Dystopia Of Night - Chapter 3 Part 13

The desolate ruins, with only fragments of the fading sunlight falling on the ground, were neither bright nor dark. Yuju stood among the collapsing buildings, opening and closing her mouth like the lips of a mermaid who had lost her voice, searching for someone.

‘Where are you? Where are you?’

The ground she stood on began to crack and crumble. Yuju ran, looking around for some way out. Her legs ached as if they were engulfed in a roaring fire, but no one came to her aid.

Gasp! Gasp!

She called out to him until her throat felt like it would burst, and she searched for him until her lungs felt like they would tear. Her whole body turned blue and she trembled uncontrollably in the ambiguous air that was neither summer nor winter.

Losing him in this dreadful world was like descending into an endless hell. She thought it would be better to die.

Yuju stopped gasping for breath. Her eyes, whose will to live was broken, stared blankly at the end. The upturned ground, like angry waves, engulfed her body. She died alone, unable to even take a single step forward.

“Gasp!”

Yuju woke up trembling from her dream. Beads of cold sweat trickled down as she turned to look at Sehan, who had fallen asleep.

“Haa….”

Unconsciously, she let out a deep sigh and immediately covered her mouth to stifle any noise. She was afraid he might wake up because of her. Fortunately, he seemed deeply asleep.

Feeling intense thirst, Yuju carefully got out of bed. Blinking her drowsy eyes, she fumbled in the darkness, searching for a water bottle. As her hand touched the lukewarm bottle, a faint scraping sound echoed almost simultaneously.

Yuju looked down at the plastic bottle. She wondered if the noise she heard was caused by her gripping the bottle too hard and making it crumple. However, the scratching sound, like nails on a chalkboard, continued persistently.

“…..”

Through the gap in the blinds, a sparkling sphere passed by. Her trembling hand absentmindedly wrapped around the blind’s cord, and the flimsy string swayed gently in the wind.

The round sphere was moving slowly, blinking as if peering through the gap in the blinds, glinting intermittently.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Yuju’s heart, awakened abruptly, seemed to fall to the ground and bounce back repeatedly. Worried that the loud beats might be heard by the something outside, she pressed her hand firmly against her chest.

After hesitating for a moment, instead of raising the blinds, Yuju brought her eyes closer to the window. The chilly blinds touched her bare skin, making her shudder. She lifted her trembling eyelids and peered through the gap in the blinds.

The glowing sphere was round. As she tried to guess what it could be, a ‘thud!’ sound was heard, and the window shook violently.

“Kyaaaakkkk!”

“Oomph!”

A scream, desperately trying to escape like a sneeze, was tightly muffled by a large hand. Yuju could smell the familiar scent of soap from the warm palm. He held her tightly and pulled her backward before finally letting her go.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Something outside fiercely pounded on the camper’s window. The noise was like hammering. It felt like the window could break any moment, and that presence might come inside.

Shh.

Sehan raised his index finger to his lips, signaling Yuju to be quiet. She nodded in response.

Sehan examined the blinds of the rear window and then opened it slightly.

Bang! Bang! The presence outside was only knocking on the front window. He threw a glass cup far outside. Crash! The sound of the shattered glass drew the dark figures towards that direction.

“I guess it doesn’t have good eyesight… Maybe it’s responding to sound?”

The brightly shining spheres were their eyes. Though it was a pitch-dark night, their large luminescent pupils allowed the faint shape of the creatures to be seen. They had a shape like a four-legged mudfish with webbed feet, and sharp teeth.  They looked like a creature living in water.

“Kyaakk!”

“Kyaaakkk!”

“Kyaaaak!”

The webbed-footed monsters let out angry cries and rushed towards the broken glass cup. In their rage, some of them got injured by the shattered glass, which further fueled their aggression as they began attacking their own kind.

Their skin was tearing, flesh was bursting, and they savagely devoured their own kind. Yuju’s face turned ashen at the sight of these carnivorous creatures, ripping apart even their own flesh in a frenzy.

One of the monsters, with over half of its tail severed, survived alone on the gruesome battlefield. Its pupils dilated as it had consumed so much of its own kind’s flesh that its stomach bulged out, and then its entire body began to glow yellow.

And the glow intensified, growing larger and larger. It became even bigger than the camper that Yuju and Sehan were in.

“Really. None of this makes any sense.”

With a tired expression, Sehan was mumbling about the law of conservation of mass being seemingly meaningless. He turned his head and looked at Yuju.

“Get dressed. It’s better to hide outside, if possible. This camper won’t hold up.”

He was only wearing a pair of pants, but he was too busy grabbing Yuju’s outerwear to bother with his own. As he hurriedly dressed her and hastily put on a shirt, the monster was causing a commotion.

“Kyaaaak!”

The others who had likely been holding their breath like Sehan and Yuju rushed out of their cars to escape from the monster. Hae-jun and Yeonji ran towards the forest, but Hansol ran towards the camper.

“Hyung-nim! Hyung-nim!”

As Hansol ran towards the camper, calling out loudly to find Sehan, the monster’s attention was drawn to him. The monster approached him with heavy footsteps, and it swung its sharp claws at Hansol.

“It would be good if you help me!”

Before Sehan could do anything, Yuju stepped forward. She opened the window and shouted.

“Shut up, Hansol-ssi!”

The short and concise threat was exceptionally effective in conveying its meaning. The quick-witted Hansol immediately shut his mouth, and Sehan watched as Yuju followed what he did earlier, throwing glass cups far away.

After breaking about three glass cups, the monster’s attention finally shifted in that direction. Yuju kept an eye on the monster as it thudded away in the opposite direction, holding Sehan’s wrist and leading him outside.

“Let’s go, Sehan.”

“…..”

The familiar scent of soap emanated from her fluttering hair. Sehan faintly smiled with a look that showed no sign of tension at all.

He didn’t feel the slightest bit uncomfortable being dragged along by someone else.

“Uh, what should we do?”

Hansol, who had joined the two, glanced uneasily at the monster.

“If the car breaks down, our first line of defense will also be breached. If we lose the space where we can rest with peace, we won’t be able to sleep and our stamina will continue to decrease. We can’t just let the car be completely destroyed. How about trying to lure it towards the forest?”

Yuju responded. It was still a long way to dawn, and there was no certainty that the forest was safe. They couldn’t just be thrown into this world completely defenseless, they had to try something. Fortunately, the monster seemed quite sluggish.

“It’s not even raining…”

“What’s the matter, Sehan?”

Sehan was looking down at the thoroughly wet ground, despite the fact that it wasn’t raining. Was it water dripping from the monster’s body? His gaze reached the stream where water was trickling along.

However, when considering the depth of the water, there was no place where a creature of that size could possibly hide and breathe. Where could that monster possibly have come from? Like the ordinary tree that had transformed, could this monster also be a transformed fish? If so, what could be the connection between the monster and the stream?