Delusive Fate

#115

Note: This chapter contains detailed descriptions of suicide and trauma that may be triggering. Please proceed with caution.

The closet came to mind. The smell of Lee Han-sol everywhere, completely dark and cramped inside. Ki Baek-woo crawled into the closet and, covering his face with both hands, tried to think good thoughts. He searched through his consciousness, pulling out happy memories of Han-sol bit by bit. Han-sol smiling so brightly his eyes disappeared, his voice saying “I love you,” the gentle warmth wrapping around his waist. He tried to think only of such things. But…

‘It didn’t work well.’

How could someone like me succeed at anything? Inside Han-sol’s closet, clutching Han-sol’s clothes and burying his face in them, Baek-woo could no longer bear the persistent, terrible hallucinations that inevitably flickered before him. This time, he saw Han-sol looking completely exhausted and drained.

Han-sol walked wearily, his face as white and dry as beach sand. His bare white feet made soft, dry sounds as they stepped across the floor… heading toward the closet.

Baek-woo, did you really think this place would be okay? Wake up, you damn bastard.

As if mocking Baek-woo’s shameless expectation that this place would be fine, Han-sol opened the closet door. Inside, familiar clothes hung in their usual arrangement. Baek-woo recognized it as his own closet. A not-too-large two-section closet. Left side was Han-sol’s, right side was Baek-woo’s. Baek-woo watched as Han-sol, crumpled into the left section, staggered to hide himself in the right section. No, he imagined it. No, he remembered it…

Han-sol’s thin body swaying, the calf revealed below his shorts disappearing like a tail at the last moment. The closet door closed with a snap. Crying sounds could be heard.

Sob… hic…

The Han-sol that Baek-woo knew didn’t cry often. Unlike Baek-woo, who would hold back tears at the slightest provocation, Han-sol was strong and never cried over trivial matters. But when something truly worth crying over happened, he would always wail like a child, sobbing loudly. Baek-woo liked that Han-sol’s way of crying was different from his own constant sniffling. He admired everything about Han-sol’s natural self. But now, Han-sol was crying quietly, hidden in the closet.

Ah… sob… hnnng…

It was a frail sound, like a candle flame trembling in a breath. Baek-woo covered his ears in shock. But like a vision that appears even with closed eyes, the sobbing continued unabated. Han-sol’s thin sobbing flowed not from outside but from his brain to his eardrums. He had the terrifying thought that the sound would stick inside his ear forever, endlessly sniffling.

Baek-woo, don’t cowardly close your eyes. You need to look straight at how weak I’ve become. You know now, don’t you? Because of you, I died again and again, died until my life was worn out, and finally ended up like this. It’s too late, but you finally know what you’ve done. So look carefully. This is your creation. Well, are you satisfied?

Han-sol’s sobbing voice seemed to whisper like that.

Ugh… yes, sob.

Han-sol was curled up in the closet just like Baek-woo had been. In the darkness, he reached out and grabbed Baek-woo’s sweater hanging on the rack. While clutching the soft sweater as if crushing it, he buried his face in it. The sobbing sound became smaller, muffled by the clothes. Han-sol in the closet stayed like that for a very long time.

A very long time.

After time passed, Han-sol rummaged through his pants pocket. He pulled something out. When he moved his thumb, there was a click sound. An extremely sharp metal edge gleamed coldly even in the darkness. It was a knife. A cutter knife with a yellow plastic handle. Han-sol’s exhausted eyes gazed at it quietly. He soon rubbed his cheek against Baek-woo’s sweater. It looked just like a cat saying a final goodbye.

Before Baek-woo could think, No, the blade dug very deeply and unhesitatingly into Han-sol’s bony wrist. Blood spurted out.

Ah.

Baek-woo moaned and shook his head convulsively.

Ah, aah.

The scene before his eyes refused to disappear, as if it were only natural. It continued to show Han-sol closing his eyes in exhaustion with a pale face speckled with blood, and the red liquid flowing in surges.

No, stop, ah, aack, ughh, ngghhh, Baek-woo struggled violently in the cramped closet. Han-sol leaned against Baek-woo’s clothes, breathing increasingly faintly, and blood slowly flowed through the quietly closed closet door as if nothing had happened.

Aaaack, please, stop, sob, ugh, Baek-woo was in pain. Terribly distressed. The closet that had felt so comfortable just moments ago now felt like the mouth of a monster.

Here, here hyung, hyung also like me, no, I like hyung… feeling like hyung would die like this, so hyung… urrgghh…!

Baek-woo rushed out like a beast, screaming. His panic-stricken face was blue. He quickly crawled to the side and opened the right closet door. He saw the hanging clothes. The sweater that Han-sol had buried his face in during the vision was hanging in the exact same place. Baek-woo looked at it, then turned to the left closet where he had been hiding.

It feels like torture, he thought.

No matter how hard it is for you, Han-sol already went through all of it, you idiot, it was as if someone was mocking his sorrow.

Are you so miserable you want to die? Can’t bear it? Yes… that’s why Han-sol died too, it was like someone whispering directly into his ear.

He couldn’t breathe properly. A heaviness as if oxygen wasn’t reaching his lungs. His mind was hazy and his vision yellow. Baek-woo felt shame. It was terrible that while he was merely short of breath from this, Han-sol had gone through this repeatedly. The fact that Baek-woo himself had made him that way was a terror like standing naked before the apocalypse.

So… this… though it can’t really be my memory… if this is my memory… and it feels so familiar as if I experienced it sometime before… if hyung and I… repeated the same time countless times…

No. Stop these crazy thoughts. Is this a game? How could a person repeat the same time over and over? Please think of something that makes sense.

Nevertheless, Baek-woo kept feeling it. This strange feeling. A despair like his knee joints had completely melted, making it impossible to stand properly. A destitute and shabby sense of loss, as if every last speck of dust had been taken from him. A distant resignation as if the Earth’s inner core was rapidly collapsing. Baek-woo was confused why the sinking feeling before Han-sol’s death was not unfamiliar. He thought:

For some reason, I seem to know what I should do next. It comes to mind as naturally as a long-practiced habit.

Baek-woo couldn’t take his eyes off the closet where Han-sol’s bright red blood had been dripping through the crack, and slowly felt along the floor. Thud. Something touched his hand. It was a sharply broken glass shard. Baek-woo picked it up. His body remembered. His arm moved on its own.

Hyung died. So this is what I must do.

That’s how it’s always been.

Therefore, when the sharp glass shard deeply cut into Baek-woo’s right wrist, it wasn’t his will. His arm simply moved like a programmed machine. As if Baek-woo had always, without fail, committed suicide upon realizing Han-sol’s death.

Blood spurted out just as it had for Han-sol moments before. Baek-woo stared blankly at the spreading red liquid. He had thought he couldn’t die because hyung might come for him…

But Baek-woo had long since become dazed amid reality and dreams, between the sudden visions of Han-sol’s death. The boundaries between them had completely blurred, making it impossible to tell what was real and what was fake, what was present and what was past.

So Baek-woo thought, ‘But is hyung alive? Didn’t he just die in the closet? Or no, did he poison himself? Or no… was he mauled by a monster…?’ While thinking this, he lay down, feeling dizzy. He thought he heard the doorbell ringing faintly. If it had been Han-sol, he would have entered the password and come in, so this must be a visit not worth paying attention to, Baek-woo thought as he simply closed his eyes.

“Fortunately, the Hunter Management Team was determined to break down the door just in time, otherwise Hunter Ki would have died long ago. Do you remember?”

The single-patient ward with its hospital bed, oxygen respirator, and vital signs monitor was silent. Hwang Ji-young, the Recovery Team 1 Nursing Department head, shone a penlight into Baek-woo’s blank, unresponsive eyes. After confirming his pupils contracting, Ji-young sighed with relief and continued talking to herself. She had much to say. The pale faces of the Hunter Management Team staff who had rushed in with a stretcher a few days ago.

‘T-T-T-Team Leader, something terrible happened. Help us. Please help…’

‘My, why all the fuss? What is it?’

‘The patient, the patient, the patient, the VIP patient, the patient…!’

The S-class patient lying on the stretcher as if already dead, covered in blood, whom she had seen with furrowed brows. Ki Baek-woo, who was pale like a wax figure, almost unrecognizable if not for his thick eyebrows and straight nose, in a complete mess.

‘Wait, isn’t this Hunter Ki? I heard he went off the grid, did he go on a raid already? Why is he in this state?’

‘The house door, house door, we broke down the house door, and Ki, Ki Ki, Hunter Ki Baek-woo, his wrist, he himself, his wrist, his wrist, the house was a sea of blood…!’

‘What? For such an emergency you should have said so earlier…! Quickly move him to the treatment room bed! Lee, call all the healers and doctors available now, tell them it’s an S-class emergency so hurry!’