Red Dot - 134

Chapter 134

– 8th Day

It was still morning, not long before lunchtime.

Junseong was the last to take a seat after gathering a few people in the living room of the suite.

“I called you here to talk about what comes next.”

As he sat down, his eye twitched slightly as if he felt uncomfortable, but he quickly looked up as if nothing was wrong. He glanced at each person he had gathered, one by one.

There were six people in the living room:

Kang Junseong, Do Hanseo, Seo Changmin, Hwang Kyungo, Gwak Dujae, and Jang Daewook.

All of them knew about “Kang Junseong’s dream.”

Originally, Junseong had planned to call Kang Chaeyi as well, but he decided against it. It wasn’t that he was ignoring her, but she was already mentally exhausted. Since she had just reunited with her older brother, she would never allow him to do anything even slightly dangerous. The same went for Junseong himself.

That’s why he asked Jian to stay with Chaeyi. With Jian’s sociable nature, she would quickly get along with Chaeyi and be a good companion for her anxious mind.

While Junseong briefly thought about Chaeyi, Daewook tilted his head and asked,

“What’s up with your neck?”

Junseong flinched and touched his neck. His fingertips felt the rough texture of the bandage he had hurriedly wrapped around it that morning.

“A bug bite… It was really bad.”

“But winter is just around the corner?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was a winter bug or something.”

Since the bite covered a large area, he had no choice but to use a bandage instead of just a band-aid. He secretly glanced at the “bug” that had bitten him. The moment their eyes met, the other person smiled slyly, his eyes curving slightly.

As if brushing off the unnecessary attention on the bandage around his neck, Junseong turned to Daewook and spoke in a serious tone.

“The survivors you’re with should be about 32 people in total by now, right?”

Daewook’s eyes widened in surprise before he nodded.

“Yeah, excluding Chaeyi, there are 32, including me.”

“If the numbers are the same, then the members should be the same too. The main fighters are probably the ones who were on the bus and the three people left behind with the others.”

“…I knew it, but hearing it like this is kind of creepy.”

Daewook rubbed his arms as if he had goosebumps and spoke in a disturbed tone.

The people who had boarded the bus with Daewook included himself, Kang Chaeyi, the driver, and 12 others. The elite fighters, totaling 15, had left three behind to protect and manage the other survivors.

The reason they filled the bus with only those capable of fighting was because of the information Junseong had given them about Inhan Hospital. He had told them that the building was always surrounded by zombies. Even though they knew an entry route thanks to him, they still had to be extra cautious.

“I’ll get straight to the point.”

Junseong thought for a moment before looking at everyone.

“You should all join Daewook’s survivor group. I’ll plan the route for after you merge with them.”

The first person to notice something strange was Seo Changmin.

“Why do I feel like you’re excluding yourself?”

“That’s right.”

Junseong answered immediately, without even trying to come up with an excuse. The atmosphere shifted instantly.

“W-What do you mean? Are you really telling us to go without you?”

“Junseong, are you saying you’re not coming with us?”

Kyungo, who was flustered, and Dujae, who looked serious, asked at the same time. When Junseong nodded again, Daewook abruptly stood up, glaring at him.

“Hey, does that even make sense? What the hell are you planning to do alone?”

“Calm down and sit, Jang Daewook.”

Junseong gestured at him to relax, as Daewook’s voice was getting dangerously low, like he was about to snap. With an irritated expression, Daewook bit his lip hard and sat back down on the sofa with a thump.

“Most things are happening just like in my dream, but two major things are different. One, the zombies have already broken through Inhan City and are spreading nationwide. And two…”

“There’s another person who remembers the dream. …You mean that murderer, right?”

Changmin, who quickly caught on to the second difference, spoke with a grave expression.

A complete wild card.

Not only did this person know about Junseong’s dream, but he was also using it to torment and obsess over him.

It was no surprise, really. Since he remembered the dream, Nam Ki-hyuk was behaving completely differently from how he had in the dream’s timeline.

In the dream, Nam Ki-hyuk had been just another ordinary resident. Like everyone else, his memory would reset to “before he met Kang Junseong” whenever a new round began. With his bright smile and fake kindness, even the sharp-eyed Junseong had been fooled. As a result, he had ended up as “Nam Ki-hyuk’s plaything.”

Junseong trembled slightly, recalling the countless times Nam Ki-hyuk had strangled him, and then nodded.

“Up until now, Nam Ki-hyuk was someone we could just ignore, but not anymore.”

At first, Junseong had thought he could simply avoid him.

Sure, Nam Ki-hyuk remembered the dream too, but they hadn’t spent many rounds together. That meant Junseong could still piece together a safe escape route based on the rounds where he hadn’t met him.

But Nam Ki-hyuk wasn’t going to let that happen.

He was actively blocking any route Junseong might think of, threatening his sister’s life, and even attempting to bury everyone under the hospital.

Maybe Nam Ki-hyuk had already known that Kang Chaeyi would reach the hospital on the 7th day.

[“Come to that factory I liked on the 7th night.”]

[“If you don’t, I’ll bring your sister’s head and come get you myself.”]

Just like the message he had left at the subway shelter, Nam Ki-hyuk had collapsed Inhan Hospital the moment the 8th day began—almost as if he was punishing Junseong for not showing up on the 7th night.

Had he planned to take Chaeyi’s severed head and come find Junseong?

Or worse, if Junseong was already dead, had he intended to show it to his corpse anyway?

But that thought lasted only for a moment.

‘Nam Ki-hyuk would definitely do something like that, but he doesn’t want me dead.’

There were many things about the incident at Inhan Hospital that didn’t add up.

A warning explosion at midnight, time bombs that activated late as if they were waiting for him to check.

It was like they were testing Junseong.

Survive this situation. You can do it.

He could almost see Nam Ki-hyuk looking down at the chessboard with amusement.

But there was something more important.

If the bombs were the only strange thing, he wouldn’t have thought so much about it. He would’ve just considered it another one of Nam Ki-hyuk’s crazy antics.

A bus suddenly appearing, as if offering a lifeline in a collapsing building—that was Dae-wook’s group’s bus.

He was sure of it. That had to be Nam Ki-hyuk’s doing.

‘That crazy bastard. Just how much does he remember?’

The round he spent with Nam Ki-hyuk was also the one where he had been with Jang Dae-wook and his group.

In that round, Jang Dae-wook died at the hands of Nam Ki-hyuk, someone he had believed to be his ally.

Inside this very same bus.

Junseong had been looking outside on a bright morning when he suddenly recognized Dae-wook’s bus. Seeing the reinforced high-speed bus parked in the motel lot made him remember a scene from his dreams.

But in his dreams, they had only obtained that bus long after joining Dae-wook. It was Junseong himself who had come up with the idea of reinforcing it with metal plates for extra defense.

And yet, that very bus was now right in front of him, as if reliving the past. With Jang Dae-wook, who had died inside it.

Could this really be a coincidence?

Jang Dae-wook’s usual route had never included a bus like that.

‘Someone placed that bus there on purpose, right in Dae-wook’s path, to make sure he saw it.’

Nam Ki-hyuk knew that Dae-wook’s group had a veteran bus driver. With a ready-to-use vehicle right in front of them and someone who knew exactly how to handle it, ignoring it would have been unnatural.

Then why go this far to push the keywords “Jang Dae-wook” and “bus” in front of him?

‘Is he planning to kill Dae-wook again… right in front of me?’

Junseong frowned at the way these keywords were being shoved in his face, almost as if forcing him to recall that time. Maybe Nam Ki-hyuk didn’t intend to kill him outright but to take him hostage and use him to shake Junseong up.

If he didn’t want that to happen, he had to go to him himself—exactly the kind of twisted message Nam Ki-hyuk would send.

But Junseong had no intention of moving according to Nam Ki-hyuk’s plans. At the same time, he didn’t want his group to be used and killed by that bastard.

After briefly explaining his thoughts, Junseong spoke to his group, whose faces had darkened.

“Nam Ki-hyuk is trying to pressure me even more carefully than I expected. So we’ll split into two teams.”

“Are you saying we should divide up to escape?”

“One team will move to find an escape route. But the other team… won’t.”

“What do you mean…?”

What else could they possibly be looking for, other than a way to escape this zombie-infested place?

Junseong looked at his confused group members, then pointed at Hanseo, who was sitting beside him.

“This guy and I are going to find the ‘real solution’ to ending this zombie world.”

Everyone’s eyes widened at the unexpected statement.

Only Do Hanseo remained calm, as if he had already known everything Junseong was about to say.