Red Dot - 30

– Chapter 30 –

“Now that the physical examination is done, please put on your clothes and come to the nurse’s office later. I’ll dress your wounds, and if needed, I’ll provide painkillers.”

“Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me; it’s something I should do. Oh, by the way, keep the fact that you have bite wounds a secret from others.”

Hyunje, in a low voice, emphasized while neatly wrapping the bandage.

“All done. I’ll go out first and prepare a place for you to rest.”

The strange gaze from before seemed to be a mistake when Junseong saw it.

Hyunje left the room with the same bright face as when they first met.

Junseong, who had picked up his clothes and was buttoning his shirt, suddenly looked down at his right hand. The bandage Hyunje wrapped was neater and firmer than what Hanseo had done. Was this the touch of a professional?

“Is he just another nurse with the same name…? But is that even possible by coincidence?”

He was using someone else’s name, attire, and name tag, and on top of that, he was a person Junseong had never seen in his dreams, unlike the first encounter with Do Hanseo in reality.

“What else could have gone wrong?”

Junseong was frustrated, wondering where this butterfly effect had started.

Hyunje left first, and soon Hanseo entered.

“Is your hand okay?”

Hanseo seemed to be concerned about the bitten wound on Junseong’s right hand.

Nodding with a pensive expression, Junseong waited silently for Hanseo to speak first.

“I wonder what changed and led to this situation.”

“Are you talking about that nurse?”

“The nurse and everyone remaining on the 7th floor.”

When they opened the door to the 7th floor around this time, according to the dream, there should have been more than six people, more than double the number. All six of them seemed to be the same people Junseong had seen in the lobby of the 7th floor in his dream.

“Where could the others have gone? They were supposed to be the people who should have evacuated here normally.”

Junseong touched his forehead with one hand. The future he had directly experienced for two months was gradually becoming chaotic. It felt like even the known outcomes and all the information would become useless.

His mind became increasingly confused. He was beginning to doubt whether he could trust the information from his dreams. Maybe it would be better to erase all the information from his mind.

Yet, on one side of his mind, various diverging paths of dreams he had dreamt so far were being shown. Different futures that had changed depending on where he made choices.

“But what’s the use if everything changes like this?”

His mental state had already deteriorated to the point where he thought it might be better to have no dreams at all.

“What did I do wrong again?”

Junseong touched his forehead with the hand wrapped in a bandage. The hand should have been hotter since there was a fever from the wound, but perhaps due to thinking too much, Junseong’s forehead was a bit warmer.

“Did I do something to change the future? Why? What did I do to turn the hospital situation that was the same every time?”

Nothing made sense. When he revisited and reconsidered for deduction, there was no end. Moreover, most of those things didn’t seem to be events that would have an impact on the hospital itself.

“Junseong.”

In the midst of Junseong’s confusion, he heard Hanseo’s calm voice.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. Instead of those thoughts, just focus on what you tried to do.”

Hanseo lifted Junseong’s thigh with ease, hugging him tightly, while still wearing only a shirt and pants. Since Hanseo was tall, when their eyes met at an awkward angle, Junseong, unable to deal with the awkward gaze, simply grabbed his shoulders with both hands.

“Whether it changes or not, your job remains the same, anyway.”

Hanseo skillfully lowered Junseong onto the hospital bed without a hint of disarray. Then, he buttoned up the remaining buttons on Junseong’s shirt.

With each button that Hanseo fastened, Junseong’s mind gradually became more composed.

“Right… My task is the same anyway.”

The memories from the dreams, which had been mingling in a corner of his mind for the past two months, seemed to be arranging themselves one by one.

“I need to follow the path of that day and find a solution to this situation. In the last dream, I obtained it but died immediately. This time, I must survive and take it with me. That’s the only way to return to the past.”

For the swift resolution of the zombie situation, which he had never accomplished even in his dreams, and for a quick start on vaccine development, he needed to convey the solution promptly.

“And…”

Junseong stared at Hanseo with determined eyes.

“I have to safely get Dohanseo out of here.”

As a vaccine and a friend he couldn’t find even in his dreams, he had to leave this place, even if it meant being separated.

This time, Junseong’s gaze turned to outside the room, focusing on the nurse who might be lurking there.

“To do that, I need to properly understand this uncomfortable situation.”

Beep

“Three more men added.”

Hyunje, who entered the supply room inside the nurse’s office, spoke briefly into the small rectangular walkie-talkie.

A moment later, another voice came through the walkie-talkie.

Newcomers? I thought there wouldn’t be any more paths to come due to the zombies, but they managed to come anyway.
The man on the other side of the walkie-talkie, who had been laughing, asked seriously.

How are they? Are they useful?
“Two in their twenties, one in his thirties. All clean and healthy.”

-Good. Then should I prepare for all three of them?

Hyunje, thinking about the six refugees who had run out into the corridor, made a troubled expression.

“Since we don’t have much time, let’s just dispose of the rotten ones and go.”

Oh, does the helicopter come at 4? In 5 hours… It’s definitely tight to finish all the work.
“Let’s take out the ones who can work first, send them for processing, and then take the rest of the healthy ones on the helicopter.”

Got it. We’re almost done with the work we were doing, so you can send them down anytime.
As he was about to finish the conversation on the walkie-talkie, he hesitated.

“But it’s a bit strange.”

What’s strange?
“The three who just arrived.”

What’s strange about them? Well, with the zombies increasing so much, I thought there wouldn’t be anyone left except those on the 7th floor.
“That’s true, but…”

Hyunje, who was stretching the conversation, furrowed his brow in thought.

“There was no announcement about the 5th-floor door just now, right?”

If there was an announcement, I would have called you first on the walkie-talkie.
“That’s what’s strange.”

As Hyunje pondered, his eyes filled with doubt.

“We didn’t get any notice about the three who just arrived.”

To hide them from the evacuees and prevent entry into the 5th floor, they had gathered everyone on the 7th floor under the pretext of needing to conserve numerous patient rooms or backup power for resting comfortably. Then, on each emergency staircase on the 5th floor, someone had set it up so that an alert would be triggered on their colleagues’ devices whenever someone attempted to open a door.

In case someone new and fresh dared to open the door on the 5th floor, their colleagues would immediately apprehend them and bring them to the work area. If they weren’t fresh, a signal would be sent to Hyunje to bring them up to the 7th floor.

However, the absence of any alerts meant that those three hadn’t even considered trying to open the doors on the 5th floor as they passed through.

“It bothers me that they came straight to the 7th floor.”

Maybe they were waiting for a rescue from the rooftop.
“No, if that were the case, they would have gone straight up to the rooftop at the end of the emergency staircase.”

Hmm…
The man on the other side of the walkie-talkie soon spoke as if he found it bothersome.

Ah, I don’t know. Maybe they have a long lifeline. It’s not even something important to worry about.
Hyunje’s face wrinkled as he heard the man’s words.

“We need to get back to work.”

Hyunje looked at the now silent walkie-talkie with an uncomfortable expression.

Then he sighed deeply and exhaled.

“Am I worrying too much about things that aren’t even significant?”

As the man said, it wasn’t something important to worry about. They would end up on the workstations anyway.

Putting the walkie-talkie back into the drawer in the supply room, Hyunje suddenly paused as the face of someone in his mind came to him.

“Hmm, it really looks like him no matter how I think about it…”

He recalled one of the three men from earlier, and his face twisted into a grin. If he had a montage or a photo, he could compare, but all he had were the impressions and atmosphere, making it uncertain.

“No? Well, since the guy your brother saw in ‘that dream’ wasn’t here at the hospital today, it must be a different guy.”

Hyunje dismissed the thought of him being someone resembling the other and erased it from his mind.