When you repeat the same time over and over, confusion sometimes creeps in.
Even if you know your circumstances, your background—your entire life—are completely different, it still feels like you’re reliving the exact same moment endlessly.
Thud!
Cha Eui-sung jolted upright as if flung by a spring.
The mattress, which had suffered similar shocks for months now, let out a miserable squeak as if issuing a final warning.
“Haaah… haah…”
Beeeep—
A high-pitched ringing blared in his ears. Or maybe it was coming from inside his head.
Like the long, flat line of a vital signs monitor, a stretched-out noise rang on.
All other sounds in the world had stopped. Only that strangely heavy, clinging tinnitus remained, lodged deep inside him.
“Ngk… cough!”
A violent cough burst from him, and a thin stream of blood trickled from his lips.
Cha Eui-sung wiped it away with his wrist, his eyes slowly closing.
The blood… wasn’t gushing out.
That was the first thing that came to mind.
Next came the return of sensation in his body. His insides didn’t lurch too badly.
A foul, metallic tang of blood filled his mouth, but nothing else seemed to be rising from his gut, and his head wasn’t splitting in pain either.
Only his senses were slightly dulled, with the ringing still lingering in his ears.
But even that began to fade, until all his sensations snapped back—sharp and crystal clear.
The symptoms that always followed like a penalty, growing worse each time, were strangely mild this time.
“Agh…”
He felt hazy, like he hadn’t fully woken up yet. His mind just wouldn’t kick into gear.
It didn’t feel like a physical issue. More like emotional overload.
Every time he tried to think, heat surged up his throat in jagged, ragged gasps.
Goddamn it.
Cha Eui-sung sighed, pressing a hand to the corner of his eye.
The wetness clinging to his fingers told him everything.
His forehead was almost dry, but the area under his eyes was soaked—this couldn’t be cold sweat.
His fingertips were trembling. His whole being felt unstable.
This dream… he’d had it before.
Back when he’d just arrived in Cheongseri—on one of those sleepless nights.
SAVE THE WORLD
—Protect the Earth!
A memory he’d brushed past without thinking shimmered back to life.
At the time, he’d fallen asleep on that dust-covered wooden platform bed, no longer in use, just before a mission that had crashed into his life like a natural disaster.
He’d napped for maybe two hours, then couldn’t fall asleep again.
He’d just stared up at the night sky for a long, long time.
Wrapped in a strange, inexplicable feeling he couldn’t shake, replaying the memory of a past death over and over again, trying to calm down.
That’s why he still remembered the dream so clearly.
For a meaningless dream, it had left a lasting impression.
But now…
Cha Eui-sung’s half-lidded eyes snapped open, and he turned his head.
His gaze landed on the ugly wallpaper, but he didn’t care.
All he could feel was a growing sense of dread curling through his thoughts.
Now that I think about it, when did I get the skill “Faded Photograph Fragment”?
That question dropped into his head—and with it, his heart sank like a stone.
The first day.
The skill had arrived like a reward from the System, on the same day he’d deliberately bumped into Moon Tae-young to get acquainted.
That was the first time he’d raised his Savior Gauge.
He’d only signed the lease on this house after that.
Which meant he had to have fallen asleep on that rotting platform after receiving the skill.
Could it be… that wasn’t a dream?
But still.
That situation had felt nothing like his usual skill activations.
Back then, he hadn’t suddenly coughed up blood, and the viewpoint hadn’t been like peering into someone else’s memories.
It hadn’t been like watching CCTV footage from a third-person perspective like it often was afterward…
He had felt it.
As if recalling a blurry memory from the past. As if he’d actually been in that moment—eerily vivid and real.
Could it be that this—not the day he used the fake nephew excuse to speak with Moon Tae-young—was the true first memory triggered by the skill?
…Just thinking about it made his head spin.
Cha Eui-sung retraced his memories over and over through the fog of confusion, but the more he did, the deeper the sense of unease grew.
His eyes darted around, and then—suddenly—he looked up into the empty air above him.
He stared off at something unseen, lips stained with blood parting slightly.
“…Show yourself. What the hell is this?”
Of course, the System wasn’t something that would just appear when called. But still, he said it out loud—because with the room spinning and his thoughts unraveling, he needed something to confront.
The vision he’d just seen kept flickering before his eyes.
The cry that had echoed in his ears. The heat that had bloomed across his forehead and under his eyes. Even the scent lingering at the tip of his nose—someone’s familiar body scent—clung to his memory with disturbing clarity.
“What the hell does this mean?!”
He couldn’t hold it in any longer and shouted. But the empty house remained utterly silent.
Cha Eui-sung exhaled a long, heavy breath, his face blank with despair.
What is this…?
That strange sensation lingered.
He didn’t even have to ask why the System had shown him this—it felt like the answer was hovering just outside reach, wrapped in an ominous certainty.
At the same time, an inexplicable grief crept into his chest. He couldn’t make sense of the emotion, but it sank into him all the same.
Even sitting there doing nothing, he felt like he was being dragged under by a tide of relentless sorrow.
Barely holding himself together, he instinctively summoned his Savior Gauge, more out of habit than intention.
[SAVIOR GAUGE]
■■■■■■■■■■
■■■■■■□□□□
80%
“Fuck… what?”
At some point, it had climbed to 80%.
Without warning, without a sound—another 2% had been added.
Are you kidding me?
He hadn’t even seen Moon Tae-young.
Why the hell was the gauge rising on its own?
What the hell was that Demon King bastard thinking, off doing god knows what away from him?
Cha Eui-sung stared at the nearly full gauge in disbelief, biting hard into his lower lip.
It didn’t feel like he’d had a dream and then the gauge rose.
It was the opposite—his gut told him the gauge had hit 80%, and that had triggered the System to send him a memory from the past.
Which meant this wasn’t just a vivid dream—it was a memory retrieved through the skill Faded Photograph Fragment.
And since he’d already experienced it once, the usual physical toll barely registered this time…
Back then, it had been the first activation. No wonder there hadn’t been any extreme symptoms—just emotional disarray.
“Goddamn it.”
The more he thought about it, the more everything lined up.
As soon as that impossible hypothesis took form in his mind, it hit him like a slap to the back of the head.
He couldn’t even tell which part of him had been struck, only that his vision flashed like he’d been smacked clean across the face.
“…That was me?”
He muttered the words aloud, like he was daring the air to confirm it— but they dissolved into nothingness, echoing pointlessly into the room.
Thud.
A jolt rocked his crown. Cha Eui-sung stared blankly into the empty air above him.
“That’s strange. Not many people move here, you know?’”
“Really? It seemed like a good place to take care of things quietly.”
“I like dawn. It gives me a weird feeling.”
“A weird feeling?”
“Like this is the only place left in the world. Just me and you.”
“You really don’t plan to go back up?”
“I told you, I’m not going.”
“If you lived with me, we’d see each other more often.”
“Do you regret it?”
“I don’t know.”
“…”
“Why are you crying? I’m fine.”
Cha Eui-sung remained hunched over for a while.
Those fleeting, foggy conversations… the wet, trembling voice buried in that memory the skill had handed him… they buzzed and swirled around his head like a hornet’s nest.
His vision swam, bringing with it a wave of discomfort.
He kept pressing his palm to his forehead, eyes clenched shut.
…No.
That can’t be it. There had to be some mistake.
If he thought about it rationally, there were just two times the viewpoint had shifted while using someone else’s memory.
And even calling it “two times” was a stretch—technically, they were the same memory. So just once, really.
Think straight.
It’s absurd to be caught up in this logic-shattering theory.
It was just a dumb dream. He woke up flustered—that’s all it was.
But even as he mumbled that like a mantra, trying to convince himself…
His instincts kept tugging at the seams.
Some beastlike sixth sense whispered again and again, The first thought you had was right.
So insistent it made his head throb. So intense it left him nauseated.
No way. If that was really me… that would mean there are moments of my own life I’ve forgotten.
The moment he reached that thought, Cha Eui-sung felt like he’d just willingly stepped into a trap.
Hadn’t he just days ago been speculating that there might be parts of his past he couldn’t remember?
…This is madness.
He finally admitted the theory he’d resisted so fiercely.
“Haaah.”
If—if—this is true, then what the hell has the System done to him?
What did it want so badly that it would orchestrate this?
Was he chosen as the Hero from the very start because of this?
Was there some prior connection with Moon Tae-young he couldn’t even remember?
No, that’s insane. Why the hell would such a moment exist?
Who gave the System the right to erase his memories?
Was this really even his second life?
In this relentless loop of regression, when could a memory like that have slipped in?
“You bastard, get the hell out here.”
Cha Eui-sung hurled his pillow at nothing.
Still, the System stayed silent. But his rage didn’t come from seeing that man cry in the memory.
No—it was because the timeline, already a tangled mess, had now gotten twisted beyond repair in his mind.
All the careful hypotheses he’d built came crashing down in an instant.
And Moon Tae-young was the Demon King.
The same Demon King who’d lobbed a rock at his head like some cruel child playing gravestone tag.
The same monstrous villain who tried to bring about the world’s end, destroying everything Cha Eui-sung had fought to preserve.
So this supposed “relationship” between them—if it even existed—had to be because of the System’s mission.
Every choice he made to accept Moon Tae-young, without hesitation or forgiveness, had to be a forced response, nudged by the System.
Damn it.
And yet, every time he thought of Moon Tae-young, something soft and stupid kept squirming in his chest.
Still there. Still unchanged.
Cha Eui-sung lay sprawled across the bed, trying to untangle the chaos in his head.
Thoughts rose and fell with no coherence, swirling like a storm.
It felt like he’d been dropped into the heart of a vortex, spinning deeper into disarray.
