Chapter 570
* * *
—This is hopeless as hell.
—No tutorial or anything and they're throwing people into this? ;;
—Seriously realistic. I'd have a breakdown too and either run away or just collapse and cry T_T
—My head's still spinning, I still don't understand anything.
Across the corridor.
She had to reach the control room, located even farther inside than the administration office.
“Oppa, do you love Yujin or not?”
Passing by a delivery man talking on the phone, Tak Jeongyun burst into the control room.
“Make an announcement! Please!”
“Huh?”
“There's some kind of disease spreading! Please evacuate everyone! You have to seal off the emergency room!”
Tak Jeongyun cried desperately.
“What are you talking about?”
“Who is this woman?”
“Get out! Leave!”
Naturally, nobody believed her.
“I think we really should make an announcement. They say a delirious patient is causing a huge disturbance in the emergency room.”
“Aah! No!”
Tak Jeongyun was restrained.
—Attention please. Code Gray. Code Gray situation in front of the emergency center on the first floor. All security personnel and guard teams, proceed to the emergency room immediately.
Once again, the announcement played unchanged.
“Ah...”
Shaking off the hands holding her, Tak Jeongyun headed upstairs again.
“Evacuate! Evacuate! You have to leave right now! Ah! Eunji! Hurry and get out! You have to leave!”
“Huh?”
“Ma'am, you have to take the patient and leave right now! Hurry! There's no time!”
But nobody believed her.
Crying, Tak Jeongyun shouted,
“Everyone's going to die! If you stay here, everyone dies! Please...”
She collapsed to the floor.
“Please believe me...”
The camera rose all the way upstairs.
The Strategic Planning Office came into view.
The chief director rushed out of his office.
On his desk, the computer screen remained active.
[Neuro-Regenerative Medicine Symposium: Session 4]
What we focused on was the infinite proliferation potential of human induced pluripotent stem cells, or IPSCs. As you know, patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease or brain death lose their function as human beings due to the death of neurons in the cerebral cortex. To replace those dead neurons, we directly inject stem cells created through dedifferentiation of the patient's somatic cells into the basal ganglia...
6, 7, 8, 9, 10...
The number in the top-right corner climbed endlessly.
The university hospital appeared in a wide shot.
One moment it was chaos, full of zombies and fleeing people.
Then time rewound and peace returned.
Then once more it descended into chaos with zombies and fleeing people.
* * *
At JC ENM's new headquarters, Jegal Rok, who still hadn't gone home, rested his chin on one hand as he watched .
O Seonyul had come from the film industry.
There was only one reason they had brought her in.
Because she was someone who could freely expand a tiny television screen measuring roughly 122 centimeters by 69 centimeters.
Into something eighteen meters wide and eight meters tall.
Because she was a director capable of handling footage meant for a gigantic screen.
Like the conductor of an orchestra, she had created .
Images flowed like dazzling music impossible to predict.
O Seonyul elegantly realigned the twisted timeline she had deliberately tangled earlier.
—I learned many things while repeating the loops. For example.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Inside an elevator.
A doctor riding with Myeong Jeha appeared.
—Holy shit
—Ah, that was Tak Jeongyun on the phone with him TT_TT
—Goosebumps
—LOL wow LOL
—FUCK!!!!
—You can't go to the emergency room. Could you please go to the control room first? I can't get there right now. Lower the shutters. Fire shutters, whatever. You need to help people evacuate. This entire hospital is going to die soon. Please trust me just once.
Tak Jeongyun's voice played over the scene as the elevator doors opened.
Myeong Jeha got out.
The doctor, who was heading to the emergency room, didn't believe Tak Jeongyun and hung up.
A short while later—
“Kyaaaah!”
“Help! Somebody help!”
The doctor was bitten by a zombie.
Realizing something, he ran frantically.
He reached the control room on the second floor and shouted,
“Everyone, get out! Get out!”
“Oh my, what happened to your arm?”
“Because of a delirious patient...? You need treatment right away, kyaaaah!”
“I SAID GET OUT!!! DO YOU ALL WANT TO DIE?!”
His almost hysterical scream stimulated the zombies, and they charged upstairs.
The control room turned into hell.
“Urgh... hng...”
He barely managed to extend his arm and lower the fire shutters.
The control room.
The hospital's command center.
Hell unfolded across the CCTV screens.
The camera zoomed in on one monitor.
On it was On Jihwa.
She desperately shook the shutter like a madwoman.
Even on the tiny screen, her desperation was heartbreaking.
At the same time, Tak Jeongyun was evacuating people on another monitor beside it.
Then a crack appeared in the high-pressure oxygen pipes embedded inside the walls.
Hiss.
The sound of oxygen leaking spread.
In the pocket of someone rushing away, a Zippo lighter fell.
BOOM!
—Holy shit, that's what that was
—I'm losing my mind
—All those earlier scenes were spoilers TT____TT
—Goosebumps;;
—So THAT'S why the explosion happened...
As the explosion rang out like cymbals crashing at the climax of a symphony, the viewers of went wild.
At the same time, Tak Jeongyun returned to the stairs again.
The number in the top right continued climbing.
44.
—There were a few things I learned from repeating the same day.
Tak Jeongyun ran again.
Toward the control room.
“There's a man stabbing people in the emergency room! Call the police first! He planted bombs too! Please issue an evacuation order!”
—Something realistic works better than talking about zombies or diseases.
“No, if there's a stabbing, why aren't we sending guards? We need to send them even more!”
Tak Jeongyun gritted her teeth.
Because she knew armed guards becoming zombies would be even more destructive.
“Then send only half! There isn't just one attacker! There's another one in the annex! That's what I meant!”
“Where in the annex? Looking at CCTV, we don't see any—”
“Just hurry!!! If I'm wrong, I'll resign tomorrow! Is that enough?! Everyone's about to die!”
—Attention please. There is currently an armed attacker...
The announcement was made.
People evacuated.
Patients and guardians.
Doctors and nurses.
Everyone became infected.
Several men in SECURITY vests tried to block them, but it was hopeless.
“Hey, why are there only this many of us?!”
The guard's shout disappeared beneath the tide of zombies.
—Holy shit, that was that scene earlier
—I wondered what Security was yelling about TT_TT
—So that's why...
Against the flood of people pouring out, Tak Jeongyun moved upstream.
Talking to someone on the phone, she headed higher.
Higher and higher.
“I know you won't believe me. But if you get bitten, go to the control room and lower the shutters. Got it? Control room. Shutters. I'm hanging up.”
—Looks like he lowered the security shutters instead of the fire shutters
—Holy shit
—Everything's fitting together perfectly LOL
—Goosebumps, that's all I can say
Tak Jeongyun evacuated the people in the main building into the annex.
Going to the first floor was too dangerous.
She hoped the annex would still be safe.
People flooded across the fifth-floor bridge connecting the buildings.
The screen changed.
On Jihwa and Kim Kangil appeared.
“J-Jihwa!”
The moment they heard there was a knife-wielding attacker, they headed toward the underground parking lot.
But they shouldn't have.
“Grrrk!”
Infected people emerged from the elevator that had reached the underground parking level and chased them.
On Jihwa reacted quickly.
She ran.
Ran.
And ran again.
“You motherfuckers!”
The elevators were already paralyzed due to the evacuation.
Trying to use the emergency stairs instead of the central lobby staircase, Myeong Jeha found himself trapped by the infected.
He removed his helmet.
“Please!”
His arm traced a huge arc.
He pierced a vital spot, threw one zombie into the others, and sent them tumbling.
Leaping up three stairs at a time, Myeong Jeha rattled the emergency door of the next floor.
—Attention please. Emergency situation. Please evacuate...
Inside the control room, someone waved an arm.
It was that doctor from before.
His vision was blurry.
Fumbling around, he pressed the button for the previously recorded announcement.
Then, after violently pressing another button, he collapsed.
Clank!
The security shutters.
“Aaaah!”
On Jihwa turned around.
The shutters had closed.
The hand she and her mother had been holding was severed by a single steel wall.
Her mother was trapped.
Jihwa shook her head desperately.
The horde rushed from behind.
Her sweating mother smiled.
Moving her lips, she said,
Jihwa.
Go.
* * *
Endless despair.
Amid the repeating catastrophe, Tak Jeongyun opened her eyes once more.
The number at the top had reached 144.
She had died over a hundred times.
—Funny, isn't it?
The more loops she experienced, the less hesitation she had.
—Even in all this, I still get sleepy and hungry.
Tak Jeongyun marched into the on-call room and slept.
She cut in line at the staff cafeteria and wolfed down food.
Beep-beep-beep—
Then it all began again.
The same day.
—Wow, the acting's insane
—Where has this actress appeared before?
—I've had goosebumps this whole time TT_TT
—Bringing in a nobody was genius; I thought one of the three leads was the main character LOL
Tak Jeongyun was exhausted.
Staggering on the stairs, forced to relive the same day again and again, she shook off Do Gyeoul's hand.
“Go...”
“Huh?”
“Just go...”
Staggering, Tak Jeongyun walked toward the lobby.
Waving to Do Gyeoul almost like a farewell, she offered some advice.
“Don't bother running. Just get bitten immediately... it hurts less. Aim for the neck.”
Leaving behind the confused Do Gyeoul, who couldn't understand what she was saying, Tak Jeongyun wandered aimlessly.
Across from her, the delivery man was still on the phone.
“Oppa, do you love Yujin or not?”
As she brushed past Myeong Jeha, she thought,
—It started in the emergency room. From the hospital director's fall. And that's all I've managed to learn.
Looking at the control room CCTV, she reviewed everything she'd discovered.
—Then why did the director...? How? For what reason?
She climbed the stairs.
—The time resets weren't always the same... no, sometimes they were. What's certain is that they don't start with my death.
Step by step, she climbed higher.
Her expression was utterly exhausted.
Completely numb.
—Time rewinds even while I'm alive. For the first time. Which means someone else is the trigger...
Opening a door, Tak Jeongyun stepped onto the outdoor terrace.
Inside the hospital that would soon become hell, it was peaceful and warm like paradise.
Sunlight.
Children running around.
A young father smiling happily.
A young man talking on the phone.
Someone in a hospital gown staring blankly at the sky.
Among all those people, Tak Jeongyun sat down on a bench.
—Too many things are suspicious. 3:44. The director's fall. Right before that, the ICU main server crashed. That's too perfect to be a coincidence. Something definitely happened before that.
Staring at the sky, she thought and thought.
The peaceful terrace beneath the blue sky filled the screen.
—Someone definitely accessed the ICU server and did something they shouldn't have.
Then—
“Hyunmok!”
A child collapsed.
Without thinking, Tak Jeongyun ran over.
Reflexively, she checked his breathing.
—Come to think of it, I knew this patient.
“Nurse! Nurse, our Hyunmok...!”
—Three months in intensive care. A patient suffering from a rare degenerative brain disease.
The screen shifted to the past.
The first loop.
Tak Jeongyun standing in the pharmacy with documents.
The papers scattered on the floor before she ran.
—A name that wasn't there.
The scene of Do Gyeoul grabbing her wrist as she looked back.
—No anticonvulsants. No intracranial pressure medication. No sedatives. None of the drugs he needed constantly. Today, they were all missing.
Back to the present.
The child convulsed.
—Could all of this really be a coincidence?
A chilling electronic sound echoed.
Everyone watching stiffened.
Episode One.
Back when the drama had just begun.
The spotless white hospital beneath bright sunlight.
The camera naturally flying through the wide entrance.
The lobby.
Passing over the patients.
That moment.
“Ma'am, for the next hour, please stay with your child in the waiting area outside the injection room and monitor his condition.”
The very scene where a medical worker was explaining something to the guardian of a child in a hospital gown.
—Holy shit, that was foreshadowing
—They showed it right at the beginning TT_____TT
—Did he get the stem cell injection too???
—Holy shit
—Goosebumps TT_TT
—This is insane
—What even is this
A clue had finally begun to emerge.