Chapter: 108. Report (3)
Whoosh goes the gray dust.
Taking countless lives,
And now still causing pain to hundreds of thousands—a plague’s messenger.
Naturally, just because we opened the door doesn’t mean the gray dust would whoosh out into the world. The dust swirled only beyond the transparent reinforcement wall.
The place we entered was just the entrance.
The three of us stood in silence, awestruck by the immense sight, stepping quietly into the sealed interlock chamber.
“Unho.”
“Yes, Haram-nim?”
“Do you have immunity to that disease?”
“Then there’s no problem.”
It was a fact I should have asked much earlier, but I only just threw the question at him.
If we confidently walked in and Unho caught it too, I wouldn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the irony.
“Then, hold on for a moment.”
“Huh? What’s that—”
Unho’s trailing words went cut off.
Instead, I heard a gagging sound, as though his throat was blocked.
Unho suddenly acting like that wasn’t due to a magical attack, the plague, or any special trap.
It was simply because there was no air.
To ensure that not even fine dust escaped outside, and that no outside influence could penetrate inward.
A completely ignorant vacuum chamber to cut off all contact with the outside.
Of course, the speed at which the air leaves is massively fast, and any ordinary person entering might faint, but those qualified to be here are either heroes or nurses, so it’s not a big problem.
Unho was clutching his throat and causing a racket, but that guy is half-invincible anyhow, so it’s not a huge deal.
As a few silent minutes passed, Unho, who was kicking up a fuss on the ground, calmed down just in time.
A red light illuminated.
The small red lamp above the door flickered ominously several more times as it emitted its red glow.
Thud.
With a vibration, the door to the designated special area began to open.
It was only a slight crack, yet a massive amount of gray dust began to be sucked in through the gap.
It wasn’t enough to obscure our vision, but it was still sufficient to say this place was overrun with gray.
“I thought I was going to die! You should have told me beforehand!”
“Let’s go.”
Finally, the air returned, and voices started to come through.
Ignoring the noisy Unho flailing on the floor, we stepped into the gray smog.
As the two of us exited the decompression chamber, the red light issuing warnings through the smog began to slow down.
“…If you don’t hurry out, you’ll have to go through decompression again.”
“I don’t want that!”
Unho’s scream echoed in the designated special area.
Probably, he’s the only one here not taking this seriously.
This place is gloomy enough to make even the light-hearted solemn.
With each step, a sticky sensation transmitted from the soles of my shoes.
This wasn’t some strange substance, nor was it the horrifying bodily fluids of a person spilling out, or the byproducts of the dead.
It was just dust clumped together.
To be precise, it might be a bit different. It wouldn’t just have stickiness from simple dust.
It must be a mix of human bodily fluids, plastic coatings, remnants left by nurses, and parts of oxidized metals, all coming together and settling on the ground.
Even now, nurses are diligently mopping the floor, but the persistent stickiness indicates just how much dust there is.
And it’s not just the floor that’s sticky. Even the air I’m breathing is unbearably unpleasant.
The air, unventilated for over ten years, seems to envelop me as if it has its own will.
Just a short walk in, and I already regretted coming here, the air unbearably thick and sticky.
The coarse gray dust only entered my lungs, and yet it triggered a hyper-reactive response in my nose, as if a fishbone was stuck in my throat, causing me to gag.
This horrifically murky air made me envy the gas mask Oxymoron was wearing.
But this was just the beginning.
The true cruelty of this ward hadn’t even started yet.
Thud. Something brushed against my leg as I walked.
The reason I hadn’t detected it earlier was that the gray smog had obscured my vision.
I had a rough idea of what brushed against my leg, but I bent down to confirm.
A clump of gray dust.
Though I kicked it, it only crumbled slightly, its shape still intact, and it was quietly thumping.
Like the beating of a heart.
So quietly. The rhythmic pulsing.
…Oxymoron. There’s a heart rolling around here. Handle it.
“I’ll call a nurse.”
To ensure that the form of this dust clump doesn’t get damaged any further, I completely stabilized my body in mid-air. If the form was disrupted, it would be irreversible.
Fortunately, this bizarre pantomime didn’t last long.
The nurse, arriving swiftly, fixed the dust form into a transparent container shaped like a heart and vanished somewhere with it.
They handled this like it was an everyday task.
Well, it probably is an everyday occurrence.
Having enhanced senses to pierce through the fog, nurses often act in such ways.
This time I just happened to be the first to find it.
This is that kind of place.
A location where the method for dealing with the gray dust passed down from the past is unknown, and people are somehow shoved in like children trying to push their way out of view.
Thus, it carries the musty, gloomy scent of an ancient library or a tomb.
The only difference is that the dust absorbs all moisture, and everyone here is very much alive.
Indeed.
Every piece of this dust is someone’s body.
Their insides.
A person that due to the operating room’s influence hasn’t died, yet can’t maintain their shape.
People in a catatonic state whose illness shouldn’t have progressed, yet suddenly worsened.
They were in such desperate straits—those who were near the operating room and had symptoms from the beginning, but barely managed to escape it.
Those who suffered a deterioration due to faulty treatment while not knowing how to handle this disease.
This is a place where such desperately ill people are gathered.
If left alone in a regular room, they’d simply crumble to dust and spread the disease, and some have already become indistinguishable from dust, so without this concentrated management, they’d be whisked away by the wind.
Yet they are still alive.
Like how just now the heart made of dust pulsates, each piece of dust represents someone’s body, their intestines, themselves.
That’s why this place was created.
To find the owner of each dust particle, reconstruct them, and maintain the shape of a person.
An endless repetitive task. Finally, a glimmer of hope.
Yet even so, it will fall apart.
Dust is dust.
It crumbles with just a slight impact. And it rolls around the room again.
The countless hours of work invested fades away, meaningless.
Time, like dust.
Yet we continue to maintain this place, stacking meaningless dust.
It’s a grave.
A grave that wouldn’t have been possible without the infinite manpower of Oxymoron’s nurse.
This is the end of the terminal disease.
The designated special area for the terminal disease.
Squish. Squish.
The central management center at the heart of the special area. A sticky sound rings out in our ears.
Click. Click.
Followed by a horrible sound that scratches against the base price.
It’s not some unusual phenomenon.
No matter how hellish the place is, the central management center overseeing the entire region isn’t a chaotic mess.
Right now, there’s no one but us, but given this is where scientists or medical professionals researching the disease reside, it’s cleaner than outside by several magnitudes.
Of course, it’s not entirely free of dust.
In a corner of the room, an air purifier connected to the outside is roaring mightily, but it’s overly ambitious to think it can filter out all the dust, with a considerable amount still floating in the air.
Still, merely not feeling suffocated makes it clear this place is relatively clean.
Squish.
The squelching sounds came from nearby, and turning my head, I saw a nurse standing there holding a pouch.
“Oh, thank you. I’ll drink it up.”
“Thank you, son.”
What the nurse handed to Oxymoron and me was a brown liquid contained in a transparent plastic pouch.
Perhaps to minimize the dust absorption, it came equipped with a transparent tube.
I believe I heard astronauts eat this kind of food.
Biting down on the end of the tube and sucking vigorously, a bittersweet taste surged down my throat.
The soft sweetness quenched my throat that had been irritated by the dust moments ago.
Was it coffee?
Squish. Squish.
Again, the sticky sound was heard, and I turned my head back to the original scene I had been observing.
In one corner of the office stood a whiteboard.
In front of it was a particularly distinctive nurse holding a marker, creating some base price outline.
Compared to other nurses, she looked more human, with her hair dyed black and metal accessories adorning her.
That must be the head nurse Oxymoron had mentioned.
It turned out she wasn’t joking about being able to write; she was jotting down messages for us on the whiteboard.
“Please concentrate.”
Even so, what does it mean to concentrate on something like this…?
What on earth does ‘identifying infinite preservation entities through mana infusion’ even mean?
And what’s ‘the correlation between mental magic formulas and consciousness extraction’?
What even is a ‘consciousness extraction’?
I came here to draft a report on the current situation, yet somehow it became like listening to a specialized lecture without any clear communication at all.
Oxymoron seemed intrigued, nodding along with the whiteboard, but for me, it felt like an entirely different realm.
White is for the whiteboard; black is for the marker line.
I can understand the letters, but I cannot comprehend the terms and sentences; speaking of which, can I actually sleep at the central management center? I’d have to crawl into a capsule to nap, but it’s such a hassle to go back and forth; maybe I should just announce I’ll sleep here. Oh wait, do I have to set an alarm too? I only learned that now that I’m here.
Thanks to what’s written on the whiteboard, useless thoughts dominated my mind, and I couldn’t help but feel relieved that I came here with Oxymoron.
If I had come alone, I would have to squeeze out information for my report from that specialized content.
“Patient intake is on the decline.”
I noticed this understandable phrase amid the vast chaos of trying to make sense of the incomprehensible.
I stopped my escapism and glanced back at the whiteboard.
What was written was various graphs and statistical data.
And complicated formulas to interpret them.
There’s no way I can understand that…
…What?
Just by glancing over the whiteboard once, the relevant content began to organize itself in my mind.
Though the number of patients is on the decline, it remains dangerous; while not many patients are experiencing severe symptoms, there exists a possibility of a sudden surge triggered by a single special stimulus.
The ratio of those affected stands at 0.5% of the hospitalized patients. That may seem insignificant, but given the numbers of those hospitalized, it could escalate to a two-digit infection rate. Urgent measures are required.
It wasn’t even written in easily understandable sentences.
What’s on the whiteboard is merely statistical data and supporting formulas.
Yet, through seemingly alien thought processes, I derived conclusions from them.
Why is that?
Why can I interpret this?
I’ve never learned anything like this.
As an Awakener, I never even completed formal education, let alone delve into specialized statistics.
While I may have various specialized knowledge, it was inscribed into my brain through magical powers.
It’s no real knowledge of mine—more like a dictionary, making it awkward to flexibly employ.
Being fluent in foreign languages, or possessing a bit of scientific knowledge feels like wearing ill-fitting clothes; it’s painfully difficult to utilize.
Yet here I am, effortlessly expanding my thoughts upon seeing statistics, the rough draft for the report forming in my head in an instant.
Delving deeper into my thoughts, I soon discovered the root of that ability.
A faded gray memory devoid of stimulus.
A memory I deemed unnecessary, cast aside.
A 40-something office worker. I was pulling that ability from his life.
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