Footsteps on the roof again. Frantic this time. Then another thud — someone else dropping onto it.
*BANG!*
I switched on the right-side lights. A dark shape appeared on the second floor of a strip of shops.
The roof kept shaking and rattling, and then people jumped down on the left side of the bus. A middle-aged man and woman, and a younger guy.
I looked right again. Two of the ugly monsters were crawling down the building wall from the second floor. I recognized them. The ugly ones.
I flipped on the left-side lights too. In the darkness beyond, the people who'd been sprinting away flinched and spun around. They probably couldn't see the bus itself — just the sudden blaze of headlights catching them off guard.
I grabbed the sword and shield from the storage room and stood by the side door. The two uglies happened to be passing right in front of it.
I pushed the door open and, without stepping out, extended the sword. They turned toward the bus with startled, dumb expressions.
"You look even uglier when you're confused."
Two quick flicks of the blade, and both uglies collapsed to the ground in a heap of green meat.
When the sword crossed back through the doorway, the green blood dripped clean off the blade onto the floor — and then drifted away as smoke, along with the uglies' remains.
I shut the door and checked through the table-side window in the direction the people had run. The headlights lit them up clearly.
They were climbing into a sedan parked along the road. The way they opened it without any trouble — probably their own car.
They're in the car now. They can figure out the rest themselves. Not much more I can do anyway.
I watched for a moment.
*Huh?*
Two sharp legs punched down through the roof of the sedan. A short burst of screaming followed.
The spider monster.
"That son of a—"
I couldn't be sure it was the same one from yesterday. But that didn't really matter.
I felt almost none of the fear I'd had yesterday.
*Oh right — the boar monsters held up against the bus, didn't they?*
The memory surfaced: a whole pack of boar monsters slamming their massive bodies into the bus, over and over.
I dropped into the driver's seat and hit the gas. Aimed straight for the spider.
"Be care—"
Seonghui's worried voice came from the back, but I had a strange certainty about this. The bus had taken the boars.
I floored it.
The bus plowed straight into the spider monster's legs.
*CRACK!*
Something shattered — but the bus rolled through without so much as a shudder. I hit the brakes, switched on the rear lights, and checked through the back bedroom window.
Two legs were still embedded in the sedan's roof. But the thing they belonged to was sprawled on the ground.
The rest of the legs were scattered in pieces across the asphalt. The spider's head and torso were still twitching on the ground.
I scanned the area outside, then took the sword and stepped out slowly.
The wind blew.
It lifted my hair.
Anger coiled around the hand gripping the sword.
White fur around the thing's mouth.
Every leg broken, but the head and torso were still moving.
I walked toward it slowly and looked into its eyes. All those eyes — staring back at me with the kind of terror that comes from knowing exactly what's coming.
Yeah. Fear is yours now.
I didn't put much force into the sword arm. I just pressed the blade into its head. Slowly.
The red eyes went dim, little by little. The twitching faded not long after.
I stood there watching blankly until it crumbled into gray dust and disappeared — and then I remembered the people.
I snapped my head toward the sedan. The monster's legs that had been stuck in the roof were gone too, dissolved into smoke.
But it was too quiet.
I looked through the broken side window. The driver and passenger — I couldn't look at them for long. The back seat: a soaked headrest, blood everywhere. Someone was curled on the floor, shaking violently.
"Are you okay?"
No answer. I opened the rear door and grabbed the trembling shoulder — and he swung his arm at me without warning.
"Ugh!"
*Damn it.* It happened too fast. He was holding a box cutter. It caught my left hand, sliced it open. Too close, too sudden — I couldn't slow it down in time.
"Oh, come on—"
He scrambled to his feet and kept slashing. I stepped back fast and stared him down. His eyes were completely gone.
I could understand it — losing it in a situation like this. Still made me furious.
He stood there, blade shaking in his hand, glaring at me.
"Hey. Snap out of it!"
My shout made his eyes waver. Slowly, he lowered the hand holding the cutter.
*THUD!*
A black shape blurred past.
He was gone.
Just a dark silhouette for a split second — I couldn't make out what it was. The feeling told me it was something I'd never seen before.
I spun around and moved to get back to the bus.
But between me and the bus — right in front of the door — stood something I didn't recognize. It looked almost human. Almost. The two eyes burning red were nothing close to human.
It had a human shape, more or less, and it was staring at me with eyes that made my skin crawl. The fingernails on both hands gleamed like freshly sharpened blades.
*This one's different.*
I raised the sword. Just one of them.
The moment I leveled the blade, it vanished. Then something grazed my arm.
"Ah!"
Blood started running from my right arm — the one holding the sword. The instant I registered it, a wave of searing pain shot up from my arm through my neck and into my skull.
My grip gave out. The sword hit the ground. I shifted the shield on my left arm higher and reached down with my left hand to pick it up.
*CRACK!*
Something hit my head like a lightning strike.
"Ugh—!"
I spun backward and hit the ground. My neck wrenched. The pain came in like a tide — felt like dying again.
I opened my eyes. The monster was standing right over me, looking down.
It was smiling.
Seeing an expression on a monster's face — that bothered me more than I expected.
But the real problem was that its movements weren't slowing down for me.
Had I lost my ability? Or was this thing just faster? I couldn't tell.
What I could tell: that last attack was just a taste. It could've killed me and chose not to.
Why?
No idea. For fun? Seriously?
Either way, it looked like the fun was over.
It raised both hands — those terrible blade-tipped fingers — and got ready to tear me apart.
It wasn't that I couldn't see it in slow motion. It was actually moving that slowly on purpose. Like it wanted to stretch out my fear, squeeze out every last drop of entertainment.
*Oh, hell.*
Is this really how it ends? Like this?
When those claws were close enough that I could feel them at my face —
The wind blew.
A familiar smell hit me.
Wait —
Meat. The smell of someone who just ate meat.
*Huh?*
Then I saw it — a figure, head bowed, tangled hair hanging forward. And that figure drove its knee straight into the monster's head.
The monster never saw it coming.
The creature toppled sideways and lunged at the curtain of messy hair. Or tried to. But the figure — steam still on her lips — brought that devastating knee down into its face again.
*CRACK!*
That was the sound it made. Horrifying just to hear. And her eyes were closed.
*How… how is she doing that?*
Her hair flew again, and the terrible sounds kept coming.
*CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!*
The monster was something else too — it kept taking hit after hit to the face and held on. But it couldn't fight back. Every time it was about to move, another blow landed.
I clamped my right hand over the wound still bleeding freely, and with what little strength was left in my right hand, I managed to pick up the sword.
Then I started walking — slowly — toward the sound, to help her.
*CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!*
The monster couldn't even attempt to run. It just flailed, struggling to hold on. But it wasn't dead yet.
*CRACK! CRACK!*
I figured I'd have to finish it with the sword. I was barely lifting the blade when —
*SNAP!*
She ripped its head off. And threw it. Far. Very far.
The headless monster convulsed for a moment, then went limp.
I was still holding the sword. I quietly lowered it, as if I'd never raised it at all.
She collapsed in front of me, hair still hanging in a tangled mess over her face. I tried to catch her before she hit the ground, but my arm had nothing left — she went straight down.
*SMACK!*
That was her head hitting the asphalt. I winced and closed my eyes for a second.
"Sorry… I couldn't catch you."
I checked the spot where the monster had dissolved into dust. Three cores sitting there.
*Stronger ones drop more.*
I picked them up and glanced toward where the other monsters had been — the bus was already eating through those cores. It seemed to flinch when it noticed me looking.
*Oh right — how many did the spider drop?*
I could count once I was back inside. Honestly, it didn't matter much. The bus was burning through fuel constantly, and my head was too worn out to track every unit precisely.
I tossed the cores in my hand toward the bus. They flew straight into the fuel cap on their own. The bus felt like it was smiling.
I managed to lift Seonghui and carried her back inside.
*So that's why the knees of her jeans were torn. Her finishing move is a knee drop. Of course it is.*
I was laying her down on the bed when her eyes snapped open.
"Wha — what?!"
She bolted upright and stared at me, startled. I kept my expression neutral and asked:
"You don't remember again, do you?"
She looked at me for a moment, completely lost, then let out a long breath and sat down on the seat.
"What happened?"
She asked in a resigned voice — like she was getting used to the blackouts. Then she spotted the wound on my arm.
"What happened to your arm?" "Something came up."
I didn't go into it. I peeled off my torn shirt, found the first aid kit in the drawer, disinfected the cut, and started wrapping it.
"Give it here."
She snatched the bandage out of my hand and started wrapping it herself, quick and practiced.
It hurt. There were no painkillers in the kit. The bandages and antiseptic didn't seem to have any special properties either.
"Thanks."
I took the bandage back from her when she was done and put it away in the kit. I put the torn, bloody shirt back on. No spare clothes.
I sat down on the living area seat. She asked again:
"What did you see?"
I walked her through everything that had just happened. She listened without a word.
Her hair was still a mess. There was still a faint trace of steam on her lips.
I noticed a fresh bump forming on her forehead, but I made a point of not looking at it.
Then, out of nowhere, I felt someone watching from outside the bus window.
Something felt off. I turned my head —
Someone was peering in through the right-side window of the bus.