Humanity Protection Company

Illustrations: None.

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Walking down the corridor.

The guard readjusted his grip on the sprayer, glancing briefly at the researcher. The researcher blinked rapidly, poised to douse anyone who appeared with the cure.

The guard slowed his pace.

"Wouldn\'t it be better if I administered the cure, and you carried this, sir?"

Though he\'d ended up shouldering the container , this wasn\'t an appropriate role assignment.

The target was someone infected with the murder disease. Wouldn\'t it be more efficient for the guard in protective gear to approach?

The researcher vehemently shook his head at this rational suggestion from the special forces member.

"No, no. I\'ll do it. I\'ll share the pain I felt. Or would you like to try it? Then I\'d be willing to switch roles."

"No, sir. You go ahead."

The guard quickened his pace, horrified. No matter how efficient the strategy, he had no intention of putting that in his mouth.

As the guard walked briskly and the researcher nearly broke into a run to keep up, Lee Yeonwoo, who was leading the front and keeping watch, suddenly stopped and held his hand back. A gesture indicating something was ahead.

Everyone stopped. Only the researcher excitedly reached into the water container.

"Is someone there? I hope it\'s an infected person."

"There\'s an infected person-"

"Excellent!"

Splash!

Pitter-patter!

The researcher, hands full of cure, dashed off before anyone could stop him. However, after a few steps, his pace slowed. He stopped abruptly, looking around blankly.

It was just a factory corridor soaked with water. No infected person, let alone anyone at all.

"Where\'s the infected person?"

"Over there at the end of the corridor, isn\'t it?"

"...Over there?"

Yeonwoo, who had casually followed, pointed to the far end of the corridor. The factory center, where most people had been, waited in the distance.

The factory center, littered with plastic surgery machines, where guards and infected had clashed.

The researcher\'s lips trembled. He rolled his eyes downward. The sticky sensation suddenly felt anew, and that taste, which only he could experience, revived in his mind.

"...Let\'s go quickly."

They moved after distancing themselves slightly from the researcher, and arrived at the factory center.

All the infected had been subdued and were writhing, tied up somewhere, while the guards surrounded them with guns aimed.

"Die, die!"

"Please be patient. We received word that the cure will arrive soon."

"I don\'t need any cure! I feel so relieved now! Die, all of you... My goodness, what\'s that?"

One of the bound infected who had been thrashing about wildly spotted the researcher beyond the guards. The writhing stopped, and their expression changed strangely.

Several guards did too. After turning to see the infected\'s reaction, they raised their guns first.

"Stop!"

The researcher, hands covered in something deep blue, smiled.

"Ah, don\'t worry. It\'s the cure. Just one mouthful and you\'ll come to your senses."

"The cure...?"

The guards fell silent for a moment. The squad leader was the first to lower his gun. He\'d been informed earlier that the cure was on its way.

After checking the color of their eyes once, the squad leader stepped aside to make way.

"Is there enough?"

"If it\'s not enough, we\'ll have to make more."

"Thank goodness. Then please administer the treatment quickly. If we wait any longer, they might start hurting themselves."

"Alright."

The researcher approached with a grin, looking at the scattered infected. His gaze was like someone thinking what to eat first.

Just as the infected unconsciously averted their eyes, the researcher suddenly rushed to the nearest one, grabbing their face with both hands. Hands that roughly gripped the nose and mouth, just as he had been treated.

"Eat! Eat!"

"Mmph! Mmph!"

The struggling was futile. Eventually, the office worker swallowed the cure, and its taste struck their soul. A stimulus the soul couldn\'t bear. Shallow breaths escaped from the gaping mouth.

They couldn\'t even scream. Only after what felt like an eternity did the infected come to their senses. A gaunt face, aged by several years.

Suddenly feeling nauseous, they bent over and let out an anguished cry.

"Urgh-! What, what did you feed me!"

"Hm? Not fully cured? Guess you need more?"

"No! I\'m cured!"

The office worker, now back to normal, looked up at the researcher in shock. The researcher gave a sinister smile.

"Your eyes are still red though?"

"They\'ve always had a reddish tint! My eyes are naturally like this, I swear!"

"Is that so...? Still, just to be sure."

A blasphemous finger entered their mouth. The office worker swallowed the cure with tears in their eyes. If they bit the finger, he\'d surely claim they weren\'t fully cured and force them to take more.

Gueeeeek!

The sound of a soul screaming echoed through the vast factory.

The guards turned away, sweating cold at the scream pounding into their brains, while the infected trembled, forgetting even their murderous urges.

Then, the office worker cured of the murder disease slowly stood up. Eyes shining eagerly.

"I\'m cured. Please untie me. I want to help administer it too."

"Excellent."

The bindings were untied. The office worker quickly approached a guard, scooping up handfuls of the cure.

Thus, from one to two, two to four, four to eight. The number of healers increased exponentially. It took less than 30 minutes for all the infected to be cured.

"..."

But the guards couldn\'t relax.

The cured gathered in one place, talking with clear eyes.

"Are there no more infected?"

"Shouldn\'t we check if some are hiding elsewhere in the factory?"

"Let\'s search!"

"We need to make more cure too! Some of you go to the roof and make more cure! More people need to take this!"

"How do we make it? Ah, no need to explain. I understand. I\'ll make more."

The cured began searching the factory in small groups. Silence suddenly fell over the factory.

The squad leader, watching this scene from afar, gripped his gun tightly. He opened his parched mouth and spoke.

"Headquarters, do you copy? Are you seeing this? The murder disease is cured, but they seem to be infected with something else-"

"Squad leader? Is that you?"

A voice from behind.

The squad leader and the guards turned around simultaneously, aiming their guns. At the end of the muzzles stood the researcher. His hands thickly coated with the blue cure.

"Don\'t be on guard. After trying this myself, I think it works on mental abnormalities other than the murder disease too. So, I think it\'d be good to turn this place into a cure production factory."

The researcher smiled.

"I\'d like the squad leader to write up such a proposal. If multiple people write the same proposal, wouldn\'t the higher-ups take it more seriously?"

"...I\'ll think about it."

"Think it over carefully. It\'s a way to save many people."

With those final words, the researcher turned and left. Heading for the roof. Where the oak barrel was.

The squad leader watched his retreating figure, then clenched his fist. Cold sweat soaked through under his gloves. He exhaled a labored breath.

"Do you copy? This is beyond our capacity. This isn\'t our job, I\'m telling you! Call in the quarantine unit, or mental purification specialists! Quickly, before it\'s too late!"

"We\'re monitoring from here too. It seems this is no simple cure."

At the leisurely voice, the squad leader\'s neck veins bulged, but conscious of others, he suppressed his voice.

"Don\'t state the obvious. I\'m telling you to respond."

"The response is already being carried out there."

Incomprehensible words. All the guards were gathered here, so who was responding and how?

Just as the squad leader was about to lose his temper and shout, sunlight suddenly shone down on their position. They all looked up at the factory\'s high ceiling simultaneously.

An eraser had passed by, leaving a gaping hole in the ceiling.

Under the blue sky, three heads were visible. Yeonwoo, the agent, and a guard. And the oak barrel. The guard holding the oak barrel high yelled.

"Squad leader! Catch this well!"

The oak barrel was immediately thrown, plummeting vertically. One of the nearby guards threw himself at it. The barrel bounced off the thick protective gear and landed upright on the factory floor.

"Squad leader. First, prevent any more self-proclaimed cure from being produced. Don\'t destroy the oak barrel. It\'s an interesting anomaly, isn\'t it?"

"...What about the infected?"

"They seem to retain some sense of reason. Subdue them with appropriate threats. Additional support will arrive soon. If it gets too difficult, shoot to kill."

The squad leader\'s eyes darted to the infected emerging from various places. He lowered his muzzle to aim at the oak barrel.

---

---

Yeonwoo first sensed something was off when the infected were almost all cured. Watching people gather in small groups to search for more infected and discuss making more cure, he suddenly felt a sense of dissonance.

He touched his smiling lips, having been contentedly watching people in pain.

\'...Why am I feeling pleased about this?\'

These were strangers. They weren\'t close enough to be happy about just being cured of the murder disease, and Yeonwoo\'s emotions weren\'t that sensitive.

\'Sharing the pain I felt? No. This isn\'t right at all.\'

Once he became aware of the problem, more issues kept surfacing.

To begin with, the very act of voluntarily treating people infected with the murder disease was strange. There\'s no way he would approach an infected person.

\'If they were cured, they should have run away. Why are they still here?\'

His smile froze stiffly. Something was wrong. This wasn\'t like him; he was acting out of character.

"Agent, guard. Come over here for a moment."

He pulled the two by their arms under the metal stairs. They followed willingly, sensing something was off too. After glancing at the others once, they began talking in hushed voices.

Yeonwoo spoke first.

"I think there\'s a problem with the cure."

"I thought those people looked strange too. A colleague told me people act like that when affected by a mental anomaly."

"...Are you alright, Investigator Yeonwoo?"

"It\'s hard to say."

It\'s not as intense as the murderous impulse. It just subtly lingers, distorting one\'s intentions.

But it doesn\'t threaten lives, so survival instincts don\'t strongly resist either.

\'I\'ve definitely been affected though.\'

Yeonwoo slightly raised his finger, pointing to the roof.

"Let\'s secure the oak barrel first. We can\'t let more of this be produced."

It was too late to run away now. It would be difficult to escape while affected by the cure, and they needed to find information about the cure here.

\'For now, taking the oak barrel hostage is the priority.\'

To threaten that we\'ll destroy it if the infected become more aggressive, preventing them from making more cure.

"That seems like the best option right now."

The agent and guard didn\'t object. They had sensed the dissonance too.

They crept up the metal stairs to the roof, immediately erased the floor, and threw the oak barrel to the guard. None of the guards had taken the cure.

And just seconds later, the people trying to make the cure arrived. They saw Yeonwoo\'s group.

"Where\'s the oak barrel? We need to make more cure quickly."

Yeonwoo calmly spoke.

"The guards have the oak barrel. More importantly, shouldn\'t we find the research data on the cure first?"