“I’m fine!”
Ami answered boldly.
With that sa voice, she first lanted the tragedy of dropping her frappuccino, then added seriously,
“But it felt like the stab avoided my vital points on purpose.”
“What?”
Ska repeated.
Yehyeon narrowed his eyes and looked down at her.
“I’m not that spaced-out, you know.”
It was the patient’s claim.
Everyone in the room turned their round eyes toward her. She looked so normal it was hard to believe she’d just co out of surgery.
Until Yehyeon arrived, she had been the oldest in the hospital room.
Ami spoke solemnly.
“The culprit’s really skilled. I didn’t even sense them coming.”
“It’s okay~... people can get distracted by frappuccinos sotis....”
Ricardo grinned slyly.
Ami flared up.
“No!”
“Ami. Don’t move so much.”
Yehyeon hurriedly pressed down on her shoulders as she raised her arms.
“Your wound will open.”
“Ska didn’t notice either! And the person vanished like a ghost!”
Lowering her arms again, Ami insisted earnestly,
“Soone who moves like that isn’t an amateur!”
Ska stayed silent for a while.
Sitting down, he only stroked his chin. Yehyeon and Ricardo waited quietly for him to reach a conclusion.
The tall aide uncrossed his legs.
“That’s a valid point.”
Silence filled the room.
Everyone sank into their own thoughts, eyes downcast. Only Ami blinked wide eyes, waiting for the others to finish thinking.
When she couldn’t bear the boredom anymore and smacked the blanket with both hands, the silence finally broke.
“I’m already bored!”
“Let’s call Hilde here first, then talk more.”
Yehyeon muttered as he patted her head.
“No idea why we can’t reach him, though.”
***
I stared fixedly at the monitor.
Yehyeon’s photo and the text beside it.
The sentence at the very top of the personal information caught my eye.
“During the zombie-type Creature outbreak within the Core, received subject X’s biological data from Falcon.”
What is X.
And what is the “zombie-type Creature outbreak”?
I stared at the incomprehensible words.
Then I felt a chill of killing intent from behind.
Startled, I threw myself sideways.
Crash!
Jaeyeon’s fist shattered the computer screen.
The glass cracked but the fra held. Cracks spread outward from where his fist had struck.
It was still functioning, but not for long.
Jaeyeon kept swinging his fists.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
The screen went completely black.
What the hell is he doing again?
The shattered display, the glass shards stuck to his bleeding hands.
I could only watch, speechless, as Jaeyeon lost control.
What’s his problem?
Only after pulverizing the screen entirely did he lift his head.
Just like when he smashed the serum at Erich Erhart’s museum, he was panting heavily.
“What the hell was that for now?”
Surely not because he saw Yehyeon’s face?
“Why the sudden fit?”
Wham!
Yun’s shoe slamd into Jaeyeon’s side.
Jaeyeon’s body flew back into a pile of docunts. Thud! The stack, as tall as a man, burst into the air.
I exhaled a stunned “Huh...” at the abrupt chaos.
Yun walked slowly toward the man struggling to rise.
“Psychopath.”
The shooter stopped at Jaeyeon’s feet and muttered coldly.
“If you’re going to have a fit, at least know who’s really to bla.”
His low voice trembled with fury.
A hard, freezing gaze locked on his opponent.
The anger simred deeper.
“You couldn’t even bare your fangs at your master.”
Jaeyeon scread.
Eyes gone wild, he lunged at Yun with an inhuman sound. Even expecting it, the force was overwhelming enough to make flinch.
The sheer rage and grief reached even .
But Yun didn’t flinch.
The gun went off.
Bang!
A bullet grazed Jaeyeon’s ribs.
Even with blood spurting, he didn’t stop.
“What do you know!”
Jaeyeon slamd Yun down, straddling him, and raised his fist.
He was so frenzied he didn’t even feel the pain of the wound.
“What do you know! What do you know about what he and I had!”
Thud! Thud! Thud! His fists pounded Yun’s face. Yun didn’t blink through the barrage.
Even under the blows, he calmly reloaded.
He lifted the gun, aiming at Jaeyeon’s wrist.
Bang!
If this went on, one of them would die.
Most likely Jaeyeon—since Yun had the gun and his sanity. Though ironically, Jaeyeon’s insanity granted him monstrous strength; Yun couldn’t shove him off.
Still, if nothing changed, Jaeyeon would die first.
I sighed and looked around.
Good.
Another crowbar.
Crash!
The crowbar snapped in half.
Of course. Crowbars never hold up to impact.
I tossed the broken tool away, but didn’t stop this ti. I ran toward the n wrestling on the floor and kicked away the gun.
Then I grabbed so nylon cord—clearly ant for restraining test subjects—and put it to use. I tied up Jaeyeon first, then Yun’s hands as well.
And I set them back-to-back.
“Why tie ?”
Yun spat blood and glared.
I smiled at the two disheveled n.
“Did you forget? You threw the first punch again, senior.”
“He’s the one at fault.”
“What did he do?”
Ignoring Jaeyeon’s ragged struggling, I asked.
The cord wouldn’t break. I’d tied it with all my strength, and the material was tough; besides, I knew how to bind hands so they wouldn’t slip free.
Yun narrowed his eyes.
I waited patiently for one of them to speak.
At this point, I deserved to know. I couldn’t keep breaking up their psychotic fights forever.
Silence fell over the lab.
Yun finally spoke.
“You don’t know about the zombie-type Creature incident, do you.”
“No.”
“There was once a humanoid Creature—like the one we just saw—rampaging inside the Center Core. It caused a major crisis because it infected people like a zombie.”
Wait. I’d seen a disease like that in my old world.
And the fact that it was humanoid nagged at .
Jaeyeon’s thrashing grew wilder, making Yun’s body jolt along with him.
The shooter stopped talking for a mont and glared at Jaeyeon.
“Knock him out.”
“I’ll finish listening first.”
“The infection spread fast. People’s panic rose to dangerous levels, and rumors started that the Center Core itself might collapse.”
So this happened after the Second War.
“The Elders took it seriously and got involved.”
“I saw a note earlier. It said Falcon gave Yehyeon the biological data of ‘X.’”
I said it absently, then asked,
“Who is X?”
Could it be my data?
That thought hit as I spoke. Maybe it was mine—or one of my kind’s. Maybe Falcon handed over the biological data of soone human-shaped but not human.
I asked with half certainty.
But the answer was sothing else entirely.
Unexpected.
“Jaeyeon.”
My eyes widened.
I stared down at the two bound n.
“Him?”
The one sitting back-to-back with you right now?
“Why his?”
“Because he isn’t human either.”
I stayed frozen.
Jaeyeon had gone dangerously quiet. Head bowed, motionless. The calm before another storm.
Problem was, I was too stunned to react.
Still, I kept ready in case he exploded again.
“What is he, then, if not human?” I muttered.
“He arrived here before you did,” Yun said flatly.
“Not a Titan, not a human. Didn’t you suspect it? Before you passed your youth to him, Jaeyeon was already staying young at Falcon’s side.”
Ah.
The mories rushed back.
Red lipstick. Upturned eyes. Flowing black hair.
Rose lipstick, high nose bridge, golden strands glinting over the collarbone.
A sharp Adam’s apple, distinct veins, short black hair.
Jaeyeon was a master of disguise.
That talent had eaten away at his mind. Like soone with dissociative disorder, his identity kept collapsing. A drifting self—no one knew what his true face was.
Perhaps only Colton did.
The one we called Shapeshifter.
From the very beginning, he had been Colton’s subordinate.
Jaeyeon laughed.
“I was gladly his.”
The human-shaped thing smiled wickedly. In his eyes I saw a dizzying mix of emotion—
Betrayal, rage, humiliation, pleading, hatred, love, fear.
“I served him while he consud . And this is what I get for it!”
Even after knowing Colton for decades, I’d never known what Jaeyeon truly was. Probably no one had.
Not until Colton handed Jaeyeon’s biological data to Yehyeon.
“A truly, truly grand ending!”
“If your master betrayed you, then your blade of hate should be turned on him,” Yun growled.
“Why aim it at Yehyeon instead?”
“Because he asked for my biological data!”
“Bullshit. He asked for useful information, not your data. He didn’t even know you weren’t human.”
“Yun. He’s not thinking rationally anymore.”
Even as I tried to calm them, half my mind was spinning, processing the new information.
Now it made sense.
Everything that hadn’t quite fit clicked into place.
Why Jaeyeon had smashed the vial of blood serum in a frenzy.
Why he hated Yehyeon so much.
How Yun had been able to create the “Creature Recognizer” so quickly.
All of it traced back to that zombie outbreak.
Jaeyeon couldn’t bring himself to hate Colton, who’d given away his data, so he directed his hatred at Yehyeon, who had rely received it.
And Yun /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ had used Jaeyeon’s biological data and the infected Creature samples in his research ever since.
“So what was that thing, exactly?”
I said aloud to no one in particular.
“The zombie-type Creature?”
I was almost afraid of the answer.
I regretted asking as soon as I did. It was over and done with—better to forget.
But words can’t be taken back.
Yun answered coldly.
“A diseased Titan.”
My stomach twisted.
I tried to absorb what I’d just learned.
I didn’t know which part hurt most.
That one of my kin had still been inside the Center Core?
That they’d t such a miserable end?
Or that because of it, Jaeyeon’s hatred for Yehyeon was misplaced—and Yehyeon was still suffering for it?
The illness had appeared around the ti the World Tree began to sicken. Those who had received its blessing sotis contracted it, though rarely.
We’d never found its cause.
Blankly staring at the floor, I murmured,
“So that’s why Yehyeon was so sure there was a Titan inside the Core.”
“Maybe. The higher-ups and I thought it might’ve crawled in from outside. Sotis the dinsional rift opens, linking inside and out. That’s usually how Creatures appear inside the Core.”
That, too, was new to —but I didn’t have the ntal space to dwell on it.
I looked at Jaeyeon, cold with rage, and Yun, cold in his own way.
The diseased Titan who had endangered the Center Core.
“When you made the Titan Recognizer—you said the research started before I appeared.”
I murmured, watching Yun.
“The sample you used was that Titan, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s a specific way to kill soone infected with that illness.”
A throbbing headache hit; I pressed my temples hard.
“We learned it the hard way. If they’d known that, it would’ve ended as a minor incident....”
Why do I always arrive too late?
The ringing in my ears made wince.
If only I’d been inside the Core then.
If only I’d stopped it before it spread—
Bang!
Sothing slamd against the lab door.
Yun and Jaeyeon turned their heads, but I didn’t.
Instead, I bent down and began rifling through the scattered files.
“What was that Titan’s na?”
They looked at as I muttered.
I ignored their stares and kept digging, hands flying through the papers.
“There must be more information here.”
My goal had shifted.
“I think it’s a na I know.”
I wouldn’t leave this place until I’d learned everything the Elders knew.
Not until I’d torn every scrap of information from this lab.
Like an addict deprived of a fix, I began tearing through the research materials.
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