L*st and Death

“Haah, this is seriously pissing me off.”

Siron glared at Isaac, who for some reason looked amused, with eyes full of disgust.

“Then what was that injection the old man gave me?”

“It was a non-functional injection.”

“...A fake?”

Isaac tapped along Siron’s inner arm to find a vein, sterilized the area, then inserted the syringe into his pale skin. But though Siron could feel the long needle slide along his flesh, there was none of the sharp pain he expected from a real puncture.

“What the hell are you—”

“Shh.”

The syringe itself was hidden beneath Isaac’s large hand, but he was unmistakably pulling the trigger. When he finally lifted his hand, a syringe full of blood was in his grip—one that had been pre-filled with someone else’s blood. As he rubbed an alcohol swab over Siron’s uninjured skin, a strange smile lingered on his lips.

“The injections the other captives received were vector serums designed to induce genetic recombination errors. On the surface, they seem like complete formulations.”

Siron had undergone three rounds of injections during clinical trials back in Baggers City. But here on the island, Isaac explained, captives were given only a single dose. Whether the experiment succeeded or failed was determined in just ten days, and unsuitable subjects were mostly sent back to the mainland.

Once returned, they’d be exposed to pheromone-enhancing drugs and libido-boosting narcotics, then “delivered” to wherever they were needed. This, Isaac said, was the true identity of etas—a feast prepared for alphas.

“They’ll get suspicious when it doesn’t do anything, won’t they?”

“It was an experiment with an extremely low success rate from the start. I’m the only one who knows how to actually create an omega, so they have no choice but to keep me alive.”

Isaac divided the blood in the syringe into sample tubes. Though the blood didn’t belong to Siron, he casually wrote Siron’s ID number on the labels.

“But they’ll start questioning the drug’s effectiveness soon. We need to leave the island before those doubts solidify.”

The only reason Isaac was still alive on this island was because he alone knew how to create an omega. And part of why the others had relaxed their guard around him, it seemed, was due to his current condition.

“It’s the wheelchair, isn’t it.”

As Isaac pressed a bandage onto Siron’s arm, he raised his head.

“What about the wheelchair?”

“People seem to let their guard down around you because you’re in one. But your head’s full of schemes.”

Isaac smirked and tidied up.

“I doubt they’re that relaxed. I’ve got a bomb strapped to my neck.”

“...What?”

“If I move more than one kilometer beyond the island’s perimeter, or get within 200 meters of the satellite antenna receiver, it explodes. They’re tracking my position via satellite signals.”

Siron stared at him in shock. Isaac was wearing a black turtleneck under his white lab coat. The fabric around his neck bulged slightly, but it was loose enough to blur the outline. No one would suspect a bomb was hidden beneath.

If there hadn’t been a knock on the door from the hallway just then, Siron might have reached out without thinking and tried to confirm it with his own eyes.

“You done yet?”

The door burst open, and a man Siron had never seen before stormed in, visibly irritated.

“It’s finished. Took too long. 3543, your blood draw’s done—get up.”

Isaac dropped the medical waste into the bin with a bored expression. They’d spent far too long in the blood draw room—enough to raise suspicions over a simple procedure.

Siron left Isaac behind and stepped out into the corridor. He waited among the other captives scheduled for testing, then was led by alphas back to the dormitory. The sirens had stopped sometime earlier without him noticing, but there was still no sign of 3547. Only when Siron laid down on the tepid concrete floor did he realize how tense his entire body had been all day—his muscles ached from constant alertness.

Baekgyeong stared blankly up at the white ceiling that felt like destiny itself. He’d spent the past four years facing white walls in treatment centers and psychiatric hospitals, and now he was trapped again in another sterile white space. His mind, too, seemed to be growing emptier and hollower with each passing day, just like those walls.

He’d boarded the plane without suspicion, following Manager Kim Seontae’s instructions. He’d accepted the orange juice from the flight attendant and passed out after drinking it—then awoke here, kidnapped. Manager Kim hadn’t just hacked the company server and his mother’s computer—he was clearly involved in her death, too. But there was no way for Baekgyeong to contact his father or older brother. Surrounded by white walls, he was powerless to influence the world beyond them.

A cell five meters wide and six meters long, with nothing but a toilet and a sink. No windows. Only the endless hum of the ventilation system kept him company. Trapped in this solitary world, Baekgyeong absentmindedly touched his neck. The bomb around his throat—thick like a crude choker—pressed down on his windpipe.

“You better be careful. Rip that thing off in a fit of rage and your head’ll go flying.”

“So fucking annoying I wanna die.”

He wanted to tear it off right then and there. But there was no one around to witness the dramatic gesture.

Baekgyeong shifted his gaze to the corner of the room, where a CCTV camera stared back at him. He locked eyes with the black lens as if daring it to blink. Just then, a goddamn fruit fly buzzed past his face and landed on his cheek. No matter how many he killed, they kept coming back to annoy him.

At first, they gave him a frozen burrito for meals—still icy inside. After his suicide attempt, they started giving him the same food the staff ate. But even that was unsatisfying. Most of the time, he threw the food at the wall just to spite them. Nearly ten days had passed since he’d been locked up, and the hot weather had spoiled the food fast. The stink had drawn in the flies.

And today, they’d added a new heap of garbage. That guy—Ian or Eon or whatever—had brought him a so-called Korean meal. The moment Baekgyeong tasted the suspicious kimchi stew, he hurled it at the wall. The red cabbage stew splattered across the surface like a massive bloodstain.

To think they’d try to win him over with garbage food and get him to unlock the phone password. The insult festered inside him.

But he couldn’t starve forever. Today’s meal was a scoop of dry, crumbly rice and a rolled omelet—small enough that someone had probably taken a bite already. It didn’t even cover half his palm.

Suddenly, Baekgyeong missed Siron’s kimchijjigae. Siron’s grandmother had been a longtime chef at a famous Korean restaurant in the LA Koreatown. Siron had picked up cooking from her, and occasionally, he’d make Baekgyeong humble home-cooked meals.

Come to think of it, Baekgyeong had given Siron unlimited credit cards but never once brewed him a cup of coffee. He’d yelled, obsessed, nitpicked, and made Siron’s life hell. There were so many things he regretted. He was a walking disaster who ruined everything around him.

He thought of his mother—a relationship that could never be mended now. Even after her death, sorrow remained a distant and abstract concept for him.

He reached for the paper copy of the card his mother had left behind. On it were eleven riddles. He’d already solved seven.

k, h, f, d, o, a, t

More than half the clues, and yet no word came to mind. He stared at the collected letters for a long time before muttering to himself:

“Handkerchief? Doesn’t feel right.”

Some letters weren’t even included, and that word had twelve letters anyway. A word with exactly eleven letters, containing all of k, h, f, d, o, a, t? Without memorizing the entire dictionary, it felt impossible to solve.

Eventually, his brain gave up. Running his mind on such low fuel had made it overheat. And just then, another damn fruit fly buzzed around his head.

“God—fuck! Fucking fly!”

He smacked his forehead to crush it, but only succeeded in reddening his skin. The fly lived. Maybe that was for the best. If he was doomed to die alone in this wretched cell, maybe that pathetic fly could be his friend.

“...I’m definitely going insane.”

He suddenly felt like he’d discovered a fundamental truth of life inside this cell: when you cause your own disaster, you’re the one who has to clean it up.

He forced his exhausted body to stand, squatted in front of the wall, and scooped up a handful of stinking, mushy food waste with his bare hands. Tempted to throw it at the pristine white wall again, he resisted with effort and dumped it into the toilet instead.

After a few loads, disaster struck—the toilet clogged.

“...What the actual fucking hell.”

Without thinking, he raked a hand through his hair—forgetting it was covered in filth—and then froze in horror.

“Time to die.”

Calmly, Baekgyeong reached for the bomb at his neck to rip it off—but stopped. Like he’d just seen a ghost, he froze. Four years in the psychiatric hospital had burned one truth into his brain: never believe escape is impossible.

To think he’d nearly given up and died, leaving Siron alone with that rut-driven bastard Lewis.

Baekgyeong reignited his will to escape. He staggered to the sink, turned on the faucet, and washed his filthy face and hands. The food-clogged drain swirled sluggishly. Watching it with strained patience, Baekgyeong plucked a stubborn bay leaf from the water’s surface.

As he was about to flick it away, he noticed something strange: along the prominent central vein, shallow markings—like a worm’s trail—had been etched into the leaf.

「Gyeong-ah」

It was his name.

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