Chapter 215.2

Chapter 215.2

She panicked, bracing herself and straining against him, but Kia, consumed by malice, seemed to have made up his mind.

Kia gasped for breath, laughing as if he was crying. No, he was crying as if he was laughing.

Helplessly, her upper body was pulled forward, her shoulder jolting loose. Then, the moment she finally lost her grip on the track railing…

Lee Wooshin, bracing himself, began kicking Kia’s vital spots, thwack, thwack.

“Motherf…!”

Curses flew back and forth, and the fingers of both men began slipping precariously, one by one. Lee Wooshin unhesitatingly sank his teeth into the leech-like hand that was pulling Seoryeong. Blood seeped between his teeth, and even as a painful scream echoed, he tore through the flesh relentlessly.

“Goddam… son of a bitch… goddammit…. Why do you keep getting in the way…”

The strength drained from Kia’s hand, and Seoryeong fell backward. Half out of her mind, she sat with her hips planted firmly on the inside of the track. She felt nothing, as if her heart had stopped.

“Don’t look back.”

A low, kind voice enveloped Seoryeong. Desperately clinging to her senses, she looked down at Lee Wooshin, who was rigidly frozen. But contrary to his soothing, hushed tone, his expression was utterly tense and strained.

From that point, time seemed to stop, and everything flowed slowly. Unbelievably, Lee Wooshin was letting go of the track.

“I-Instructor…!”

He wrapped both arms around Kia’s back, and the rifle slung across Kia’s shoulder aimed directly at Seoryeong. Under the unexpected weight, Kia’s hand also slipped from the track.

Bang, bang! 

The bullets that grazed her hair struck two agents who were just leaping out of the train with perfect accuracy. Seoryeong froze, powerless, and stared blankly at the men falling from the track.

A bleak wind wildly tossed her hair. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from their helplessly falling forms.

Even while falling, Bang, bang! 

Lee Wooshin pulled the trigger again, his focus unbroken.

With welling eyes she couldn’t control, Seoryeong heard Lee Wooshin’s desperate shout.

“Shoot!”

In an instant, he wrested the gun from Kia and swung his arm in a wide arc. She watched him disappear beyond her sight, falling endlessly into the deep, distant valley, then picked up the gun that had caught on the track.

In the unbelievable reality, she couldn’t even hear her own breathing. The gale that had felt like it would tear her skin had now vanished as if washed away. She could feel nothing.

Even so, her body moved on instinct, following the Instructor’s last order. Seoryeong mercilessly riddled the torsos of the agents emerging from the train with bullets.

With each pull of the trigger, a foreign stranger’s heart and head were pierced. The gunfire, like screams, echoed incessantly.

‘You’re not dead. You wouldn’t die and leave me behind. You wouldn’t disappear and leave me all alone. You wouldn’t do that again…’

Seoryeong closed and opened her eyes, the whites bloodshot, and entered the train. She stepped indifferently over Yoo Dawit’s body and advanced toward the engine room.

“…Find it! Bring it…at any cost!”

“Understood…!”

“…Make contact, signal the backup team, handle the derailment…!”

“Did we fail this…”

Then, sensing one, then several presences, she swiftly hid herself. Clutching the gun Lee Wooshin had thrown to her at the last moment, she held her breath.

But her face kept crumbling, over and over, filled with deep sobs. Her eyelashes fluttered, and her entire face convulsed like a wave.

Helplessly, she covered her mouth with one hand, but tears dripped steadily onto the back of her white hand. She stared wide-eyed, her vision pulsing red like bloody water, and yanked the electrical switch down with all her might. Soon, the inside of the train was plunged into darkness.

“—!”

She sensed the stirring air from all directions and lunged forward like a beast. The flashing gunfire did not stop until every intact seat was reduced to tatters.

It did not stop until spent shell casings piled high on the floor, and until there was no one left speaking or responding on the crackling radios.

“….”

Her chin was damp from the endless stream of tears.

‘Lee Wooshin is not dead. He can’t be. He wouldn’t disappear and leave me alone in this world again.’

‘He wouldn’t leave me behind…again!

Seoryeong snatched a pistol from a dead agent’s grip and pressed it against her own head.

Shoot!

Lee Wooshin’s voice drilled into her ears like an echo.

‘Is this the reason for everything?’

‘Is this why my life, and why you, have become so difficult?’

‘Is this the reason for all of it?’

‘Her finger tightened violently on the trigger.’

‘But I will not give up on you.’

‘Even if the God of Death himself drags you away.’

‘I will… I will find you again.’

An intense belief sprouted in her worn-out eyes.