Episode 15
“Are you okay, noona?”
“No… I feel like I’m going to die.”
I sincerely struggled to move even a fingertip. Perhaps because I’d been moving so violently, my stomach swirled and my head throbbed. It felt like my body was floating, and yet terribly heavy at the same time.
“Let’s… just rest like this for a bit. I… can’t move.”
“But we’re outside…”
“It’s okay. There won’t be any zombies today anyway.”
Stage 1 still retained a tutorial-like feel to consider players who were starting the game for the first time. After clearing it, all the zombies inside the school disappeared for the day. They would reappear after a day, but still, it was just one day. I thought about this as my consciousness began to fade.
***
When I opened my eyes again, what I saw was not the open sky but an unfamiliar ceiling. I blinked my eyes to regain my senses for a moment and rose from my spot in a daze. Then when I looked around, I found him sleeping soundly next to me. It seemed he had carried me inside the building.
I wanted to know how long I had slept, but there was no clock in sight. So, I turned my gaze out the window and saw sunlight streaming in. It’d been 12 o’clock at night when Stage 1 had been cleared, and given that the sun was up, it was already morning. By the way…
“Just how strong is he…?”
We’d gone around the school fighting off zombies here and there together. While I had fainted, he had carried me, who was unconscious, into the building. I seriously wondered if this was humanly possible.
I sighed quietly, carefully moving so as not to wake him, and exited the building.
“Ugh… It hurts so much…”
Every time I moved, various parts of my body screamed in pain, and involuntary groans escaped my lips when I touched them. I tapped and massaged myself here and there, hoping to loosen up my body a bit, but there was no sign of improvement. Eventually, I gave up and headed back to the counseling room.
I remembered that I had left the remaining food and medicine there in an attempt to lighten our load by a little before the third-day event began. Since the hidden stage would start at midnight today, we would have to stay here for today and tomorrow, so I moved to get our things in advance. All the zombies in the school were gone anyway, so it was safe to walk around alone. That’s why I had left him alone while he was sleeping.
I arrived at the counseling room with my aching body and picked up the bag of food and the medicine before returning to where he was. And there, I faced him, trembling with tears in his eyes.
“You…”
“Noona!”
As soon as he saw me, he rushed in. I didn’t know why, but it felt like a large dog running to its owner.
Wait a minute. This felt like Deja Vu. Hadn’t we done this before?
“Please… please don’t leave me behind and go somewhere alone. Please.”
“I… It’s not like I went far, just somewhere nearby.. since you were asleep…”
“Wake me up next time and we’ll go together, okay? Promise me you won’t go alone. Please!”
“Uh… Alright, Alright.”
Honestly, I couldn’t understand why he was reacting so strongly, but since he didn’t look too good, I agreed with him and tried to calm him down for now.
“If you leave me behind like this again, I’ll really get mad. I’ll tie you up so you can’t go anywhere!”
“No, why on earth…”
“You promised!”
“Uh… fine.”
Tie me up? As if I’d let you do that so easily.
I laughed dryly in disbelief and stroked his head.
“I understand, so calm down first… Are you feeling well? I brought some leftover medicine, so tell me if you’re hurt so we can treat it in advance.”
“…I’m fine. You went to get medicine for me again…?”
He stared at the medicine in my hand for a moment before burying his face in my embrace.
“Are you really not hurt? We’ll be here until tomorrow morning, so tell me before then. Once we start moving, we might not have the leisure to treat injuries like we do now.”
“We’re moving?”
He raised his head and looked up at me. Seeing him like that, I briefly pondered how I could convince him to leave this place and move on to the next stage.
“We can’t stay here for long anyway. The food supply is limited. We need to go out before it’s too late to find proper food… and I have to get other necessary things too.”
“….”
“Right now, the communication network is intact and we have internet, but we don’t know when it might be cut off, do we? When that happens, we’ll need a radio to know how the world is functioning… And look at us, don’t we look ridiculous? Our clothes are all torn… Hygiene is important, especially in times like these, so we need to go out and find things like that…”
I wracked my brain to come up with reasons to convince him somehow. Whether he was aware of my efforts or not, he just quietly stared at me.
“…So, I’m saying we need to get out of here for now.”
“….”
“Are you listening to me?”
“Yes, I’ll do as you say.”
I had been anxious that he might refuse, but when the answer I wanted came out of his mouth, I cheered inside. Phew… Thank goodness. I could take him to Stage 2 now.
“But noona… isn’t the current situation weird?”
“Hmm? What do you mean?”
“Zombies suddenly appeared out of nowhere.”
“That’s true. It is a little strange.”
“No, the appearance of zombies isn’t the issue.”
“Huh?”
“It’s possible for zombies to suddenly appear, right? In movies and such, you see strange viruses spreading, causing zombies to appear or the world to end. I get that. But what about the broadcast that echoed through the school yesterday?”
“Broadcast…?”
I tilted my head at his unexpected words. A broadcast?
“That broadcast definitely controlled the zombies. How could they control them? It’s strange that zombies would follow someone’s orders in the first place.”
“….”
“And yesterday, there was definitely something invisible preventing us from leaving through the main gate. After that, a strange screen or something like that appeared in the air and then disappeared, and we were able to go outside.”
“….”
“Ah, it came up to you too, right? The screen that said Stage 1 was cleared.”
I was so bewildered that I was at a loss for words.
Come to think of it, since I knew this was the game, I took it for granted that we wouldn’t be able to leave until the system window popped up and the stage was over, but from his perspective, it would have seemed strange.
“Noona?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah…. It came up to me too…. That’s right. It is indeed strange.”
“…Yeah, it is. Something’s off.”
I couldn’t explain it, so I just smiled awkwardly and pretended not to know. He stared at me for a moment, but he didn’t ask any more questions. An awkward silence ensued.
“…You know, you said you knew the future too, right? Do you happen to know anything about the zombie who appears at midnight tonight?”
I hesitated for a moment before carefully bringing up the topic I had been wondering when to mention since earlier.
“That guy?”
“Yeah…. Don’t you know?”
Hmm…. So he didn’t know about the hidden piece?
You could get a hidden piece by killing the zombie who appeared at midnight tonight, the final boss of this stage. The reason I’d been travelling and sticking to him was this.
“In the future I saw, defeating that thing will grant a special ability. That ability will greatly help you in surviving in this changed world. So…”
“Alright.”
“What?”
“You want me to take it down, right?”
“That’s right…”
“I don’t have that information, but since you do, it must be trustworthy. I’m fine with it. But can we defeat it? If there’s a reward like that, it wouldn’t be easy…”
“It’ll be fine, because I have a way. And that guy isn’t as strong as you might think!”
Relieved that things were going more smoothly than I had worried, I answered brightly with a smile. The final boss, contrary to his name, was actually quite simple to defeat. Unlike the mutant zombies we’d encountered so far, he could be overcome with strong willpower alone, without the need for physical force.
***
“Noona, are you really sure this is okay?”
“It’s fine. I’ve already explained to you what you need to do.”
“But I… I’m not confident.”
“Believe in yourself. You can do it.”
You’ve already defeated him before. In the game, he easily overcame the creature’s attacks and confidently obtained the hidden piece. There was no reason he couldn’t do it this time. Moreover, it wasn’t like he was fighting it without knowing anything; I’d already told him everything from his characteristics to how to defeat him. How could he not do it then?
Leaving him to his worries, I turned my gaze to the playground. 11:59 PM. It would soon be 12 AM. We were currently outside the building, in a spot with a clear view of the field, waiting to face the final boss. I looked up for a moment and saw the full moon shining brightly in the sky.
“Look at the sky. Isn’t it pretty?”
“What? Are you really stargazing in this situation?”
“So what if I am? It’s a full moon today, so the moon is really beautiful. There are a lot of stars around too.”
“…I guess you’re right.”
He said this with a reluctant face, looking up at the sky. The stars studding the sky and the full moon, round and bright. The conditions had been met. I lowered my head and looked at the playground.
“…Noona, I think it’s appeared.”
A dark smoke began to swirl in the center of the playground. At the sight of it, he grabbed my arm tightly and called my name in a trembling voice.
“I’ll say it again, you just have to stay focused. Don’t be swayed by any illusions. Everything that thing shows you is fake. It’s all stuff from the past. So don’t pay attention to those things and just think positively. Think about happy memories.”
“….”
“That one is associated with darkness. The concept opposite of light, it’s a creature made up of cold, filthy, and horrifying things. It’ll deliberately show you only bad things to drag you into the darkness.”
I continued, looking at the final boss who was slowly taking shape.
“That guy will devour its opponent once they’re completely consumed by darkness. But on the other hand, if you escape from there, it’ll self-destruct.”
It was very simple. There was no need for strength or intellect; you just had to overcome the bad memories it showed you. If you thought of the visions as illusions and tried to recall only good things, believing that it was all in the past, you could easily escape from it. That’s all there was to it! To think a thing like this was the final boss! Even a mid-boss would be much harder.
“Think of only good things, no matter what. Bright thoughts. Got it?”
Still, we shouldn’t let our guard down. Just because I knew how to defeat it didn’t mean I wouldn’t suffer and slowly die caught between terrible memories if I was caught unaware. As the form of the final boss seemed to be almost complete, I tapped Do-yoon’s shoulder.
“Let’s go.”
I wanted to kill that thing and obtain that skill as soon as possible. As soon as we stepped into the playground, I felt my hair stand on end and my body under pressure. It seemed the creature had found us. I only moved my eyes to look at it. Then I felt a vague figure staring at us. lI couldn’t see a face or anything, it just felt that way. And soon, the sensation of the ground beneath us collapsing, along with the loss of feeling in my body and a blurring of my vision, took over.
