Savior Proto-Call Chapter 2

Chapter 2. No Longer Human (2)

Her hair was pure white, as though someone had gathered freshly fallen snow from a field untouched by a single footprint and poured it directly over her head.

Yoon Doha didn't even have the presence of mind to determine whether the person before her was male or female.

She was so startled that the papers clutched tightly in her hand crumpled further.

How many lunatics could possibly be running around the research wing like this, as though they'd stuck flowers in their hair and completely lost their minds?

Countless scenes from disaster and fantasy movies she'd watched over the years began flashing through Yoon Doha's mind.

Laboratories filled with experimental subjects who lost their sanity, went on a rampage, escaped confinement, and were eventually shot dead.

Thwack!

"Urgh...!"

The person, who had been panting heavily while practically sliding around the corner, slammed the back of her head against the wall.

Yet she didn't slow down.

Instead, she continued charging into the corridor where Yoon Doha stood.

The sharp squeaking of her shoes against the floor pierced Doha's eardrums. Their soles sounded much like the indoor slippers elementary school students wore.

"Kh...!"

The figure raised her head with a ragged gasp.

She was a woman.

And like a wild boar charging blindly with its eyes covered, heedless of anything in its path, she came rushing straight toward Yoon Doha.

It happened before Doha's brain could even register that the woman's eyes were silver with a hint of ocean blue.

Ah. Fuck. What the hell is—?

Thud!

A dull impact shattered the silence.

The white-haired woman was visibly tall, and when she collided head-on with Doha, the latter's frail frame was lifted into the air like a fluttering scrap of tissue paper.

She didn't even have time to process the pain from the powerful impact against her abdomen and lower jaw.

"Ah...!"

A scream escaped her instinctively, filled with helpless anguish.

Unfortunately, screaming proved woefully inadequate as either a means of easing the pain or denying reality.

Perhaps driven by a desperate instinct to survive, Yoon Doha twisted her body.

As a result, her right knee struck the smooth epoxy floor with enough force to send a jolt through the bone.

It felt as though someone had placed a chisel against her kneecap and hammered it in.

Thump! Crash! Bang! Thud!

One agonizing impact after another assaulted her entire body.

A searing heat spread through her knee, as though someone were repeatedly rubbing the flat side of a red-hot blade against it.

The pain felt like a drill was grinding her kneecap into pieces, twisting Yoon Doha's face into a grimace.

It was unbearable agony, enough to make bile rise in her throat.

"Ah..."

They say that when your luck is rotten, even falling backward will break your nose.

Well, apparently falling backward can shatter your fucking kneecap, too.

My poor joints... I already wore them out working those goddamn part-time jobs!

Her pelvis and elbows, which had slammed brutally against the floor after she'd been sent flying as though struck by a truck, were also throbbing with pain.

But even that was bearable compared to her knee, which had absorbed the full force of the impact.

Perhaps because her entire body weight had come crashing down on that single right kneecap, she could already feel the blood rushing to the area.

It burned fiercely, as though a massive bruise were about to bloom beneath the skin.

Her already fragile body had just been worn down another notch.

"Ah... Shiiit..."

With that brief lament, Yoon Doha opened the eyes she'd squeezed tightly shut.

Only then did she realize that a rather heavy body was sprawled over her own.

The white-haired woman had planted her hands on either side of Doha's hips and was hanging her head low, breathing in short, desperate bursts.

Her upper body was bent so far forward that she looked ready to collapse at any moment.

She even coughed dryly between breaths, like someone who had just run up and down a hundred flights of stairs.

If they had been on a sidewalk in the middle of the city, her ragged breathing would have made her look like an ordinary person suffering from a panic attack.

"E-excuse me... H-hello...?"

Doha called out to the woman, stumbling over her words in confusion.

There was no answer.

Fortunately, the woman had lowered her head toward Doha's lower body, allowing Doha to prop herself up on her aching elbows and raise her upper body.

"Hngh... Ugh..."

But once she'd managed to regain some composure and examine the situation, she realized that something was definitely wrong.

The woman's clothes were as white as her hair, but their design was far from ordinary.

They were too starkly white to be hospital garments, lacking the distinctive cross patterns often associated with such clothing.

Moreover, several sections appeared to have been left unfinished.

The woman's outfit was divided neatly into front and back panels, joined together by small ties placed at regular intervals from her wrists to the area around her neck.

Her pants were constructed in much the same way.

Every section that would normally have been stitched together was instead fastened with short strings.

...Isn't this the kind of clothing they make you wear right before strapping you onto an examination table?

The suspicion she'd entertained moments earlier began to take on a faint certainty.

Just as Yoon Doha drew her dark eyebrows together, the woman's body suddenly sank forward.

Thinking she might be collapsing, Doha instinctively reached out a hand.

But her hand froze in midair.

Because the woman had just torn apart the right side of her jeans with a single violent movement.

Rrrip.

Yoon Doha stared blankly as the fabric of her jeans ripped apart with a disturbingly crisp sound.

Then the white-haired woman's head dropped directly onto her knee.

The situation was so absurd—so utterly disconnected from reality—that Doha couldn't bring herself to react.

Immediately afterward, something soft brushed against the skin already consumed by burning pain.

The unexpected damp sensation, something she would never have encountered on an ordinary day, made her flinch violently.

If her central nervous system was still functioning correctly, then whatever had just touched the swollen, bruising skin of her knee was—

This woman's tongue.

Doha considered the sequence of events.

A complete stranger had suddenly charged at her, tackled her to the ground, ripped her pants apart, and started licking her knee.

Is any of this even remotely normal?

Heat rushed to her face, as though someone had deliberately poured molten metal over it.

Faced with a situation that no sane person could possibly comprehend, Yoon Doha felt her thoughts burn away into nothingness.

I'm screwed.

I've definitely gotten caught by a lunatic who's even more dangerous than a zombie or some escaped experimental subject.

"W-wait a second...!"

Almost convulsively, Yoon Doha lashed out and smacked the woman's head with the palm of her hand.

The sharp crack of her palm striking the woman's face rang out.

At the same instant, Doha's eyes widened in shock.

Even though she was the one being threatened, a sudden fear seized her that she might have injured the other person.

"Haaa... Kh."

The woman's head had been knocked backward while she was completely defenseless.

Her head snapped upward at nearly a right angle, stretching the muscles along her neck taut, before slowly turning forward again.

She had a beautifully straight nose, a smooth and gently rounded forehead, long eyelashes, and exquisitely sculpted facial features.

Every element of her face came together in nearly perfect proportions.

Had the current situation not involved a woman seemingly possessed by a dog greeting its owner and licking her knee, Doha might genuinely have stopped to admire her beauty.

But that thought quickly evaporated.

The woman's unfocused pupils, set within her sharp, striking eyes, stirred an eerie sense of foreboding.

"...H-holy shit."

Even in such an utterly bewildering situation, hers was a face that naturally drew attention.

Beneath the woman's disheveled hair, which looked like scattered grains of sleet, her blue-tinted eyes shone intensely.

They were the eyes of a beast utterly stripped of the rationality a human being ought to possess.

Her gaze was pure, almost as though it had been carefully refined, yet her pupils held not the slightest trace of learned obedience.

Whatever fleeting admiration Doha had felt was swallowed by a chill that seemed to claw directly at her brain.

An unfamiliar realization overtook her.

The woman's irises were blue-gray.

More precisely, they were so pale and translucent that they almost resembled the whites of her eyes.

But she's probably a native Korean.

Even if she weren't Korean, do eyes that gray with a bluish tint actually exist?

The woman's pale, bluish-gray gaze pierced straight into Yoon Doha's eyes.

And with it came a realization that struck her brain like a nail.

A quiet gasp slipped from Doha's lips.

This woman is an ability user.

And not someone whose abilities had manifested through artificial medication, as hers had.

She was one of the unusual cases whose abilities had awakened naturally.

Doha remembered learning about them during a mandatory special lecture conducted by the Salvation Agency the day before summer vacation began in her third year of middle school.

Naturally awakened individuals inevitably experienced changes in both their hair and iris colors.

Because of this, it was possible to distinguish naturally awakened individuals from others simply by looking at their hair or eyes.

And true to that explanation, the woman's white hair and silver eyes, so close to blue in color, were not features one would ordinarily see in a normal person.

I was an idiot for not figuring it out the moment I saw her white hair.

When that head popped out from around the corner, I should've turned around, barged straight back into Kim Jaehee's laboratory, and begged her to save me.

While regretting her earlier stupidity, Yoon Doha realized something even more serious.

There was usually only one reason an ability user would lose their rationality to such an extent.

Phantom Pain.

Infection with Cyan, the substance found inside a Phantasm, allowed a person to wield supernatural abilities.

But it also brought other symptoms.

And those symptoms were known collectively as Phantom Pain.

The exact manifestations varied drastically from person to person, but they generally shared one common characteristic.

Irrational behavior.

Some people were overcome by an uncontrollable urge to kill.

Others experienced pain as though their entire bodies were being torn limb from limb.

Still others reportedly suffered the sensation of their bodies slowly rotting away, beginning at their extremities.

As those examples suggested, most forms of Phantom Pain surpassed anything an ordinary person could imagine.

The symptoms were often so severe that maintaining one's sanity through them was nearly impossible.

For that reason, the actions of awakened individuals suffering from Phantom Pain frequently went far beyond the bounds of common sense.

The white-haired woman continued staring at Doha with a dazed gaze so devoid of deceit that it seemed impossible to detect even the smallest falsehood in it.

Then her head suddenly dropped again, like that of a corpse whose neck had been severed.

And without the slightest hesitation—

She sank her blunt teeth forcefully into Doha's already agonizing, purple-bruised skin.

"AAAAH!"