#128
Lee Han-sol’s footsteps stopped. He couldn’t walk. What did I just hear? His thoughts ceased. He must have misheard. Lee Han-sol denied his own ears. ‘What did you just say?’ He wanted to ask this, but his mouth remained sealed as if stitched shut. As he stood frozen without looking back, Ki Baek-woo hesitantly approached. Unable to face him directly or stand beside him, he stopped one step away from his back.
“Tell me. Did I really leave you to die like that, hyung…?”
Ki Baek-woo’s voice was hoarse, with the beginning and end quivering unstably. His irregular breathing made the listener anxious as well. Lee Han-sol tightly gripped Ppomi’s leash. So tightly that his protruding knuckles turned white. He was dazed. He couldn’t even tell if his heart was beating rapidly or had stopped completely. He felt strange. Just suddenly, as if floundering in the middle of the universe. Not knowing what to do, he mechanically began walking forward again. One step, two steps… His legs felt heavy, as if massive weights were attached to his ankles.
“Did I, to you hyung…”
“……”
Lee Han-sol thought his legs had stiffened and turned to iron. I can’t walk… His unfocused eyes stared into empty space as he stood powerlessly. The alley was dark and empty. Ppomi tugged at her leash, as if urging him on. She made a whining sound. When there was still no response, the small dog finally gave up and lay down quietly on the road. Even by then, Lee Han-sol hadn’t said anything, and Ki Baek-woo just waited silently. There wasn’t much else he could do anyway.
The silence continued, heavy and damp like monsoon season air, until it was broken by a very small voice. It was Lee Han-sol’s voice, barely audible.
“You… Ki Baek-woo, what are you…”
“……”
“What, are you asking about?”
Ki Baek-woo’s eyes, which had been cast downward lifelessly, looked sadly at the area around Lee Han-sol’s nape. That familiar straight, white neck that gave off a rather lonely feeling. Ki Baek-woo takes a deep, slow breath as if it’s burdensome.
“How much wrong I did to you, hyung… do you remember it all?”
“What nonsense are you talking about, speak clearly!”
Lee Han-sol turned around and shouted at Ki Baek-woo.
“What am I supposed to remember, what!”
Lee Han-sol’s face crumpled suddenly. The features filling his small face twisted fiercely. Ki Baek-woo quietly gazed at him, as if grateful even for the glaring face, before lowering his head slightly.
“You knew.”
“Knew what! What do I know! I said speak clearly!”
“I saw it all…”
“Do you want to die? Are you playing with me right now? Do I look like an idiot to you? You show up out of nowhere, then grab someone who’s trying to leave and mumble incomprehensible nonsense? What did you see! You said you were sorry, but that was all deception, wasn’t it? Can you do this if you’re really sorry? Just how long are you going to mess with me, you son of a bitch!”
Lee Han-sol hates this situation so much. He can’t control how much he hates it. ‘Did I leave you to die, hyung?’ He should have just ignored such a question. He hates himself so much he wants to kill himself for not being able to pretend he didn’t hear that one thing and ending up dealing with Ki Baek-woo again. It can’t be possible. Lee Han-sol knows this. Ki Baek-woo, who hasn’t remembered anything until now, couldn’t possibly have recalled the past days. Knowing this fact, he found it horrifyingly unpleasant that the question ‘Did I leave you to die, hyung?’ had already lodged itself in his mind. He wanted to tear himself apart for being so shaken by words that should have no meaning.
Fucking Ki Baek-woo. Of all the nonsense you could say, you had to say something like that and make me like this. How many years did I struggle, wanting to tell you everything, somehow make you understand that was the reality, and keep you by my side? Every time, you acted like an empty can. Being such a great darling who receives all the world’s attention, you never heard anything no matter how many times I told you. You made me give up everything.
And now you say such things? You pretend to remember something and make me recall that useless struggle I’d forgotten, that desperation of begging you to listen to me while holding onto you like a toy with dead batteries? You son of a bitch. You don’t actually know anything.
Wrapped in confusion, Lee Han-sol repeatedly thought, as if reproaching himself:
‘Ki Baek-woo doesn’t know. Ki Baek-woo doesn’t know anything. Even if Ki Baek-woo wants to know the truth, the reality, he can’t. Because that bastard was made that way. Jung Yi-dam said so. He clearly said that Ki Baek-woo, those trash S-rank hunters, not mere C-ranks, are pitiful beings who cannot escape the system’s coercion. I heard it clearly. I still remember him saying that because I’m nothing but cosmic dust, Jung Yi-dam could manipulate me as he pleased. I couldn’t possibly forget that even if this tedious time repeated hundreds more times. The voice of Jung Yi-dam, repeatedly saying that disgusting line about only you and me knowing the truth in this world…’
So Ki Baek-woo couldn’t possibly remember the past… Because… even I don’t have memories of the first death, of before that. According to Jung Yi-dam, Lee Han-sol has died hundreds, thousands of times. He was devoured by destruction at that gate many times. But he only remembers twenty-five times. So it must be the same for Ki Baek-woo, Lee Han-sol tried to think rationally to suppress his rising emotions.
Even if Ki Baek-woo could remember everything from now on, he couldn’t recall the past that has already gone by. So what Ki Baek-woo means by “saw” can’t refer to the Lee Han-sols who died miserably. He’s not talking about the Lee Han-sol who was thrown away like a used tissue and pathetically begged. Not me who was dying because I couldn’t be by Ki Baek-woo’s side.
He can’t have fallen into guilt remembering me dying simply because I wasn’t loved. He can’t be suffering as if about to die because he’s sorry to me. Lingering pathetically while knowing everything, like me, like the miserable me from back then… it can’t be.
Ah, what am I hoping for?
Lee Han-sol, fallen into chaos, took deep breaths, his chest heaving with “heu, heu” sounds. His mind was completely black. Lee Han-sol couldn’t tell if he was angry, scared, or hopeful.
If angry, was it because “the current Ki Baek-woo” might now discover his past shameful self? If scared, was it because the current Ki Baek-woo might belatedly experience that long-lasting suffering he’d gone through and waste time uselessly? If hopeful, what was he hoping for? Revenge? Is he excited because the opportunity has finally come to know everything fairly and truly take revenge?
His judgment seems broken, Lee Han-sol thought. He just glared at Ki Baek-woo as if to kill him, with as much murderous intent as the confusion he was feeling. He bit his lip until it bled.
Ki Baek-woo’s gaze moved from Lee Han-sol’s sharp eyes to his lips. His hand, which had flinched as if wanting to stop him, falls down powerlessly, knowing its place and doing nothing. His pathetically chapped lips stumbled over words.
“Why did you do it, hyung.”
“What did I do that you keep…!”
“You could have just abandoned me. You could have just left me behind like now… But why didn’t you…? That gate, why did you enter it?”
No. Lee Han-sol’s expression hardens as he desperately denies it internally. Ki Baek-woo raises his head again. His eyes ripple gloomily.
“Why did you go there? Why did you die there, hyung.”
“……”
“Because I wasn’t in my right mind… because I was such trash, if you wanted to punish me for that… you could have just killed me…”
“……”
“It was all my fault, so why did you have to suffer that?”
It should have been me who died. It should have been me…, Ki Baek-woo said lifelessly. Tears start falling with his finely quivering breath. Lee Han-sol, watching blankly, suddenly felt cold. It was as if the heat burning fiercely with anger and hatred, using his insides as fuel, had instantly transformed into a cool, chilling sensation. An icy coldness that felt like freezing was spreading throughout his body through his blood vessels. His body trembling, Lee Han-sol instinctively hunched his shoulders and wrapped his arms around himself.
How on earth… How could Ki Baek-woo.
This is that story.
Lee Han-sol could no longer deny that Ki Baek-woo was talking about the last gate where he had died over and over again.
“You… how do you…?”
Ki Baek-woo’s powerless eyes, close to resignation, blinked. Each time, tears poured down.
“So I really did that. You remember it all… That’s why you came to hate me. Because I did such things and didn’t know anything… And then, I tried to do the same thing again this time…”
“……”
“You should have killed me, hyung.”
“You really…”
“You should have killed me each time…! You should have killed me! If I die and return to the beginning—I know this sounds strange—but the same things keep repeating, so when you return to the beginning, you should have killed me first…”
So I couldn’t do that to you, so you wouldn’t end up like that because of me, just thinking only of you… you should have killed me cruelly. But why you, only you… You… You’re a precious person…
Ki Baek-woo’s voice grew quieter toward the end. His pale eyes, soaked with tears, became momentarily blurry. He staggered briefly as if feeling dizzy. Lee Han-sol, shaking with an unknown emotion, took a step back. His mind was still empty. Confused. Now of all times. Why now. How, why…
“You, how…”
“You kept appearing in my dreams.”
“……”
“And died.”
I, killed you. Continuously. So I was afraid to sleep. But when I woke up, you were there, alive… I just thought that because I was a traitor… I was just being punished… but…
Ki Baek-woo spoke with disjointed pronunciation, as if even this waking moment was terrifying like those dreams. His hesitant, fumbling speech. Lee Han-sol recalled Ki Baek-woo curled up like an egg in front of a bedroom in an old apartment at dawn. His frantic face, streaming nosebleed after being kicked yet still clinging to me, asking again and again, ‘Hyung, you’re alive, right? You’re alive?’ When he was just starting to deteriorate, desperately repeating an incomprehensible request—’Take me too, please take me too…’—in his severely damaged state. Was it from that time? From then…
Lee Han-sol traced his memories, stunned. Ki Baek-woo, who often checked on his life or death when they were still living together. Ki Baek-woo who urgently examined his face despite being the one with a nosebleed when blood was mentioned. All those anxiety-ridden actions that Lee Han-sol had thought were pathetic, considering he would soon be crazy about Jung Yi-dam anyway. The submissive, earnest, desperate attitude of Ki Baek-woo back then, to the point of being sickening… Lee Han-sol huddled more as he felt a chill. His toes, exposed beyond his slippers, stung.
Why does it feel hard to breathe… Ah, I hate this. This is really awful…
Just as Lee Han-sol was thinking he wanted to disappear somewhere away from Ki Baek-woo right now, a large jacket wrapped around his shoulders. It smelled strongly of Ki Baek-woo. And then Ki Baek-woo asked in a cracked voice, as if wringing it out:
“Hyung… how can I be forgiven?”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
