Chapter 26: The New Journey

Yeosu had never once seen her mother openly express emotions. But now, Cheche was showing clearer emotions than ever.

She was pleading with her daughter, who had cried for days and then fallen asleep from exhaustion by her corpse, to leave now.

“Ah…”

A hoarse voice escaped her parched lips. Yeosu, who couldn’t let go of her mother’s cold hand for a long time, realized the blood on her clothes was fading and looked up at the sky.

The rain falling on the wilderness was clear like water. It was not yet contaminated.

Yeosu looked at her mother’s face, which was becoming clearer as the dried blood washed away. Was it heaven’s comfort for the horrific last moments? Though there were no longer gods on Earth, Yeosu felt that her mother’s upward-facing face looked as if she were making a wish to him.

Yeosu found the courage she hadn’t been able to muster for a very long time. She straightened her knees and stood up, taking off her clothes, which were stained brown with blood.

Though it was only half the length of the tall Cheche, Yeosu covered Cheche’s decomposing body with the clothes that uniquely retained her warmth. Soon after the rain stopped, the sandstorm would carry her into the ground.

She took off Cheche’s worn-out shoes and placed them beside her. They were shabby shoes, but Cheche had cherished them and worn them carefully.

Finally, Yeosu kissed her mother’s cheek. It was something she had never dared to attempt before, afraid of her strict mother.

‘If only she had thrown more tantrums. If only she had dared to approach her more, without fearing being disliked.’

Would she have been closer to her mother then?

The empty regret chilled Yeosu’s heart. Even as she resolved to leave, her gaze couldn’t part from her mother. If she left, where would she go? Where could she go to live as her mother wished?

Even as she walked through the sinking mud, Yeosu kept looking back, checking on her mother lying there. The rain did not weaken even slightly.

It was fortunate, at least. In this weather, the human soldiers wouldn’t come here until the sandstorm hid her mother.

Ahead lay a wilderness of rugged hills, and a black sky. Yeosu, who had kept glancing back until her mother was out of sight, succumbed to the overwhelming fatigue and cold, and collapsed onto the ground.

Her thin underwear barely covered her body, but it couldn’t stop the icy wind from sweeping over her arms and legs. Her eyes began to close again, blinking. All strength left her body as if her blood was draining out.

The fluttering paper that landed near her might have been Cheche’s last outstretched hand to the child whose time to die was approaching. In the fleeting moment her consciousness blurred, Yeosu picked up the paper that had fallen in front of her.

The paper, soggy from the rain and with its edges torn, was a propaganda flyer she knew well. It was when she was blinking, trying to read the letters in the darkness.

A strong orange light stung Yeosu’s eyes. A girl’s voice reached her, as she shielded her eyes with her arm.

“Hey, are you going to the screening center too?”

The orange light was a headlight. As she lowered her arm, she saw a two-wheeled vehicle that looked like it could be a piece of junk.

Yeosu looked at the girl sitting on the saddle, avoiding the light. The girl, meeting her gaze, tilted her head.

“I thought you were, because you were holding a flyer… Why are you only wearing underwear?”

Her tone was cautious. It was as if she was wary of a mad child who deliberately took off her clothes to brave the rain.

Yeosu squinted to see her more clearly, as she couldn’t see properly due to the light. She had thought it was just one girl, but there were two people sitting on the saddle.

The one who had been speaking to her wore a short-sleeved shirt so covered in dirt that one wondered if it was originally brown, and comfortable-looking black leather pants. She seemed older than Yeosu, but not yet an adult.

The woman sitting at the very front, on the other hand, was middle-aged. She was chewing on something like a leaf in her mouth, but the moment her eyes met Yeosu’s, she spat it out and frowned intensely.

Yeosu instinctively flinched and lowered her head. Both individuals she briefly saw had skin that shimmered and was smooth like gold dust. They must be a mother and daughter.

“Can’t you speak?”

The girl, feeling suspicious that Yeosu continued to keep her lips tightly sealed, hummed, making a strange sound in her throat. Yeosu’s shoulders twitched at the peculiar sound.

Not far from here, where Yeosu had left her footprints, her mother lay, still unburied in the ground. If they took the two-wheeled vehicle, they would discover her in less than a few minutes.

Yeosu still didn’t know their identities. She was sure they didn’t live in an incinerator shelter, given their healthy complexion and untattered clothing, but that made them even more dangerous.

They could take her mother’s corpse, hand it over to the guards, and profit. She couldn’t let that happen. When the girl hummed once more, looking troubled, Yeosu hastily lifted her chin and spoke.

“I-I, I c-can, speak.”

Even to her own ears, her voice was terribly hoarse. Her stammering, worse than before, was made even more incomprehensible by the cold distorting her pronunciation.

Just as she was thinking it might have been better not to speak, an unexpectedly cheerful voice was heard.

“I’ve never seen a kid with such clean pronunciation!”

The girl smiled innocently, as if genuinely surprised. Having always been called Kuchanti or dirty, the compliment ‘clean’ was bewildering. And that with her stammering voice, to be called ‘clean’…

The girl, perhaps misunderstanding something from Yeosu’s slumped shoulders, quickly added.

“Oh, was I too rude? When you wander around, there are often cases where people speak the same common language but with a peculiar accent, so you can’t understand them. This is the first time I’ve heard common language that so clearly sticks in your ear.”

Yeosu’s body stiffened. It was because an old memory came to mind. When her accent was pointed out by others, she inevitably became nervous. What if she made a mistake and used barbaric language again, like last time…?

The middle-aged woman, who had been watching silently, sighed.

“Stop it, Shalbi. I know you’re happy to meet a child younger than you for the first time in a while, but there’s no time now.”

“Yes, yes. Hey, are you going to the screening center?”

The girl named Shalbi, who had responded indifferently to the middle-aged woman, turned her head back to Yeosu. It seemed she wouldn’t leave until she got an answer.

The screening center… Was she going to the screening center? She had walked without a destination, so she didn’t know where she was.

How should she answer so that they would pass by her mother without noticing? Yeosu suddenly looked down at the flyer in her hand.

The map was visible. The southern screening center had an ‘X’ over it, meaning it was closed. The northern one… was far from the shelter. At least it would be opposite to where the guards were.

“S-screening center… y-yes, that’s right.”

“Oh, I knew it!”

Shalbi clapped her hands.

“You came all the way from the incinerator, just walking by yourself to go to the screening center without a guardian, right? And then you met some raiders and ended up like that.”

Shalbi, who wore a peaked cap instead of a rain cover, gestured with her chin at Yeosu’s shabby attire.

Yeosu herself felt her chest tighten and her breath caught at the word ‘guardian.’ Her toes, buried in the mud, curled up, and her trembling hands clenched tightly.

The middle-aged woman, who had been looking at Yeosu indifferently until then, narrowed her eyes. Shalbi was engrossed in her own speculation, but the middle-aged woman could see the bloodstains on Yeosu’s hands even in the darkness. However, she remained silent.

Shalbi, more excited than before, looked back at her mother. The middle-aged woman sighed softly, admitting defeat, and nodded.

“Child, you cannot walk to the screening center from here. If you want, you can ride in the wagon.”

“Do that! You look so light, you’ll be able to ride in that narrow wagon without any trouble.”

Yeosu looked at the ‘wagon’ the two women had gestured to. A cargo bed with tires was attached to the back of the two-wheeled vehicle with a metal hook.

Inside it, a few cans that looked like food and tools were scattered haphazardly. Yeosu took a step, then flinched again and looked back.

Mom… She thought of Cheche, covered by her clothes, enduring the pouring rain alone. She couldn’t bring herself to leave.