Chapter 16: Parallel Universe

Knock, knock.

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door.
Hannah whipped her head around and, at the insistent sound, went to the door and looked out through the peephole.
Then she relaxed her guard and opened the door.

“If I had known you’d greet me in that state, I would have saved myself the trouble of looking for clothes.”

Zakar, who had come in brushing his hair back, spat out as he looked her up and down.
Hannah responded with a blank expression.

“No, you came at the perfect time. I was just about to sprinkle rose petals on the bed and fold a towel into the shape of a giraffe.”

The contents of the shopping bag she took and scanned were toiletries, underwear, slippers, comfortable clothes to wear, and sandwiches to eat, all from the convenience store.
It was perfect.
There was nothing else she could have bought for now.

“Go wash up. We need to talk.”

As she looked up and said it as if to give him a passing grade, the man who had been looking at her collarbone slowly raised his eyes.
When she raised an eyebrow as if to ask if he had a problem, he took his clothes out of the shopping bag without a word.
It was a good thing she had turned on the air conditioner.
Because she didn’t want anyone to feel the dampness she had felt when she came out.
While listening to the sound of running water from the bathroom, she took off the towel and put on a black tank top and shorts.
Then, with a sudden thought, she pressed the time button on the screen.
Saturday, July 18, 2033.
4:51 AM.
The towel fell to the floor with a thud from the shock.
It was 2037 now.
‘Did we come to the past?’
‘No, if that were the case, the Abyss would still have opened in 2030.’

“So this place is…”

Her professional senses demanded that she develop intuition rather than imagination, but this time, based on objective information, she considered all possible scenarios.
And by the time one conclusion stood out in her mind, Zakar came out of the bathroom.

“Ah, sorry. I forgot to mention, even in a cheap place like this, there’s no quota for one of us to walk around naked.”

She said to the man who was shirtless with a white towel on his head.
He replied dismissively as he dried his hair.

“The clothes don’t fit.”

Only then did his broad shoulders and large, masculine torso come into view again.
It was plausible.
First of all, there were almost no men’s clothes in this neighborhood.
Thinking it was a good thing there was underwear at the convenience store, she glanced at his combat pants, and Zakar strode towards her in just two steps with his long legs.

“So, what did you find while I was out there like a rain-soaked dog?”

“Do you like sci-fi?”

“Only when it’s mixed with action.”

“Good. Since we’re the main characters, there should be some action.”

That’s enough with the pointless wordplay.

“I looked into it, and it seems the Abyss never opened in the place we’re in now.”

The hand of the man who had been roughly ruffling his hair as he dried it slowly stopped, just as hers had.
And his gaze was immediately fixed on the screen.

“That’s why there was no operations base to fight the Abaddons. That’s why the factory zone didn’t exist. The space factory zone in Sector 17 was created as part of an attempt to escape into space right after the Abyss opened.”

“……”

“Do they usually call this a parallel universe? If this world is real, that’s the easiest explanation. It’s absurd, but that’s my conclusion.”

Hannah, who had summarized it as concisely as possible, waited for the sharp rebuttal that would naturally follow.
It was a ridiculous claim, so criticism was justified.
But no matter how long she waited, Zakar didn’t sneer.
His wet hair was calm, and he was staring at the screen with a blank expression.

“What?”

“What?”

“Why aren’t you saying it’s nonsense?”

“Because I don’t think it’s nonsense. I had a similar idea a while ago.”

Now it was her turn to be surprised.
Hannah raised an eyebrow and waited for him to continue.

“While I was out, I managed to get in touch with my father’s personal secretary. He was the one who personally cleaned up the mess I made when I was fourteen and didn’t want to go to boarding school, but today he acted as if he had never seen me before.”

“……”

“He was even offended by the name Zakar Kairos. After he hung up once, he didn’t answer when I called again.”

“…Wait a minute.”

Come to think of it, he had been looking at the time on the screen intently until they came here.

“Have you ever heard of the Kairos Earthquake?”

Hannah furrowed her brow at the rapid development.
The Kairos Earthquake?
She felt like she had heard it somewhere.
She guessed it was one of the earthquakes that had happened in the Kairos Desert.
The desert where Zakar’s family was based was located on the border of a tectonic plate, so it was a place that had always suffered from a lot of earthquake damage.
A vast, wide wasteland that withstood the rumbling of the earth.

“It was a massive earthquake that occurred in the middle of the desert in 1999. The magnitude itself was over 9, but the liquefaction of the sand base and the dust storms created a special kind of hell.”

1999 was long before they were born.
She couldn’t understand why he was mentioning an old incident now.
Hannah crossed her arms and tapped her fingers impatiently, asking.

“Are you saying this because the incident of a massive earthquake overlaps?”

“Something like that. At the time, there was only one survivor in the Allied Forces base in the desert that had collapsed. When asked how he survived the long disaster that had continued for a month, he said that when he crawled up, a deep blue meadow stretched out before him. He said that where the largest desert on earth had been, there was a forest, and he had procured both water and food there.”

“……”

“To be precise, he said he ‘saw such a world’. A world where the Kairos Desert was a meadow. ‘It was like a dream, but it was definitely real.’”

A shiver she couldn’t describe ran down her spine.
She finally understood why Zakar had suddenly brought up an old incident.
Hannah looked at his chiseled profile and opened her mouth.

“Do you believe such stories?”

“When the person who told the story is my own grandfather.”

“……”

“When something that seems impossible happens, there are two possibilities. Either it’s fake, or this is really another world.”

Zakar’s gaze finally descended from the screen to her.
His gaze was sometimes like a slash of rain.

“No one believes it, but in my family, there’s been a bedtime story that’s been passed down for a long time. ‘When the earth rumbles, a crack opens where the air leaks.’”

When the earth rumbles, a crack opens where the air leaks.
It was too romantic a story to come from the mouth of Zakar, who she thought was a realist.
But at the same time, Hannah understood the expression on his face the moment he came out of the door.
A face that knew something.
As if he had encountered a ghost he had only heard about, rather than being confused.
Hannah shook her head as if to shake off her stray thoughts and, before discussing the reality of it, pointed out the most important thing.

“Fine, let’s say everything you’re saying is true. Then how did the people who went there come back?”

“I never asked. Not after the person who told me the story died.”

The strength drained from her body.
In the end, it was back to square one.
Hannah let out a short sigh and sat down on the bed with a thud, tilting her stiff neck back.
The crack in the wallpaper, which looked as if the ceiling would collapse, was clearly imprinted in her eyes.
It had to be a dream.
It had to be a hallucination.
It shouldn’t have been so detailed and real, like an actual world.

“Your injury?”

She followed the long crack that stretched like a tattoo on her body with her eyes and changed the subject as if passing by.
The man, who was ruffling his hair again, replied indifferently.

“Ribs 11 and 12.”

It was a relief.
If it was ribs, the pain would be severe, but time would solve it.
At that moment, he bent down and rummaged through his pouch, retorting.

“What about your right arm?”

When she lowered her gaze from the ceiling, she saw Zakar swallowing a painkiller without water, as if he hadn’t said anything.
The injury to her right arm, when did he notice?

“It’s just a pinched ulnar nerve.”

When she spat out dryly, he immediately threw the painkillers to her.
Hannah, who reflexively caught the bottle, mechanically pushed a pill into her mouth and drank water.
Then, as she remembered, she took out a pain relief patch.
She applied it from her elbow to her wrist and stood up.

“Turn around.”

It would be difficult to apply it to his back by himself.
When she gestured with the patch, which had a wide application area, Zakar lowered the towel and stared at her as if he had heard something strange.

“I’m saying this because I don’t want to be indebted to you. And I hate seeing it applied crookedly right in front of my eyes.”

When he still didn’t move, she had no choice but to go behind him.
When she saw the black bruise that extended to his latissimus dorsi under his broad, sharp back, Hannah frowned slightly.
He must have been hit by a falling object from above while protecting someone.
She breathed in the pungent smell and tore open the patch.
When her fingertips touched his lower back, she could feel him tensing up.
She had expected it, but being in contact with the man who had said they should never see each other again was more uncomfortable and precarious than she had thought.
Perhaps because she knew what this precarious atmosphere meant.