Theatrical Regression Life
Chapter 15

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Chapter 15

In the original novel, the protagonist starts by experiencing the death of Team Leader Kang Minah right from the beginning.

Team Leader Kang Minah, separated from the group, fell to a lower floor of the building. No one caught her, and instead, everyone ran away, causing her to plummet.

It would have been better if she had just died on the spot, but she couldn’t even have that. She was torn apart by monsters, her flesh shredded, and she met her demise, abandoned and alone.

He could easily infer her fate from the countless spider legs chasing us, and he confirmed it with his own eyes as he exited the building.

The team’s morale didn’t take long to shatter into pieces, given the gruesome demise of a colleague they were close to.

The horrific end.

Efficiency versus humanity.

The protagonist, lost in thought, only regained his senses after encountering two students much younger than us.

Jung Inho overcame the death of a colleague with the responsibility of an adult.

Of course, describing it as ‘overcoming’ is excessively harsh and dry, but at least through that, the protagonist could make a rational judgment.

Although he had willingly embraced death, the protagonist had lost the comrades who had previously accepted death, but now he found himself encountering new lives to take responsibility for.

However, the current Jung Inho had not experienced the death of anyone.

Without weaker lives to take responsibility for, Director Lee Jaehun had saved them all and even comforted their minds that should have shattered into pieces.

Given the current state of Jung Inho, does he truly have the capacity to deal with the deaths of others?

“…”

It goes without saying, but none of them welcomed death.

Of course, Doctor Ha Sungyoon, by virtue of his profession, could be familiar with death. However, that didn’t mean he could love death itself, and beyond that, Jung Inho found death unfamiliar.

Unfamiliar and frightening. He hated it to the point that it felt like being trapped in an iron room tinted entirely with a gray hue.

Just imagining it was discomforting, surreal, and brought about a sense of suffocation, as if he were confined within that iron room. That was the concept of death.

Because of this Jung Inho, he could sense the death of others sooner than anyone else.

“…go, go.”

“…”

“I have to go.”

Furthermore, he had never once prepared for it.

Jung Inho tightened his grip on the monkey wrench and immediately dashed away.

The sight of him discarding all the carefully collected branches revealed how shaken he was, and that unease spread to Doctor Ha Sungyoon and Yoon Garam as well.

As Jung Inho swiftly ran ahead, the two who had been standing still, instinctively realizing how the situation might unfold, also started moving their legs.

While fending off approaching monsters, Jung Inho sensed something unusual.

“Why did I come so far…?”

The location where the four of them were and where they currently were had become too distant.

The reason Jung Inho left the group was to give them time to talk, not to go far beyond them. Originally, he hadn’t come here just to pick up a few branches.

There were plenty of them around the group, or was there not? Jung Inho was in a state where he didn’t even realize how far he had distanced himself from the group.

However, if he really thought about the process, he could recall it.

They had wandered around looking for branches without exchanging a word, and at that time, Jung Inho, considering that they weren’t particularly close, naturally regarded such silence as expected.

So, if we had to pinpoint the cause of the current situation…

“…”

He just thought of the hypothesis that Doctor Ha Sungyoon had suggested earlier.

The hypothesis that mental strength is crucial in this world.

Upon reconsidering that, Jung Inho realized.

Coming this far was purely the will of their group, and it was just because, as Doctor Ha Sungyoon had said, their mental strength was low, leading them to mindlessly come this far without any thoughts.

In other words, they had spaced out, and that’s how it turned out like this.

Jung Inho suddenly felt chills down to his fingertips.

Although he believed he had regained his senses, even that was an arrogant judgment in this world.

Doctor Ha Sungyoon called out to him with pursed lips.

“Jung Inho, Mr. Jung Inho!”

“…”

“You need to move with us! It’ll be even more troublesome if we scatter!”

In response to Doctor Ha Sungyoon’s words, Jung Inho turned to face them.

“Well then, run faster.”

“Jung Inho.”

The doctor with a distorted face spoke.

“I understand your urgency, but. Going there might actually worsen the situation.”

“How could it get worse…? There’s hardly anyone there to fight right now.”

“But Mr. Lee Jaehun…”

“You just heard a woman screaming over there!”

In the end, Jung Inho, who had lost his composure, shouted.

Yoon Garam is with us, and the only ones left are Team Leader Kang Minah and Kwon Yeohee.

Team Leader Kang Minah was timid and wouldn’t scream even in fear, while Kwon Yeonhee, no matter how simple-minded, wasn’t foolish enough not to realize that screaming in this situation could attract more monsters.

‘One of them screamed?’

Without such a thought process, they wouldn’t have been able to regain their sanity from the beginning, and if both of them, who were supposedly in their right minds, were in a situation where they would scream, there was only one thing that could come to mind.

“It means it’s a situation so dire that judgment is impossible, right before the brink of death.”

Jung Inho said this with a sharpened tone.

“So, what you’re saying about Director Lee Jaehun not being able to protect either of them.”

“…”

“Then how could things get worse here…?”

At the very least, Director Lee Jaehun would likely be incapacitated, and one of the female colleagues would have screamed right before death.

With only four people present, even if all of them were to die, it wouldn’t be surprising.

But could it get worse than this?

“They’re all my… my colleagues.”

People I’ve been with for so long.

Team Leader Kang Minah and I often shared meals and spent time together, intern Noh Yeonseok and I discussed various concerns.

As for Kwon Yeonhee, I occasionally saw her in the hallways, and Director Lee Jaehun, well.

Now, he was someone I felt was worth having a conversation with.

Even though all those people looked like they were dead, I had already suspected that someone among them had died.

How could Jung Inho, who already hated death so much, regain composure in the face of such cold reality?

I wasn’t that kind of monster.

“…Hurry up and run.”

“…”

“If you’re late, I might really lose my mind….”

I didn’t have the confidence to go that far.

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Fortunately, finding the way back to the path they had taken earlier wasn’t too difficult. In their group, Owner of the flower shop, Yoon Garam, who used to take walks in the park, guided them through the seemingly identical trees.

“Did we… come this way before?”

“…”

“No, I’m sorry. I said something strange.”

Of course, the fact that they had come all the way here without any thought seemed to be a chilling realization for Yoon Garam as well, just like it was for Jung Inho.

She wore an expression of discomfort as if feeling nauseous about not recalling the path she had taken, despite the clear intention behind it.

It was probably because they felt how threatening this world was to them.

Yes, this world harbored considerable malevolence.

The trees of the park, which shouldn’t have been more than a few meters tall, soared high like those in a jungle, blocking out the sky. Unlike the familiar trees, the trunks of these trees lacked the sense of life.

It was as if they were painted with watercolor on styrofoam or cement, creating an unsettling sense of unfamiliarity.

A world where even breathing felt cumbersome and burdensome.

A world where, despite moving of my own volition, it didn’t feel that way, and there was an unsettling sensation as if someone was observing us.

That was exactly where we had ended up.

Squelch!

“…”

Jung Inho furrowed his brow at the ivy he inadvertently stepped on, not even realizing it.

While there weren’t many actively approaching monsters, that wasn’t the only issue.

What was with the sound, just a sound….

‘It can be this repulsive.’

Nausea rose, and he breathed heavily.

As if someone had inserted their hand into his throat, physiological tears flowed, and a sense of vagueness invaded his mind.

If he stopped running for even a moment, it felt like he could grab onto a tree and start vomiting.

In fact, Jung Inho wasn’t the only one showing this kind of reaction.

Even Doctor Ha Sungyoon, running alongside them, was silently furrowing his brows. The pallor of his face seemed to indicate more than just the side wound on his flank.

Suddenly, he remembered Noh Yeonseok, the intern who had vomited right after leaving the office. Perhaps Yeonseok felt a similar way back then. Like this…

“Ugh.”

It felt like cockroaches were stirring in his stomach.

It was an intensely vivid and horrifyingly familiar sensation.

What was somewhat fortunate was that Yoon Garam didn’t seem to be in a particularly bad condition.

In fact, rather than Jung Inho harboring reasonable suspicions towards her, she briskly guided them to where they needed to go.

This reminded Jung Inho of the anomaly in the flower shop that Director Lee Jaehun had pointed out.

“Ah, here. Yes, here. You need to go this way.”

“…Got it.”

In front of her flower shop, tree roots protruded like those of an old avenue.

What could that possibly mean? Why were the paths of the flower shop and the park connected?

And why did Director Lee Jaehun, who had observed his surroundings and pointed it out right after leaving the office, approach it alone with what kind of thoughts?

Considering that all of Jung Inho’s judgments so far had been incorrect, he couldn’t even begin to guess Director Lee Jaehun’s inner thoughts.

What thoughts could he possibly have had while wielding a pipe alone in this world? Why did he shed so much blood alone, without harboring any resentment?

“We’re here. If you turn here…”

“…”

“…Is it…?”

Jung Inho couldn’t understand him.

“…”

“…”

“Kang…Kang Minah…”

Yoon Garam’s voice trembled miserably.

Just before reaching the location Yoon Garam had guided them to, what first caught their eyes in front of a large wall-shaped sculpture was none other than Team Leader Kang Minah, lying there in a pool of red.

Team Leader Kang’s eyes were fixed on the empty air.

“Uh…”

“…”

“Uh, uh…”

At that moment, there were no words other than ‘uh.’

Just as if pressing the spine with a thick iron, breath escaped slowly, and with a stiffened tongue, no recognizable form of speech could be grasped.

Perhaps the lips were working in place of this stupid person who seemed to forget how to breathe.

If breath were released through the mouth, the eyes were desperately searching for a sense of reality in a sight they had never seen before in their lives.

Honestly, speaking of experiences, it seemed like they had seen similar situations in many R-rated movies, but for some reason, the feeling was entirely different from what they had observed through the screen.

In books, they always say that a knife is stained with blood, but now I understand why such an absurd expression of liquid permeating metal was used.

The place where Team Leader Kang lay was as vividly red as if the wooden boards were soaked in blood, almost as if someone had personally killed a person.

The person who spewed that blood seemed eerily fluid, gazing into the air like a doll. There was an uncanny lack of vitality, and it seemed to murmur or imitate something incredibly close to a human or a mannequin.

Despite the neat shirt being torn as if bitten by numerous teeth, it appeared eerily calm, like a decoration in a film set.

It was too alien and unfamiliar to be the form of someone I knew. The rounded left eye and the crushed right eye were unrealistically surreal.

“K-Kang, Kang Minah. Minah…”

“…”

“No, no, no, why…”

Thud!

Yoon Garam sank to the ground.

Perhaps she had formed a brief camaraderie with Employee Kwon. As the first same-gendered person they met in this world with nowhere to turn, her death was truly disheartening.

Jung Inho recalled the smiles they shared when they first met under the leadership of Employee Kwon. Unable to approach Team Leader Kang Minah or even hold her hand, he averted his gaze from Yoon Garam, who was now staring at her without any support.

Inho noticed that Dr. Ha Sungyoon was gazing elsewhere. At the end of his gaze was Intern Noh Yeonseok, impaled on a large tree as if torn apart.

“…”

So that’s it. It meant he couldn’t bring himself to speak.

“Yeonseok…”

Even so, he managed to let out a sigh. That was all.

My mental pockets were filled with too many things.

The image of Yeonseok’s legs in the distance, the torn-up flesh resembling a broken doll, the blood-soaked tree, and the thick hands that gripped it—all of them were mingling around.

But once I verbalized it…

“…”

What I’m looking at is really a corpse.

The realization hit me that someone could die in the blink of an eye, right beneath the sky. I grasped that what I was witnessing was indeed a crime scene.

“Ha.”

A bitter laugh escaped me.

How can you describe this as ‘death’?

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