FLIA 171

Yohan heard a song.

Lullaby, pitying smile, a bonfire blooming on the field, glittering stars drifting, a silent dawn, clattering beads, a mouse nest, counting grains of sand, a whispering rosebush….

He barely felt the sinking when his ankle became trapped. When the trap reached his knee, Yohan lifted his head while tears fell endlessly. He gripped his wounded arm roughly. Pain cleared his mind. When blood fell from the flesh that had moved softly on the ground, the thing scrambled to eat it, then it tightened around his arm to stop the bleeding and it climbed up.

Using his blood to dull his nerves, Yohan tightened his grip on the spear. The purification power that had seemed completely spent gathered at the spear tip and shone with an ecstatic light. Yohan remembered the fatal blow he had driven into the core of the abyss in the past.

He raised the spear and thrust it toward Lee Hyunmook’s eternal stone. But he did not aim to harm the opponent.

Yohan’s spear fitted precisely into the place where a shard had broken away. As if it had never broken, the moment it matched without a crack, an explosive light burst forth. Resonance that had stopped thrummed until the hollow rang. Seeing the chaotic black and white light cover every direction, Yohan closed his eyes. His mind faded and pulled in toward somewhere else.

***

Hundreds of times, thousands of times, countless recurring nightmares and memories….

…….

….

He heard the youngest’s sorrowful cry. Lee Hyunmook pressed his brow because a headache felt like his skull would split. A month had already passed since they fell into the Abyss. This place proved far more horrible than they had vaguely imagined.

No proper food or drink existed. Monsters swarmed every direction, so finding a safe shelter became difficult. As corruption worsened, wounds did not heal easily. Mental disorders called negative enhancement grew stronger. Everything moved toward the worst.

“Stop crying! Crying won’t fix anything!”

Seo Yakrin slammed her head against the wall and shouted. Ju Hoyoung, who had cried that he wanted to go home and that his legs hurt so much he would rather cut them off, flinched and shrank. He looked horribly thin. He had endured without food or drink. He survived so far as a mid-level awakener, but Lee Hyunmook worried miserably about how long that would last and whether they would lose the youngest first.

“I’m sorry for getting angry, youngest…”

Seo Yakrin apologized with self-loathing and then tore at her hair while she groaned. Spots mottled her skin all over. Worse, her arm suffered severe deformation so she could not even hold a weapon properly.

Ju Hoyoung would not die, but he would grow more hollow and cold and become unreachable. Seo Yakrin’s arm would soon turn into something like a wing and she would fly away. But compared to other teammates, these two stood in a slightly better state.

Slurping and ravenous chewing sounded from earlier. In the shelter corner, Yoon Seungryong crouched while he tore at something and ate it with relish. Black fluid dripped from the torn flesh and wetted the floor while a foul stench rose. The headache worsened until Lee Hyunmook wished to rip his head off. He stared at the void and muttered.

“Seungryong, you already ate a lot.”

“Heh, heh… did I? Did I already eat? When did I eat? But my stomach feels… hungry?”

Yoon Seungryong grinned with a hollow laugh. He ranked among the two most severely corrupted. Here, whatever one ate, the more one ate, the worse the corruption. When Lee Hyunmook approached, Yoon Seungryong twisted his body and cried out like a dog.

“Don’t touch! Mine! Mine! I will eat it all!”

Marrow among the food proved especially dangerous. After Lee Hyunmook took the bones and threw them outside the building, Yoon Seungryong exploded with anger. He spat vile curses at Lee Hyunmook, but Lee Hyunmook watched without reaction. Seo Yakrin responded to those curses.

“You bastard! Do you think you’re the only one alive here! Shut up! Be quiet! You bastard! Just leave and die!”

Soon the two savagely fought. They broke bones and tore flesh. Lee Hyunmook walked slowly and forced them apart. Ju Hoyoung’s cries grew louder. Yet because he had not drunk water, his hollow eyes had stopped shedding tears since a few days ago. He only feigned crying while he watched for a chance to escape this place.

Most serious among them proved Lee Chanha. He cowered in the darkest, most remote corner under a blanket. He required to be constantly covered. Without the blanket, Lee Chanha would convulse and try to rip off his own skin. Lee Hyunmook stared into the void with hollow eyes.

His teammates. The ones he had to protect safely with his own hands.

But no matter how hard they fought or crawled, the Abyss was far too cruel for a mid-level awakener to survive.

■Hyunmook knew what would happen next.

Strangely, it felt vivid before his eyes, as if he had already gone through it once. His precious teammates would lose their sanity, then they would forget even the shape of being human. No matter how hard he fed them his essence to keep their human form, no matter how much he protected and soothed them, no matter how much he tried, he would keep doing it again and again and again.

■■mook knew what would happen next.

They would want to die, but they would leave him alone in this place. In the end, he would not even be able to keep them together. He would have to tear them apart and store them separately. And then only Lee Hyunmook, alone, solitary, hopelessly lonely, would wander through this hell, checking from time to time whether his deranged teammates still lived.

He stared at his teammates who fought like beasts. He wondered if he should take action before they suffered too much. For example, he could let them rest peacefully and put them somewhere safe. In this abyss, there was no safe place, but he could keep them inside himself.

■■mook knew wha■ wou■■ ■■ happen.

Then he would no longer suffer, and he would no longer feel lonely. His shadow, filled with his will, trembled.

“…Found you!”

A bright voice suddenly rang out.

At first, he thought it was a hallucination or a delusion. But when he saw his teammates react, Lee Hyunmook realized they saw the same thing. That thing was a person.

In the Abyss, everything became tattered and filthy. Everything twisted and warped. Nothing, whether object or person, stayed unstained. But the young man who suddenly appeared before them was perfectly clean. Above all, he shone brightly. Lee Hyunmook could not pull his gaze away.

It was not the first time someone had fallen into this terrible hell. But those were usually civilians, already dead when found or dying within a day. Even if they looked like soldiers, their deaths were no different from suicide.

But this one was different. He did not look miserable at all, even in this place. Maybe it was mania from corruption, yet his eyes were clear and pure. His eyes turned slightly red as he looked at each teammate slowly, but he did not cry, and his expression was brave.

“Hello, my name is Yang Yohan. I’m a purifier, and I came to save you from here!”

It sounded absurd. But the first one to react to that absurd statement was Ju Hoyoung. The one who had always been cautious of strangers ran toward Yohan. His thin body clung to Yohan as he shouted desperately.

“Huh, uuh, really, you came to save us? Me! I want to get out of here! Please get me out! I want to go back! I want to go home!”

He held him so desperately that his clothes ripped apart. Yohan slowly reached out his hand toward Ju Hoyoung as if approaching a frightened animal. At some moment, light glimmered on his hand. That light reflected in Ju Hoyoung’s eyes too. A moment later, the light spread into him.

The legs that had suffered the worst distortion healed first. The chronic pain that had tormented him without rest vanished. His extreme anxiety and fear disappeared. The purifier who had appeared out of nowhere smiled at Ju Hoyoung.

“Are you alright now?”

Ju Hoyoung looked up at Yohan blankly, then burst into tears. This time, they were real tears. His body was dry and starved of water, but somehow sorrowful tears flowed endlessly from him.

“Can I really go home? Can I really go back? You really came to save us?”

“Yes! I really came to save you! You can really go home!”

After answering confidently, Yohan purified Lee Chanha, who had stayed in the corner. He poured radiant light over the blanket and then carefully lifted it. Under it was the deputy leader who had peeled off his own skin in disgust, who had cried and struggled day and night in agony. He looked down at his healed body. Then he stared up at Yohan, dazed.

Next, Yohan purified Yoon Seungryong, who had devoured everything to the point of swallowing concrete, and Seo Yakrin, who had wounded herself out of uncontrollable rage. Finally, he turned to Lee Hyunmook.

Even though they met for the first time, Lee Hyunmook thought of how tears had always gathered in this person’s eyes. Just imagining the tiny glimmering tears falling felt precious. But Yohan still did not cry. He walked toward Lee Hyunmook slowly, then suddenly embraced him. He let out a trembling breath as radiant light scattered from him.

After a moment, Lee Hyunmook placed his hand on Yohan’s back. He held the sudden savior who had appeared in a way he had never imagined before. It felt like a dream.