L*st and Death

Siron pushed Isaac's shoulder to make him face forward, then climbed onto his lap and bent down. He filled the gaping, cave-like space between Isaac’s parted lips with his tongue, brushing along his teeth and tongue, sucking up the thick saliva pooling beneath his tongue. As he pushed in his wet, slippery tongue, trying to deepen the kiss, Isaac, surprisingly, seemed indifferent. No—his attention was elsewhere.

Just as Siron tilted his head to kiss deeper, Isaac suddenly shoved his hand between their mouths and blocked the kiss.

“...Huh? Mph!”

Isaac covered half of Siron’s face with his palm and pushed him away.

“Mm? Ngh!”

“Shh.”

There wasn’t even time to feel embarrassed about the inexplicable rejection. Tension abruptly crept over Isaac’s face. In one swift motion, he lifted Siron off the floor and climbed the ladder that led up to the surface.

“Stay quiet.”

Isaac quickly ascended and shut the door above. His footsteps echoed away as he ran out into the living room, and then—nothing. A long silence fell. Then came a series of small explosions.

Siron had no idea what was going on. He stayed alert, nerves taut, until he finally crawled up to the very top of the ladder. He twisted his body sideways and strained to press his ear to the trapdoor. That’s when he felt it—a faint vibration through the floor. But he couldn’t tell where it was coming from or how far away it was.

Moments later, it sounded like a whirlwind had torn through the forest. The underbrush rustled violently, and it was as if ancient trees were being torn out of the ground. In the terrifying noise that made it feel like the entire mountain was shaking, Siron waited, hoping to sense Isaac’s presence—but there was still no trace of him.

Then, all of a sudden, a deafening roar tore through his eardrums and echoed inside his skull. The shockwave slammed the entire building. Siron lost his balance and fell from the ladder to the floor. It sounded like a massive explosion.

He barely managed to lift himself, but the echoing blast still rang through his ears, leaving him dazed. Clutching his ears and collapsed on the floor, Siron eventually gathered his senses and reattached the fallen ladder to the hook under the trapdoor. Someone had bombed the hideout. If the underground space had been affected this much, the surface might have been completely obliterated. There was no way Isaac had survived that explosion. Just as Siron started to lift the door to check outside—

“Don’t come out!”

Isaac’s rough, pleading shout froze Siron in place like a command from a higher power. The voice pierced through his ears and sent a violent jolt through his brain.

Don’t come out? Don’t come out. Siron puzzled more over how the words sounded than their meaning. And then he realized what felt wrong.

Isaac had shouted in Korean.

“...Ha.”

Even in that grave moment, Siron recalled all the things he’d screamed at him. Every word he’d hurled unfiltered, purely to mock him.

Son of a bitch, piece of shit, psycho, I hope you get struck by lightning on the street... All the insults. Every single one, Isaac had understood. He’d just pretended not to.

Goosebumps raced across Siron’s body.

But his panic didn’t last long. From above came the sound of rubber soles hitting wooden floorboards. People were breaking into the building. Bang, bang, bang—gunfire erupted, shell casings rattled onto the floor, and then came the harsh hiss of gas spraying through the vents into the air.

Soon, new sensory data reached the pitch-black basement like a rat’s burrow. Gas seeped through micro-cracks in the floor and spread underground. The faint mist in the air had such a pungent, acrid stench that Siron felt dizzy just from the smell.

Gas? What the hell is going on?

His vision spun, and he slumped to the floor. Knowing he couldn’t inhale the smoke, he barely managed to grab a blanket and cover his face—but it was too late. The feeling in his nose, mouth, and face began to fade, followed by all the strength in his limbs.

But even as his consciousness slipped away, the final barrier of awareness looped over and over: Isaac’s voice and all the curses he himself had thrown at him, echoing like a broken record. Staring into the black void, blinking slowly, Siron finally succumbed to the weight of his eyelids and sank into a deep sleep.

“Hey, I’m telling you nicely—just carry this thing.”

“Why do I always get the °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° heavy stuff?”

“How many times do I have to tell you? There are rules between elders and juniors. You bratty little punk, you never listen.”

“Hah, not even worth replying to.”

Chessie Will let the childish argument of the two men behind him roll off one ear as he checked the remaining battery on the drone. It was at 89 percent—enough for about two hours of flight over a ten-kilometer radius.

From the restaurant in Bethel Village to the foothills of the Sombras Mountains, Chessie had endured nonstop bickering from the two men behind him. If it hadn’t been for the $1,000 bill that the guy named Baek Kyung had begged and shoved into his hand, he never would have agreed to help them.

It had all started when Chessie had mentioned something he’d witnessed a few days earlier while chatting with locals at a quiet restaurant in Bethel Village.

As a forest fire lookout, Chessie was stationed in a tower built on a high mountain peak. His job was to monitor a 30-kilometer radius in all directions for signs of wildfire and report any incidents immediately. The role demanded long periods of isolation with no outside contact, and staring at the same scenery for weeks on end made it an incredibly lonely post.

Three days ago, around 2 a.m., Chessie had been jolted awake by the sound of helicopters. From the tower window, he saw several helicopters with searchlights cutting across the night sky. They came to a stop midair over the middle slopes of Mount Sombras and hovered there for a long time. He couldn’t make out the details from that distance, but then—suddenly—a white flash erupted, and part of the mountain exploded. A massive black plume of smoke shot up into the sky.

Fully alert now, Chessie had immediately called the forestry department’s fire response team. But the only reply he got was a vague explanation: military training.

Luckily, no wildfires had spread from it. Still, it didn’t make sense to him. Bombing exercises in dense, fire-prone forests? That military drill had left a bitter taste in his memory.

After ten straight days on duty, Chessie had come down to the village for a short break and stopped by his usual diner. He ended up recounting the whole event to the owner. Whether the two men had overheard him or were waiting for him outside, he wasn’t sure—but as soon as he left the restaurant, they approached him.

They asked if he could identify the explosion site. If he helped them locate it, they promised an additional $5,000 in cash.

It nagged at him that the location they were asking about was used for a military operation. But searching the mountain by drone still fell within his jurisdiction as a fire lookout. In the end, he accepted the deal and led them to a spot near the foothills, close to where the explosion likely occurred.

“If it weren’t for me, you’d still be loitering around Curry King!”

“You bastard! I told you not to call me Baek!”

“Gentlemen. Shall we launch the drone now?”

Cutting through the shouting match, Chessie activated the drone. The propellers spun fast and kicked up a breeze as it lifted into the air. Chessie stared at the controller screen, watching the live footage from the drone’s camera.

The forest stretched out below like a vast, green ocean. Trees packed tightly together, waving in the wind. The drone rose higher, capturing a sweeping aerial view as it moved farther from their position. Then, when it had flown about three kilometers from the base of the mountain—

“...Huh? Is that it?”

Through the small screen on the controller, a rounded section of the mountain slope came into view, looking as if it had been scooped out with a spoon. In the center stood a single-story building made of concrete and wood, half-collapsed and abandoned.

Chessie deftly maneuvered the drone closer to the building.

“...Are those bloodstains?”

At his muttered words, the expressions of the two men standing beside him turned grim. Dried, dark crimson stains were splattered all around the ruined entrance.

After completing the search, Chessie handed them a topographical map and pointed out the blast zone.

“...Looks like a lot of people died. This wasn’t a training drill—it was some kind of covert op. I don’t know if I should even know about this. It’s making me nervous...”

Baek Kyung handed him fifty $100 bills and answered,

“What’s dangerous is if word gets out. So let’s just keep our mouths shut, all of us.”

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