Episode 006: Shapes?
894 Words
'Is something like this even possible?' Eli wondered. He had seen a lot of unexpected things in this world, but he didn't think that this was possible. In front of him were not one, not two, but three of the monsters lying, dead, in front of one of the apartments. This meant that there was someone- or something- more powerful than the monsters in this world. He had told Mi-Ok, Hyun-Ki, and Olivia to wait in a nearby apartment while he inspected the dead monsters. As he bent down and took a closer look at the monsters, he saw that each of them had deep cuts in three, seemingly random, spots. There was one directly above the eye, another going diagonal across the chest, and the last cut went straight across the monsters' throats. Eli wanted to test a theory, but he wasn't sure what effect touching one of these monsters might have on a human so he looked around for something he could use.
After looking around a bit, he decided to simply use a piece of glass from one of the many broken windows. He walked over to where one of the monsters were and tried to pierce it's skin with the glass. As he had somewhat expected, the glass shattered upon hitting the monster's skin, not leaving any visible mark where it had hit the monster. This meant that whatever had been strong enough to pierce even just the skin layer, let alone get deep enough to kill the monsters, had to be stronger than anything any he had ever faced before. Eli went back to examining the monsters. He noticed that each scale-like piece of skin was in the exact same shape as the carvings on the mirror. Suddenly, a thought struck him and he froze in both realization and shock.
Mi-Ok felt a bit uncomfortable whle she was talking to Hyun-Ki. She could tell that Olivia was glaring at her, although she didn't understand why. She couldn't think of anything she might've done to make Olivia dislike her, so she decided that she should just ignore it for now. "Eli is taking a while... Do you think something might've happened?!" she asked, worry clear in her voice. "No, I'm sure he's fine. This apartment is just down the hall, so we would've heard if anything happened. Don't worry. Eli is perfectly capable of taking care of himself." Hyun-Ki replied. "Yeah, you're right. I'm sure he's simply trying to find out as much as he can about the monsters while we have the chance." Mi-Ok reasoned. Almost immediately after Mi-Ok had said that, Eli stepped into the apartment. He looked a bit shaken up, but he didn't seem to be injured anywhere. "What happened?" she asked, going over to where Eli was standing. Right as she got over to where he was, Olivia ran over to him, pushing Mi-Ok out of the way. She said something to Eli and he responded, seeming angry. He then walked past her. "Are you alright?" he asked, helping Mi-Ok up. "I-I'm fine." she told him. He said one more thing to Olivia before turning and facing Mi-Ok again. "There wasn't anything strange about the monsters, but we should get out of here as soon as we can." he said. "Alright, let's go now then."
It had been a few days since they had left the apartment building that had three dead monsters on the fifth floor, and Eli was growing evermore conscious of the fact that they needed to find another safe place to stay. Because of the fact that they hadn't found any place that they could be sure was safe in a few days, there always had to be at least one person staying up to keep watch while the others slept. Despite the fact that they avoided overly-populated areas of Seoul, they still occasionally ran into the monsters, although they were in smaller groups, making them easier to avoid. "We should start trying to find an area to stay for the night now." Eli suggested. "Alright" the others agreed. "Let's split up into groups of two then! Eli, you and I can go check the buildings in that direction, and Hyun-Ki an Mi-Ok, you two can go check those buildings, k?" Olivia said. "I'm fine with that, if you two are." Eli said in Korean once Hyun-Ki had finished translating what Olivia had said for Mi-Ok. "Sure, we're fine with that." Mi-Ok and Hyun-Ki agreed.
After checking a few buildings, Eli and Olivia finally found an area inside of one of the nearby buildings that seemed safe enough for them to stay the night in, so they headed back to the alleyway in between two of the buildings that had been set as the spot where they would meet up after about twenty minutes, or to wait at once they had found a safe enough place. When they reached the alleyway, Eli saw more than thirty monsters, surrounding Mi-Ok and Hyun-Ki. "Stay here! I'll go help Mi-Ok and Hyun-Ki." Eli told Olivia. "No! It's too dangerous! Why risk your life for the likes of them?!" "'For the likes of them?!' What's that supposed to mean?! I have to help them!" he exclaimed, beginning to run towards where the monsters were surrounding them, before being stopped by Olivia grabbing his arm. "No!"
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