episode_0048

“Do-hoon! I know how anxious I was because you suddenly left alone! Huh? Why the shorts… Wait, are you okay?”

As expected, Hyeji was still noisy. An idiot with no sense, no caution, and no common sense.

At first, I had planned to save her and then force her to do whatever she did wrong, but now, strangely, I didn’t feel like doing that. But that didn’t mean I would just listen to Hyeji’s nagging.

“Be noisy…”

“Thank goodness!”

I frowned. Was this year a bad fit? Someone was dying from pain, so what’s the big deal?

“Hyeji, what a relief…”

The old man must have had similar thoughts because he put the brakes on Hyeji’s nonsense.

“In my experience, if you have the energy to say something like that, it means it’s not that bad!”

Hyeji smiled with an incredibly bright face, as if something had gotten stuck in her head while she was searching through the electronics store.

“I was exposed to danger for a moment! As a result, Do-hoon rescued Dan-hwa without any major problems, and it seems like there’s progress between the two, so isn’t it a good thing? It’s a complete blessing in disguise!”

“Crazy bitch.”

I didn’t want to talk any more, so I just buried my face in the old man’s back and went to sleep. I had been running until my feet were sweaty in this cold weather, and I had been through a near-death experience, so I felt like I was just pouring out of exhaustion.

*

“Hyeji, what are you planning to do later?”

“Me? Why?”

Do-hoon scratched his head. Hye-ji didn’t really need to explain this to her. Moreover, I think I told her this earlier, but she must have forgotten.

“What are you going to do about the aftermath of the incident? She’s just tired right now, so when she finds the energy later, Hyeji, you’ll be in big trouble.”

“Hehe, I guess I know a little more about shorts than you do. Maybe it’s because we’re both women?”

“Huh…?”

Do-hoon made a face as if he was wondering what Hye-ji was talking about. Of course, even with that face, he didn’t forget to pack the things Hye-ji had insisted on taking.

“The Danhwa I know is the type that, if he’s really angry, he’ll let it out no matter what happens to his body. That’s why I said it was fortunate!”

“What, fortunately it was you…”

Do-Hoon was wondering if he should be angry at this thick-skinned fool.

If the incident had gone wrong, if she had suffered a serious injury rather than just a simple back injury, Hyeji wouldn’t have been able to smile like that.

“You’re not mad, are you? You’re just being polite, and you’re really glad that Danhwa wasn’t hurt too much? ”

Hyeji desperately protested with a slightly embarrassed expression on her face. Dohoon smiled bitterly, thinking that she had lost control of her facial expressions.

“Ehehehe…”

Do-hoon opened his mouth because he felt he had to say something to Hye-ji, who was laughing along with him. If this kind of thing happens again in the future, it will be a nuisance not only to Dan-hwa and himself, but also to the members of the shelter.

“If you need anything, don’t act on your own, just ask me. When you were at the Blue House, you were safe wherever you went, so your careless personality wasn’t a big problem. But now that you’re at our shelter, you have to fix that personality or you’ll be in trouble.”

Do-hoon spoke with a serious expression. Hye-ji also lowered her head, knowing that Do-hoon wasn’t just saying it in passing.

“Yes… I understand. Mr. Do-Hoon…”

“Let’s go quickly. It’s not right to carry a sick child and do this.”

*

The cold wind pierced my body. Judging from the lack of a musty smell, it seemed to have come out of the sewer. I opened my eyes, wondering what it was.

“Are you awake?”

As I was waking up, I must have moved a little, because the old man noticed me like a ghost and spoke to me.

“Because it’s cold.”

I answered the old man’s questions with only the facts, without any exaggeration. Even as I did so, my body began to shrink involuntarily, and I ended up unintentionally pressing myself against the old man’s back.

“Sorry, I was just taking a quick break and looking around because the view wasn’t that bad.”

I took a quick look around and Hyeji wasn’t there. If you were watching, where did you drop Hyeji?

What if I get lost somewhere strange in the middle and have an accident?

“What about Hyeji?”

“Hyeji went into the shelter.”

What, didn’t you say you were just taking a break and looking around? It’s fucking cold, so when you get here, you should just go in and warm up. Why are you dragging me here and causing trouble?

“Even though winter is a bit cold, isn’t the scenery nice?”

“It’s not just a little cold, it’s really cold. You probably feel less cold because you’ve been eating hard and gaining weight, but my situation is completely different.”

Aren’t you shivering right now, clinging to your old man’s back, trying to endure the cold even a little?

Still, I felt a bit awkward ignoring him while he was making such a fuss, so I looked over the old man’s shoulder and took in the sight he was seeing.

A pure white city came into view. There were probably originally white buildings, but there were more of them because of the snow piled up on the outside.

The trees that wrapped around the building were holding snowflakes in their arms instead of leaves. And the zombies that filled the streets below had turned into snowmen, making for a spectacular sight.

Honestly, it wasn’t bad. But when I think about the hardships I went through just now after stepping into a place that had become like that, I think that feeling will sink in.

“How is it? It’s not bad, is it?”

“I could have told you it was okay if only my back didn’t hurt as much. It’s too bad.”

“Sorry, I should have arrived a little earlier…”

No, I’m not questioning you, I’m just saying that my back hurts…

The atmosphere was a bit strange. I should say that I could clearly see the old man blaming himself. Anyway, this person had become a little dark.

“That’s not what I meant for you to take it that way, is it? And I said thank you. It’s my fault, not yours.”

The old man smiled faintly at my words.

“Thank you for saying that. Now that I think about it, I heard something I didn’t hear the first time I saved you.”

Was I like that…? My personality was so bad that I didn’t even say thank you to the person who saved my life… Ah, I didn’t really want to live back then.

“Just at that time, um…”

It was something I couldn’t say to his face, ‘I didn’t really want to live, but you saved my life, so I did.’ It was just shameless.

“I guess I forgot because I was absent-minded. Why, should I do that too this time?”

The old man shook his head at my words. The smile that had spread across his face did not disappear, but looking at him, I began to feel a little uncomfortable.

Why is this person acting so disgustingly like this?

“No, that’s not what I meant to hear.”

“Then what is it?”

I didn’t realize that I was being rude. Maybe it was because I felt like he was treating me like a child.

“That’s what I thought. At that time, when I saw you, Danhwa, I thought, ‘Is it okay for a kid like this to have eyes like this?’ It felt like I was looking at my old colleague. That guy’s eyes were always lifeless.”

The old man tried to tell a dark story.

It was difficult. I didn’t want to bring up the past.

Whether it was in a past life or in this life, how many good things happened…

Just as there is no need to look into a sewer while walking down the street, there was no need to bring up the dark past.

Didn’t the old man himself show any signs of hesitation when he brought up the past story? There were also many parts that he muddled through.

When I heard the story at the time, there were more than a few things I wanted to ask or had doubts about, but since it was a story that the old man didn’t bring up, I didn’t touch on it.

“Even back then, I wasn’t a kid.”

I was just nitpicking to change the subject of the story.

“Let’s say he was a kid by my standards, and a teenager by your standards.”

“In the end, it means you’re a brat.”

“Is that so?”

This human… If only he were in good health, I would have given him something to eat.

“I felt good when you told me that you were grateful for saving me this time. I’m telling you now, but I couldn’t sleep at night after saving you last time. I felt like I had saved someone who was about to die.”

I wondered what he meant.

“That? Why?”

“No, what…”

The man ruffled his hair with the hand that wasn’t holding me. Then he blurted out.

“Thank you for changing from that time.”

“You haven’t changed at all? Whenever you do something stupid, I just want to die, so if you want to keep that gratitude, how about you change a little bit yourself?”

“Huh? I always try hard, right? That’s my motto, just do what’s necessary.”

I laughed when I heard the old man’s words.

“What the heck?”

“Oh, it’s true, but you still don’t know this.”

“I’m thinking about going to the shelter quickly, the scenery and all, my back hurts and I’m so cold I feel like I’m going to die.”

It was true. My heart was beating hard to somehow warm up my increasingly freezing body, sending blood all over my body, and my face was so hot that I couldn’t tell if it was flushed or frozen.

Eventually, until we reached the shelter, I had to cling to the old man’s back, sucking his heat, calming his frantic heart, and melting his face that was about to burst from the cold.