Delusive Fate

#111

Ki Baek-woo scratched his arms, feeling like he was going insane. He dug his nails in until the skin peeled and stung. When those marks became wounds and blood flowed, he would press down on them with his rounded fingertips. He tore at the wounds. Until the sharp pain cleared his head. Without doing such things, Ki Baek-woo remained completely crushed under the violence of anxiety, guilt, and fear.

In reality, Lee Han-sol was trying to leave, and in dreams beyond reality, Han-sol kept dying repeatedly. Ki Baek-woo truly felt like he was going mad. Dreams. He needed to understand the true nature of these dreams.

The dreams, once appearing fragmentary, at some point found their sequence and connected into longer visions. When Ki Baek-woo, pushed to his limits, unknowingly dozed off, they would haunt him like a ghost, waiting for exactly that moment.

With each repetition, the dreams deteriorated Han-sol more. Though just dreams, they very realistically showed Han-sol gradually, bit by bit, withering away. Watching the pale, slender Han-sol fall apart was as desolate as watching a cigarette burn down. Just as a cigarette must be crushed somewhere to stop it from burning further, Han-sol was injured and collapsed in some way or another.

Baek-woo.

Eventually even that voice calling him seemed so pale that Ki Baek-woo wanted to thrash about like an excited beast and scream. He wanted to grab the dream Ki Baek-woo who ignored Han-sol without even giving a single response and throw a fit. Why, please, stop treating hyung like that, please! Please…!

He wanted to jump into that scene right now, embrace the weakened Han-sol, and answer a hundred or thousand times, “Yes, hyung, yes, I’m listening, I’ll listen to whatever you say.”

He wanted to say that wasn’t Ki Baek-woo. That he was Ki Baek-woo, and he would never treat hyung that way, could never do that. Please hyung, don’t look at that bastard with those eyes. Why are you looking at him with loving eyes? He’s not worthy of that, he’s a fake. I’m the real one. So call me with that voice full of love, call me… please love me. The real me is here… look at me, hyung…

Ki Baek-woo sincerely wanted to kill the Ki Baek-woo in his dreams. He wanted to beat that ungrateful, shameless face until it was unrecognizable. He wanted to cut out his tongue and break his limbs. He wanted to completely destroy him until that fake was no longer seen as “Ki Baek-woo” in Han-sol’s eyes, until Han-sol would look around asking “Where’s Baek-woo?” even with that person right in front of him. If only he could erase that bastard and somehow enter the dream to let Han-sol know that he was the real one.

Then hyung, no, the dream hyung wouldn’t hopelessly fall apart like this.

“Ugh, ah… it hurts… ah… what is this even… urgh.”

Han-sol slowly but surely deteriorated… and eventually died even in places where Ki Baek-woo wasn’t present. It was after Han-sol had died eleven times in eleven different ways in Ki Baek-woo’s dreams.

One day, another new dream began. He saw Han-sol running frantically along the sidewalk. A light blue cotton t-shirt, blue checkered pants. They were familiar pajamas that Han-sol often wore in reality too. So, the day Han-sol suddenly woke up cursing. That was the day after Ki Baek-woo had kissed Jung Yi-dam, and also the first day he felt Han-sol’s attitude suddenly turning cold. Han-sol had been wearing those same pajamas that day too.

Han-sol looked somewhat disheveled, even apart from the home wear he had on. There was a certain sloppiness unique to someone who had just woken up. In that state, he was running wildly through the empty streets wearing slippers. While running, he tripped over a protruding paving block and fell with a thud. Han-sol didn’t seem to care about his badly scraped palms, not even checking the wounds before jumping up and continuing to run. The path he was taking was familiar. It led from the old apartment where Ki Baek-woo and Han-sol lived together to the Central Center.

Sure enough, upon arriving at the Center, Han-sol ignored the stares of people directed at him and pressed the elevator button. Watching the elevator display numbers change slowly, he frantically pressed the button repeatedly as if playing an arcade game. Huff, huff, with his chest heaving as he took rough breaths, Han-sol couldn’t wait even a few dozen seconds and finally headed for the stairs at the end of the hallway. He began climbing the stairs. Taking two, three steps at a time, jumping up however he could, he arrived at the 5th floor of the Center.

“Huff… huff, hah.”

Watching the dream Han-sol catching his ragged breath, Ki Baek-woo wondered why he had come here. Was the fake Ki Baek-woo here? There was nothing but research labs on the 5th floor, so why had hyung come here? As if to reveal the answer to Ki Baek-woo, dream Han-sol flung open the door to Research Lab 3 and entered. Lab 3 was famous for developing useless biochemical weapons or suspicious new drugs.

Why did Han-sol hyung come here…? As Ki Baek-woo watching the dream grew suspicious, Han-sol, who had been urgently rummaging through the empty lab, picked something up. It was a small bottle containing green liquid. A purple sticker was attached to the top of the bottle. It was a poison warning.

Han-sol swallowed its contents without hesitation. Then he collapsed on the spot.

Ki Baek-woo felt stupefied. What did hyung just do? His thoughts stopped. So, this is the Center, this is the lab, that’s poison… but why would hyung? He couldn’t understand the situation at all. Meanwhile, Han-sol’s white face turned bright red as if with high fever, then instantly turned blue. Ah. Han-sol moaned and curled up. It hurts… what is this even made of…

“Sob, huung, gulp, how annoying… what kind of, urk, bastard made this… urgh, why won’t I die instantly… waaah…”

So, so… hyung…. Ki Baek-woo finally understood what was happening. Dream Han-sol was trying to die. Han-sol was committing suicide right in front of Ki Baek-woo. The reason he had rushed here as if there was an emergency, not even changing out of his sleepwear…

…to die?

Because he thought eating something strange here would kill him instantly? Because he wanted to? Hyung… why…?

Why.

The fake Ki Baek-woo isn’t even here now. He’s not tormenting hyung either. So why? Why on earth?

Ki Baek-woo struggled. He needed to embrace Han-sol, who was groaning with his forehead against the cold tile floor. He needed to take him to the recovery center immediately. No, there must be an antidote somewhere, he needed to find it and feed it to him first. Because he was still alive, because he was in pain like that, Ki Baek-woo thought he needed to be by his side. He wanted to save hyung.

I don’t care if it’s a dream. It’s even better because it’s a dream, where anything can happen. Since it’s a dream where even such disastrous things can happen… please send me there. Send me to hyung’s side, right now…! Ki Baek-woo tried to break free from the feeling of being tied with ropes. Untie this, I need to go, this is my dream, if it’s a dream, just, just send me to hyung…

“Kack… huuu… Baek-wooo… hyung, you… hur… ugh, it hurts….”

Ki Baek-woo blankly watched Han-sol, who was curling up small, very very small, and vomiting black blood.

If this is really a dream, send me to hyung’s side. Please send me.

There’s no fake Ki Baek-woo acting badly, no Jung Yi-dam watching hyung with unpleasant eyes. Yet hyung is still dying, what am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do…? Why won’t you send me to hyung? I asked to be able to go there if this is a dream.

If this is a dream…

If this is really a dream.

A feeling of powerlessness, as if turning to sand and scattering, a terribly distant emptiness as if the world was caving in beneath his feet, clung to Ki Baek-woo’s back like a shadow. Han-sol’s writhing movements had stopped. With his white face smeared with black blood, Han-sol was not breathing. He had died. He had died again in Ki Baek-woo’s dream. As if desperate to die, he had run out without even changing clothes and died like this, by his own hand.

Ki Baek-woo, opening his eyes and returning to reality, couldn’t move at all. His entire body was drenched in cold sweat. A dream? Was it a dream? Is it really a dream? His breath came out very faintly. Suddenly, Ki Baek-woo thought he wanted to go back to before he was born. He wanted to return to when he was in his mother’s womb.

Then he would disappear before even being born, with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck.

Even if it was just a dream, if Han-sol hyung’s heart was so torn that he would drink poison by himself because of someone like me, I want to erase everything and give him a chance to start over. I want to completely disappear. My hyung, Han-sol hyung, the most beautiful and precious person in the world living a life so damaged he can’t even die… it’s as unbearable as being abandoned. So there’s no other way. Ki Baek-woo needs to return to his mother’s womb. If he dies then, it would be bearable for Ki Baek-woo because he wouldn’t have met Han-sol yet. He could die because he wouldn’t know Han-sol.

“It was my fault….”

Ki Baek-woo deteriorated along with him. Poisoning himself, hanging himself, in the closet where Ki Baek-woo’s clothes hung, not eating anything, not doing anything… Han-sol kept dying in new ways. He died lonely and desolate without Ki Baek-woo. Like tissue paper soaked in water, tearing and dissolving, Han-sol deteriorated beyond repair. Every scene was so vivid, with such a strange sense of déjà vu, that Ki Baek-woo, dreaming these dreams, wore away with him.

Increasingly unable to bear this fear, Ki Baek-woo would curl up against the coldly closed bedroom door at dawn after waking from a dream. When he put his ear to the door, he could almost hear the breathing of the living Han-sol. Yes, it’s all just dreams. Hyung is alive. Thinking that way made him feel a bit relieved.

“Aaaargh! What is this! Get the fuck away! Die!”

It was fine even when he was stepped on by Han-sol who had come out for water.

“Ugh, this nosebleed. Ever since it started, it comes at the most inconvenient times.”

Even when Han-sol had a nosebleed and looked ridiculous, it was fine then. As long as Han-sol was alive, Ki Baek-woo wouldn’t care even if all his limbs were torn off. As long as he was alive…

Ki Baek-woo realized all of this wasn’t a dream only after Han-sol had left.