Humanity Protection Company

TL/Editor: raei

Status: 5/week mon-fri

Illustrations: posted in discord

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Yeonwoo's offer to help with the observation left the researcher looking puzzled.

'Didn't he come here to help anyway since he accepted the request?'

That thought barely had time to register before Yeonwoo spoke again. The researcher listened intently, as the question related to his field of expertise.

"Is space really that dangerous? I mean... things like the mist of contamination or astronomical anomalies. And there's the issue of contamination too, right? Like space getting polluted."

"Well..."

The researcher started to answer but then rubbed his hands together. The underground isolation room was cold. He took a few quick steps.

"Let's talk upstairs. This isn't the best place for a conversation."

Yeonwoo nodded in agreement. Thanks to the vitality from the rain, he could resist the cold a bit, but it was still chilly.

They locked the underground isolation room securely again and moved to a modest office. The researcher boiled water and brewed some tea.

"Would you like some warm tea? What kind would you prefer?"

"Anything is fine."

"I'll make you some green tea then."

Though he didn't particularly want tea, Yeonwoo accepted it like a hand warmer. He cupped the warm mug with both hands and looked at the researcher, as if asking him to answer the earlier question.

The researcher sat across from him, swirling his tea bag.

"You asked if there are many dangerous anomalies in space, right? There probably are. It'd be stranger if there weren't, given how vast space is."

For a moment, Yeonwoo tensed up. The things overflowing on Earth were already giving him a headache, and if he expanded his view to include space...

But the researcher calmly took a few sips of tea. As if he didn't have a worry in the world.

In fact, he wasn't worried at all.

"But anomalies that could actually reach Earth are just a handful. It's space, you know. Whether it's people, anomalies, or contamination, they're all just dust in the face of the universe."

"Are you sure?"

Yeonwoo asked, his voice filled with doubt and hope. Warming his hands on the teacup, he met the researcher's eyes.

"It's true. Do you know how dangerous space itself is? Black holes, supernova explosions, gamma-ray bursts, galaxy collisions... And above all, the universe is expanding."

The researcher brought his hands together in front of his face, then spread them wide.

"Once the distance reaches a certain level, the speed at which things move apart becomes faster than the speed at which contamination spreads or anomalies approach. The expanding universe acts as a natural shield."

He was saying that even anomalies were mere specks of dust before the universe, unable to reach Earth.

Yeonwoo blinked. It felt like dozens of question marks were floating around in his head.

'Is that so?'

Honestly, he wasn't sure. It's not like he knew much about space. Since an expert was telling him this, he could only tilt his head and believe it.

The researcher suddenly chuckled. He took out his phone, tapped on it a few times, and showed Yeonwoo an image of a strange star.

"The company is also very interested in space and observes it using various anomalies. This one was once the protagonist of an Earth destruction scenario."

Yeonwoo craned his neck forward to look closely at the screen.

It was a bizarre star. A strange star with the outline of a mouth and teeth.

"What is it?"

"It's an anomaly we named the Planet Devourer, a star-eating entity. The moment the company observed it, it also became aware of Earth and started racing towards us by the shortest route."

For a moment, Yeonwoo felt a chill. Even if it wasn't an anomaly, something of that mass falling to Earth would mean extinction.

But the researcher snickered.

"But this thing was really far away. Far enough for the universe's expansion to increase the distance. No matter how fast it flew towards Earth, the distance just kept growing."

The researcher tapped his phone. The picture changed.

It was a photo of the Planet Devourer, shriveled up and dead. Its planet-sized mouth was pathetically agape, spewing dust like saliva.

"It starved to death."

"It starved?"

Yeonwoo stared blankly at the photo, and the researcher swiped to the next one.

The next photo depicted the Planet Devourer's pitiful end. Shattered into pieces after being hit by a passing comet, it became cosmic dust. Even that dust was drawn into the gravity of a star that had entered its orbit.

Just as an animal dies and enters nature's cycle, the anomaly that had roamed space devouring stars returned to the stars.

Yeonwoo felt overwhelmed anew and afraid.

'An astronomical anomaly. And the universe, of which even that entity is just a small part.'

He felt like a speck of dust desperately struggling in the face of the infinitely vast universe. It truly was an infinite universe. He was just a tiny particle. Was there any meaning in desperately trying to surv-

'No. That's not right.'

Yeonwoo snapped back to his senses. No matter what the universe was like, living was what mattered.

"Is Earth safe?"

"It's relatively safe. There aren't any unmanageable anomalies in our nearby space. Even if there were dangerous ones, the company and other groups work together to protect Earth, right?"

In other words, there were no cosmic anomalies that could significantly harm Earth.

Yeonwoo relaxed a little. His body, stiff from the cold, loosened up and slumped in the chair.

He suddenly looked up.

"What about the mist on Pluto...?"

"We're not sure about that. Since we can't observe it at all, we don't know what will happen. That's why this observation is important. We need to find out what it is and what's happening on Pluto."

The researcher spoke worriedly, and Yeonwoo nodded before looking out the window.

The sun was setting over the quiet plains. The time to see the stars was slowly approaching.

---

---

The best time to observe Pluto was at midnight, so there was still time left. Yeonwoo ate dinner in the observatory's cafeteria and spent time enjoying his new hobby.

His new hobby was writing about himself on the company's intranet community. It was a site where company employees chatted anonymously.

Tap, tap tap-

Yeonwoo's fingers moved quickly. He typed incessantly on his phone, completing a long post.

'They said not to write anything that might violate security regulations.'

There was also a warning that the Intelligence Department was watching, so he twisted his experiences slightly to avoid revealing his identity.

He wrote about getting tased on his first day, swindling the Goldberg Club, almost dying after summoning the Demon of Sloth out of curiosity, getting dragged to the Intelligence Department for interrogation, and encountering a bald doomsday cultist with an eraser.

The responses were consistent.

People asked if he was a problematic employee, why he got tased on his first day, why he summoned the Demon of Sloth at home, what he did to get dragged in for interrogation...

As he wrote posts and browsed reactions, it was time.

The door to the break room opened.

"Let's go up! It's the perfect time for observation now!"

The researcher's eyes sparkled as he entered, dressed in black. Gone was his disheveled appearance from earlier, replaced by the aura of a passionate researcher.

Seeing the researcher fidgeting with excitement, his eyes twinkling like stars, Yeonwoo immediately pocketed his phone and stood up.

"Should we go right now?"

"Yes! Come quickly!"

The researcher strode ahead cheerfully. They left the break room, climbed the stairs, and reached the top of the observatory.

Yeonwoo looked around curiously.

The observation room with its round dome ceiling felt like the top of a lighthouse. In the center of the dimly lit room stood a complex machine that looked like a cannon - the telescope.

The researcher busily moved around, manipulating the machinery. He spoke excitedly.

"This is perfect timing. The weather today is really good. There are no clouds, it's a great night for stargazing. I already feel like we'll succeed in our observation, our luck seems so good."

Listening to the researcher repeatedly saying how good it was, Yeonwoo suddenly realized something.

'...If it had been cloudy, would we have had to wait here until the weather improved?'

It really felt like he'd chosen this task carelessly without any research. Yeonwoo made a mental note to at least check basic information before accepting requests in the future.

The observation preparations were complete. It was as if life had returned to the observation room.

Whirr-!

Power flowed into the complex machinery, graphs like heartbeats and images appeared on several computer monitors, and the dome began to open.

Yeonwoo looked up.

The ceiling opened. Cold winter air blew through the gap, and a pitch-black sky spread out. A night sky where stars seemed about to pour down.

"Alright, let's get ready."

The telescope moved on its own. It turned its eye towards the open night sky, towards where Pluto should be.

The researcher clapped his hands and called Yeonwoo over. He pointed at the monitor.

"Can you see it?"

"I can see something, but I'm not sure what it is..."

The screen was dotted with white spots. It seemed to be Pluto as captured by the telescope.

"Are these Pluto and stars?"

"No, it's noise. We can't observe accurately because of that mist. I'll zoom in."

The researcher scrolled the mouse wheel, and mechanical sounds came from the telescope.

"The noise got worse, right? Even though this isn't just a simple telescope but a piece of equipment loaded with advanced science and anomalous technology, we can't block out the mist's noise."

The researcher, who had been leaning over the computer, straightened up. He turned to Yeonwoo with hope in his eyes.

Yeonwoo nodded. He knew what he had to do.

"I'll give it a try."

He resolved to do his best. Yeonwoo quietly closed his eyes. He called upon the dice in a corner of his mind.

'Dice. The possibility of piercing through the mist's noise and observing.'

Roll-

Failure!

"Ah..."

Crackle, the noise got worse. The researcher stamped his foot in frustration at the messy screen, while Yeonwoo kept his eyes closed.

'There doesn't seem to be much risk in failing. Even if I get a critical failure, it shouldn't be unmanageable. I'll keep rolling then.'

Perhaps because he didn't sense any danger, his various senses remained calm. Yeonwoo purely rolled the dice, and the results kept coming.

Miss, failure, miss, miss, and then success.

"Ahhh!"

Suddenly, a terrible scream erupted. The researcher jumped up and down, delighted like a child.

"We did it! We succeeded in observing! I can see Pluto, the mist of contamination! I can see it clearly! As if it's right in front of me!"

His voice was excessively intense. Torn, cracked, flipped, filled with noise.

Something was wrong. Yeonwoo felt cold sweat running down his spine. It wasn't just the researcher's voice that was the problem.

The observation room should have been filled with dry winter air, but he felt a sticky, humid moisture.

The researcher continued speaking.

"I can see what the mist is! Contamination! ██! █████"

His voice was terribly horrific, unpleasant to hear.

Yeonwoo felt his blood boiling. No, the anomaly within him, the parts contaminated by anomalies, were bubbling furiously.

"No!"

Yeonwoo opened his eyes urgently. He saw.

The observation room filled with mist.

In the mist, the researcher's shadow was faintly visible. It was no longer in human form. His eyeballs were elongated, his spine curved towards the sky, his head and eyes pointed straight up.

They had observed the mist. The mist had also seen them. The mist had come here.

'Why did this happen!'

Yeonwoo screamed internally as he called upon the dice. Then he made a strange expression. He opened his mouth and spoke.

"My senses..."

His contamination level had skyrocketed. He felt senses clearer than ever before, possibilities he could almost grasp.

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