#110
“Ah. No, it’s not like that.”
“Then what?”
“I just, I’m not sure. It was like this when I woke up.”
“You woke up?”
“…It’s not an illness. I’m not sick. I must have eaten something bad.”
“Oh, you actually ate something?”
Lee Han-sol snorted with a hmph, turning his head away as if it wasn’t even funny. “I see now this guy’s full of lies as a daily habit. Does he think I’m not Lee Han-sol but some gullible fool? Are my eyes not eyes but buttonholes? Give me a break.” Self-muttering sarcasm meant to be heard. Han-sol’s neat eyebrows twitched in annoyance as he passed by Ki Baek-woo. Seeing this, Ki Baek-woo quickly lowered his head. His heart immediately started beating faster.
Ah, I annoyed him. I shouldn’t do that. Why do I only make hyung angry? But I can’t tell the truth. I already look terrible enough, and if I tell him I did this… he’ll think I’m abnormal. He’ll think I’m a creepy, unpleasant guy and won’t want anything to do with me. Get yourself together, Ki Baek-woo.
So after that, he hit places other than his cheeks. It felt completely normal to him. The long insomnia had dulled all his thoughts and sensations except for those about Han-sol. Even self-harming to the point of congestion didn’t hurt, and it felt like handling someone else’s body, giving him no satisfaction. Harder. To stay awake. I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want to sleep…
Ki Baek-woo didn’t mind his body being covered in bruises and aching if it meant keeping his grip on his consciousness that was fading as if he might pass out. As long as he didn’t bother Han-sol, whatever happened to his own body was fine. Nevertheless, there was a limit, and even as he barely held on, there were moments when his consciousness suddenly cut off. Such moments would ambush him before he could even recognize them. It was beyond his control. At those times, Ki Baek-woo would collapse and fall asleep like a narcoleptic patient. And invariably, he would dream.
‘Baek-woo, it’s all my fault…? Hyung is being punished for doing wrong. So… yes, I’m sorry for loving you… for wanting to be by your side, it’s all my fault. Since I was wrong, just once… won’t you tell me just one thing?’
Han-sol now clung to Ki Baek-woo, only to be pushed away onto the road by Ki Baek-woo’s arm, which twitched its eyebrows as if annoyed. A short, weak moan of “Ah” could be heard, and then one, two,
three,
four.
Before reaching five, a loud BANG! followed.
‘Just tell me why you stopped liking me… Just once…’
Baek…woo…ya… A blood-soaked Han-sol writhes and dies. Dies miserably. Ki Baek-woo doesn’t look back. How cruel he is, with an expression showing no interest. Only Jung Yi-dam, standing beside Ki Baek-woo, keeps glancing back.
Jung Yi-dam says with trembling breath, ‘Hunter, what about Han-sol? No, this Hunter…’ Flushed cheeks, damp eyes. With a strange and unpleasant face that couldn’t be distinguished between shock or excitement, only Jung Yi-dam turns to look at the ruined Han-sol. As if entranced by the intense shock, with an obvious gaze, more than just staring, on and on and on. Ki Baek-woo exhales a long breath as if feeling irritated by the troublesome situation.
‘Don’t look, Healer Jung. You’ll only ruin your eyes.’
Saying such things, fading to black. Ki Baek-woo wakes from his sleep. His eyes, soaked with tears, sting.
“…Hyung.”
Hyung. Hyung. Hyung, I love you. How could I stop liking you? You are my god. I am so devout that I want to pour oil on my body, set it on fire, and become an offering. Hyung, I love you. I love you…
It’s just a dream. Even while thinking that, hatred toward himself was already boiling in Ki Baek-woo’s heart. He finds it difficult to endure the strongly rising murderous intent. The intense desire to kill himself is felt eerily clearly. Ki Baek-woo looks around. He sees a fruit knife on the table. He grips it tightly and aims the knife tip at his thigh. He contemplates.
This won’t kill me even if I stab here.
The knife tip moves toward his wrist. No, somewhere more definite than this. This time the knife tip touches the carotid artery beneath Ki Baek-woo’s chin. The skin and the sharp blade are precariously close. He thought he should stab the knife in before he could count to five, like Han-sol, or rather, like Han-sol in his dream.
Let me atone with death.
Since hyung doesn’t like me anymore, he might see my death as a gift. If I can make hyung happy one last time, I’d be satisfied. Even though blood would gush through the opened artery if the knife just dug into the skin a little, Ki Baek-woo is simply expressionless.
He counts. “One.” Unwanted stray thoughts follow the numbers. But after I die… will hyung remember me? “Two.” Later, when hyung lives well and dies, will he come to where I am? But what if there’s no afterlife? “Three.” If there’s no hell or heaven, and we can never meet again. What if we reincarnate in different places? What if we don’t recognize each other? “Four.” But what if that dream repeats even after death, what will I do then?
“……”
Ki Baek-woo’s hand holding the knife falls limply. What should I really do? He mutters silently, as if brainwashing himself.
It’s all a dream. Just a dream. A dream. Not reality. Definitely not real…
…is it not?
Ki Baek-woo became increasingly haggard. He thought he had a mental illness. The more he dreamed, the more the boundary between reality and dreams seemed to blur. Even when his eyes were open, it felt like he was in a dream, and even while in a dream, it felt like reality. Either way, it was extremely painful.
Fear was a powerful emotion. Something that easily consumes a person, connected to survival. Ki Baek-woo tried to think rationally in his own way.
‘Dreams are like mirages created by an unstable mind buried in fear. They’re just visualized anxiety and obsession. Hyung’s miserable appearance that I’ve never seen or imagined. It’s the result of my brain searching through all memories and selecting and editing appropriate ones. There must have been someone dying after being hit by a car in a movie or drama I’ve seen before. Hunters who died during raids, some of them must have been eaten by monsters. My brain would have selected such scenes that my unconscious remembers and synthesized them with Han-sol hyung. The human brain is inaccurate and imperfect, creating nonexistent memories for convenience and distorting existing ones. So the image of hyung in my dream just represents my frightened state of not wanting to be abandoned. It expresses my psychological discomfort of having difficulty breathing in panic through such a death.
I don’t want to make hyung like that.
I don’t want to treat hyung like that.
I, did, not, do, that, to, hyung.’
Nevertheless, Ki Baek-woo couldn’t stop falling apart. The dreams were too real. They were as vivid as full-color reality. With such dreams and reality tangled in his mind, he gradually became unable to distinguish what was real and what was fake.
Get a grip, Ki Baek-woo. I wouldn’t do that to hyung. With such an arrogant expression, in such a damn tone, don’t be ridiculous. Someone like me couldn’t possibly do that to hyung. You didn’t do that. Because you couldn’t…!
But the unceasing dreams eventually dropped Ki Baek-woo into the boundary between real and fake. He couldn’t escape. So from some point, he began to feel as if he had actually committed such acts against Han-sol. Just like how if you hear hundreds of times that a gas lamp isn’t dimming when it actually is, you start to doubt yourself… It was helpless and painful. It became difficult to look at Han-sol directly.
Ki Baek-woo couldn’t eat anything either. His appetite hit rock bottom, and his chest always felt queasy, like he was constantly seasick. Nevertheless, the reason Ki Baek-woo forced himself to join Han-sol at mealtimes was simply because he wanted to sit across from Han-sol. Sitting across from each other at the table for meals. That moment alone resembled their old daily life. Ki Baek-woo was pathetic, and he couldn’t give up that time. So he forced himself to sit in front of the food. Fearing that Han-sol would be annoyed if he just sat there, Ki Baek-woo pretended to eat, holding a spoon he couldn’t even bring to his mouth. Even that was a difficult task for him with his worn-out nerves.
The moment he scooped rice with a spoon, the moment pasta wrapped around a fork, at all such moments, a certain scene would appear in Ki Baek-woo’s mind as if it had been waiting. It was Han-sol’s pitiful face soaked in blood. From within a pool of blood, struggling, the Han-sol in his mind seemed to say:
Baek-woo, save me… You said you loved me, so why do you keep killing me…? Save me, hyung is in so much pain, Baek-woo… Baek-woo, how can food go down your throat after making hyung suffer like this? Are you eating to live? You’re an evil apostate. I sentence you from my heart, from my life, from my world. Now you will fall into the endless hell where there is no Han-sol. You will never see Han-sol again for eternity.
He couldn’t chew and swallow anything. He felt nauseous even on an empty stomach.
While vomiting what wasn’t even in him in the bathroom, Ki Baek-woo sometimes strangled himself. Kkeuuuu, after suffering miserably, when his airway opened, he felt alive for a moment. But as if to say you don’t deserve even such relief, the world immediately showed him a crying Han-sol. Han-sol’s face, drenched in tears and looking utterly miserable, multiplied around Ki Baek-woo in all directions. Han-sols dying sorrowfully, all moaning pitifully in unison. Baek-woo-ya… Extending ivory-white hands, then dropping them when no one catches them.
“No, stop. Hyung, stop. It’s just a dream. I’m not like that, how could I do that to you, hyung please stop…!”
Please stop dying… I really, I really can’t live… My heart feels torn to pieces and turned to mud… Please don’t appear in my dreams, I’m begging you…
