BANG-!
A single gunshot rang out.
My left ear rang momentarily.
And blood spurted out, soaking the back of my neck and head.
Human blood was incredibly warm.
Thud-.
From the recoil, Kyung Soo’s left arm fell onto my left shoulder.
But I wasn’t the one who collapsed.
Instead, Kyung Soo crumpled lifelessly to the side.
Thump! Splat, whoosh.
Turning my head slightly, I saw blood gushing like a fountain from his temple.
He was holding a gun in his right hand, and his eyes remained open in death.
I wiped away the blood that had splattered on my right cheek.
He had killed himself.
He had placed the gun barrel against his temple and pulled the trigger.
And now, I felt nothing.
Despite nearly dying just moments ago, I couldn’t feel even a hint of tension or anxiety.
I trudged forward.
More than the shock of him dying right behind me, I felt more regret about the two wasted bullets.
Plop-.
I sat down in a theater seat and cradled my head.
I felt slightly dizzy.
I pressed my fingers against my temple and looked at the dead Kyung Soo.
Blood was still flowing from his temple.
Behind him, his brain matter had exploded across the floor.
As he said, perhaps I really am a man suited for the end.
Maybe because the world I lived in was already hell, I wasn’t particularly moved by how it had changed now.
Honestly, I don’t know.
Perhaps Kyung Soo had a character more exceptional than mine in this game, perhaps one closer to justice.
Whether it was God’s joke or God’s choice.
“……”
The conclusion was this.
He couldn’t endure and died, while I endured and survived.
I tilted my head back and surrendered my body to the seat.
Finally, it’s over.
I can finally leave this goddamn mall.
That’s enough.
I’ll leave all the stories and emotions from this place behind, and now I’ll go find my brother.
That’s all there is to it.
As I was resting like that for a moment, a woman approached.
Opening my drowsy eyes to check, it was Jae Hee.
She carefully sat down next to me and let out a small sigh.
When she sat down, I asked first.
“Will things like this continue from now on?”
“…Similar, but on a much larger scale. Honestly, I’m not sure about the Gyeonggi-do area.”
“……”
I pressed my hand against the other side of my head.
Jae Hee asked me.
I could feel her gaze as if she was looking at me, but my eyes were fixed solely on Kyung Soo.
“What are you going to do now? What’s your plan?”
“I’m going to find my brother.”
“What if you can’t find him?”
At her question, I removed my hand from my head and looked at her.
Then I spoke again.
“I will find him. Even if it’s just his corpse.”
With those words, I put my hand back to support my head.
Jae Hee also remained silent.
* * *
Lee Juyeon stood there holding a crossbow.
More precisely, she had frozen because the preceding scenes were so shocking.
The arrow had missed.
Honestly, it was a real shame that it missed, but a miss was a miss.
If Kyung Soo hadn’t killed himself, everyone in Hong Team would have died helplessly.
Everyone here, including herself and her brother.
But Kyung Soo committed suicide, and we survived.
“……”
Juyeon carefully put down the crossbow and exhaled roughly.
Then Se Beom approached and embraced her back.
“It’s okay, it’s over now.”
“……”
“We survived, sis. Are you alright?”
“…Huh? Uh… yeah. I’m… fine.”
Ju Yeon rubbed her eyes with her hand and looked ahead.
There, Sion was sitting in a theater seat.
Jae Hee approached him.
It was a calmness that someone who had nearly died moments ago couldn’t possess.
If it had been her, she would have lost all strength in her legs from the shock.
When Kyung Soo chose suicide, Ju Yeon felt her heart sink.
It wasn’t from surprise, but relief.
Ju Yeon recalled his final words.
That this place was hell, and all he was doing was escaping hell.
As if that was the last choice he could make as a human being.
Then what about those of us left behind?
Are we not human?
“…Sis.”
Se Beom gently shook Ju Yeon’s shoulder, but she gave no response.
So he shook her shoulder more vigorously.
“Sis!”
“Uh… yeah… I’m listening.”
Only then did Ju Yeon slightly raise her head to look at her brother.
Se Beom frowned and said.
“Listening my ass. Snap out of it. We need to go home now.”
“Yeah…”
“Oh, seriously!”
Despite Se Beom’s shouting, Ju Yeon just lowered her head slightly and walked to the seat on the opposite side.
She sat down and pulled her legs together.
Everyone was silent.
Everyone here seemed at a loss for words.
The situation was over, and everyone seemed somewhat excited at the thought of being able to go home.
The man with glasses was chuckling to himself.
Ju Yeon looked at him and thought he no longer felt human.
No, she thought that no one here could be human anymore.
“Se Beom.”
Ju Yeon called her brother while remaining seated.
Se Beom, who had been fiddling with a cigarette, looked at her.
Ju Yeon kept silent for a moment before finally speaking.
“Never mind.”
Ju Yeon closed her eyes and thought.
In front of her, Se Beom just frowned, frustrated with his sister.
The silence continued for a while.
No one spoke.
But soon the silence ended.
The movie theater screen.
A small portal appeared there.
A cheerful trumpet sound filled the theater, drawing everyone’s attention.
Ta-da-da~!!!
Baby angels emerged from the portal, divided into two rows.
The baby angel at the back of the line was holding a red flag.
And Administrator ‘K’ was walking through the middle of that formation.
Clap, clap, clap.
K walked forward, slowly applauding.
Two kings appeared floating on either side of her.
[LOSER]
With loser signs hanging around their necks.
Their corpses appeared suspended from the flag.
Like a public execution display.
Kyung Soo’s dying body, which had been on the ground just moments ago, had mysteriously vanished.
The old man from the Cheong Team had his jaw hanging open and eyes closed, his face pale as if all blood had drained from his body.
Meanwhile, blood from Kyung Soo’s temple had congealed at his chin and was dripping onto the floor, and having died only recently, his face still retained some color.
Walking between them, K shouted.
“What an incredibly dramatic outcome! Ah, congratulations, Hong Team. I was watching with bated breath at the end, thinking the Hong Team would lose. But! My intuition wasn’t wrong after all. Congratulations, Mr. Sion. You’ve won.”
At that moment, light formed around Sion’s neck.
Soon, a sign hung there.
[WINNER]
Sion immediately removed the sign from his neck and threw it to the ground.
Watching this, K covered her mouth and laughed.
“Puhuhuh…! How prickly. Don’t be like that. You all have ‘at least’ survived, haven’t you? Please enjoy the modest party prepared by our management committee. Children.”
At K’s words, the baby angels brought out tables.
They arranged them in a row and covered them with pristine white tablecloths.
The baby angels came carrying plates of various foods on their shoulders and placed them on the tables one by one.
They set up plates, knives, and forks matching the number of surviving participants, and even poured wine into wine glasses.
The appetizing aroma of food began to mask the smell of blood.
Some survivors raised their heads and looked at the food.
But none of them readily reached for it.
K then plucked a green grape from the table and ate it.
“There’s no poison. And since these foods are benefits outside the regulations, you can’t take them out of the building. I’ll clear everything away exactly 30 minutes from now. So. Why not enjoy it now? Mr. Sion.”
K kept addressing only Sion.
Yet Sion remained seated, not moving an inch.
But the other survivors were different.
They hadn’t eaten proper food for days.
The bespectacled man was the first to dive in.
He grabbed a chicken leg and began stuffing it into his mouth ravenously.
Once one person made the first move, the other survivors poured in like a breaking dam.
They hurriedly devoured the food on the table like pigs in a pen.
Watching them, K smiled maliciously.
“Ha-. They’re no different from livestock. I wonder if these are really the harmful species that attempted to challenge the universe. Is it delicious?”
K asked while stroking the head of the bespectacled man who was burying his face in soup and gulping it down.
The bespectacled man nodded and grabbed some stir-fried food with his hands, stuffing it into his mouth.
Only then did Sion ask.
“Let us out of here already. We won the game.”
“Yes. I will. But before that, there are some additional explanations about the game rules that remain.”
“…Speak quickly.”
“There’s no need to be so hasty. Once you get outside, you might actually wish to come back in here, you know?”
Sion frowned.
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“Hmm… That’s true. But since it’s still voting time in Area 2, I can’t let you all out yet.”
K picked up a chicken leg and forcibly shoved it into the mouth of the middle-aged man sitting at the table.
The middle-aged man, not even realizing how degrading it was, chewed on the chicken leg that had been thrust into his mouth.
K, who had been watching him, burst into laughter.
Then she caressed the middle-aged man’s chin.
Just like petting a dog.
“Cute, so cute.”
“Voting time?”
Sion asked again while watching the scene.
“Yes. Every day from midnight to 1 AM. A one-hour voting period. Well, you don’t need to know about that. Now, let me explain. I think I can release you all into the field once I finish the explanation.”
K answered while looking at a holographic clock that had appeared.
Soon, the movie theater screen lit up.
“Now let’s begin the proper explanation of the game. Leaving the livestock aside. Want some?”
K, who had somehow taken the seat next to Sion, offered him popcorn.
Sion ignored her and stared at the screen.
K smiled slightly at his reaction, then tossed some popcorn and caught it in her mouth.
“Start, kids.”
At her command, the baby angels who had been serving food entered the screen one by one.
A contract made of strange characters became visible.
K, looking at the contract alongside Sion, said:
“From now on, the world will become a single field. Like a game board. And you all are the game pieces. Everything you’ve experienced so far was just a demo version. Now, the ‘king’ won’t be selected but conquered. Next.”
When K instructed to move to the next screen, the baby angels naturally turned the page.
The format was a PowerPoint presentation.
But it was impossible to understand what content it contained.
The only recognizable things were the illustrations.
“I’ll tell you the most important victory conditions. It’s simple. Only harmful species who satisfy the ‘victory conditions’ until the final round will survive. If you fail to meet even one of them, you cannot survive. Next.”
The page turned.
The people who had been devouring food on the table finally raised their heads to look at the screen.
But it was only for a moment, and they soon turned their eyes back to the food and continued eating.
The next page was a small animation.
There were two people, one colored red and the other blue.
Soon, the red person beheaded the blue one.
The blue person’s head rolled away, tumbling out of the screen.
Then the red person raised both arms in triumph, and the boundary defining them expanded.
“You will progress through rounds based on boundaries. Simply put, it will go in order of buildings, roads, cities, regions, and continents.”
The world beyond the boundary was completely different.
It was a world they had never encountered before.
The red people walked into that world.
“From now on, you will encounter strange worlds you’ve never faced or even imagined. As the boundary expands… the wider it gets.”
Shadows of monsters with bizarre appearances appeared on the screen.
Some folded humans in half and devoured them.
Others carried hundreds of people while traversing continents or flying through the sky.
And there were even parasitic creatures like hairworms that lived inside humans.
The red people in the screen died one after another.
“Ultimately, you must prove it. Prove that you are indeed a life form worthy of survival. Prove why you must survive. Not by instinct, but as humans! Right? Prove your value as intelligent beings. Don’t be led by instinct like those creatures.”
K was referring to the Survivors of the Red Team who were lost in their gluttony.
Crunch-.
She had already emptied an entire container of popcorn.
When K put down the popcorn container, it naturally disappeared.
K rubbed her hands together and stood up.
“I believe Mr. Sion and all of you will do well. Why? Because you’re the players I’ve personally selected. Hehe.”
Click, click.
K walked forward and stood in front of the people who were still ravenously eating.
After watching them for a moment, she turned her head to look at Sion and Jae Hee.
More precisely, she looked at Lee Juyeon, Se Beom, and one unnamed student who were staring at the PPT beside her.
She spoke with a faint smile.
“Shall we go now? It’s time.”
Tak-!
K snapped her fingers.
At that moment, the heads of all the survivors who had been frantically eating at the table flew off.
Like fireworks.
Six heads soared into the air before rolling back onto the table.
Thud, thud, thud.
The bespectacled man’s head rolled around before becoming coated in rib marinade.
There was still meat in his mouth.
“Out of the total world population of 7.8 billion, 2 billion survived the first round. You have beaten the odds with a survival rate of one in four. You have earned the right to advance to the second round. So, welcome.”
Clank-!
At that moment, the screen split in half.
More precisely, the entrance to the main hall on the first floor appeared before them.
Only then did Sion rise from his seat.
The black smoke that had filled the main hall in front of him began to clear.
It was the same black smoke that had trapped them in the shopping mall.
Light poured in through the gaps.
How many days had it been since they’d seen light?
People hurriedly covered their eyes against the sudden brightness.
But Sion immediately opened his eyes.
Screech-.
As the main hall doors opened, fresh air from outside rushed in.
With the cool breeze at her back, K smiled at Sion and said:
“The theme of the second round is winter.”
Sion stared straight ahead.
His pupils trembled wildly at the scene unfolding before him.
He slowly took one step at a time toward the outside.
Four people followed behind him.
(To be continued)
