March Novel (Completed) - Chapter 31

The siren grew louder than before. The red warning light on the ceiling spun around. It seemed the security level had been raised. His running legs felt heavy as lead. One shoe had come off long ago. His scraped sole stung and ached. Still, he couldn’t stop. Gi Taejeong was already far ahead of Sehwa, and,

“There he is!”

Behind him, soldiers guarding the shelter were giving chase. The sound of their footsteps running towards him grew closer and closer. The echoing thud of multiple military boots pounding down the shelter corridor reverberated loudly. Sehwa, pale with fright, barely managed to lift his feet. He felt as if a hand reaching out from behind would grab his hair at any moment.

“Crazy… gasp, bastard, really….”

A moment ago, as the entrance to the shelter drew near, Gi Taejeong had gradually begun to pick up speed in his walk. His slightly quickened pace had soon turned into a run, then a terrifying sprint. That was all. Gi Taejeong simply charged at the soldiers bare-handed. He dodged the pouring bullets as if he had a knack for reading them all, then quickly and accurately strangled someone’s neck and snatched their gun. Even if he had been targeting that person from the start, he couldn’t have been that fast.

After that, it was simply Gi Taejeong’s unilateral slaughter. After entering the building, he went ahead of Sehwa, eliminating obstacles and soldiers in their path, and occasionally came to rescue Sehwa if he seemed about to be caught. Of course, he was grateful. But if he was going to be kind, and if he had even promised to save him… couldn’t he be a little more generous? Gi Taejeong only appeared abruptly when he seemed truly about to die, dealt with the bare minimum, and then disappeared again. The speed at which such a tall and well-built man ran was so fast it was like he was a missile.

“Direc-tor….”

The voice he barely managed to utter was closer to a hiss (a continuous ‘shush’ sound among the static in a receiver, or the hissing sound of a snake) than a human voice. Even though he knew Gi Taejeong wouldn’t hear him, Sehwa called him several times. He didn’t expect Gi Taejeong to match his pace. But it would be nice if he just stayed a little ahead. Just enough to easily fend off the guys following behind. Just enough so he wouldn’t tremble with such anxiety….

“Truly a bad… bastard, gasp….”

He said he would take him. He said he would save him. He was so out of breath his stomach felt like it would burst. Sehwa had a stitch in his side and struggled to even walk, let alone run. He didn’t even have the energy to speak. But if he didn’t curse Gi Taejeong, he felt like he would just collapse there. He felt like he needed to use annoyance and resentment as fuel to survive without dying.

“Hoo, huff….”

Sehwa, who had briefly leaned on his knees to catch his breath, gathered his strength again and narrowed the distance with Gi Taejeong. Of course, his speed was slower than a snail crawling… so he wasn’t sure if it could even be called narrowing the distance.

The shelter was single-story and simple inside. It wasn’t a very good structure for an air-raid shelter, so it was probably used as a warehouse and then roughly repurposed. There weren’t many people living in this area anyway, and 99% of them were criminals living under concealed identities. There was probably no intention of carefully evacuating these residents from the start.

In any case, it seemed it hadn’t been managed for a long time, as iron shelves were set up on both sides of the corridor. Of course, they were filled with items necessary for evacuation, like gas masks and fire extinguishers, but piling them up like luggage in the corridor only obstructed movement. Not even the emergency exits of the house were piled with so much stuff.

The corridor was somewhat cluttered, but fortunately, the path wasn’t complicated. He didn’t have to worry about getting separated from Gi Taejeong; he just had to follow the straight corridor. However, that also meant he had no choice but to expose his position to the enemies and squeeze through the corridor, narrowed by the items, running forward. Without knowing what lay at the end.

“Aargh!”

As soon as he lifted his head, which he had been bowing, a whooshing sound tore through the air, grazing Sehwa’s crown. Startled, he snapped his head up to see Gi Taejeong aiming a gun, having approached this close without him noticing. He could have been shot, but Sehwa dared not question him. It was because gunshots and unfamiliar screams echoed one after another from quite close by.

“Hee-eek!”

Sehwa, gathering all his courage, turned around and his knees gave out, making him collapse. Two men with wide-open eyes, holes drilled in their foreheads, slowly collapsed right in front of Sehwa. The thick, hard clubs in their hands fell to the floor with a dull thud. He didn’t know when they had gotten so close, but it seemed they had intended to strike him from behind with those.

“I think I’ve dealt with most of them, so you can walk a bit slower now.”

“R-really? How did you….”

“If this many have died, there probably aren’t many left.”

He desperately hoped so. Sehwa, looking haggard, stumbled closer to Gi Taejeong. He wanted to get as far away from the corpses as possible.

“By the way, do that again from before.”

“Huh?”

“The ‘hee-eek’ sound.”

Gi Taejeong smacked his lips, saying he’d never heard such a sound from him before.

“You didn’t even cry like that when your body was almost folded in half.”

Sehwa’s mouth fell open. He was so dumbfounded he didn’t know how to react. No, even in this situation, did he want to think about sex?

“Ah. Cancel the part about walking slowly. You’re too slow.”

“…Director.”

He had called him in a voice seething with anger, but due to his lack of energy, it sounded like a young animal whining. Sehwa felt like his insides were bursting in many ways. He wanted to argue with Gi Taejeong. Considering he was a civilian, this wasn’t even slow, and of course, he could barely walk right now, but he wished Gi Taejeong would consider why his body was in such a state, and most importantly, was it normal to tell someone who was terrified after seeing people die right in front of them to make that groan again, reminding them of sex?

But Gi Taejeong didn’t wait for Sehwa, who had so much to say. He stroked his chin suggestively, imagining something to himself as he looked at Sehwa, then moved towards the fallen men. With practiced ease, he snatched the pistol from a man’s waistband and fired wildly behind him. He seemed to be shooting haphazardly without looking, but each time Gi Taejeong pulled the trigger, loud, low screams reverberated down the corridor. The sound of bodies collapsing with a wet thud was vivid even from a distance.

“It’s getting a bit embarrassing. For a military facility, it’s too shoddy….”

Gi Taejeong counted the remaining bullets, then fired them all into the ceiling and threw the gun away without regret. Several warning lights shattered, making the scene even more desolate.

“I’ll lose face, won’t I?”

He still couldn’t understand why Gi Taejeong was wasting precious bullets like that, but Sehwa had stopped expecting explanations or common sense from Gi Taejeong. It was easier to think he just wanted to shoot a new gun with a full clip.

“The medicine is definitely hidden there….”

“Huh? Where?”

Gi Taejeong poked a sack inside the shelf. It seemed to be a refill for fire extinguisher powder when it ran out. Sehwa’s face brightened.

“It’s perfect for camouflage. White, and powder.”

Hearing that, he looked at the shelf and saw an excessive number of sacks. This shelf alone had only one fire extinguisher, but over ten sacks of refills.

“Then, should we pack them now?”

“No. We need to show the sealing of the medicine here. So Lieutenant Park can pull it up as a hologram.”

“Sealing?”

“That way, we can use it as a bargaining chip with Kim Seokcheol. If we just show him syringes, he’ll deny everything. Saying he doesn’t know where they came from.”

“Th-that’s right? What should we do? We didn’t bring anything….”

“I know of one item suitable for carrying… Usually, at this distance, you’d find a control room or a makeshift booth, and they’d typically store it there.”

But he couldn’t see it, Gi Taejeong said, stroking his chin.

“What is it?”

“A bomb.”