Guest Ch 18

West Fort Owner, Blue Hawk (9)

When I left the villa, it was already getting dark. I carried my heavy bag and returned to the mechanical room. As soon as I arrived, I called out to Lee Yiseon, who was taking out a cold drink from the refrigerator.

“Lee Yiseon-ssi.”

The water bottle slipped from Lee Yiseon’s hand and hit the floor.

Thud, roll.

His expression, like he was about to have a fit, looked genuinely terrifying. Seeing him like that made me even more nervous.

“Well, uh, you said I could call you by your name when it’s just the two of us… If it’s uncomfortable, should I just call you ‘hey’ instead?”

Lee Yiseon glared at me for a long time before picking up the water bottle rolling on the floor and replying.

“Why are you calling me?”

“Uh, well, I wanted to read this thing I got from the Doctor, um…”

I carefully added as I took out a notebook from the bag.

“Could you turn on the light? If there’s no light, I can just wait until sunrise tomorrow.”

“There’s a reading lamp attached to the bed’s headboard.”

The guy who always told me to save electricity was now acting like he had done me a huge favor. Not a candle, but an actual lamp. He preferred seriousness over humor, and it seemed like he appreciated my attitude of trying to study late into the night with the diligence of Han Seokbong^[1].

“It’s powered by a rechargeable lithium battery. I’ve got plenty of spares, so sit on the bed and read comfortably.”

Lee Yiseon’s words to sit on his bed made me swallow my saliva.

He doesn’t seem like the type who likes people using his stuff… What if he makes a fuss about it later?

Lee Yiseon, quick to catch on, saw right through my concern.

“I won’t complain later, so just use it.”

He started pulling something off the shelf. It was dried potatoes, cut into thumbnail-sized cubes. He then took out other dried foods from transparent containers and began pouring them into a round bowl like cereal.

Clatter, clatter.

Small, square pieces of potato, tomato, onion, and fruit mixed together in a variety of colors. Lee Yiseon poured the bottled water he was drinking into the bowl and stirred it with a spoon.

Clink, clink.

I sat down quietly at the head of the bed, looking at Lee Yiseon’s broad back.

Click.

When I turned on the reading lamp, a small, round glow about the size of my palm spread over the pillow in a soft yellow hue. I placed the notebook under the light and started flipping through the pages from the beginning.

The First Prophet. He was the original Prophet, marked as number 1. No name, no external characteristics were recorded. His profile was ridiculously simple compared to the other Prophets.

Korean male in his early 20s.

Precognitive ability was a one-time prediction.

<The Prophets will appear. At first, you will find it hard to believe and think it’s nonsense, but you must not reject them. You need to be safe. Do you understand? Promise me. Trust and follow them, even for my sake.>

To whom did he say those words? Are these really all the words he said? Judging by the tone, it sounds like something he said to someone close to him. But even after looking through the other papers, there was no information that could help me understand the context of the conversation.

I flipped through a few more pages, looking at the other Prophets, but I kept thinking about the first one, so I went back to it. I traced my fingertips over the few lines of words and asked Lee Yiseon.

“Why is there so little information on the First Prophet?”

He had made something resembling porridge from the rehydrated dried foods. It wasn’t until he came over to the bed with the bowl in hand that he answered.

“I met him when I was seventeen, so my memory isn’t that clear.”

Huh? So the one who heard these words was Yiseon?

“Did the first Prophet speak to you directly?”

“Yes.”

“Who was he?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why not?”

“I had a major accident back then. The person who helped me was the Prophet, but my mind was foggy, so I don’t remember clearly.”

“An accident?”

“You’re really interested in my story. But that’s not the important part, is it?”

There he goes, getting prickly again. Fine, fine. I won’t pry into your business.

I shrugged my shoulders and shut my mouth. In response, Lee Yiseon handed me the bowl he had been holding. It was the same bland potato porridge I had eaten when I first arrived here, no seasoning whatsoever.

“Eat. I put some salt in it this time.”

One bowl of this stuff wouldn’t fill me up, but still, it was better than nothing. Grateful, I accepted the bowl and began eating with a spoon. It tasted just as bland as soaked oatmeal. Forcing myself to eat so I wouldn’t starve, I glanced down at the notebook again.

“You didn’t write all of this, right?”

“I only wrote the profiles for the first few. From the middle on, the Doctor wrote it.”

“Ah, that’s why the handwriting is different.”

I nodded as I flipped through a few pages and compared them. I kept eating the porridge as I read. The portion was so small that after just a few spoonful, the bottom of the bowl was already visible. By the ninth spoonful, the spoon clinked against the brass bowl.

I picked up the empty bowl and looked up at Lee Yiseon. I wanted to ask for more, but instead, I just thanked him for the meal.

“Thank you. It was good.”

Lee Yiseon didn’t take the bowl. He kept staring at me quietly, which made me tense up. I tried to interpret his gaze, wondering if I had eaten too greedily, when suddenly, he said something unexpected.

“You look like him.”

I blinked a few times, unsure if he was really talking to me, then asked,

“Me? Who do I look like?”

“The First Prophet.”

“Huh?”

“I thought I had seen you somewhere before, but it’s because you look like him.”

As Lee Yiseon spoke, he seemed relieved. It was as if the long-standing strain that had made him frown whenever he looked at me had finally subsided.

“Hah, even being unnecessarily kind… just like him.”

I couldn’t tell if that was a compliment, a criticism, or something else entirely.

I hesitated at the words I couldn’t quite grasp. In this world, not calling someone by their name was as bad as not saying thank you after eating or not greeting someone. So, of course, common courtesy was treated as useless kindness.

He put the bowl down on the sink next to the refrigerator and brought over dried fruits on a new plate.

“Eat while you read. If there’s anything you don’t understand, ask.”

I still wasn’t used to the way he looked at me. After realizing that I resembled the First Prophet, he openly stared at my face. I felt strange even watching him offer me a plate of dried apples and persimmons.

He was the one who had become uselessly kind, but he didn’t seem to realize it. Trying to ignore Lee Yiseon’s unconscious gaze, I looked through the Prophets’ records.

It was written that the Prophet, who had been a news anchor, had awakened as a Prophet at some point while delivering the news as usual.

<There has been heavy rainfall worldwide. In Indonesia, the Philippines, Central and South America, and parts of Europe near the equator, torrential rains have continued for two weeks, resulting in numerous casualties and flooding in some areas.>

<After a month of heavy rainfall, a severe drought has set in. As the drought continues for three months worldwide, emergency groundwater supplies have begun in our country due to the dry dams and rivers.>

<Due to the drought following the extreme rainfall, the ground has weakened, causing sinkholes to occur all over the world. In some areas, buildings have collapsed or people have been injured due to huge sinkholes measuring 100 meters deep and 50 meters in diameter.>

<Ecologists are deeply concerned about the simultaneous occurrence of sinkholes worldwide.>

<In Xiamen, China, a sudden sinkhole has caused a 30-story building to collapse. This is the first time a giant sinkhole has occurred in a major city.>

<A 200-meter sinkhole is expected to occur in San Francisco. About 20 ordinary houses are likely to collapse. The Golden Gate Bridge is safe.>

<The US government must order the evacuation of its citizens to safe zones. A decision must be made within four days.>

<Who will take responsibility for the widespread panic in Western Europe due to the giant sinkholes occurring in Barcelona and other parts of Spain?>

<All Europeans should evacuate to Northern Europe, where sinkholes are less frequent. This is a natural right granted by the Schengen Agreement.>

<We must take full responsibility for nuclear power plants. All countries must accept the mass migration of Japanese people.>

<An average of 5,000 sinkholes occur per day, and the number of casualties will increase to an average of 20 million per day.>

<In four days, an earthquake of magnitude 8.0 or higher will cross the Korean peninsula. The power will be cut off. Please receive solar panels through each local government and install them in each household to implement self-power supply.>

<You must not be in a building.>

<Don’t kill. Don’t steal. Please. Everyone.>

<The transmission will be cut off. Can you hear my voice?>

And there was one sentence that Prophet wrote himself before he disappeared.

<Beep————.>

It was as if the sound of a broadcast being cut off, the screen going blank, was written out. The handwriting was calm and orderly, as if Prophet himself had transcribed his words, but it conveyed a deep sense of urgency and dread.

Was the word ‘beep’ something Prophet actually said aloud? How could a human voice produce such a mechanical sound? He must not have been in a rational state. If he had been in his right mind, he would have predicted it in a different way.

“Doctor said…”

I swallowed my saliva, feeling scared as I imagined a human being imitating the sine wave sound of beep with their mouth.

“Doctor said there’s no one who can make global prophecies, but this person was able to do it. Is it because his job is to deliver news around the world that this is also recognized as part of his experience?”

Lee Yiseon seemed impressed by my question.

“You’re quick-witted. Your mind works well with this stuff.”

“Uh, um, thanks for the compliment.”

“He was able to see more than any other Prophet in history. He was a great help to us, but it must have been unfortunate for him.”

“Why?”

“He died four days after becoming a Prophet. Making a beep sound. Maybe he went crazy because he couldn’t handle his powerful prophetic abilities.”

His gaze, watching me absorb this shocking news, remained calm. In his dark eyes, illuminated by the soft yellow light of the reading lamp, there was no pity or sorrow. It felt like Prophets had long been treated as expendable.

Does Lee Yiseon want me to be a powerful Prophet too? Even if I go mad and die like that anchor, does he hope I’ll be of more help? He just doesn’t say it out loud. It’s cruel to wish that he would rather have me die quickly as a strong Prophet than as a weak Prophet.

“Let’s move on.”

He turned the page himself.

Flip.

I was still shaken by the weight of life tied to the power of foresight, so the next Prophet’s story didn’t sink in right away. I exhaled deeply and organized my thoughts before I could read the other stories.

Lee Yiseon moved carefully as I immersed myself in the notebook. He dampened a gauze towel and wiped my face and hands, then lay down next to me. I could feel his gaze as he propped his head up with one arm and watched me concentrate on the notebook, but I didn’t mind.

I was focused on the world within the notebook.

He was watching me as I entered this new world.

In that way, We were looking at the same thing without meeting each other’s eyes.

In this bleak world, the hopes he and I dreamed of were different. But that’s okay. Just the fact that it wasn’t awkward to lie in the same bed meant that he and I had become a little closer.

Rustle, rustle.

Only the sound of turning pages continued into the late night.

It was a night where I could occasionally hear the sound of Lee Yiseon’s breathing as he watched over me without sleeping.