HACKED 64

I thought he would break the mirror or draw a weapon as soon as he discovered the girl inside the mirror, but unexpectedly, the man did nothing. He was simply looking straight ahead. He barely even blinked, staring so intently it felt suffocating. The shadow cast beneath his eyes added a strange sense of intimidation.

<Sickly Model Student> also stopped blinking along with him in his daze. He even held his breath.

“…”

Whether he did or not, the man seemed to have absolutely no intention of turning his gaze away. After staring fixedly this way with his arms crossed and standing with his weight on one leg, he rummaged through his pockets and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. The hand that lit the cigarette held in his mouth without even looking was quite skillful.

‘What is it? Is he using a skill on me? Something like a skill that tortures with a gaze? And why pull out a cigarette. Is he going to smoke one before formally entering battle?’

Time passed like that. As the eye contact lengthened, <Sickly Model Student>’s body and mind became extremely distressed.

Let’s set the mind aside. The body was the problem. He was maintaining the exact posture he had taken at the moment he first made eye contact with the man. He couldn’t move an inch because he didn’t know when the opponent might try to harm him.

If the posture were at least somewhat comfortable, it might be different, but it just so happened to be an incredibly awkward state. While pressing his injured flank and thigh with his hands and checking the situation outside, he was in a posture that looked like he had stopped halfway through a squat… a posture that was painful just to look at.

Furthermore, the man was tall. He wasn’t as big as the Dokkaebi he saw before, but he was on the taller side compared to the average height of an adult male. Somewhere between 160cm and 200cm… precisely, right around 180cm. While sitting, he naturally had to look up. His joints were aching to the point that a moan of pain came out instinctively, but having to tilt his neck back was torture.

‘No. If I move now, I’ll die. I’ll 100% die. I have to endure.’

However, there was a limit to enduring with an injured body. Eventually, <Sickly Model Student> collapsed while letting out a strange scream.

“Hic! Hwaak, aaaaah…”

“Whoa! Wow, you scared me!”

Thud.

<Sickly Model Student> slammed his forehead grandly against the floor as he fell. His head was now filled with nothing but the thought that he was dead.

‘Please save me please save me please save me…’

“…”

However, the mirror did not break and silence followed. In the moment of falling, he was out of it due to the pain and shock, but after a bit of time passed, the thought occurred that something was strange.

‘Wasn’t there one more scream just now besides mine?’

<Sickly Model Student> lifted his head while rubbing his forehead. The man outside the mirror was looking at him blankly. Because his pale complexion and the shadows under his eyes synergized with that expression, he looked truly as if he had lost his soul.

“I thought it was a photo. I wondered why there was suddenly a huge frame in the hallway.”

The man muttered. Under his feet lay a long cigarette that he had barely taken two or three puffs from.

He was a young man with a strange atmosphere. Each feature was sharp, but overall he had a puppy-like face. Seeing him like that with such a face, he looked exactly like a pet dog that had passed out after being tormented by the relatives’ children during a holiday.

‘Wow, the dark circles are getting darker in real-time… Is he a panda? An Incarnation of a panda, or something like that?’

He felt sorry for no reason. <Sickly Model Student> offered an apology without realizing it.

“Th-that, well, I… I’m sorry.”

“The photo talks, too.”

“I’m not a photo… anyway, I’m sorry.”

‘Did he not come here to harm me? It doesn’t seem like it, right? Right, he could be the type like that Dokkaebi Mister.’

<Sickly Model Student> cautiously stepped out of the mirror. In any case, because of his injuries, his energy had reached its limit and he was reaching the point where it was difficult to maintain the skill.

“Sorry. I thought I was alone.”

The man immediately stepped on the cigarette butt at his feet to put it out. The small ember remaining on the half-burnt cigarette was completely extinguished.

“No, no-no! I’m the one who’s more sorry. That cigarette looks brand new, but you couldn’t smoke it because of me… Ahhk.”

As he straightened his hunched body, pain spread from the injured areas. Belatedly, he thought about his own appearance.

First of all, the flank area of the knit vest he was wearing was drenched in blood. On top of that, because his skirt had torn when the bullet grazed his thigh, his bloodstained bare leg was exposed. It wasn’t a sight to show in front of a stranger.

<Sickly Model Student> hurriedly covered the injured spots while watching the man’s reaction. He was looking elsewhere without a word. Since it was an injury to the point that parts of his body were stained bright red, he surely must have noticed, but he did so very naturally.

If he had made a fuss about being surprised by whipping his head away or saying something like “Ah, sorry! I won’t look!”, he would have been grateful, but a corner of his heart would have been uncomfortable. It was consideration that seemed intended to prevent the other person from even knowing they were receiving consideration.

The man, who was looking out the window with vacant eyes that didn’t reveal what he was thinking, asked.

“Do you need clothes?”

“Clothes? It would be good if I could change… do you have spare clothes or something?”

“Uh-huh, well.”

“Then I’d be really grateful. I’ll just borrow them for a moment, wash them cleanly, and return them kyahaaaak!”

Without even answering, the man crossed both arms, grabbed the hem of his top, and began to pull it up from the bottom to take it off. <Sickly Model Student> was so surprised that he squeezed his eyes shut.

Why taking off the top all of a sudden? Unlike how he looked, he thought he was reasonably sensible and considerate, but was this jerk also one of the crazy ones after all?

“Just how many decibels is that. If I were recording, the audio would have peaked. Did you train in some sound-based martial art or something.”

<Sickly Model Student>, who was busy closing his eyes and screaming, didn’t know, but the other side was also looking at him as if he were a crazy person.

“Ack! Ack! Waaaak!”

“Stop it. My ears really hurt.”

“Hwaaaak!”

“Hey… excuse me? Can’t you hear me?”

“Aaaaaah… yes?”

<Sickly Model Student>, who had been wailing so loud the hallway echoed, opened his eyes belatedly.

The shocking sight he had expected wasn’t there. The man, now in a black short-sleeved T-shirt, was simply holding out the lavender top he had been wearing with one hand while rubbing his temple with the other. Because he took off his clothes, his black hair was sticking out everywhere. Whether it was just a feeling or not, the shadows under his eyes seemed to have gotten a layer deeper.

“Ah. You were wearing a tee inside. I thought… haha, hahahaha. Come to think of it, it’s only natural. That’s why you readily offered to take it off. I’m really sorry.”

<Sickly Model Student>, feeling awkward, quickly took the clothes and put them on. The clothes, which were a loose fit even for the man, were extremely large on him. Almost half of his thighs were covered.

“But why are you being so nice to me? You don’t know me. I’m seeing you for the first time too, Mister. Uh… um. Mister? Oppa?”

“First of all, I am a Mister. It’s just that I’m weak toward kids. Not to mention actual kids, even those who only look like kids on the outside…”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. My younger sibling died at a young age. Maybe that’s why.”

“A younger sibling?”

Younger sibling. It is an extremely common and everyday word, but at the same time, it is a word that Incarnations have no use for. Because an Incarnation, an aggregate of narratives, does not have a family.

However, the moment he heard those words, <Sickly Model Student> suddenly recalled a certain sentence. It was a part of the manual that he had read so much it wore out and he had memorized it entirely.

<The Drum that Sounds on its Own> has been alone all along and is still alone now. That Incarnation has no such thing as a younger sibling. For an Incarnation to have a family, it doesn’t make sense in the first place, right? Everything he says is a lie, so let it go in one ear and out the other.

‘Gasp. Could that man be <The Drum that Sounds on its Own>? Then everything he has said to me so far is a lie?’

The more he thought about it, the more confused he became. Whether he knew that or not, the man’s words continued.

“That kid, it’s also because of me that they died.”

“Pardon?”

“No… never mind. You wouldn’t want to hear this kind of depressing story either. Just forget it.”

“…”

If some strange man goes beyond claiming ‘he had a younger sibling’ and even says ‘that sibling died because of him’… how on earth is one supposed to deal with that? It was a part that was not mentioned in the manual.

“Ah, right. Do you want to eat before you go?”

The man changed the subject and asked an out-of-the-blue question.

“Food? Can I eat? Isn’t there nothing like that here?”

<Sickly Model Student> has never eaten anything since descending to this Pantheon. However, he is an Incarnation based on a South Korean high school student. Naturally, he knows at least how to eat food, what kinds there are, and what it tastes like if one eats it. It is not something he has actually experienced, but literally ‘knowledge’ that was automatically implanted in his head.

“There wasn’t, but there is now. I brought it from somewhere else. It would be good if you could get treatment too, but that takes a long time… so I won’t force you. Still, eat before you go.”

At the moment he was about to nod his head as if possessed, another item from the manual flashed through his mind.

If someone tries to give you something to eat or drink, refuse it. There are no food supplies left here. Even if there are, they aren’t for us.

‘I’ve violated two rules!’

The goodwill and gratitude he had briefly felt for the other person vanished instantly. Fear filled that space.

“Gyaaaaaak!”

<Sickly Model Student> fled without looking back. Even while limping on one leg, he managed to run somehow; it seemed he was doing his absolute best. In addition, the scream that seemed to tear the eardrum was a bonus.

The man, or <User Myeong 808>, was left standing there alone.

“…She really has good vocal chords.”

It was exactly the same impression as a certain Dokkaebi who would be somewhere in the Pantheon right now.