Creator’s Favoritism

The figure standing behind the elevator door appeared to be a shabby-looking man in his late 40s. The first thing that caught my eye was his right foot in a green plaster cast, followeded by the handheld camcorder he was holding.

“This is the 5th floor where documentary director Chae Jeong-bin’s office is. The monster’s sounds continue to…”

The man, muttering to himself, widened his eyes when he spotted Kang Chagyeong and me. The camera lens, about the size of a thumbnail, immediately pointed at us.

“Oh… are you high school students?”

He asked in a surprised voice upon seeing us in our school uniforms.

“Weren’t you attacked? Where did you come from? Huh, is that the monster over there? Did you see it directly? What class does it look like? Class D? Class F?”

He was asking several questions at once. I didn’t know where to begin answering. Kang Chagyeong stood up, avoiding the man’s gaze. Nevertheless, the man continued to press.

“More importantly, are you hurt anywhere?”

“Um, I think we need to get out of here first,” I said, standing up to join Kang Chagyeong. The continuous banging sound coming from the metal door, where the monster was growling, made the door shake as if it would break at any moment.

“Ah, right, right. Get in quickly.”

The man gestured toward us, casting a fearful glance at the metal door. After exchanging looks with Kang Chagyeong, I hurriedly stepped into the elevator.

“I never expected such young students to be on the lower floors…”

The man muttered as he pressed the button for the 8th floor. I was worried the elevator might stop right there. 

Fortunately, it safely reached the 8th floor. As soon as the elevator doors slowly opened, a young woman with a camera tripod slung over her shoulder appeared.

“Oh? Director… who are these people? Where’s the RealFeel CEO?”

Confusion was evident in her eyes as she looked back and forth between Kang Chagyeong and me.

“I went down to the 5th floor and found these students in front of the elevator. There was a monster outside the door, so I couldn’t even check RealFeel’s office.”

The woman nodded as if she understood. Now that I looked closely, her hands were completely soaked in dark red blood.

She smiled with effort as she addressed Kang Chagyeong.

“You students are really unlucky. What are the chances that the gate you stumbled into in a place like this would be a sealed type? How did you end up in this building?”

“…”

As if she couldn’t hear the woman’s voice, Kang Chagyeong stood with his head bowed, looking dazed. The atmosphere instantly chilled.

The woman opened her mouth again, as if trying to break the awkward silence.

“We haven’t been able to leave since yesterday evening… Just as we were about to go home after finishing work, the gate…”

The woman’s face darkened remarkably quickly as she continued speaking.

“My assistant director and I were pulling an all-nighter at the office because of a delivery deadline.”

The man, referred to as the director, pointed at the woman.

“Then we were unlucky enough to have the gate open. It’s fortunate that the building structure is complex. We’ve had places to hide and run to… My assistant director and I have been constantly on the move.”

It was easy to imagine how much these seemingly weak individuals had struggled to survive. Moreover, the director had a cast on his right foot, and his shabby coat was caked with a mixture of blood and dust.

“While fleeing from the monsters, we’ve been checking if there are any survivors, but you students are the first living people we’ve found. Fortunately, it was lunchtime, so there weren’t many people left in the building. And those we did find were all corpses.”

“But what are you filming with the camera?”

Curiosity struck me suddenly, and I asked the director. The red light on the camcorder had been on continuously, indicating that it was recording.

“Well… the last struggle of a civilian who’s neither a hunter nor anything else?” The director touched the body of the camcorder, smiling bitterly. “More than that, if there’s video footage documenting a disaster site, it would be much more helpful in dealing with gates in the future. For the public good.”

The assistant director corrected him dryly as soon as the director finished speaking. Her face looked resigned as she adjusted the tripod on her shoulder. “Director, it looks like there are only four of us left alive in the building… I haven’t heard any human screams for a while now.”

“How much time is left until the seal is lifted…?”

[SYSTEM: A sealed gate has opened in the Seunghwa Building, Yeouido-dong, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul. 42 minutes and 38 seconds remaining until the seal is lifted.]

The same system message appeared before our eyes. Despair settled in the eyes of the director and assistant director, realizing they hadn’t even lasted 30 minutes yet.

-Keee-!

A faint monster cry echoed from afar. Like cornered herbivores, we flinched and trembled at even the slightest noise.

“Anyway, students, let’s move together. The lower floors seem much more dangerous, so it would be good if we could go up.”

“I have the key to the rooftop. I don’t know if it’ll help, but…”

When I pulled out the rooftop key I had kept, a glimmer of hope spread across the director’s face.

-Kyaaak!

A monster’s roar was heard from an even closer place than before. There was no time to waste. We moved forward step by step, trying our best to muffle our sounds.

It felt like it took half a day just to move quietly. Before opening a door, we would press our ears against it to check for monster sounds, and we checked again after opening it. 

As we climbed up floor by floor, the monster sounds would temporarily fade away, but they would draw closer again just as we caught our breath.

「While depicting the scene of civilians struggling through the gate, Tito feels an unbearable frustration. Tito’s hands itch with the desire to awaken ‘Kang Chagyeong’ quickly.」  

I decided to ignore the narration box that appeared after a long time. Most of the office doors on each floor were closed, and we occasionally saw the corpses of office workers lying in front of the elevators or emergency stairs.

“By the way, how old are you students?”

“Ah, we’re just entering high school this year.”

“And that boy there?”

“Seventeen… years old…”

Kang Chagyeong mumbled something in response to the director’s question, but his voice was so small and his pronunciation so unclear that only I, who was closest to him, was able to understand.

“This friend is the same age as me.”

The director nodded as if he understood and turned the camera toward me again. 

Despite limping on one leg, his passion was such that he gave up his crutch to hold the camera.

“Don’t you students have anything you want to leave behind? To your family or something…?”

This bastard Tito is trying to raise another death flag.

“I have no intention of leaving a last will.”

When I looked at the director seriously, he quickly waved his hands. “Oh, no, that’s not what I meant. The assistant director and I have already left something on video. Given the situation, I thought it might be good if you could leave something behind too…”

The man kept chattering. The assistant director, her face full of fatigue, silently focused on scouting the corridor ahead.

“Are you a director?”
“Yes. I’m Director Park Sang-gyo. I make documentaries.”

However, I regretted starting the conversation less than a minute later. Director Park began to recite the programs he had produced as if he had been waiting his entire life for this question. 

I was completely uninterested and was about to let it go in one ear and out the other when Director Park suddenly pulled another camcorder out of his pocket and held it out to me.

“So, about that… I’d appreciate it if you could record with me.”

Director Park even went so far as to kindly place the camcorder in my hand.

“What?! You want to film at a time like this?! We’re more likely to be taking memorial photos soon.”

“Please. You can throw away the camera anytime if it gets urgent. Who knows, something amazing might be captured in the footage we shoot here.”

Director Park pleaded, almost begging. I sighed and took the camera. It was light enough to hold easily in one hand, so it wouldn’t hinder my movement.

We had just reached the 13th floor, inadvertently shooting a gate vlog, when we heard a human voice from the direction of the elevators in front of the office corridor.

“Help me, ugh, save me…”

The back of a man lying face down trembled as if in convulsions. We stood frozen, staring at the man.

-Grr, grrrr.

A growl that was clearly from a monster echoed nearby. The man’s hands, struggling to crawl faster out of fear, kept slipping in the pool of blood.

“I have a daughter; she’s only six months old. Please save me, please…”

The man, his head buried in the floor as if lacking strength, painfully reached into his suit’s inner pocket. 

The hand that emerged held a blood-soaked photograph. The photo of a smiling baby trembled in his grasp.

「To draw the baby’s photo, Tito keeps glancing at a picture of his nephew he took before.」  

Both Director Park and the assistant director looked like they wanted to help but couldn’t bring themselves to step forward. Kang Chagyeong’s eyes darted about wildly as he stood hesitantly.

I silently placed the camcorder down beside my foot.

“Everyone… stay here for a moment. I’ll go check it out first.”

Although I had made up my mind, my voice was still trembling. My heart, which had momentarily calmed, was now pounding furiously.

Rational thoughts—like how carrying a severely injured person in a dangerous gate would be detrimental to survival, or how coldly abandoning a father here would make me unpopular with the readers in the divine realm—didn’t even cross my mind.

“Please don’t leave me behind. I feel like I’m going to die…”

The man’s sobbing voice was extremely pitiful. The man with a cast on his leg. The boy who’s been out of his mind. The woman with a physique that looked like she’d collapse if you just touched her.

Even if a monster suddenly appeared, I was the only one who could potentially escape. I decided to try to pull the injured man to safety.

“If it seems okay, I’ll signal. Then we’ll move him together.”

The assistant director nodded, her face as white as a sheet at my words. Right after that, when my eyes met Kang Chagyeong’s, I whispered to him, suppressing my voice.

“I’ll take care of that person. You take care of these people and go up to the rooftop. Got it?”

Kang Chagyeong nodded, biting his lower lip hard. Thanks to the mental strength buff, I was fortunate that I could at least keep my wits about me.

Cautiously approaching the man while keeping an eye on all directions, I knelt down on one knee. There was a long trail of blood where the man had crawled. I listened for a moment, but there were no monster sounds nearby.

“Are you okay? Try putting your arm on my shoulder.”

At my words, the man’s head drooped. He mumbled something with his head bowed low, but the sound was too faint. I leaned my upper body closer to the man’s face.

“What? What did you say?”

“Thank you, thank, gur, gurgle.”

A strangely bubbling noise mixed with the voice expressing gratitude, as if blood was rising in his vocal cords.

Why is this person’s voice…

The moment I thought this, the man’s body, which had been lying face down, flipped over. It wasn’t a natural flip, as if he had turned over on his own, but rather as if something had flipped his body unnaturally. 

The man’s eyes I met were empty. He was a corpse; I could tell the moment I saw him.

A thin tentacle I hadn’t noticed from afar was wriggling around the man’s ankle. The color of the tentacle hidden in the blood trail was unpleasantly red. 

From the man’s throat, which was spread wide at a bizarre angle, tentacles like thin ropes poured out in droves. It seemed they had imitated a human voice by squeezing the corpse’s organs.

As I tried to stand up to escape, stepping in the pool of blood, a thick tentacle grabbed my ankle. I slipped, and a scream burst from my throat.

“Thank you! Krururuk, thank you, gurk!”

Immediately, the ice-cold corpse pressed down on my body violently. The pain felt as if every bone in my body was being crushed. When I opened my mouth, all that came out was a groan that couldn’t form words.
“Kuh, ughk…”

I faintly heard the assistant director shouting my name as if her throat was being torn. My fingers, unable to withstand the pain, scraped frantically at the floor. That’s when it happened.

-Thud, thud.

Along with a heavy sound, a large, squishy form revealed itself from around the corner of the long corridor. Its decaying body was marked with fissures that looked like knife cuts. 

Each time the four-legged body took a step, tentacles like the ones holding me down flickered through the cracks of the split fissures.

I tried with all my might to escape from under the corpse, but it was futile. The monster treated me like a child playing with a dragonfly. 

Enduring the pain of my flesh being crushed, I turned my head. The three people who had been in front of the elevator were gone. Now, only the monster and I remained here.

As if it had lost interest, the monster easily tossed aside the man’s corpse. With the weight pressing down on me gone, I placed my hands on the floor, trying to escape somehow. 

However, the speed of the tentacles extending from the monster’s main body was more than enough to overwhelm me as I staggered.

A tentacle as thick as a child’s forearm firmly wrapped around my neck. The closer the monster came, the tighter it squeezed. The pain of my breathing being cut off was fanned by terror.

The monster bared its sharp teeth, its maw spreading as if in a smile. There was a malice in its gurgling sound that seemed almost mocking.

‘You, son of a…’

In the very short moment before I could even finish “bitc,” I lost consciousness. The last crunching sound I heard was certainly my neck bones breaking.

T/N: WTF!!!?