What situation am I even in?
My head, wracked by dull throbs and sharp stabs of pain, couldn’t immediately grasp my surroundings.
Only the swaying scenery passed in and out of blurred vision.
Multicolored light bulbs, the yellow tactile paving on the floor, an exit number sign, gray...
Stairs.
“Hhk.”
That instant, I realized.
Ko Yeongeun was carrying me on her back, desperately pounding down a stairwell. With fingers missing, her hand gripped my dangling arm over her shoulder.
I forced my parched lips to part.
“...Sa-nyang.”
“...!”
Startled by my voice, she nearly missed her footing, almost tumbling, but barely managed to recover her balance and continued to rush down the stairs.
All the way to the platform.
“......”
She shouldn’t be able to.
Ko Yeongeun... her body isn’t even intact, so how is she managing to carry me like this? I couldn’t make sense of it. But I felt the urgency, the panic of flight. I couldn’t stay like this, burdening her. She must be straining under the weight. Since I’d regained some clarity, I should walk on my own legs. I forced strength into my body, extended my legs toward the ground—
......
Nothing.
Below my thighs, nothing remained.
My left leg was gone from the thigh entirely. My right leg had been severed at the joint.
Signs of bleeding, strangely clotted off.
‘...The casino!’
Suddenly, like my skull bursting open, memory slammed back.
The Body Casino. The VIP room. Russian Roulette. Deputy Lee Seonghae. The sickening sensation of my head being torn apart. The stolen body parts snatched from the rail. The euthanasia drug. The struggling. My own hand clamped over nose and mouth—
The countless acts of damage I’d inflicted on the casino’s assets.
‘Was... my legs charged as the cost?’
It seemed a reasonable assumption. Even if losing just my legs could never possibly balance the astronomical destruction I’d caused.
But even more fundamental—
‘Why am I not dead?’
I had raised the gun to my head and pulled the trigger. So why was I still here? Still conscious?
And...
Was Ko Yeongeun trying to save me?
“Thi... s,”
“Shh.”
She barreled down to the subway platform, nearly collapsing, then ran straight for the far wall opposite the screen doors.
And wrenched open a fire hydrant cabinet.
“...!”
“Quick...!”
Normally just barely wide enough to jam a hose inside, the fire hydrant compartment was, strangely, spacious.
Large enough for one person to lie down inside. For two, cramped but sufficient to squeeze in.
Ko Yeongeun hastily shoved me into the darkness, then climbed in after me.
Thud.
The metal door clanged shut. Darkness closed in, broken only by the faint glow of the bulbs seeping through the cracks and the red emergency light.
“......”
“......”
“Don’t... worry, hff, casino dealers never chase outside... just have to avoid the addicts....”
But she couldn’t continue; she had to catch her breath. Even so, she bent closer as if to check my condition.
When she reflexively twitched her hand, maybe to pat my back—
“Hhup....”
Another light source bloomed in the dark.
A pale green glow.
Something at her waist gave off a fragile radiance. She didn’t notice, from her angle. But I knew what it was.
Baekilmong’s Class C Regeneration Potion.
......
A realization hit me.
Taking advantage of the dark, I slipped the potion from her worn padding pocket and hid it in my own.
Meanwhile, she managed at last to steady her breathing.
“Sa-nyang.”
“Phew, yes?”
“Did you save me? From the casino...?”
“......”
“What happened in there?”
“I don’t know either. Just, it seemed like the dealers were coming to the VIP room, but when I looked inside, everyone was... dead, and you, Roe Deer, were the only one still breathing, so....”
So she ran off with me on her back.
...There must have been equipment or items helping her.
She’d survived in Se-gwang Special City for half a year; she must have prepared all kinds of measures for survival.
“Even then, I was too late... carrying you out, your legs were already—”
“Don’t worry about that. ...Thank you.”
The fact that I hadn’t died outright was the worst possible outcome.
‘...If not for Ko Yeongeun’s help.’
Then in Deputy Lee Seonghae’s place, I would have been dismantled completely in that casino, turned into a dealer myself. As if passing a baton.
A shiver ran down my spine.
“And since your legs were gone... you weighed less.”
“......”
“In a way, that’s a relief.”
“That’s hardly—”
She looked on the verge of cursing, her face twisted with rage, but she swallowed it down. Whether out of fear of drawing attention from outside, or simply from exhaustion, I couldn’t tell...
My head was starting to clear, but I felt that brief sharp clarity dulling again....
I noticed that my head still throbbed.
Raising a hand, I felt the wound.
The skull... had it been punctured? I couldn’t tell.
But I had definitely been shot.
‘...Was there a misfire?’
Or had the bullet struck at precisely such an angle that I couldn’t die outright?
They say the brain can’t feel pain, so I couldn’t know how ruined I was.
And as I groped at my head, Ko Yeongeun flinched, then as if realizing something, jerked upright.
“Ah!”
She dug frantically in her pocket.
“The potion! The one the manager gave you...!”
“......”
As I thought.
She was about to use it on me.
“Hurry, hurry....”
The Regeneration Potion.
But I’d already stolen it into my own pocket. Her hand, trembling, searched for the bottle Deputy Manager Lee Jahaeon had entrusted her with.
...Guilt and heaviness swamped me.
But I couldn’t give it back.
If it were used on me, I’d only feel guiltier.
“...It’s all right. I think the bullet only grazed me.”
“What are you—”
“So... the limb loss, cough, can wait. We’ll retrieve them at the casino later.”
“......”
“And if we can find the potion again, it’ll be better if you drink it. It’ll work more effectively for you.”
I only prayed she couldn’t see my wreck of a face in the dark.
“My head wound... might’ve just been a dud. For now... I’m stabilizing.”
A lie.
I’d be dead soon.
But for me to use it now would be a waste. She needed it far more.
“...Once we get on the train, we’ll return to normal! Then we can find it slowly and fix everything....”
“Yes.”
I wouldn’t last until then.
But I nodded quietly. She was anxious, but she couldn’t bring herself to swing the cabinet wide open, to check me under the light.
Instead, she repeated words like a charm, to reassure herself and me both.
“Don’t worry. The hydrants... when they’re addicts, strangely, they never open them....”
“I see....”
I forced my dizziness down, to redirect her attention.
“You heard that from rumors too?”
And... I asked what I’d wanted to.
“Sa-nyang, what exactly happened to you?”
“......”
Like before, she stayed silent for a while.
Then, abruptly, words came.
“Do you remember? I told you I dropped out of med school.”
“......”
“The truth is, it was always a stretch from the start. I was from the countryside, my family wasn’t well-off. Tuition, living expenses, missing out on dorms and having to pay rent... it all piled up.”
Her voice sounded rambling, yet calm.
“Even with student loans, working part-time jobs alongside was just too much. Once clinical training started, it was basically impossible....”
“......”
“And then some problems cropped up in the department too.”
......
“But of course, it had to be just then. That was when I fell out completely with my parents.”
Ah.
“We fought, then lost all contact.”
She hunched her shoulders slightly.
“From then, support was cut off. My sense of purpose blurred... and I naturally transferred out. I guess burnout hit too.”
I listened in silence.
“Nothing special, really. But....”
Her voice shrank.
“Funny, but that’s why.”
“...What do you mean?”
“That’s why I joined this company.”
“......”
“I didn’t know how else to reconnect with my family.”
Not just in the sense of hiring an investigator to find their whereabouts.
“I wanted to get along with them again... but I was blocked right from the start.”
“......”
“So I thought, if it’s a wish-granting ticket, maybe I could wish even for this.”
And I knew.
Ko Yeongeun was someone who knew how to use the wish ticket properly.
She’d figured out a way to fulfill Jang Heowoon’s wish by proxy; she could do the same with her own.
“When you passed me the wish ticket, I thought about it.”
Her voice sank low.
“I didn’t want to wake up in another world where my wish had been granted. Didn’t want to suddenly find myself never having gone to med school, or already a doctor living happily with my family. So....”
So.
“I made this wish.”
“Grant me a supernatural ability to gather news of my family.”
...!!
“With that, I thought I could reach them, understand the situation, and reconcile.”
A wish for a specific ability.
Not too much, not too little.
She’d calculated a wish applied solely to herself, nothing excessive.
By rights, it should have worked flawlessly.
But—
“When I opened my eyes....”
......
“I woke up here.”
In this bizarre subway station.
Beneath Se-gwang Special City.
“And the moment I woke, I realized—something was wrong.”
Where did I live, again?
“Isn’t that strange? Who introduces themselves as ‘from the countryside’? You say what place. But somehow, I’d never even wondered before. Same with my family....”
A gulp of saliva.
“I didn’t even know why we’d lost contact.”
A chill.
“All that’s left is the feeling that things became irreparably bad, so contact was cut off. And this vague resignation, this aversion, that I can never reach them again....”
And then I understood.
“What on earth is this?”
Ko Yeongeun was from Se-gwang Special City.
When a Destruction-class supernatural disaster struck and the city was sealed, she had been left stranded, separated from the real world where she’d lived in Seoul.
And the wish ticket had shaped an environment where her wish—to hear news of her family—could operate.
By forcing her into the sealed zone.
And then—
“I gained this strange ability to perceive the rumors drifting through the city.”
But her family...
“I’ve never once heard news of them.”
......
“Maybe it’s obvious. This is a city of ghost stories. Right? How could I find my family’s news in ghost stories? Right...?”
“......”
“So I thought it hadn’t worked. That Director Ho had tricked me. Right?”
I wanted to agree, to say yes for her sake.
I tried.
“...Roe Deer?”
But no words came.
“Roe Deer!”
I slumped against the hydrant wall.
My limbs failed, like my nerves had gone haywire.
Is this the end?
The end was here.
But then—
Train approaching.
“Do you hear it?”
Her hands gripped my shoulders.
Shaking.
“The train! It’s coming in. We just need to board it. This one—it’s my shelter train. If we can just reach it, just... please....”
Speech grew harder.
Dear passengers, please board safely while observing proper etiquette.
Light spilled in. She must have opened the hydrant.
I felt her dragging me out.
“That train. G1572. If we just get on that one, just that....”
Out of the hydrant, she tried to hoist me onto her back again—
But I stopped her with what strength I could.
“...Roe Deer?”
It was meaningless, my hand too weak. Only barely resting atop her arm.
I tried to mouth the words.
Don’t worry.
“What...?”
I’ll come back.
At the end, even my lips wouldn’t move.
“Roe Deer, Roe Deer....”
As the train roared in—
I died.
***
I opened my eyes.
“You’re awake, Roe Deer!”
Ho Yuwon’s voice.
“When you wouldn’t wake, everyone was about to kill me. I was terrified. How could I possibly know your personal circumstances...?”
Those plague-ridden eyes looked down on me.
“But I’m curious too.”
His mouth curled into a smile.
“You rescued who you meant to rescue. But aside from that—don’t you have lingering regrets in Se-gwang Special City?”
......
“Do you now have a reason to go back?”
Fuck.