Chapter 5 - The First Opening of the Eyes

Without thinking, I raised my phone to check the time.

12:36 a.m.

I looked back at the streetlit road, where fog had begun to spread in a cold layer like dry ice. The area around my eyes ached, as though I had been staring wide-eyed without realizing it.

But Han Myeong-un, the friendly-looking, smooth-skinned squad member standing watch with me, had kept his gaze fixed on the kissing couple the whole time. Chuckling as though he finally had something to watch during our tedious shift, he had even put his phone away.

Before long, though, both his face and mine began to stiffen—his idle curiosity fading, my eyes still fixed on the fog.

"Mmm... mmph... mph..."

Something was wrong with the man and woman we had assumed were simply kissing passionately. The movements of the middle-aged man and the toned young woman, who had seemed to be locked in a fierce embrace, now looked downright grotesque.

THUD! THUD!

The middle-aged man was pounding on the woman's back. He wasn't embracing her. He was clenching his fists and striking hard enough to leave deep bruises, as anyone could see. He backed away, his stance falling apart.

The woman, meanwhile, held his head in what looked like a sudden, tight embrace and refused to let go. As he staggered backward and nearly fell, she supported him and helped him lean against the wall, then seemed to kiss him even more deeply.

The more she did, the more violently he reacted.

He dug his nails into the back of her neck and began shaking his hands as though trying to tear the flesh away. Even from here, I could see skin ripping beneath his nails and blood running down.

"Ummph... mmph..."

At the sight, Han Myeong-un's face hardened. He adjusted his grip on his rifle and started toward them. Contrary to how he looked, the guy apparently had a strong sense of justice.

It was no coincidence that the page I had received in the small auditorium came to mind at that moment. I called after him, trying to stop him.

"Myeong-un. There's fog."

"What?"

"Rule Six of the Survival and Engagement Rules Within Restricted-Access Zones. Rescuing people is strictly prohibited."

He blinked several times, then gave me a look of contempt, as though I were garbage.

TCH.

Clicking his tongue loudly enough for me to hear, he adjusted his helmet and headed toward the couple again.

"What a fucking moron..."

His mutter was loud enough that he clearly intended me to hear it.

Objectively speaking, he was right. Unlike me, standing motionless behind the sandbags and vehicle barriers, he looked like a gallant knight going to rescue a woman whose skin was being torn off. His handsome looks and easy manner probably helped.

At least he wasn't cowardly enough to justify himself by bringing up Rule Six just because there was fog.

But even as I felt like a coward, I had absolutely no intention of following him. Beneath the streetlights, the fog gathering over the road seemed to rise higher with every passing moment.

If you've ever listened blankly to a scary story, only to get goose bumps when you finally realized which part was frightening, you'll understand.

It might have seemed like fog just happened to be rolling in after midnight. But as the area around the road grew damp enough to blur even the streetlights into murky smears, a trickle of cold sweat ran down my back.

At that moment, I remembered what First Lieutenant Shin Han-gi had said.

["These characters were discovered within Restricted-Access Zones."]

I took Magic Crash Course out of my jacket. Only when I looked at the hand holding the booklet did I notice it trembling. And only after seeing that tremor did I realize I was suffering chills worse than when I'd had intestinal inflammation.

I hurriedly opened it to the page containing the strange character—the symbol I had named seven-corner.

Beneath my bloodless fingernails lay the page I held firmly in place, its drawn symbol beside a facing page packed with interpretations. The insight that had almost come to me after all that agonizing in solitary confinement was returning.

It was instinct. Like our ancestors meeting the shifting eyes of a tiger in pitch-black darkness beneath a night sky where even moonlight wasn't enough.

Under the streetlight, its glow wavering and smeared beyond the rising fog, I could see this strange character, this uncanny symbol, returning to its original form.

You could call it an optical illusion. A hallucination my brain had conjured up in psychologically oppressive surroundings would have been the more natural explanation.

But when the fog rose to my left hand holding Magic Crash Course and spread over the page, my eyes saw the character I had assumed was an overlapping triangle and square wriggle into alignment as though it were alive and breathing.

"..."

GULP.

It was hard to swallow.

Should I believe proven science, or follow my uncertain intuition? Should I assume my eyes were mistaken, or understand what the moving character meant?

I understood a little—a very little—of what our ancestors must have felt when they met a tiger's eyes.

Only one thought filled my mind: I was going to be eaten.

From this point on, common sense would unravel. The prejudices and preconceptions I had built up over a lifetime would twist and melt like taffy being stretched.

Beyond this lay curiosity venturing into the unknown, recklessness inviting death, and the realm of madness that put oneself in danger.

Then I noticed the sweat seeping from my hand had soaked the page. Only now could I see what the fully aligned symbol was.

An overlapping triangle and square. Inside a triangle stretched long to either side sat a distorted square, crammed in as though determined to fit somehow.

This wasn't a character.

An eye.

Making humans, who could see only three, see four or more...

...magic.

"Bleeeargh..."

The instant I understood, I vomited. With my legs shaking and all strength draining from my body, I collapsed over the stacked sandbags. Even throwing up was a struggle, leaving me gasping for breath.

I hadn't eaten anything while confined alone, yet something lumpy spilled from my mouth along with stomach acid and landed with a wet splat in the fog that had already filled the entire road.

But my eyes—my eyes that had already awakened to magic—were burning like mad. The blood vessels in my forehead and head swelled, pounding with every heartbeat and cooking my brain with their heat. Nausea so terrible I thought I would die washed over me. Eventually, I was left retching and gagging with nothing left to bring up.

Yet in contrast to my burning head and eyeballs, I felt a chill seep into my spine. The shivering cold that shook my whole body forced me upright.

And before I could even wipe the vomit from my mouth, I instinctively loaded live ammunition.

CLACK.

The fog had already risen to my chest. Beyond it, everything was so thickly shrouded I could barely see. Each time the flashing light of the pedestrian signal blinked pale and blurred through the fog, all I could make out beneath it was a damp shadow struggling violently.

The man and woman at the alley entrance had become three people. In place of the middle-aged man, who had gone limp, I now saw Han Myeong-un's back flapping desperately.

Maybe "flapping" was too cute a word. He was stamping his feet like someone being strangled to death, like someone hanging by the neck from a rope.

I raised my M16, shouldered it, and aimed in their direction. I could see the muzzle shaking violently, and the rifle hadn't even been properly zeroed, so I couldn't frame the target properly in the iron sights. Still, I held my aim and watched.

I couldn't make so much as a sound of breathing.

Then, within that single thing that had become three people, Han Myeong-un's resistance finally succeeded.

SQUELCH!

Did you ever play with modeling clay as a child? Or chew gum until all the sweetness was gone, spit it out after chewing it some more, then mix it with another piece and chew it again?

Once mixed, it's hard to pull apart. Once tangled together, it's essentially one thing.

So even after Han Myeong-un barely managed to pull his face free, his cheeks had melted and stuck to the back of the woman's head. Flesh and flesh were one. Even from a distance, I could see blue veins beneath his cheeks tangling and knotting like skeins of thread.

The clearest change of all was that the middle-aged man's face was melting beside his and mixing into it.

"Aaaah... ah..."

His mouth was no exception. He was desperately trying to turn it away, but it had long since joined with the middle-aged man's mouth, which had begun tearing wide open.

The middle-aged man's face melts and mingles with Han Myeong-un's. Myeong-un's left eye has already overlapped with the man's right. Their sockets have become one, and the eyes are piled atop each other, tangled like a compound eye.

Only Myeong-un's right eye is looking this way, streaming tears uncontrollably. Its gaze holds fear, pleading, and a scream.

He howls, somehow twisting his tongue, which hasn't yet merged with the others.

"Dohn' jusht shtan' there... he'p me!!!"

I did not move at all. With my rifle trained on them, I simply watched what my eyes were seeing.

Even through the thick fog, I could make out the outlines of the three melted people.

One joined head. Three bodies.

"He'p meeee!!!!"

Han Myeong-un's face was already tangled into the others. He—the three who were now one—wove their faces together like bizarre conjoined twins, crushing what had been three mouths into one. The tongue he desperately stuck out began to melt into a single mass as the others' tongues forcibly coiled around it.

"Aaaagh... aaagh..."

Even the vocal cords were no longer his. Only one right eye remained Han Myeong-un's. Tears streamed from it, but I sensed that even those tears no longer belonged to him.

All that was left of Han Myeong-un was a groan that scraped harshly through the throat, unable even to become a scream.

Then the head of the three made one looked toward me. Its dangling limbs hung limp, yet it stood distinctly upright, maintaining its bizarre gait.

Now I understood why different people had produced different interpretations of a single symbol.

A power that forced humans to see what they normally could not.

I was seeing time—the future of how the monster would move. The places where the fog blanketing the road stirred were the future itself, the footsteps of the approaching monster.

When I moved my muzzle along those footsteps, the monster merely watched me in silence.

Then it moved once more. This time, Han Myeong-un's arm swayed limply.

A feint. The leg on the other side, the woman's side, would move. The middle-aged man's arms and legs were sandwiched in the middle, maintaining its balance.

When I turned the muzzle toward the woman's side, the three-legged monster stopped trying to provoke me. Instead, it simply stood motionless beyond the fog, watching me.

Cold sweat ran down me. With my eyes burning and pain that felt as though my brain were cooking, I couldn't begin to guess how long I could endure.

But with eyes that felt ready to burst and hands slick with sweat, I did not let go of the rifle.

I couldn't even tell whether I was breathing. I couldn't tell whether the dampness came from fog or sweat.

And at the end of our standoff, the three-legged monster overlapped its faces again, leaving only the backs of its heads visible, and dragged its limbs away into the fog.

There were no more screams or groans. But I remained motionless with my rifle aimed, for minutes, for tens of minutes.

Then the fog began to disappear. By the time I could clearly see the blinking pedestrian signal again, I was the only one left at the intersection.

Still rigid, I kept the rifle shouldered and aimed down the road.

Until someone placed a hand on my shoulder.

"Je-min! Baek Je-min!"

"..."

It was Kang Daniel.

Behind him, squad members were getting out of a truck that had even brought a searchlight. He looked around, then examined my face. Seeming to notice the strange atmosphere, he asked,

"What about the other man on watch?"

"..."

"Where did Han Myeong-un go?"

I tried to speak, but my lips had frozen.

No. My whole body had simply gone rigid, with the rifle still against my shoulder.

People in the low-rise apartment buildings near the street belatedly heard the commotion and opened their doors to come outside. I could feel their glances.

But only one thought came to mind.

I had to escape Seoul.

No. I had to leave this country.