Chapter 177

The car Jae-gyeom was driving entered Hangang Bridge.

Most people whose living area is Seoul are probably the same, but I like the scenery when crossing a bridge over the Han River.

But today, the blue river or the buildings visible beyond it did not really enter my eyes.

Because the original form of 「Great Bridge Sunk in Fog」, where I had been trapped, was this very Hangang Bridge.

I was busy taking in the shape of the bridge, which was not particularly special.

I had been up on that arch with Baek Sa-ra.

Team Leader Cha Si-eon had torn off that railing and made it into a ladder.

My experience and memories were this vivid, yet reality had nothing to do with them.

And this kind of dissonance created by Special Zones was always strange.

I was looking at Hangang Bridge and the small island beyond it when it happened.

Bzzzt—

My smartwatch rang.

It was a call from the Bureau Situation Room.

-Agent, your leave is going well, right?

A light voice followed.

-We contacted you to check because your location is being picked up as 「Great Bridge」 and 「Island」.

This call was only half obligatory, and the other half was closer to a joke.

So I laughed dryly and answered as well.

“Yes, I am heading home just fine.”

“Kwak Jae-gyeom is next to him too. Rest easy.”

Kwak Jae-gyeom cut in while driving.

At that, the Control Team agent also answered with a laugh.

-Yes, confirmed. Have a good leave.

When the communication ended, Kwak Jae-gyeom said lightly,

“It’s fascinating, right? The GPS overlapping.”

As Jae-gyeom said, it was a fascinating phenomenon.

Even if one fell into a Special Zone, GPS could be detected.

So every time I was dragged into a Special Zone, the Bureau immediately grasped my location.

However, sometimes, like this, they had to check directly.

When I passed through the space that served as the original form of a Special Zone, as I was doing now.

Because the GPS detected from the Special Zone overlapped exactly with the location of that original space, so by looking only at the GPS information, they could not distinguish whether I was in reality or had fallen into a Special Zone.

“It is fascinating, and also grotesque.”

“Right. Like it is openly showing off that it is another dimension.”

“Come to think of it…….”

I began speaking in agreement with Jae-gyeom’s words, then stopped.

At that, Jae-gyeom glanced at me.

“Come to think of what?”

“No, it is nothing.”

I shook my head and changed the subject.

Jae-gyeom looked puzzled for a moment, then soon began another story.

While keeping pace with that story, in one corner of my head, I repeated the words I had swallowed back down.

Come to think of it, there was content like this in Author Na Bit’s short story collection.

In the near future, after most of civilization had been destroyed, humanity’s only foundation was a shelter.

However, that final bastion was far too cramped for the number of survivors, and so the shelter’s administrators devised a plan to split dimensions into several branches and house the survivors separately.

People could neither see nor touch people from dimensions different from their own.

Thanks to that, the survivors came to share the same space with people from other dimensions, while neither being expelled outside the shelter nor going mad from the oversaturated population density.

However, even if the dimensions had split and they had no chance of running into one another, as long as they shared space, they influenced one another in ways large and small.

On a small scale, the interior of a house would change to an unfamiliar taste. On a large scale, a perfectly fine car would suddenly be processed as scrap.

As dissatisfaction piled up, people began sharing methods to kill roommates from other dimensions, and in the end, another war began in order to seize control over the space.

When we worked on it together for publication, I had thought it was merely an interesting science-fiction setup.

Thinking of it again now, this too felt strange, and out of habit, I stroked my left arm.

---

“Oh, your place is nice.”

“I need to clean, so do not come in yet.”

“It is clean, though.”

Jae-gyeom said that while looking inside from the entrance.

As he said, my home had maintained the state from when I had last cleaned it.

Still, I had left the place empty for more than a month, so I ventilated first.

“Hyung, did you get your cell phone back?”

“They told me to just buy a new one.”

“Ah, that might be better. It was not a phone you had been using for long anyway.”

The cell phone I had originally used was lost at 「Railway Station」 this past February.

And the cell phone the Bureau had recovered not long ago was the new device I had made afterward, one I had not even used for 10 days in society.

So changing phones itself was not much of a problem.

The real problem was the fact that a text message had been sent to Acting Team Leader Oh Tae-o from the new cell phone I had quietly left at home.

That was why the Bureau had taken my cell phone, but it seemed they had not found out anything in particular.

“Then you can go out tomorrow and set up a cell phone too.”

Jae-gyeom said as he came into the house.

I was grateful that he said it so readily, but.

“Won’t following me around everywhere be uncomfortable for you?”

“I am fine, but are you uncomfortable, hyung?”

“No, I was worried it would be a bother for you.”

When I had gone to meet Author Na Bit last time too, Jae-gyeom had waited nearby for hours.

Naturally, it bothered me that one person’s time was being used up wholesale for my private business.

But at my words, Jae-gyeom looked troubled and asked back,

“Hyung, are you hardly using leave because of me?”

I did not deny it.

If I could move around alone, I would have gone out from time to time.

But the Bureau did not allow me to go out alone, so I had been living by the principle of not going out unless it was truly important.

At my silent affirmation, Jae-gyeom shook his head and said,

“Come on, hyung. Do not worry about me and go out often. I heard Senior Lee Seop went home every weekend.”

“He had a family.”

“Still. And because of that, they say our Team Leader basically lived at that house on weekends, so hyung, you should just use leave comfortably too.”

“Team Leader Cha?”

“Yes. Back then, our Team Leader accompanied Senior Lee Seop whenever he went out.”

Ah, Lee Seop had been on Kwon Mu-seop’s team, and at that time, the youngest member had been Team Leader Cha Si-eon.

It seemed the structure had been exactly the same as mine now.

More than that, to think he had spent weekends at Lee Seop’s house.

I had already thought Lee Sol’s mother seemed familiar with Cha Si-eon and Kwon Mu-seop, but they were not merely her husband’s coworkers whom she knew through him.

Well, without that much trust, she would not have been able to calmly greet the people who had confined her daughter for half a year.

“If hyung had married early, I would have gotten home-cooked meals too.”

At Kwak Jae-gyeom’s delusion, I laughed dryly and replied,

“That is prejudice. Our married couple might not cook at home.”

“I like delivery food too.”

Whether it was home-cooked food or delivery, Kwak Jae-gyeom was saying he would eat it at my house.

“Anyway, I like getting out of duty. So use leave anytime, hyung.”

This did not seem like empty courtesy.

Judging from the sight of Kwak Jae-gyeom, who had already finished adjusting to my house and was half-lying on the living room sofa.

“Hyung, do you not have a TV?”

This guy really came here to play.

“I will give you my laptop. Watch on that.”

I brought out the laptop I used from my room.

Thinking about it, I had not turned on this laptop in far too long either.

Worried about its condition, I pressed the laptop’s power button.

Fortunately, it did turn on.

But instead of the familiar loading screen, a broken screen appeared.

“What is this…….”

“Why?”

“The laptop has an error.”

White special characters were sparsely scattered across a black background.

With the screen frozen in that state, I roughly tapped the keyboard.

But the screen neither moved nor turned off.

As I stood there holding the laptop with one hand, Kwak Jae-gyeom also got up and approached.

“Huh? Hyung.”

“What?”

“This looks the same as the ransomware that hit your company before.”

“The one you fixed?”

“Yes.”

When I asked in surprise, Jae-gyeom nodded.

When I had just been appointed to the Special Management Bureau.

Kwak Jae-gyeom had once visited my old company in my place while I was lying in a hospital bed.

At the time, the company people had been fretting over ransomware that had spread through the computers, and I had heard that Kwak Jae-gyeom, who happened to show up, solved it.

He said the state of my laptop now was exactly the same as back then.

Thinking about it, the time I had neglected this laptop also roughly began then.

“Then did it spread through my work email from the previous publisher?”

“It would be right to think that way.”

“Can you solve this too?”

“Yes, well. I have done it once before.”

At my question, Jae-gyeom readily nodded.

There was a solution, but instead of moving, we stared at that broken screen for a moment.

“This is not related to Special Zones, is it?”

“Who knows…….”

I would rather dislike it if it was related.

As if dragging me around was not enough, they are touching my devices too…….

After thinking it over, we contacted the Bureau.

“Team Leader, we are at Do-un hyung’s house right now…….”

Kwak Jae-gyeom called Cha Si-eon and relayed the situation.

Then he soon hung up and said to me,

“He says to bring the laptop. Ah, we ordered pizza…….”

Since we would have to go back in after only one hour of being out, Kwak Jae-gyeom sighed.

“For now, we can go back in and then come out again.”

But my priority was removing this suspicious thing from my home.

We picked up the laptop as it was and opened the front door.

Then, as we were passing through the corridor of the officetel.

BEEP— BEEP— BEEP—!

A loud warning sound began ringing from my laptop.

I was flustered by the warning sound ringing as if it were trying to catch a thief.

On top of that, the laptop body was heating madly.

And on the laptop screen, red and yellow were crossing frantically.

As if it would soon explode.

“Back inside!”

“What? Yes!”

Thinking, Surely not, I went back into my home.

The moment we entered the entrance, the warning sound stopped abruptly.

“What is this…….”

Not only had the warning sound stopped, but the screen had also returned to a black background with white broken characters.

The heat of the body did not seem to be rising further either.

I placed the still-hot laptop on the table.

Jae-gyeom called the Team Leader again, and feeling thirsty, I headed to the refrigerator.

“Huh? Why is my phone like this?”

As if even his cell phone was acting up now, Kwak Jae-gyeom held his phone and muttered.

First, I opened the refrigerator door.

But the bottled water we had bought and put inside earlier was not visible.

We had definitely put it in the refrigerator, but it had disappeared.

“…….”

Holding my breath at an ominous premonition, I ran to the window.

And the scenery beyond the window changed my premonition into certainty.

“……Jae-gyeom, open the front door again.”

Jae-gyeom, who was still standing at the entrance, immediately grabbed the doorknob and turned it at my words.

Click— clickclick—!

“Hyung, how do you open this door?”

It was an ordinary keypad door lock.

From the inside, it opened if one simply pulled down the doorknob.

We had gone out and come back in that way just moments ago.

But suddenly, the door would not open, his cell phone was dead, and my laptop had a grotesque error.

On top of that, the scenery outside the window was a solid blue.

The house I lived in was on the 12th floor.

So above, the sky should have been visible, and below, roads and buildings should have been visible.

But right now, there was nothing but blue, neither sky nor anything else.

Up and down were both vague blue.

What on earth is this? Is this not reality?

I turned back toward the entrance to call Jae-gyeom.

At that moment, the screen of the laptop on the table entered my eyes.

For some reason, on that screen was written a sentence I could read.

「Space can be configured.」