#134
‘Does it hurt? Are you scared? Don’t be ridiculous. This level of pain is only natural. No, it’s not enough. There’s still a long way to go to match the despair hyung experienced. Only now barely able to imagine how difficult it was for hyung, how dare you think you want to be forgiven, want to stay by his side? You have no shame… disgusting bastard.’
That thought in Ki Baek-woo’s mind grew stronger with each repeated death, as his fear of death increased, as the pain and suffering intensified. As if finding his worth in the agony of his life being extinguished.
‘Hyung is too kind for his own good.’
Lee Han-sol endured twenty-five times. Ki Baek-woo, who was frightened after just three times, repeatedly did it twenty-five times, continuously reaching out toward him. During all that time bearing it alone, Lee Han-sol never did anything bad to Ki Baek-woo, never said anything bad. Even now, exhausted and fed up, Lee Han-sol had only turned his back and walked away. A few harsh words, a few spiteful actions were all. Having gone through this pain, he quietly left Ki Baek-woo alone as he clung to him as if he were the one suffering the most.
If you’ve sinned, you must be punished. Atonement precedes forgiveness. But since Lee Han-sol wouldn’t condemn him, Ki Baek-woo thought he must punish himself in Lee Han-sol’s place. It was a kind of ritual. Like a religious ceremony where one inflicts upon oneself the suffering experienced by others to repent to God, Ki Baek-woo also had to know the pain Lee Han-sol had gone through. Only then could he earn even the smallest qualification to beg for forgiveness, only then could he show his sincerity, however slightly. If you do nothing, you can say nothing. That’s why Ki Baek-woo had the obligation to repeat this pain twenty-two more times. He had to endure.
***
“Hunter Ki, why are you doing this? What are you so dissatisfied with, what’s so hard that you’re acting like this? Is coming back from death a joke?”
“……”
“Fine, come to think of it, Hunter Ki’s lifeline seems tougher than steel wire. Is that why you’re like this? Because you think you can survive anyway, because you think you won’t die no matter what you do, so you’re using your body recklessly like you’re enjoying an extreme sport?”
After Ki Baek-woo regained consciousness following his third death, Team Leader Hwang Ji-young came in and out frequently to scold him.
“But this time you’ve been staying put well for two days? Well, with all your limbs shattered, you couldn’t crawl out anywhere. Last time was okay because it was just a broken arm. Right?”
Team Leader Hwang Ji-young constantly made sarcastic remarks while mixing narcotic painkillers into Ki Baek-woo’s IV. Ki Baek-woo stared blankly at the white wall, then suddenly asked. His low voice cracked and echoed dryly.
“What’s… today’s date?”
“Ha, I can’t believe this. What does a dying patient need to know the date for? You’re desperate to die but curious about what month and day it is? Why, have you set a date to go to the afterlife?”
“……”
“I didn’t get my nursing license to take care of crazy people like this.”
Team Leader Hwang Ji-young told him the date in an irritated tone, then proceeded to loudly criticize him as if making sure Ki Baek-woo could hear. Ki Baek-woo, who was just silently pondering the date without paying attention, closed his eyes as if tired. He couldn’t understand what this world was, how it functioned.
Repeating the cycle of dying and living again, Ki Baek-woo began to gradually question this world. Until now, he’d been too preoccupied trying to hold onto Lee Han-sol, then Lee Han-sol left, then he was out of his mind chased by emerging dreams, and then he realized that everything wasn’t just a simple dream but events that had already happened. That the person in his dreams tormenting Lee Han-sol by cornering him was his past self.
Until now, Ki Baek-woo had been consumed only with thoughts of guilt and self-hatred and Lee Han-sol, Lee Han-sol, Lee Han-sol leehansolleehansol how to ask for forgiveness I’m sorry but I can’t live without you hyung it would be better to die where are you hyung but you haven’t really given your heart to someone else, have you?
Couldn’t you not wear that man’s clothes? Why do you throw mine on the floor when you kept the scarf that man wrapped around you? I’m not blaming you. I’m sorry. I was wrong, just let me stay by your side. It’s okay even if I’m nothing to you.
Please let me stay by your side.
He had been consumed solely by such thoughts.
He hadn’t been curious about how Lee Han-sol could have died twenty-five times, why the same time repeated each time, why Lee Han-sol remembered it all. What was it that controlled his mind and made him betray Lee Han-sol, making him do such suicidal things? Jung Yi-dam, whose very existence he hadn’t cared about. What was the identity of that person Jung Yi-dam, toward whom he had only felt antipathy despite Lee Han-sol constantly showing curiosity, calling him an S-rank healer? Who the hell was that bastard to act like he was some kind of god? There had been no time to think about it.
And when he finally realized that everything he had unconsciously witnessed was his own memory, what was that strange blue screen he saw before his eyes then? That bizarre thing that looked like a system notification window.
Ki Baek-woo began to question when he first died after deciding to atone to Lee Han-sol through death.
‘Why is Hunter Ki acting like that? He’s been going wild alone since the start of the raid.’
‘It’s convenient for us. It was supposed to be a week-long raid but it’s already ending. If an S-rank wants to carry us, let’s just be grateful and accept it.’
‘It’s convenient, but it feels a bit unsettling.’
‘There are many unsettling things. What, afraid he might die from overexertion? He must be controlling it all.’
‘The way he’s just pushing through now doesn’t seem normal, does it? … Oh, right. It’s like, exactly as he’s acting now, I feel like he’s definitely going to do that?’
‘What’s that?’
‘No, don’t you see? Suddenly stopping like that to try to die… Huh? Wait, but why is he really stopping?’
Complaints continued against Ki Baek-woo, who had been moving freely through the dungeon outside the formation since the start of the raid. Ki Baek-woo didn’t even care what they were babbling about. Unlike when he was torturing himself without purpose, Ki Baek-woo’s gaze then was clearer and his attacks more relentless. The fishy bloody scent that regurgitated because it couldn’t withstand the squeezed-out power was not something to worry about. That’s how he reached the gate core, cutting the predicted raid period of one week in half.
Ki Baek-woo stood frozen like a machine that had been turned off. Right in front of the massive Destruction guarding the gate core.
Destruction twisted its body grotesquely, rippling with dark energy. In front of Destruction, which seemed about to crush him at any moment, Ki Baek-woo thought:
If I die here, when I open my eyes, I’ll probably go back to the past too. Just like the dead… hyung came back to the same point over and over, leaned on me to hear my heartbeat, felt relieved, and pressed his body against me like a chick burrowing into its mother’s embrace, will I also return to that time and open my eyes?
Then hyung will immediately recognize that I died.
Unlike me, hyung already remembered everything… If time rewinds even though hyung hasn’t died, and if we both open our eyes on that bed, I should tell the confused hyung:
‘I died for you. You’re such a good person that you won’t do anything to me, so I’m taking revenge for you instead. Until now, you’ve always done everything for me. Now I’ll do it. This is the first time. So just watch with ease. I love you, I’ll definitely prove it.’
After reuniting like that twenty-four times, on the twenty-fifth time, he could finally beg for a chance to be forgiven. Praying for that time to come soon, Ki Baek-woo was hit by Destruction’s attack and flew into the wall.
‘Oh no, crazy! What are you doing, Hunter Ki Baek-woo!’
Why are you just standing there, snap out of it! Someone’s voice shouting like that faded beyond his consciousness. His body convulsed in tremendous pain. Destruction played with Ki Baek-woo, who offered no resistance, as if tearing paper. Bang, bang, bang. Ki Baek-woo felt his brain shake along with the pain of his body being crushed. Dizziness like chaos, his breathing blocked by blood regurgitating simultaneously from his nose and mouth. A terrible burning sensation that seemed to stir and burn his entire body. His consciousness was fading.
Ah, when I open my eyes after dying, hyung will be in front of me. Hyung will be with me in our home…
That was his last thought. Ki Baek-woo died without even knowing how wretched he had become. When his stopped consciousness returned, pain enough to shake his mind dominated his entire body. There was a cold smell that stung his nostrils. It wasn’t the warm scent of Lee Han-sol’s skin that he had been longing for. Ki Baek-woo hurriedly opened his eyes, disappointed by the different sensation.
It wasn’t the cozy home where the two of them had lived together. He hadn’t returned to the past either.
‘Why…’
To Ki Baek-woo’s voice, which was hoarse and cracked, closer to moaning than speaking, came a clearly reproachful response:
‘How can you ask why now? What, are you dissatisfied because the situation is exactly the same as when you slit your wrist? Unhappy that you woke up in a hospital room? Is that it, Hunter Ki?’
Recovery Team Leader Hwang Ji-young was glaring at him with angry eyes. It was a hospital room attached to the center, and just three days had passed since his death.
From that moment, Ki Baek-woo began to question. He wanted to know just how this world functioned.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
