Delusive Fate

#112

A raid that Ki Baek-woo participated in while suppressing his anxiety, believing only in Lee Han-sol’s promise not to leave. When Ki Baek-woo returned from there, Han-sol was already gone.

After realizing that Han-sol had cut off everything as cleanly as cutting tape and disappeared, Ki Baek-woo stuck to the bed like gum, his tear-soaked flesh feeling sticky and melted. Hyung, hyung, he repeated the call even though there would be no answer, suffering from deranged dreams. Then suddenly, as if he had depleted all the moisture in his body through crying, with a face like a dried and cracked old tree, he thought. To hyung…

‘I’ll obey.’

The senseless dreams easily crushed Ki Baek-woo. The fact that Han-sol was gone demolished Ki Baek-woo’s world in an instant, like a building being demolished. His heart shattered sharply like fragments of a collapsing structure. Ki Baek-woo was completely broken. It was an irreversible problem that he could never recover from on his own. Without Han-sol, he would remain broken even if he died. To the extent that dying might be better.

But Ki Baek-woo had to survive somehow. As long as Han-sol was alive somewhere, Ki Baek-woo couldn’t die. The possibility that kind-hearted Han-sol might forgive him. The possibility that Han-sol might remember their ancient promise and finally come to get him.

These were Ki Baek-woo’s impoverished hopes that would always remain, however faintly, as long as Han-sol existed in this world. At the same time, it was also a tragedy that made him like a patient confined to a psychiatric ward. On the cold bed of a prison-like hospital room, limbs restrained and mouth gagged. An unfortunate patient deprived of all physical freedom, unable to harm himself or commit suicide…

Nevertheless, as long as there was even the slightest possibility that Han-sol might return, Ki Baek-woo could never kill himself. He seemed to hear a cold voice mixed with mockery from somewhere.

Your hope is nothing more than delusional optimism.

Love, hope. Pathological obsession that shouldn’t be wrapped in good words. Obsessive stubbornness. Your existence is Han-sol’s tragedy. A terrible darkness that won’t leave Han-sol alone even in dreams. If you’re a human who knows gratitude, dig a hole in the wall in front of you, crumple your insignificant body into it, and plaster it with cement. Disappear that way where no one will know. Make yourself vanish without a trace.

Ki Baek-woo silently answered the ghost-like auditory hallucination.

‘I know. I feel like I’m going crazy wanting to die.’

But hyung is alive. Hyung dying repeatedly only happened in dreams. So surely hyung must be somewhere right now…

Then hyung might someday look for me. With time, even burning anger might fade a little. Maybe. Then he might want to see me. Maybe. Since we spent our entire lives together, I must certainly be part of hyung’s habits. Maybe…

But what if I’m already dead and can’t go to hyung when he finally comes looking for me again? What if he misunderstands that the reason I don’t appear is because I’ve forgotten him? If because of that, hyung also decides to completely forget me. ‘I knew it, this trash,’ if he despises me with hatred, shakes off even the last bit of compassion left for me, and meets someone else. If he falls in love with that person and cleanly erases even my name from his memory… If that happens because I selfishly died, what should I do?

So Ki Baek-woo couldn’t die yet. Unless Han-sol ordered him to die, or twisted his neck with his own lovely hands, he didn’t have the courage to leave the world where Han-sol existed…

Ki Baek-woo knew. How unreasonable, persistent, and tiresome a man he was. If Han-sol knew these feelings, he might spit in his face, calling him an insufferably pathetic idiot. But since this was Ki Baek-woo’s nature regarding Han-sol, it couldn’t be helped.

So Ki Baek-woo decided to obey. Hyung now dislikes me. He hates me enough to want to pass me off to someone else, using my dirty deeds as an excuse. He cut me off from all information because even my tracking his whereabouts was horrible to him, leaving no room for me. Lee Han-sol was telling Ki Baek-woo through all his actions:

Don’t try to find me. Don’t even think about lurking around like a stalker. I’ll kill you if you come looking. This is the complete end of you and me.

However, no matter how much Han-sol wanted it, a “complete end” could not come between them. Ki Baek-woo was incapable of giving up on Han-sol. Desiring and waiting for Han-sol was his instinct. Ki Baek-woo thought that made him like a shameless maggot. Even in this state, he was still stubbornly and gloomily clinging to the desire to feed off Han-sol again.

He felt self-loathing and pity for Han-sol. That the beautiful and flawless Han-sol had to experience such pain after meeting a terrible germ like himself. Guilt and self-hatred covered Ki Baek-woo like barnacles. So Ki Baek-woo decided to follow Han-sol’s wishes in everything except for the “complete end.”

Don’t dare to look for hyung. Don’t lurk around. Let me stay here like a dead mouse until hyung someday comes looking for me.

Even if it drives me crazy, or actually I think I’m already crazy, I still have to endure it. Then hyung might… think I’m admirable and forgive me…

Ki Baek-woo quietly endured with such thoughts. He could have rushed to the Center and gone wild like a madman. He could have easily done the vile act of using his S-class rank as a hostage for blackmail. What the Center, and beyond that, the country and the public want is S-class Hunters, not the protection of a C-class Hunter’s personal information.

So if Ki Baek-woo had been determined, he could have obtained Han-sol’s information in some way. Although somewhat primitive, there was also the method of frantically rushing to B District and tearing through the entire neighborhood until he found Han-sol. But Ki Baek-woo didn’t do that. To avoid doing so, he strictly confined himself at home.

People looking for him knocked on his front door for days. Bang bang bang. ‘Hunter Ki Baek-woo, are you home Hunter Ki Baek-woo? We’re from the Central Center, please answer if you’re there!’ The intercom through the security office also rang endlessly. Ki Baek-woo didn’t respond to any of it. He felt like he would scream at anyone he met to find his hyung. Like he would threaten to kill himself immediately if they didn’t give hyung to him, making a scene.

Ki Baek-woo stayed holed up like a dead mouse, lifelessly blinking his open eyes. He thought of Han-sol. He thought only of Han-sol, and thought. His mind was completely filled with Han-sol.

Nine-year-old Han-sol, running around the apartment corridor in his taekwondo uniform,

Twelve-year-old Han-sol, brightly smiling with his cheeks reddened by the cold and rounded like plums.

Fifteen-year-old Han-sol, dyeing Ki Baek-woo’s fingernails with balsam flower dye, saying he got it from a noona he met at the gate. That soft voice speaking as he caressed Ki Baek-woo’s hand, where the vermilion color had dyed not just the nails but the surrounding skin:

‘That noona said if the flower dye remains on your nails until the first snow, your first love will come true.’

‘…Really? Is that true?’

‘I don’t know, but that noona also had this on her nails. So it might be true, right?’

‘I hope it’s true…’

‘You hope it’s true?’

‘Mm-hmm.’

‘Who’s your first love?’

Han-sol tilting his head askingly. ‘Did you have a girlfriend in kindergarten? A girlfriend even I haven’t met?’ Han-sol who smiled then with the innocent face unique to someone who knew nothing.

And that same winter night when the first snow fell heavily. The snowball that flew onto Ki Baek-woo’s back as he was blushing, holding up his fingertips with the thin remaining flower dye to the moonlight.

‘Ki Baek-woo, come on!’

Han-sol standing there when he turned around, excited like a puppy seeing snow for the first time. Han-sol’s sun-like brightness in that moment, turning night into day with just one smile…

All that remained in Ki Baek-woo’s brain was Han-sol. Everything else had lost its presence long ago. His parents who died with the destruction, and his missed family. Jung Yi-dam, who dominated and controlled his consciousness from the moment of his appearance as if casting some kind of hypnosis, making him unable to stop thinking about him as if cursed… that unpleasant, contemptible, and bizarre existence he never wanted to be involved with again. Everything had disappeared, and only Han-sol remained in Ki Baek-woo’s mind, endlessly multiplying until it felt like bursting. It was a perfect occupation without the slightest gap.

“I miss you, hyung…”

Time with nothing but Han-sol flowed just like any other time. So it came to now, and Ki Baek-woo was still as depressed as a shadow.

It was some day. Ki Baek-woo was lying in the kitchen. His muscles had wasted and his flesh had diminished, making his shoulders and sides hurt against the hard floor, but he was expressionless like someone without sensation. Curled up on his side, his lifeless gaze stared fixedly at one spot like a doll. The dried blood, now oxidized to a dark red, Han-sol’s footprint.

Ki Baek-woo had been staring at it for a very long time. Then he would doze off, wake up again with Han-sol’s death, bang his head against the floor until his vision blurred, and habitually scratch his arms. The wounds, never having a chance to scab over and constantly reopening, were already infected, swollen and red, and Ki Baek-woo was peaceful, not even aware that blood was congealing on his fingertips as they dug into the wounds. As if his senses and mind were separated, he was abnormal in a very peaceful way.

He missed Han-sol. He wanted to know why he couldn’t meet Han-sol in reality when his mind was so full of him, why he had committed sins and brought about these consequences himself.

But hyung, I’m in so much pain, I miss you so much but can’t see you, it feels like I’m being tortured all day. Each passing second, each minute becomes needles that stab me. I dream. In my dreams, hyung keeps dying. It’s not me, but hyung who’s dying like that. Why? Why is hyung dying? I’m the one who deserves to die, so why hyung… Hyung, do you perhaps know?

Ki Baek-woo asked, looking at the floor, feeling sad but unable to feel the sadness:

“In that dream, do you know why you die?”

His pathetically cracked voice addressed Han-sol’s darkened footprint. Ki Baek-woo whispered in a very small voice, mumbling as if the dried blood were Han-sol.

Tell me. Why the hyungs in my dreams die, what caused it, what happened. Please, I really don’t know… No matter how much I think about it, I can’t figure it out… So I can’t do anything when hyung dies… I have to just watch that crazy situation like an idiot. I, no, that’s not me. The Ki Baek-woo in the dream, that bastard, I have to just watch him treating hyung that way. Not knowing anything and stupidly continuing… Ah, hyung… I’m in so much pain…

“Please tell me everything…”

Ki Baek-woo desperately pleaded. But the footprint was just made with Han-sol’s blood, not Han-sol himself, and not something with a mouth that could answer. Ki Baek-woo blinked his blurry eyes quietly, then very carefully traced around the mark with his fingertips. Then he twisted his exhausted body to move a little closer.

Hyung, let me know too. Let me know everything…

Hiding the same plea under his tongue, Ki Baek-woo kissed Han-sol’s bloodstain.