrive.”

Choi Serim took the book with a puzzled expression.

Written on the page was a top-tier “anti-memetic.”

A treatment that can immediately bring someone to their senses, even if they’re captivated by a memetic kill agent.

Just having them read it is enough.

“What? Did you figure something out? Do you know where the others are?”

“No.”

I shook my head.

“I’ll bring them here.”

The next moment.

Whoosh-

With the sound of a book opening, four people appeared at once.

Yoon Daju, Heo Yoon, Seok Hyunmin, and even the AI.

They weren’t in great shape.

People still muttering nonsense, as if bewitched by the memetic kill agent.

“Noona!”

“Got it!”

When Choi Serim showed them the anti-memetic, light gradually returned to their cloudy eyes.

“What… What was happening until now?”

“Ah! It hurts!”

“Was it another memetic kill agent?”

“Urgh.”

People were dazed for a while, then frowned at the delayed pain.

Skin was torn in various places, and some looked pale as if blood had been drawn.

Daju was the most severely injured.

“Hnnng. Uuugh… Oppa… Oppaa…”

Her hair was missing in patches.

Blood still gushed from her gums where teeth had been pulled out.

Almost no teeth remained.

Her fingernails had also been pulled out, leaving only raw flesh at the fingertips.

“What do we do? Daju. What should we do?”

Shocked by the sight, Choi Serim kept muttering the same words.

I quietly approached and gently pressed Daju’s shoulder.

“Just bear with it a little. You’ll feel better soon.”

“It hurts… What happened to me…”

Blood gushed from Daju’s mouth every time she spoke.

“Don’t be afraid. Just bear with it a little longer.”

It didn’t take long for the wounds to heal.

Waste materials gathered from all over the open space.

Items made through “recycling.”

Just looking at them made me nauseous.

Making a teddy bear out of bloody hair?

I couldn’t imagine such a thing even if someone asked me to.

Anyway, the recycled materials gathered from everywhere were disassembled and returned to their original owners in their original form.

“…”

Daju had fallen asleep.

There were still wounds here and there, but the horrific appearance from earlier was gone.

The others had also passed out from exhaustion.

I quietly watched over the group.

“We’ll rest here for a bit and then move right away.”

“It’s just us two again.”

I quietly nodded.

Choi Serim and me.

Just the two of us again.

“What did you do earlier?”

“Didn’t you already know? I wasn’t even blocking mind reading.”

“That’s true, but I thought hearing Dabin explain would be different.”

Choi Serim twisted her shoulders as if embarrassed.

…I think I know why.

“Are you trying to praise me again?”

Caught, she smiled broadly and said:

“Yes.”

What I did was really simple.

And being able to do it so easily was also thanks to Choi Serim.

“Then I’ll show you this first.”

In the peace we had regained after a long time, I began my explanation.