Chapter 177: How to Create a God (6)
When I returned to the company, all of my colleagues had turned into corpses.
Friends and coworkers, they had all become monsters, and I was the only one left as a human.
I didn’t know the cause.
Maybe some corpse had infiltrated and spread the infection inside the group.
Or maybe we could turn into monsters without even touching them beyond the barricade.
Either way, none of the group members I had lived with were spared.
“…”
It was only half a day.
Everything had collapsed in that short time.
The group that we had run under the name of Company had lost all of its members and completely collapsed.
I was the only one left in the group.
Donghyun, who had led the group, and the others who had followed him, were only moving their dead flesh without any reason.
“…”
There was only one thing that the survivors in this ruined world had to do.
To give eternal rest to the immortal monsters.
It didn’t matter if they were my former colleagues.
Rather, because I knew their faces, I had a promise to keep.
I had to give them peace with my own hands.
‘Yuseong. If I ever become one of those monsters, then you have to kill me yourself.’
That was the promise.
We had promised to bury each other with our own hands if we became monsters.
We had to keep the promise we had made to each other.
I swore to them.
No matter what happened, I would keep my promise.
So I tried to keep it.
“…”
I took down one by one those who had lost their sanity and ran wild.
I killed with my own hands the colleague I had talked to this morning.
I killed with my own hands the colleague who had promised to be my friend because we were the same age.
I killed with my own hands the great leader who had always been respected by everyone and took on the hard tasks.
I stopped their breathing and silenced them.
I decorated their last moments with my own hands.
Their cold bodies stopped moving.
The noisy voices that filled the building would never reach my ears again.
“Donghyun hyung…”
In front of Donghyun, whom I had destroyed with my own hands, I leaned on the shovel and looked at him.
The great leader who had stood in front of everyone was gone from here.
Only a cold sword remained of the man.
I stared at Donghyun without a word, then slumped to the floor, leaning on the shovel.
My hands were soaked with blood and shaking violently.
“Am I… alone here now…?”
There was no answer to my question.
The diligent leader was dead.
What I saw in front of me was nothing but a trace he had left behind.
But my eyes still followed his trace.
“I asked you…”
My voice faded away.
The thick smell of blood stung my nose.
The blood that oozed out was nauseating.
Once, when I first met Donghyun.
I was desperate to survive then.
“Answer me…”
And now,
I was desperate to die.
* * * * * *
“Ugh…”
The liquor bottles rolled on the grassy field.
There, I stabbed the shovel into the ground and vomited repeatedly.
The alcohol I had gulped down without thinking was coming back up and shaking me.
Huff.
I held onto the shovel in the ground and tried to remember how much I had drunk.
‘Five bottles? Or six…?’
I couldn’t remember clearly.
But I knew I had gone way beyond my limit.
There was only one reason why I had drunk so much after cleaning up the company.
To bury my colleagues who had met a miserable death.
To keep the promise I had made with them, I had to drink all the liquor I had brought.
“Ugh…”
I couldn’t do it sober.
That’s why I filled my empty stomach with liquor.
I felt like I would go crazy if I didn’t borrow some drunkenness.
It was such an act to bury my mutilated colleagues in the ground.
Every time I faced them, the past memories came back to life.
As I looked at the scenery beyond the shovel, I felt a dizzy sensation for a moment.
“Ugh…”
My stomach that I had barely calmed down surged up.
Everything in the world was unpleasant, and the whole view started to shake.
In that discomfort, I tried to calm myself down and kept moving the shovel in my hand.
I had to dig the ground to bury them.
I had too much to do to stop my hand already.
“Hah, ha…”
Huff.
I shrugged off my stiff body and moved the shovel little by little.
Despite the cold wind that brushed my cheek, the drunkenness that weighed me down didn’t go away.
My stomach turned every time I saw a dead colleague, and my consciousness faded every time I moved the shovel.
In the chaotic world, only my hand was quietly doing its job.
Everything was mixed up and I was out of my mind.
“Ugh… ugh…”
I closed my eyes, opened them, and entrusted everything to my fading consciousness.
The hole grew bigger every time I opened and closed my eyes.
When I felt a bit of satisfaction in the growing hole,
I felt my body holding the shovel tilt.
“Ah…”
As I blinked several times at the dizzying sight,
Thud.
I blacked out.
* * * * * *
As if a switch had been turned back on, my blurry consciousness came back to life.
When I opened my eyes again, I was in my studio apartment.
A girl was sitting on the bed in front of me, and in my hand was a bottle of liquor.
I glanced at the empty bottle for a moment, then opened my mouth to the girl on the bed.
“I killed them all.”
The girl looked at me with clear eyes, then tilted her head and curled her lips.
I felt like she was smiling.
Maybe it was because I was too drunk.
I closed my eyes and opened them again, and the girl asked me with a serious expression.
“Who did you kill?”
Who?
It was obvious.
I had killed my colleagues today.
I had finished off those who were dead even though they were alive, and came here with blood-stained hands.
“My colleagues.”
“What did you do next?”
“I buried them all with my own hands.”
“Okay. You did well.”
She spoke to me without any emotion.
It wasn’t a consolation.
She didn’t seem to have any intention of comforting me.
She was calm, unlike me.
“With my own hands…”
I extended my trembling hand into the air.
I didn’t know how much blood I had smeared on it.
Even after I had scrubbed it hard, I still felt the smell of blood.
No matter how much I held my breath or covered my mouth, the smell of blood never went away.
“I… with my own hands…”
The image of Donghyun bleeding and falling flashed in my mind.
I owed him a lot.
I had accumulated a huge debt that I could never repay.
He had given me hope to live in this harsh world.
I felt like I could overcome any ordeal as long as I was with him.
But I had to bury him with my own hands.
“I had to… kill them all.”
My meaningless confession echoed in the air.
It wouldn’t bring back those who were already dead.
I was still alive, and they were already gone.
There was a huge gap between us that would never be closed.
I lifted my drooping head and looked at my hand again.
The empty bottle in my hand came into view.
“What did I do wrong–!”
I impulsively threw the bottle at the TV that was turned off.
Crash!
A large hole appeared on the TV with a heavy impact.
It was a useless thing that didn’t work properly because there was no electricity.
My reflection was distorted on the broken TV screen.
“What did I do wrong, what did I do to deserve this…!”
I longed for a normal life.
That was all.
I wanted to repeat the same routine every day, and move forward one step from yesterday.
That small wish seemed to be a big greed.
“Why does this world, make me so lonely…?”
I wished we could all be happy together.
I hoped that someday a rescue team would come for us.
I hoped that somewhere in this world, there was a city that survived and would save us.
But those hopes were all futile.
In the end, I was the only one left.
“Who is it… who made those monsters… who keeps tormenting me…?”
And now, I was not happy.
No one had a happy ending.
As I stared at myself covered in dirt with blank eyes, Estelle opened her mouth while watching me.
“You’re not alone.”
The terrible smell of alcohol shook my head.
The scent of alcohol spread every time I breathed, clouding my reason.
Still, I listened to her.
I waited for the next words she would tell me.
“Then what am I… if I’m not alone…?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be with you forever.”
The girl raised her pinky finger on the broken screen.
It was a vow.
We intertwined our pinkies, a ritual to convey our trust to each other.
She stretched out her thin finger and said to me.
“I’m the one who made you like this, and I’ll take responsibility and stay with you forever.”
“…”
“It’s a promise.”
Click. Click—
My consciousness was cut off with the noise.
* * * * * *
“…”
My consciousness surged back with the smell of alcohol.
When I regained my consciousness from the broken memory, I was still in my dark studio apartment.
The broken TV. The liquor bottles rolling on the floor.
And the small studio apartment where only me and the girl were left.
There, I lay on the bed with a small smartphone in my hand.
On the screen that came into view, there was a game that had leveled up somehow.
“Do you like it?”
I looked up at the voice in my ear, and saw the girl looking down at me.
Her finger was stroking my hair.
I looked at her, then turned my eyes back to the smartphone in my hand.
A game of unknown identity and name.
My finger was tapping on the character in the game.
“I guess I was playing a game.”
“Yeah. You said you wanted to forget by playing a game, right?”
Did I say that?
I felt like I did.
I also felt like I didn’t.
I couldn’t remember clearly because of the blackout.
“Did I say that?”
“You sure did.”
“I guess so.”
I stared blankly at the character on the smartphone.
Tap.
Every time I touched it, the character popped up a meaningless speech bubble.
It took a lot of taps, but I could kill the characters if I kept hitting them.
“This is fun.”
“Isn’t it?”
“I think I can do this all day.”
With a few gestures of my hand, the characters on the other side of the screen disappeared.
Just like the humans who had fallen irrationally in this world, the characters also met a whimsical fate by my touch.
As I tapped on the characters on the screen, I felt like I had become an omnipotent being.
I remembered the other game I had played hard to level up as I saw the numbers go up.
“It’s okay to do this all day.”
“I guess so. I don’t have to go to work now, and no one will say anything even if I play all day.”
“Have I become the freest person in the world now?”
The freest person in the world.
Maybe that was true.
There was no fierce competition in society, and no past self who worked like a part of the company.
No one forced me to do anything.
At this moment, I was in the most free situation than anyone else.
“But I liked it better when I wasn’t free.”
But now, I was not happy.
I had nothing to ignite my passion, and no huge wall to challenge myself.
Back then, I always looked at the future.
I lived longing for the future that never came.
But there was no future left in this world.
Along with my decaying mind, I was slowly rotting from within.
“I want to go back to the past.”
As I killed the characters on the smartphone one by one, I spoke to the girl who was listening to my story.
It was a futile wish.
It was an impossible hope.
But still, I felt like venting to someone now.
The girl who heard my story stroked my hair and asked me.
“What kind of life do you wish for?”
“I just want to get up from here, go to work, and come back to play games without thinking.”
“That’s a greedy wish.”
For a survivor living in a ruined world, there was no more luxurious wish than that.
I know that.
But I still wish for it.
Maybe because it’s impossible, I long for it more than anything.
Maybe because it’s impossible, I don’t even know why I want it so much.
“If possible, I want to go back to when there was nothing.”
“I see.”
“When the work is over, I want to buy some beer, drink it, and spend a satisfying day playing games by myself.”
But if this were possible.
If I could erase all the unpleasant memories of the past and make them a nightmare in an instant.
I wouldn’t care what or who I had to sacrifice.
A month. A week. Even a short time would be fine.
No, even just one day would be fine.
If only someone showed me a happy dream–.
“I’ll grant it for you.”
A clear voice brought me back from the smartphone.
The girl who was stroking my head said she would grant my wish.
It was an impossible wish.
It was not a wish that could be fulfilled by a mere human’s hand.
I couldn’t help but ask the girl who said she would grant such a wish.
“You’ll grant it? My wish?”
“Yes. I’ll grant your wish.”
Snort.
A hollow laugh escaped my mouth.
It was a ridiculous story.
What did she think of herself?
I gave her an answer full of emptiness.
“Wow, really…”
“Do you believe me?”
“Before that, why don’t you tell me who you are?”
Even though we had spent a long time together, I still didn’t know her name.
The only thing I knew was one thing.
That she was here now.
That was all I knew about her.
I complained and asked her identity, and she looked at me with serious eyes unlike usual.
– “I am the god of harmony–.”
– “No, from now on, you can call me Estelle, the god of retrogression.”
I doubted my ears at the name I heard for the first time.
But Estelle didn’t give me time to sink into thought.
Estelle’s clear voice engraved in my brain.
It was not a sound or a letter, but something else.
“Estelle…?”
Estelle.
The goddess of retrogression, Estelle.
I repeated the name that was delivered to me through the will that pierced my head.
There was an incomprehensible holiness in the name that flowed out of my mouth.
– “From today, you are the eternal rival of the new evil god that the continent will face.”
The room that was dark lit up with colors.
The light that had been asleep for a long time started to shine brightly.
The broken TV played the faint news that remained in my old memory.
Outside the window, I heard the cries of birds and the laughter of children running around.
The world that I had lost once was spread out in the small room.
And in the middle of that miracle, Estelle smiled.
“I hope you have a happy dream. My little god.”
Estelle’s last farewell echoed in my ears in the miracle.
