#090
A child wearing clothes with sleeves too long, worn-out jeans with holes in the knees, and obviously fake sneakers. Five-year-old Jung Hwi-kyung stood under a large ginkgo tree, gazing up endlessly.
A cat was perched up in the tree. It was a black, fat cat with a fierce look. Though its black fur didn’t show dirt easily, it was a bit dirty, and its eyes were barely open, crusted with what looked like an eye infection.
It seemed the neighborhood kids had chased it, calling it an ugly cat, and it had climbed the tree to escape them. Young Hwi-kyung stood still in that spot, waiting for the cat to come down.
After a long wait, the cat finally leaped down from the tree. Despite the considerable height, it landed steadily. Hwi-kyung instinctively reached out his hand towards the cat.
That was their first encounter.
A starving stray cat made a wish. It wished to eat its fill, no matter what. So the system window granted the stray cat’s wish. It led the cat to a place where it could eat cat food.
However, the result of the wish was not good, as expected. The cat ate its fill but ended up being chased by people. Ignorant neighborhood kids, people who didn’t like others feeding stray cats… Eventually, it died on the street.
The system window took that dead body as payment. It intended to use it to wander around with a physical form for a while. The stray cat was the body the system window most frequently took. Cats’ wishes were simpler than humans’ and easier to grant.
The system window, having taken over the cat’s body, mercilessly scratched Hwi-kyung’s hand as he tried to pet it. Blood flowed from the wound made by the untrimmed claws. Droplets of blood stained the ground.
Hwi-kyung quietly watched it move away, clutching his injured hand.
From that brief encounter, the system window chose Hwi-kyung. It liked him. It liked how he didn’t run away even while bleeding, trying to look at it, and how he stood straight instead of crying or collapsing despite his shabby appearance.
For such trivial reasons, Hwi-kyung gained the favor of this strange entity. If he had burst into tears like other children, it wouldn’t have happened, but Hwi-kyung was too mature. He kept quiet about his injury until Ji-ae discovered it, and he came back to stand under the ginkgo tree. As if waiting for the cat to return.
So the system window came back to Hwi-kyung.
You were the one who waited for me first, weren’t you?
That strange thing abandoned the body it had just acquired and circled around Hwi-kyung. It planned to take over this child’s body if he made a wish.
But the system window’s plan completely fell apart. Hwi-kyung suddenly died. His already weak body, constantly surrounded by the system window, succumbed to a fever and collapsed.
This can’t be. The system window was truly troubled. This wasn’t part of the plan…
Then, at the right moment, Ji-ae made a wish. Compared to the stray cat’s wish to eat its fill, Ji-ae’s wish was much bigger and more difficult. But the system window gladly accepted that wish.
Because that was the only way to save Hwi-kyung. By bringing him back from death and turning back time, it could be with Hwi-kyung forever. Now the system window wasn’t interested in Hwi-kyung’s body. It wanted Jung Hwi-kyung himself. If possible, it wanted to preserve him wholly and be with him until he wore out completely.
The problem occurred after that. It was far from omnipotent and could only grant one wish at a time. To keep the wish “Don’t die” in an “achieved” state, Hwi-kyung had to keep dying. It was inconvenient for the wish to end in a single instance.
Continue to fulfill the ■■ you have achieved.
If one wished to get a good job, they would have to keep getting new jobs. That’s the only way for “wishing” to continue. The system window needed wishes that persisted tenaciously. Wishes that ended, like a dead body that eventually rots, weakened the system window.
You were the one who waited for me first, weren’t you?
The system window was also there when Hwi-kyung demanded a vow from Gyo-ha. More precisely, it watched the two make their vow while attached to Ji-ae.
Until then, the system window didn’t pay much attention to Gyo-ha. Though annoying, it couldn’t interfere with vows between people. Besides, it didn’t think Gyo-ha would keep the vow anyway.
Even after twelve regressions, Gyo-ha couldn’t do anything. Being on the opposite side of the earth, he wasn’t even a threat. At some point, the system window forgot about Gyo-ha, who was bound to Hwi-kyung by the vow.
“Now I remember.”
But in the thirteenth iteration, Lee Gyo-ha appeared before Jung Hwi-kyung like a bolt of lightning. The vow he couldn’t even remember had taken effect.
“So that child I met back then was Hwi-kyung…”
Gyo-ha confirmed the “first encounter” between the system window and Hwi-kyung. As soon as he closed his eyes, intending to get rid of the system window, countless “Insufficient Proper Conditions” windows popped up, and as if in protest, it showed the connection with Hwi-kyung.
From what Gyo-ha saw, the relationship between the system window and Hwi-kyung was nothing special. It was just the system window unilaterally taking a liking to Hwi-kyung.
Yet the system window flaunted its connection with Hwi-kyung to Gyo-ha as if it were something grand. Gyo-ha recalled how the system window would frantically pop up new windows whenever it detected office romance. It wasn’t about the black company, it was jealousy…
The face of seven-year-old Gyo-ha making a vow with Hwi-kyung was deliberately blurred, showing how strong the jealousy was. Gyo-ha focused on the system window floating alone in that scene.
Continue to fulfill the ■■ you have achieved.
Then he reached out and scattered the window.
Continue■■ ■■■ ■■■ ■■.
The letters broke apart where Gyo-ha’s hand passed. The phrase telling to continue fulfilling the achieved wish now changed to just saying continue. The vivid scene distorted, and as if in the unconscious, time and space twisted instantly.
When Gyo-ha came back to his senses, he was in a house smaller than the villa where Hwi-kyung lived. In the dark kitchen with the lights off, there was a French toast wrapped in plastic. Hwi-kyung, much taller but still young, was shoving the French toast into his mouth without even heating it.
Gyo-ha reflexively recalled a weekend morning. Jung Hwi-kyung had shed tears while eating the French toast he had made. This seemed to be some kind of trauma.
Continue■■ ■■■ ■■■ ■■.
As a new window popped up, the scene changed again. The shaman’s face asking to make a wish came into view. Her gold teeth, implying wealth, were particularly striking.
From then on, it was content Gyo-ha knew. Hwi-kyung made a wish. I want to get a job at a good place. The system window granted that wish. Hwi-kyung kept getting jobs. Continuously searching for a non-existent “good place”…
And in the sixth iteration, unable to bear it anymore, he hanged himself. Gyo-ha looked around the motel room with its gaudy floral wallpaper. If nothing else, the wallpaper pattern was vivid.
When Hwi-kyung said he couldn’t die, Gyo-ha had secretly expected this kind of situation. Knowing you can’t die means you’ve died many times. But even knowing this, it wasn’t easy to see him hanging from the lamp fixture with a wire around his neck. Hwi-kyung looked truly desperate. He seemed to desperately want to die.
However, his death was meaningless. It only vividly imprinted how painful it is to be strangled. As soon as he died, the system window turned back time as if it had been waiting for this. Gyo-ha finally couldn’t bear it and frowned at the scene.
A series of shocking events unfolded, too much for one person to endure sanely. Hwi-kyung’s grandmother, whom he depended on most, repeatedly died of cancer, and no matter where he went, there was no place for him to settle. Where on earth is a “good place”? No matter which company he started at again, Hwi-kyung shouldn’t be satisfied.
Because if Jung Hwi-kyung compromised and chose to stay, the wish fulfillment would end there.
Continue■■ ■■■ ■■■ ■■.
That can’t happen. You were the one who waited for me first!
The bus accident was spontaneous. The system window forcibly regressed Hwi-kyung, who was trying to remain in the fourteenth iteration. It ignored the shaman’s wish that moving to the fifteenth iteration should be Hwi-kyung’s choice.
In that process, Lee Gyo-ha acted as a variable. Since it ignored the shaman’s wish, the price wasn’t paid either. Gyo-ha was still bound to Hwi-kyung by their vow.
Continue■■ ■■■ ■■■ ■■■■■.
Will you continue to interfere ■■?
With that final window, the scene changed again. Now Gyo-ha was standing in his officetel bedroom. It gave up staying as the system window in Hwi-kyung’s unconscious and took on another form. It appeared in the form most familiar to Gyo-ha.
“Will you continue to interfere?”
In the form of Jung Hwi-kyung, whom Gyo-ha couldn’t treat carelessly and wanted to save.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
