Chapter 24: To a Place I Can Never Return To

Perhaps because the number of students decreased, or maybe because the number of teachers decreased.

The sparring schedule was postponed by a week.

So says the hero(Warrior) sitting next to me, the one who saved the academy this time.

“I heard the story from the students who were there.”

“What story?”

“They said everyone else was down, but you ran out alone and fought the villains.”

“Did I do that?”

“…I’m sorry about what I said last time.”

“And for hitting you.”

“No, well, I deserved to be hit.”

“I know that too.”

“It’s just, I wasn’t in a good mood that day.”

“If only I had come sooner this time too…”

‘Where did the teachers go that a student has to be the one arriving sooner?’ I wondered, but come to think of it, they said all the teachers ran towards the villains and died.

A world where you can do whatever you want just by having power seems incredibly attractive.

In every sense of the word.

The teachers tried to throw their bodies in the way to stop the enemies, but they couldn’t do anything except have their chests split open.

And a young student, thanks to being blessed with talent, wiped out all the villains the teachers couldn’t even handle.

Honestly, this isn’t exactly a normal world, is it?

I thought about thirty came, but did they say the number of attackers exceeded fifty?

Apparently, everyone died, and only four escaped, carrying the carved-out hearts.

I’m not sure what they’ll use them for.

Probably among them is the heart of the teacher who kicked off the ground and ran out.

“Yeah, if you had come sooner, maybe fewer people would have died.”

“…”

“We were on our way back after finding and clearing out a hideout.”

“Together with the people working in the field.”

“What hideout?”

“You know.”

After she says that, silence falls for a while.

Only the sound of the news from the television inside the infirmary could be heard.

“I’ll go buy some coffee.”

“Watch the news or something.”

“Are you not going to class?”

“There’s no way there’d be classes at a time like this.”

“The teachers who would teach are…”

Saying that, she leaves the infirmary.

[On the news]

 A woman with sharp features was speaking.

She said the attack on the school was the work of an organization thought to have already been subjugated.

But the nation quickly detected it and subjugated them instantly with almost no damage.

Yeah, a likely story.

Believable enough for me, who saw people I’d spoken to die right before my eyes.

‘Weren’t they always saying children should live happily?’

‘That unlike us in the slums, everyone should be able to live a basic life?’

‘If you knew, you should have responded quickly.’

‘So that no one died.’

I don’t know if they learned to lie, or if it was just lip service, but for some reason, I felt disgusted.

Was it because the boy became an invalid unable to even speak properly despite being alive, or was it because I saw the teacher being dismantled right before my eyes?

They couldn’t even retrieve the heart that disappeared somewhere, so why are they spewing this out like such joyful news?

It’s always like this.

This world.

Everywhere you go, they say it’s full of happy people, a perfect place, but aside from the high-and-mighty adults, not many people look that happy.

The faces of people who clearly seem to have no problems eating or sleeping look gloomy, and there are plenty who look like they’re about to die.

Life certainly is tough.

Did someone say things need to get a little messy to change?

Not that I wish for collapse either.

But those crazy bastards who cut open other people’s bodies to take out hearts.

And a society that says it doesn’t matter because the ones who died were just small fry with no abilities anyway.

My head felt dizzy.

‘I want to take out a cigarette and smoke.’

‘I never thought I’d be contemplating justice at this age.’

Seo-jun comes back holding coffees with ice in both hands.

I took one and drank it; the coffee tasted much worse than I expected.

—————

The first thing I did after returning to my room was to immediately get high on drugs.

I had been grounded in reality for too long.

‘This is why the world looks so terrible.’

‘There’s no way this incredibly beautiful world, where there’s absolutely no reason to die, could be terrible.’

I take out my phone and go into my contacts again.

Then I call Si-hyun .

The person who, at least in this world, probably cares about me the most.

The person who, despite denying it, always sees her younger sister she’s never met in me.

Before, she used to answer within three seconds of calling, but now the phone just rings endlessly with the waiting tone.

I pressed the call button again, but nothing changed.

Sighing, I toss the phone roughly onto the bed.

It was a familiar emptiness, but for some reason, it felt worse than usual.

“F***ing hell.”

My head throbs, and I feel like I’m about to vomit.

The air that felt so refreshing when I crawled out of the basement now feels suffocation terrible.

Why is there nothing I can do?

It was the same when I was locked in the lab.

I killed those insolent guards, and sometimes I even ground up the researcher who stuck iron needles in my head, but in the end, nothing changed.

The one who saved me was Si-hyun after all, and the one who solved the problem this time was Seo-jun after all.

Something is definitely wrong.

Just breathing seems to twist my life into knots.

Humming the music playing from the TV mounted on the wall, I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes for a moment.

Though I couldn’t fall asleep and opened them again soon after.

While passing the time meaninglessly, my phone starts ringing.

Looking at the screen, the call wasn’t from Si-hyun but from an unknown number.

– Um, I tr-tried calling the number you g-gave me before.

“Did I give you one?”

– Uh, yeah.

– Anyway, are you h-hurt anywhere?

Come to think of it, I don’t think I saw  Hye-yeon that day.

She was probably out somewhere for training, like Seo-jun.

– I, I heard the st-story, but just in c-case.

“I’m fine.”

“No problems at all.”

– I’ll come over.

“You don’t have to c–”

The call abruptly ends.

Not long after, I heard someone knocking gently on the door.

When I opened the door, I saw a hesitant girl.

Recalling her expression the day she attacked me, she doesn’t seem like the same person.

Today too, Hye-yeon came into the room holding cookies in cute paper packaging, then dropped them on the floor.

Come to think of it, the state of my room is a bit of a mess.

The leftover white powder from getting high remained slightly on the table, and the floor was heavily stained with blood from my wrist that I hadn’t wiped up.

“…The room’s a bit messy, huh?”

“…”

Hye-yeon looks around my room for a long time, then wets the towel stuffed in the corner, yellowed from wiping too much blood, and throws it to me.

“Wipe the floor.”

“I’ll clean the rest.”

Saying that, she walks towards the powder on the table.

I roughly shoved the wet towel back into the corner and grabbed her wrist.

But she easily shook off my hand.

“Don’t touch it.”

“Suddenly barging into someone’s room and touching their stuff is…”

Maybe because I was high, or maybe because f***ing things kept happening non-stop, a wave of dizziness hit me.

My hands tremble, and strangely, only the area below my right eye starts twitching uncontrollably.

Feeling dizzy, I leaned against the wall, caught my breath, and then sat on the bed.

During that time, Hye-yeon, without even looking at me, scraped up all the powder on the table and simply threw it out the window.

‘What if a passing bird inhales it?’

“You know you get executed even if you’re just a kid if you get caught, right?”

“What were you thinking, bringing this stuff into the school and using it!?”

I didn’t answer.

‘Anyway, they kill even kids if caught?’

‘Seems like a harsh neighborhood.’

‘Where I used to live, even if a kid set off a bomb, they’d be found innocent initially.’

“I don’t know where you came from, but this isn’t the neighborhood you used to live in.”

‘It’s less that I came from somewhere… I just, fell.’

‘To a place I can never return to.’

‘And the place I could return to, where I lived, only exists in my memory; I’ve never actually been back.’

‘I only recall its existence through emotions, thoughts, and the memories embedded in my body.’

“Even Seo-jun, who said she came from across the Han River, wasn’t like you, n-not as much as…”

Our eyes met, and perhaps realizing she had suddenly made a scene by herself, the sharp expression she had moments ago vanished. She picked up the cookies she dropped on the floor and spoke awkwardly.

“S-Sorry.”

“Seo-jun wasn’t as much as me?”

“I’m curious what you were about to say, will you tell me?”

As always when Hye-yeon visits, I take out two paper cups, make cheap instant coffee, put lots of sugar in one, leave the other plain, and place them on the table.

The friend, who starts stuttering again, neatly unfolds the paper box and begins nibbling on the slightly broken cookies.

Then she takes a sip of coffee and continues.

“…Kids from the slums usually stand out, just like you.”

“Like casually doing drugs at school, or that specific raw vibe people who lived without laws have.”

‘As expected, it tastes bad.’

‘Even if the cookies are okay, if the coffee is terrible.’

“But Seo-jun didn’t show any of that at all.”

“I only found out after she told me herself.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s right.”

“She was a bit of a strange kid even in the village where we lived.”

“…You lived in the same neighborhood?”

“Who knows.”