“Uh... number thirty. Shin Ain?”
“Yes!”
A clear, open face looked up at him. The eyes, at least, were decent — honest, even. The man pushed his glasses up his nose and asked,
“What exactly are you wearing?”
“Wear... ing?”
“The posting clearly stated that applicants should present themselves neatly.”
The man’s eyes went over his outfit, and so the applicant’s eyes dropped too. Uh... oh... He stole a glance at the person beside him, then started folding the hem of his T-shirt into little crumpled pleats with his fingers, flustered all over. Then he mumbled his answer.
“Th-this is all I got... so... Sorr— I mean, I’m sorry.”
“...”
That shut him up. These were the only clothes he had? In the silence that followed, another interviewer leaned over and whispered. Apparently the suit-rental program had started charging a fee recently.
At that, the interviewer in the glasses cleared his throat with the air of a man who’d stepped in it. When he said, Please take your seat, the applicant scrambled into an empty chair.
The interviewer in the center looked them over with cold eyes and spoke.
“Kim Minsu? Let’s hear your self-introduction.”
“Good afternoon, sir! The definitive neat freak of our generation — clean room, clean body, clean heart! I’m Kim Minsu!”
The introductions had begun. Ain listened to their voices with his nerves jangling. Every one of them enunciated beautifully, projected loudly, spoke smoothly. Compared to his own fumbling self, it was night and day.
Right as his confidence started to sink, Ain shook his head.
No, I can do this too. I may not look it, but I survived just fine in a dungeon. And I’m living just fine out here, too.
Thinking of Dojin’s gorgeous face made courage well up out of nowhere. He waited quietly, and at last his turn came.
“Shin Ain? Let’s hear your self-introduction.”
Ain shot to his feet.
“Hello! I’m Slime Ain. I have been doing cleaning for a long time. I wiped wide places and narrow places, and I cleaned with clothes too. The person I like was happy when he saw a clean room, so I felt really good as well.”
An easy, unguarded smile spread across Ain’s mouth.
“Humans like things to be clean. I will make all of you feel good! Oh — I like clean things too. I like cleaning.”
It was simple talk, scattering the word like around far too freely, and yet for exactly that reason it slid straight into the ear. Maybe it was because he was so disarmingly bright. There wasn’t a sliver of room to doubt the sincerity in what he’d said.
Caught off guard by the mood in the room, the interviewer lowered his glasses a little and looked at Ain. He wrote something on his paper, then followed up with another question.
“You said you’ve been cleaning for a long time. Did you do it because you genuinely enjoyed it? Did you work alone?”
“Mostly! It was a situation where I had no choice but to do it alone.”
“Why did you have no choice but to do it alone?”
“There was one person there, but he was hurt. I had to take care of him.”
“...”
All at once the interview room went dead quiet. The interviewer’s gaze traveled from Ain’s clear face down to his grimy clothes. Off to one side came a faint sniffle.
Why’s everybody acting like this? Ain was baffled, but he was smart enough not to let it show. After a short silence, one more question flew his way.
“Shin Ain, do you have any special skill when it comes to cleaning?”
Special skill. That’s a word I studied in my books. It means something you’re good at, I’m pretty sure...
As Ain turned it over and over, his eye landed on a big piece of furniture standing nearby. Yes. That.
He marched straight over to it as he spoke.
“I can get into narrow places really well.”
He announced it boldly, softened his body just a touch, and slipped right into the gap.
How did he get in there? Everyone’s faces went past surprise and straight into shock, but Ain daringly put on a second round of showmanship, squeezing in and back out again. Then he turned to face them all, proud of himself.
“I can clean places like this too.”
His expression said he was sure of it. Every one of them stared at him with their mouths hanging open.
The interview ended and he came back outside. Haaah... Had that gone well? He’d tried his hardest, anyway. Ain tilted his head this way and that as he walked off. Then, out of nowhere, the man who’d interviewed alongside him came over.
“You’re Shin Ain, right?”
“...?”
He turned at the sudden question, and a clean-cut, good-looking man asked him, plainly curious,
“How’d you do that back there?”
“Huh?”
“Back there. Getting in behind that furniture.”
“Ah... I just tried really hard.”
“Hmm... no bones in there, maybe...”
The man muttered it with his head cocked to one side, and Ain went white as a sheet. Huh? How did he know? That I don’t actually have any bones? His eyes went wide with alarm — and the man broke into a grin.
“I’m Yu Jihan. Looks to me like you’re getting in. Let’s do good work together once we’re inside.”
He thinks I’m getting in...? Really?
Ain’s mood shot up in an instant, and he smiled and nodded. At that the man looked at him with a faintly dazed sort of expression, then started digging through his pocket. He held out his phone and asked for Ain’s number, but Ain could only shake his head. It was simply that he had no phone to give a number from — yet whatever the man took that to mean, he walked away with open disappointment on his face.
Ain looked out the window at the white clouds in all their different shapes and thought to himself.
I hope I can get closer to Dojin. Because I want to protect him from right beside him.
Inside his head there was only ever Dojin.
Ain walked out of the hard grey building, remembering their life together in the dungeon. Results in two days. It was the first step of a brand-new beginning.
Beep. Beep.
In a place where everything was pure white, a man lay still.
Beep.
The motionless hospital room was full of nothing but machine noise. The brow of the man in the bed drew tight. As if he were thinking about something, that handsome brow twitched and twitched without rest.
Beeeep.
Along with the ringing in his ears, countless voices seeped in at the edge of his hearing.
“You fucking bastard, you think surviving on your own is all that matters?”
“Is it normal to swing your blade without so much as a flicker in your face while your teammates get torn up? Isn’t that a psychopath?”
“Who knows. Maybe we got hurt because of that bastard in the first place.”
The same noise as always, people running their mouths about him right in front of him. Dojin sneered at them. Let them talk however they liked. It wasn’t as if anyone would believe him even if he spoke up. In their eyes he was already a man with no morals.
Dojin walked straight past them, the way he always did. There was nothing but pitch black ahead of him, yet his steps never faltered. He had no idea how many hours he’d been drifting like that, or how many days. The darkness on every side was so thick he couldn’t see an inch in front of him. No exit, no entrance. A world of literal nothing, black as pitch.
I’m never getting out of here, am I.
Dojin gave up. By now he didn’t even have the will to try anything.
And as he stood there blankly, staring into the dark, something soft suddenly brushed against his toes.
...?
He lowered his eyes and found a small ball. No, not a ball. A round, blue-tinted thing.
Myung.
It looked up at him and made that squishy little sound. When he kept looking down at it without moving, it latched onto the hem of his trousers and refused to come off. Like a wad of chewed gum.
For a while the two of them just stood there, staring at each other, saying nothing. How much time passed, he couldn’t say, but from somewhere came a voice calling him. Dojin.
Dojin looked around. Above his head, or no, was it off to the side? Words buzzed and hummed somewhere around him.
“I wanna see Dojin soon. I wish I could talk with him already.”
“D’you think he’s still at that hospital place?”
“Ga, na, da, ra, ma, ba, sa, a, ja, cha...? Huh? What comes next?”
...Who is that. Talks way too much. Chatter, chatter. That mouth never takes a break.
Even as he thought it, he found himself listening. The voice was clear and warm. There was something settling about it; just hearing it made him feel at ease without trying.
He wanted to know who the voice belonged to. If only there were a little light. But that was impossible. The dark still held every direction. Right as the darkness started to feel unbearable, the voice swelled all at once.
“Dojin!”
And with it, blazing white light burst in front of his eyes. The darkness was gone, not a trace of it left anywhere.
“...!”
The man’s eyes snapped open. The light slammed into them all at once and he squinted, brows pulling tight. Soon his vision adjusted, and he registered where he was.
A hospital?
He was still lying down, looking the place over, when the door clicked open and someone came in. She stood beside the bed checking the machines, jotted something on a chart, and hummed to herself. Then she turned her head toward the bed and let out an enormous shriek.
“Eeek!”
“...”
“Y-you’re awake...”
Then she hit the nurse call button on the wall beside him and spoke in a rush.
“Doctor, the patient Woo Dojin is awake!”
Daehan University Hospital, seventh-floor ward.
A man in suit trousers and a dress shirt, his tie yanked loose, came tearing down the corridor. He fired off a quick question at a nurse, then threw open the door of one of the rooms.
“Woo Dojin...!”
Long, narrow eyes. A high, straight nose. A sharp jawline.
He’d lost weight, but those pitch-black eyes still burned, and that particular weight he carried, that air about him, was the same as a wild beast’s.
In Korean he says “Sillain,” fumbling his new name Shin Ain together with “slime.”
He’s reciting the order of the Korean alphabet, the way a child singsongs their ABCs.
