Red Dot - 154

Chapter 154

Junseong suddenly felt an inexplicable fear and forcefully pushed him away. The arms that had been binding him like a spider web reluctantly loosened and slipped away.

Junseong warily stepped back a couple of paces from Ki-hyuk.

“If you were here all morning, you couldn’t have missed something,” Junseong said cautiously.

“What’s that?” Ki-hyuk asked curiously.

Junseong extended his arm and pointed to a specific spot nearby. His index finger indicated ‘Inhan Hospital.’

“It’s only about two or three hundred meters from here to Inhan Hospital,” Junseong explained clearly. “This place is slightly higher, so you can clearly see the hospital rooftop.”

“Yeah, that’s right. So what?” Ki-hyuk responded casually.

Ki-hyuk, replying, didn’t even glance at the building Junseong’s fingertip pointed to. He only stared at Junseong’s lips, as if trying not to miss a single word.

Junseong found him even more suspicious. Acknowledging that the place was Inhan Hospital without looking at the pointed location suggested he had already noticed and assessed it.

That made him even less trustworthy.

“Then why didn’t you do anything?” Junseong questioned sharply.

“Hm? What do you mean?” Ki-hyuk asked innocently.

“If you were here all morning until now, you must have seen the rescue helicopter arrive at Inhan Hospital’s rooftop,” Junseong stated firmly.

A helicopter’s noise is quite loud. At this distance, there was no way he could have missed the sound of a helicopter landing or taking off from Inhan Hospital’s rooftop.

Ki-hyuk paused briefly and then shrugged his shoulders casually.

“Well, maybe it came and went while I was lost in thought? I don’t know,” Ki-hyuk said dismissively.

“Don’t lie,” Junseong retorted sternly. “When I said earlier that I sent my brother out ‘alive and well,’ you didn’t ask how I managed to get him out or if there was a rescue.”

Junseong pointed out sharply.

“That’s because you already saw how he got out,” Junseong concluded confidently.

“…” Ki-hyuk fell silent momentarily.

Ki-hyuk then smiled slyly.

“You’re right. I did see the helicopter,” he admitted openly. “But do you think I had any way to call it? I had nothing.”

“Nothing? You had plenty of good materials right there,” Junseong countered quickly.

Junseong pointed to the construction materials on the rooftop, specifically wooden beams and metal pipes.

“With those, you could have easily made an SOS sign,” Junseong explained logically. “You have a lighter, so you could have set the flowerbed on fire to draw attention. If needed, you could have torn clothes, wrapped them around a beam, and set it on fire. On this open rooftop, with the helicopter’s path coming this way, you could have easily gotten noticed if you wanted to.”

In desperate situations, people hoping for rescue often act recklessly, doing crazy things to stand out. They might shout loudly, wave their arms wildly, throw objects, or start fires. That’s how they get noticed for rescue.

Of course, acting that way with zombies rushing in would be like asking to die. But for someone like Nam Ki-hyuk, in a safe space away from zombies, doing nothing to seek rescue was excessively suspicious.

Even if his mind froze in a sudden situation, it couldn’t have stayed that way for hours from morning until now. Right now, Ki-hyuk seemed stable enough to wonder if he was fearless. There was no trace of fear or anxiety in his words.

To Junseong, Nam Ki-hyuk seemed as calm as himself.

Would such a person just stand idly on the rooftop, lost in a daze? Then how could he explain noticing the danger beyond the rooftop door and helping Junseong so keenly?

‘Something’s definitely off,’ Junseong thought suspiciously.

People who lie unnecessarily in such situations usually fall into two categories.

Overly cautious people.

Or overly ‘abnormal’ people.

Recalling how Ki-hyuk saved him from being surrounded by zombies, Junseong guessed he leaned more toward ‘abnormal’ than cautious.

Nam Ki-hyuk, who had been staring at Junseong without pretending to hide, laughed with a clear sound.

“Haha, impressive. Yeah, impressive,” Ki-hyuk praised cheerfully.

Hearing his lively laughter, Junseong deeply furrowed his brow.

Ki-hyuk’s eyes now gleamed with satisfaction. That wasn’t the look of someone whose lie had been exposed.

“Was this a test?” Junseong asked aloud, voicing the doubts filling his mind.

Nam Ki-hyuk only laughed without answering.

Junseong definitely didn’t feel good about this.

Nam Ki-hyuk had deliberately left clues to make Junseong suspicious, as if testing how much he could notice.

But that required a condition.

Junseong had to know about Inhan Hospital and the rescue helicopter.

Not just vaguely aware, but able to gauge the distance and flight path. Only then could he realize that Ki-hyuk stayed quiet despite being in an environment where he could have been noticed and rescued by the helicopter.

With a smiling face, Nam Ki-hyuk crossed his arms and replied.

“Like you said, I deliberately avoided rescue,” he confessed calmly. “Staying here was my choice.”

“Why? You don’t know when the next rescue will come, and there’s nothing to gain by staying here,” Junseong questioned persistently.

Junseong, still not taking his eyes off Ki-hyuk, subtly reached behind his back despite feeling no sense of crisis.

‘Ah…’ Junseong sighed inwardly, clicking his tongue.

At his lower back, where he usually kept his beloved machete strapped to his belt each time, only the empty sheath remained. The weapon was gone.

Thinking back, he had lost the machete while hurriedly fighting off zombies earlier. It was probably stuck deep in the head of one of the zombies sprawled outside the rooftop door.

‘I was ready to kill myself if needed…’ Junseong thought grimly.

If he deemed Nam Ki-hyuk dangerous, he planned to ‘kill himself’ without hesitation.

Being killed by another human or committing suicide would send him back to the starting point of this cycle.

That was one of the rules of this extreme nightmare.

So, if things felt off, he intended to ‘restart’ this cycle quickly. But now, the only option was to jump off the rooftop. Or else, die by Ki-hyuk’s hands.

As Junseong entertained such extreme thoughts, Ki-hyuk stepped closer to him.

“I was looking for something,” Ki-hyuk revealed mysteriously.

“What’s that?” Junseong asked cautiously.

Each time Ki-hyuk stepped forward, Junseong’s legs moved back a step. The two, who had been standing near the rooftop door, now reached the center.

“A way to end all the zombies,” Ki-hyuk declared boldly.

A chilling air passed between them for a moment.

Junseong stopped in his tracks, struck by the only words from Nam Ki-hyuk that felt like the ‘truth’ so far. As his retreating steps halted, he found himself just a hand’s breadth away from Ki-hyuk.

Ki-hyuk’s hand reached toward Junseong. Seeing the approaching hand, Junseong instinctively felt his body stiffen.

“I actually saw you enter Inhan Hospital today,” Ki-hyuk admitted casually. “I was nearby, but there were too many zombies, so I escaped here. As you can see, I got trapped.”

Ki-hyuk’s hand, passing over Junseong’s tense shoulder, touched his backpack.

“Even after the rescue helicopter came, you didn’t get on,” Ki-hyuk observed keenly. “Your friends all seemed to leave on it, but you didn’t stay long and came straight here.”

The end of a rope sticking out from the slightly open backpack was caught in Ki-hyuk’s hand. Junseong, still not taking his eyes off Ki-hyuk as he pulled out the rope, sensed a highly dangerous vibe from him.

“Someone who ignores rescue in a situation like this, leaves a safe space, and keeps moving without rest… What is that person trying to do?” Ki-hyuk wondered aloud.

Junseong only stared at Ki-hyuk without answering.

“The answer is one of two things,” Ki-hyuk concluded confidently. “Either they’re thinking the same thing as me, or they still have someone to save.”

It was an undeniable truth.

Ki-hyuk, who had been staring intently at Junseong as if dissecting him, suddenly smiled brightly.

“Either way, it doesn’t matter,” Ki-hyuk said lightly. “But one thing’s clear: it wouldn’t be bad for us to move together.”

“Why? Because we’re both survivors?” Junseong asked skeptically.

Nam Ki-hyuk turned and walked away.

“No. I came up here with the same thought as you,” Ki-hyuk explained casually.

Pointing to the ground, Nam Ki-hyuk walked with his back to Junseong.

“You didn’t even glance at other buildings and came straight here,” Ki-hyuk noted accurately. “You probably aimed for the tallest building in the area from the start. To move in a direction with the least zombies.”

It was so accurate that Junseong couldn’t argue. He hadn’t imagined Ki-hyuk had watched him run into the building from above.

While Junseong was lost in thought, Ki-hyuk approached a wide, chimney-like concrete pillar protruding from the rooftop floor. He tied the rope securely to the sturdy concrete connected to the vent, wrapped it twice around his waist, and returned to Junseong.

Approaching Junseong, Ki-hyuk pulled out thick black leather gloves from his coat’s inner pocket.

“I’ve checked the route,” Ki-hyuk assured confidently. “I’ll take you the safest way.”

“Take me…?” Junseong questioned hesitantly.

Ki-hyuk, now wearing the gloves, tightly wrapped his arms around Junseong’s waist.

“What are you doing suddenly?” Junseong asked in alarm.

“Hold on tight. If you trust me, you don’t have to,” Ki-hyuk teased playfully.

Smiling brightly at the flustered Junseong, Ki-hyuk forcefully kicked off the ground. Junseong, caught off guard and dragged along, turned his head and gasped in shock.

“Gasp…!”

Relying only on a single rope, their bodies were thrown off the seventh-floor rooftop railing.

“This guy’s insane!” Junseong shouted frantically.

“Haha!” Ki-hyuk laughed wildly.

Junseong, overwhelmed by the fierce wind pressure, tightly shut his eyes and clung desperately to Nam Ki-hyuk’s body. The strong gravity, pressing down from above, made their bodies plummet rapidly.