Editor’s Survival Guide — Chapter 12
Chapter 12. Episode 3. The Hospital That Hunts Humans (3)
The short, overweight man was the one whose foot had been blown off.
There were holes in the floor where he had stood and the ceiling above his head.
Tennis-ball-sized holes, clean as though drawn with a brush.
“Aaaagh!”
The fallen man screamed at the top of his lungs again.
At some point, the woman had climbed out of her wheelchair and taken hold of him.
More precisely, she was tightening what looked like a belt around his ankle.
“Please move him into this wheelchair!”
The woman shouted as she stopped his bleeding.
At her call, the others regained their senses and lifted the bleeding man.
That was unexpected. I had assumed they would naturally abandon an injured person.
Privately impressed, I turned away.
I intended to use the confusion to escape.
But someone reached out from behind and firmly caught my arm.
“Where are you going?”
When I turned, the tall man stood behind me.
No, hey, was this really the time to worry about me?
In my impatience, I considered shaking him off.
But when I looked at the man and over his shoulder, I abandoned the impulse.
The woman and the other men were already watching me as well.
Damn it. Nothing about this was easy.
I opened my mouth while devising a suitable excuse.
Thump—!
Then another vibration ran through the floor.
This time, it sounded as though something heavy had fallen upstairs.
At the sound, the men beside the wheelchair signaled with their eyes to the man holding me.
Then they began moving first, pushing the wheelchair.
“Please help me up!”
The woman who had surrendered her wheelchair called from the floor, and the man holding me looked my way.
Apparently, he had no intention whatsoever of giving me an opening.
With no other choice, I grasped the arm the woman held out.
But what was this?
The woman was heavier than I expected.
I had applied only moderate strength, then lowered my body in alarm.
Only after I supported her with both arms and pulled with all my strength did she rise.
The woman draped an arm over my shoulder.
Only then did the man support her from the opposite side.
Looking remarkably close-knit, we followed the wheelchair ahead of us.
Thump—thuuump—!
The vibrations continued.
I put aside my plan to flee for the moment too.
Surely violent criminals were better than a monster.
At least for now.
Before long, we arrived at an operating room.
The men in front opened its doors with practiced ease.
And I was overwhelmed by the unexpected sight beyond them.
What lay past the doorway was not a cramped surgical space, but a broad field.
Vivid blue flowers rippled like foam on the crest of a wave.
Countless slender wooden poles stood among them.
And at the end of each sat a wooden bird.
They were not ordinary poles, but *sotdae* connecting heaven and earth.
As I marveled at the profusion of flowers and innumerable *sotdae*,
a white cloth settled over my shoulders.
When I looked beside me, the woman and man who had come with me were covering me with something resembling a bedsheet.
“Lie facedown, and be careful not to let any bare skin touch the ground.”
With those words, the woman lowered her body.
Then she entered the wildflowers, which grew as high as her calves.
The men who had arrived before us were similarly hiding among the *sotdae*.
I did not understand the situation, but I wrapped the sheet around myself and entered the field too.
Something against my knees felt strangely soft.
As I curled up, the vibrations stopped.
But another sound had continued faintly for some time.
Scrape—scrape—
The sound of something being dragged.
It was so faint that I couldn’t tell whether I truly heard it or was hallucinating.
But a deafening noise immediately shattered my doubts.
Bang—!
The operating-room doors exploded.
Thank goodness.
I had been biting my lower lip.
The taste of blood spread through my mouth, but I managed to swallow my scream.
Scrape—scrape—
The dragging grew clearer.
I wanted to turn toward it.
When I forced myself to endure and suppressed the impulse, it entered my field of vision on its own.
What I saw then was……
A monster
A corpse
Garbage
A human guinea pig
Blasphemy
Perhaps the Creator’s self-deprecating joke.
At first glance, it looked human.
Its upright spine and the way it walked on two legs did, at least.
But it was absolutely not human.
Its desiccated body resembled an embalmed corpse or a rotting vine.
Above its neck sat a single smooth metal sphere.
I couldn’t tell whether it had no head or was wearing something like a helmet.
Its head and body were so pitiful that, as though to compensate, only its right upper arm was grandiose.
Beneath grotesquely swollen shoulder muscles dangled things that might have been blood vessels or electrical wires.
Below them, its gigantic arm was an entanglement of multiple gun barrels.
It looked as though a person had been wedged into a bundle of old-model rifles.
True to its name, it was the 「Moving Gun」.
Scrape, scrape—
Dragging its heavy arm, the 「Moving Gun」 came in front of me.
I closed my eyes.
And covered my ears.
“……I think it’s gone.”
After a long while, I heard the woman’s voice.
When I slowly poked my head out from beneath the sheet, the 「Moving Gun」 had already disappeared.
Seeing the others stand, I rose too.
The floor continued to feel soft, so I stole a look beneath the sheet.
And regretted it.
What lay beneath the flower field was not soil, but something resembling pieces of flesh.
“Be careful. It attaches itself if it touches bare skin.”
So that was why they had given me the sheet.
Read only on MUGEX
I was about to thank the woman.
The instant I tried, another scream came from across the room.
“Gaaaagh!”
“Be quiet……!”
The others were pinning down the injured man as he thrashed.
At the commotion, the woman held out an arm to me.
Somehow, I naturally helped support her.
When we approached, I saw the men treating the injured person.
Apparently, the pain had driven him into a frenzy.
The woman took an ampoule and syringe from her pocket and said,
“It’s a painkiller. You’ll feel better soon.”
Once the woman administered the injection, the men stepped back.
The overweight man stopped struggling and began to sob.
“Ah, fuck…… why is it always me……? That monster bastard saw my face. I’m telling you, it saw my face back then……!”
“That’s why we told you not to take off your mask. You should’ve endured the heat…….”
“Shut up! XX! Don’t—don’t you lecture me! Don’t you know that if I die, every one of you is fucking dead too!?”
When the huge man tried to placate him, the overweight man flew into a violent rage.
Naturally, I expected a fight to break out.
But, surprisingly, the huge man backed down.
“……Fine. I understand, so get some rest.”
What was that?
That huge man hardly had a mild disposition either.
Why was he so obedient now?
“Hey, help us search. We were carrying out a mission in here.”
While I stood there unable to read the room, another man spoke to me.
It was the man who had pushed the wheelchair with the huge man earlier, and he wore glasses over his face covering.
Then the woman quietly tipped me off.
“It’s on the order sheet I gave you earlier.”
I knew what she meant.
I also remembered its contents, but for their benefit, I unfolded the order sheet again.
—Type B Mission 3.
—Extract an unrotted organ from the 「999 Sotdae」 displayed in the operating suite on the second floor of the Main Building.
—However, if the extracted organ tissue fuses with a convict’s body, the mission shall be considered a failure.
The general sequence of events came together in my mind.
What stood before me was the 「999 Sotdae」.
They had been searching here for an intact organ to complete their mission.
Then I had tripped their alarm, and they all rushed out at the sound.
They must have been bewildered when I appeared in pajamas instead of the 「Moving Gun」.
So they were questioning me when the 「Moving Gun」 truly appeared.
Judging by the way they responded afterward, they too seemed to know a fair amount about the monster’s habits.
But that knowledge came only from experience; as I had suspected, they did not know the pattern Cha Si-eon had described.
At this rate, moreover, I would be swept up with them.
“What are you going to do if we sit around here and that monster from earlier comes back?”
At my question, the huge man and the one in glasses glanced at me.
Their expressions seemed to ask why we needed such vague speculation now.
So I scattered a little more bait.
“Didn’t anyone tell you not to stay in one place for too long?”
“What are you talking about?”
“If you stay in one place for over ten minutes, that monster figures out your location and comes for you. The long-haired man said so. None of you know?”
The men reacted sluggishly, as though this was the first they had heard of it.
The huge man glared instead.
“What kind of bullshit……?”
“Wait. When we were digging through the sand, we lured it somewhere else, but it came straight back, remember? Three times.”
The man in glasses stopped the huge man from becoming angry first.
Then, apparently realizing something, he asked me,
“Did they tell you anything else?”
“It targets anyone whose face it sees first. It occasionally fires bullets that penetrate walls, but they still don’t know the conditions. It stays active for forty minutes, then rests for forty.”
I said only that much, then stopped.
—At least one person must be hunted before it can enter its dormant period.
That was the most important information, but I omitted it deliberately.
The moment I told them, they would choose a sacrifice. Why would I be mad enough to say it?
I feigned innocence and waited for their response.
Eventually, the man in glasses pressed a hand to his forehead and sighed.
“Ah, those fucking bastards…….”
“Can we trust him?”
“Nothing he said is particularly wrong. Some of it fits what we’ve seen, and Orange really did get shot.”
Fortunately, they seemed to believe me.
But who was Orange?
When I looked around, the woman pointed at the injured man.
“This person is Orange. We distinguish each other by the color of our armbands.”
At the word *armband*, I looked at the man’s arm.
An orange band encircled the sleeve of his work clothes.
The others had different colors in the same place.
Did they call each other by band color instead of name?
Well, both sides would naturally feel uncomfortable revealing their real names here.
I took the opportunity to check everyone’s band.
The woman’s was white.
The tall man who had grabbed me earlier wore blue.
The huge man wore red.
The bastard with the missing foot was orange.
And the man with glasses over his face covering wore black.
Red and Black conferred in low voices.
“What do we do now?”
“There’s no answer but this place. The other floors were destroyed.”
“But how are we supposed to find it in ten minutes?”
“We can take shifts of ten minutes each.”
I had assumed that the huge Red was the leader, but now that I looked, Black seemed to be directing them.
Speaking as though the decision had already been made, Black said,
“If it pursues the person whose face it saw first, Orange can lure the monster while the rest of us take turns working here.”
At that, Orange, who had been lying down and groaning, erupted.
“What kind of bullshit is that!?”
“All you need to do is sit in the wheelchair. That monster isn’t especially fast either, so avoiding it while moving around will probably be safer. Or would you rather stay here and get shot again?”
This Black knew how to handle people.
His tone was gentle, but it left no opening.
That kept Orange from throwing another tantrum like before, reducing him to muttering complaints.
With control firmly in his hands, Black asked the group,
“Then we’ll work in shifts. How should we divide the teams?”
“Blue, Mr. Otter, and I will take Orange and make the first circuit. Black and Red, please organize the section you were examining here.”
The woman—White—answered Black.
But one of the labels she had mentioned was not a color.
Wondering who “Mr. Otter” might be, I looked at White.
White was looking at me.
Following her gaze, I looked down at my clothes.
Ah. Me.
My T-shirt had a picture of an otter reading a book.
A short while later, Blue brought another wheelchair.
White and Orange sat in the wheelchairs, and I watched the scene with considerable unease.
Somehow, I had ended up lumped into a group with these serious criminals.
Was it really all right for me to be doing this?
Of course it wasn’t. Naturally, this was not all right. It was completely not all right!
I screamed inwardly with my eyes wide and tense.
Then Black approached and held out his hand.
“Things were so chaotic that we never even introduced ourselves. In any case, now that it’s come to this, I hope we work well together.”
Suddenly, I remembered the “Special Advice!” from the order sheet.
—Convicts are distinguished by the color of their armbands. The darker the armband, the more dangerous the individual.
Thinking it seemed quite plausible, I halfheartedly took Black’s hand.
It was rather cold.