Episode 3
What now? I escaped the worst situation somehow, but the current one wasn’t exactly great either.
Obviously, the protagonist was supposed to follow them in the early stages. I was a stranger he’d just met, and on top of that, changed my attitude as fast as someone turned their palm, so I was even less trustworthy. Wouldn’t the normal reaction be to avoid me?
I followed him, watching his reactions awkwardly in the silence. Ah, my throat was drying up. I wished he would say something, but he didn’t…. It was so suffocating.
“By the way, did you come from the beginning?”
“…What?”
Cancel that. It would have been better if he said nothing at all.
From the beginning? What? I looked at him, tilting my head in confusion as he said something incomprehensible out of the blue.
Then he looked at me with a hazy look and smiled. But for some reason, his eyes looked sad.
Why was he looking at me like that? What was wrong with….
“…It’s nothing. Rather, let’s speak to each other comfortably.”
“Ah, that…. I was just too out of it earlier…. I’m sorry.”
“No, that’s not it, it’s just that it’s more comfortable for me that way…. Ah, come to think of it, we haven’t even introduced ourselves yet, have we? I’m Lee Do-yoon. I’m 20 years old.”
“…I’m Han Ji-ah. 21.”
I said my name and age with what was sure to be a grim expression on my face. Then, he approached me familiarly, calling me “noona” as if he’d been waiting to.
“May I call you noona1Noona means older sister. It’s used by younger brothers to refer to their older sister, but also younger male friends. Some boyfriends also romanticize this term and use it to refer to their older girlfriend.? I’m younger, so feel free to speak informally to me.”
“…We’re only a year apart, though, can’t we just speak to each other without honorifics?”
“It’s fine. I’m more used to this way.”
It was strange. Something was off.
I looked at him with a questioning gaze. Maybe it was just my imagination, but he seemed to know me somehow. Moreover, he felt a bit different from when I first saw him. How should I put it…. He seemed to have more leeway, perhaps? He also seemed to be treating me too casually….
“I went to school here, so I know the layout inside. First of all, the situation outside isn’t good, and I think we might have to stay here for a few days, so I’ll show you where to stay.”
With that said, he naturally led me somewhere. I was suspicious, but for the time being, I followed.
Now that the protagonist had just escaped the tutorial, there were no zombies wandering the halls—at least for now. Soon, this school would be filled with zombies. So instead of spending time in the hallway like this, it was necessary to find a safe place first, as he said.
It was the infirmary that I arrived at after following the protagonist. It was certainly true that the infirmary was good in this situation because it had beds and medicine. The problem was just that it had no food.
He went inside before me, looking around as if he was searching for something, and then turned to me with a relieved face.
“Come on in. Fortunately, there’s no one inside.”
Why was it fortunate that there was no one inside? If by “no one” he was referring to zombies, then that would make sense, but I didn’t think that was what he meant.
In an uncertain situation, isn’t it better to be with someone rather than alone? It was normal to feel secure when surrounded by others, yet he, on the contrary, seemed to prefer being alone and away from the group.
As if he had experienced something bad while being part of a group….
Maybe I was overthinking it. Maybe he just preferred being alone by nature. That could be so, but…
As far as I knew, the protagonist wasn’t like that. In the first place, he died trying to save the group of survivors he was with five times – he was someone who loved people. Yet, the way he was behaving….
Had he gone through a regression already? But when?
I quietly entered the infirmary, closed the door, and pressed the lock. Click. The sound of the lock turning echoed loudly in the quiet space. I leaned my back against the door and asked him.
“You’re not going to ask?”
“Hm? Ask what?”
“Earlier, I said I’d go off on my own and then came back. Aren’t you going to ask why?”
“Ah…. That’s right. You did…. Is it okay to ask why?”
“Would you not ask if it weren’t okay?”
“Yes. If you don’t want to talk about it, then you don’t have to..”
At the end of those words, I looked down and closed my eyes. Damn it, that confirmed it.
This guy had gone through a regression.
Convinced, I suppressed a sigh and then opened my eyes, raising my head. Why was he still normal? The fact that he’d regressed meant he’d already died at least once. And he must have restarted from a save point, yet I hadn’t felt anything strange from him so far. There hadn’t been a sudden unnatural or awkward atmosphere.
First of all, it was a relief that the world didn’t just stop in case the protagonist dies… But the fact that he’d regressed without me knowing was unsettling. When did he die, and when did he regress? How the hell did this world work…
Suddenly, my head started hurting. Judging by his actions until now, he knew me. Otherwise, there would be no reason for him not to ask about my behavior.
“… .”
When I looked at him, he also maintained eye contact without saying a word. It seemed to mean he would wait for my answer.
On the other hand, I wondered, “Even if I died, I wouldn’t have been with the group of survivors. So for him to know me, he must have died at least five times….”
On the other hand, I also had another question. Even if he had died before, I wouldn’t have been part of the group of the survivors. So for him to have the opportunity to know me, he would have had to have died at least five times…
Ugh, I didn’t know anything. I just wanted to ask him straightforwardly, ‘You. You’ve regressed, haven’t you? When? How many times?’
But I couldn’t. No, I could ask, but I wouldn’t get an answer.
He couldn’t tell anyone that he had regressed. Once, in the game, I chose the option to tell someone else the secret, but as soon as I chose it, the protagonist died. Since then, I learned the main character couldn’t tell others he had regressed….
If my guess was correct, maybe the person in front of me now could have also experienced death after revealing the secret to someone else.
Anyway, I wasn’t a psycho who wanted to see someone die in front of me. Moreover, there was the issue of what would happen after the protagonist died in front of me.
I decided not to think about his regression as much as possible. I now also wondered if I had joined him for no reason, but… well, I confirmed whether the world stops at his death or not, and we were going to end up together someday eventually, so it wasn’t that bad, was it?
“Really? Then let’s move on. But while this place is good for sleeping or getting treatment when you’re injured, we can’t stay here for too long since there’s no food. And there’s no bathroom, either.”
“If you need a bathroom, it’s right next door. The problem is food…. The snack store is quite a distance from the infirmary, and it’s a bit…”
“What about the cafeteria?”
“It’s about the same distance as the snack store, but it’s a bit closer.”
“Is it?”
The snack store was not a good option. It was soon going to be occupied by a group of survivors, and it was where the zombies would gather the most. He probably knew that, which is why he reacted that way.
Most of the food in the cafeteria required cooking, making it awkward to use, but I remembered that I was able to get bread and drinks from it. The problem was that the cafeteria was quite far from here. We were sure to encounter a lot of zombies on the way….
With the protagonist, all the events that can happen would happen. What was the most notable one…? I think there was some kind of variant zombie….
“We’re not going to die if we starve for a day, so shall we rest here for the time being?”
I slowly passed by him and sat down on a bed in the corner. I could see the sunset through the curtains. The sunlight leaking into the infirmary bathed the interior in the color of the sunset.
When I came from the café to the school, the sun was definitely up, but probably because it was winter, it’d quickly turned into night. Visibility was blocked at night, so it was tougher to deal with the zombies. So, I had no choice but to rest here until the sun rises.
I really wanted to lie in bed and close my eyes right away, but I forced myself to get up and head towards the drawers where the medicines were kept. It got dark at night. I could turn on the lights, but that would let the light seep out into the hallway and possibly outside the building. Most zombies are said to rely more on their sense of smell and hearing than their vision, but among the mutated zombies, there were some that had the same vision as humans, so it was best to be cautious. After rummaging through the drawers, I found some candles and a cigarette lighter, which I placed on the table next to the bed.
“It’ll get darker when the sun is completely down, but if we turn on the lights, the light will leak outside. Let’s light some candles instead. It might be a little dark and inconvenient, but wouldn’t it be safer this way?”
“Okay. There’s nothing good about letting others know we’re here, so we’d better fully cover the windows with curtains too.”
“Yeah, let’s do that.”
After covering the windows with curtains and making all the necessary preparations, I sat back on the bed. Now that everything was done, there was nothing else to do, and I didn’t have anything to say to him either.
‘…Should I just sleep?’
As I considered asking him to wake me up in a few hours and going to sleep, he started talking.
“I live nearby here, so I graduated from this high school. I thought I’d never come back here after graduating, but I didn’t know I’d be back here like this.”
“Oh, I see….”
“I just turned 20, so I wanted to go out with friends for drinks and enjoy myself. When the university announcements came out, I wanted to set foot on campus… That seems difficult, now.”
“Well, I mean. The situation is like this right now, but this might just be temporary. Things could go back to normal soon, right?”
Temporary my foot. This was just the beginning, and a fiery path lay ahead. But I felt sorry for his drooping shoulders, so I lied. Leaving that aside, why was he saying all this to me?
After that, he began to share his stories I hadn’t heard of with me without even asking. At first, I responded appropriately and listened to his story, but gradually, I started wondering why I had to do this. My sitting position soon turned into a lying one, and my responses became brief.
Nevertheless, instead of showing dissatisfaction with my change in attitude, he just continued chatting away. I listened to him for so long that at some point his voice began to grow distant, and soon, my eyelids closed.
Hoping that when I’d be at my home, not in the infirmary when I opened my eyes, I fell asleep using his voice as a lullaby.
him continuing to yap is just like me fr
Noona means older sister. It’s used by younger brothers to refer to their older sister, but also younger male friends. Some boyfriends also romanticize this term and use it to refer to their older girlfriend, much like females use Oppa.
