#093
As if that desperation had reached Hwi-kyung across the water, a familiar voice flowed from the other end of the receiver.
– …I was about to call you first. Have we returned again?
It was Jung Hwi-kyung. As soon as Gyo-ha recognized this fact, he felt drained and collapsed onto the bed.
“Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere? How’s your body? Do people recognize you?”
– Ask one question at a time. I’m okay, probably…
“What do you mean, probably? Give me a definite answer, not an uncertain one.”
– I was on my way to the hospital for grandmother. Seeing that I can make calls and ride the bus, I seem to be fine.
“Really?”
– Really. I can’t see the system window either.
“That’s such a relief.”
Gyo-ha lay down on the bed, his back against it. It was closer to collapsing from exhaustion. Though he couldn’t be certain whether the system window had disappeared or not, Hwi-kyung’s voice over the phone sounded pretty good.
“I’ll come back to Korea soon.”
– You can’t just suddenly quit graduate school.
“I know. I’ll wrap everything up before coming. And buy new lottery tickets too.”
Hwi-kyung must have gotten off the bus, as small noises mixed into the call quality. Drops of blood fell onto Gyo-ha’s bedsheet. It was flowing from his right hand, which bore burn marks.
– But how… how did you get rid of it?
“The system window?”
– Yes.
“I didn’t do much, it just disappeared when I grabbed it.”
– …Really?
“Really.”
Of course, it was a lie.
Gyo-ha didn’t bother explaining to Hwi-kyung in detail how he had chased away the system window. No matter how many times he reconsidered, there was nothing good about telling him.
Under the pretext of eliminating the system window, Gyo-ha had peeked into Hwi-kyung’s past life. Though he had permission to look, experiencing someone else’s life virtually wasn’t particularly enjoyable. While Hwi-kyung was running towards a cliff, Gyo-ha had been living well without a care in the world.
Is he really someone capable of saving others? Gyo-ha was engulfed by such doubts for the first time. He couldn’t turn back time like the system window, nor could he bring dead people back to life.
He didn’t have many advantages other than being rich and thoughtless. Being thoughtless even acted as a disadvantage at times. Kindness offered with good intentions had made Hwi-kyung’s life difficult, and conclusions drawn with the distant future in mind sometimes resulted in negative consequences in the near future.
To begin with, in this harsh modern society, a good-natured and altruistic personality like Gyo-ha’s was perfect for being criticized as frustrating. Wasn’t that why Hwi-kyung initially treated Gyo-ha like an idiot?
It’s true that Lee Gyo-ha suffered just as much as Jung Hwi-kyung in graduate school during the regressions. But is that enough? Gyo-ha asked himself. Can I save someone with just this?
The system window brilliantly dug into Gyo-ha’s doubts until the very end. Taking Hwi-kyung’s form, it endlessly pushed Gyo-ha away. It shouted that he wasn’t needed and tried to persuade Gyo-ha by saying Hwi-kyung wouldn’t live long without it.
As a human, it was impossible not to be shaken by all of this. Lee Gyo-ha had witnessed dozens of deaths that even Jung Hwi-kyung himself didn’t know about. What if Jung Hwi-kyung really dies when the system window disappears? When he who always longed for death finally becomes able to die, could he leave me behind then?
It would be a lie to say he wasn’t afraid of that. How desperate did Jung Hwi-kyung look when he was hanging himself from a lamp fixture in the sixth iteration? He had told Gyo-ha he wanted to live, but Gyo-ha couldn’t be sure if his heart would remain the same once he had a body capable of dying.
Even after looking into all of this, Gyo-ha couldn’t completely understand Hwi-kyung. It would probably have been the same if Hwi-kyung had explored Gyo-ha in the same way.
People can never fully understand other people. Gyo-ha decided to accept this fact.
And he grabbed the system window by the throat, which had offered to let him remain in the fifteenth iteration if he gave up now.
“You’ll regret this.”
The system window in Hwi-kyung’s form painfully scratched Gyo-ha’s right hand. Even with its throat squeezed, a voice flowed from it. Blood dripped from Gyo-ha’s hand. But he didn’t give up and kept pressing, and its form scattered like when the arm disappeared.
It wasn’t the first time in human history that humans, beings who make wishes, killed beings that grant them. If it were truly impossible, scenes of killing gods wouldn’t appear so frequently in religions and history books.
Just as the system window’s text broke, the system window’s form itself distorted under Gyo-ha’s hand. Once broken, the spaces remained blank, unable to recover. The system window gradually became powerless under Gyo-ha’s hand.
As it became clear that something was going wrong, it desperately spat out words. It was a ridiculous persuasion.
“If you stop now, Jung Hwi-kyung will be eternal, and you can be with him forever.”
“…”
“Isn’t that better? You just have to go back and say you failed. No one can blame you.”
Didn’t you help enough? After all that effort to save him, Jung Hwi-kyung might suddenly die one day. How are you any different? You can’t even turn back time…
But Gyo-ha didn’t bother to answer the words the system window spat out. Honestly, the offer to let him remain in the fifteenth iteration was tempting. Jung Hwi-kyung would be eternal, and he could be with him forever.
At least then, Hwi-kyung wouldn’t die. As for taking care of Ok-ja, that could be managed somehow by pouring money into it.
However, that wasn’t what Hwi-kyung wanted. Gyo-ha had an obligation to grant Hwi-kyung’s wish. Even if he wasn’t aware of it, the wish had already been accepted, and Gyo-ha had a few more vows attached to him.
“You’ll regret it.”
A long scar remained on the hand that the system window had scratched. You’ll regret it like me. Jung Hwi-kyung will become more unhappy in the future, and he’ll end up working hard in a bad place. He’ll resent you someday, won’t he? He’ll definitely regret not being able to turn back time!
Gyo-ha’s right hand was instantly torn to shreds. His left hand wasn’t in great shape either, but it was still better off than his right hand that had been gripping the system window from the start. Even as his skin was raw and bleeding, Gyo-ha thought the system window was talking too much.
Even if he regretted it, it was his own doing, so why was this non-human thing interfering so much? Even if Hwi-kyung died after all this effort to save him, even if time passed and Hwi-kyung came to resent him, that was a matter between him and Hwi-kyung, not something for the system window to worry about.
In the end, Lee Gyo-ha completely pulled out and eliminated the system window. The system window in Hwi-kyung’s form eventually became an unrecognizable shape and scattered like ashes. Screams, resentment, and curses followed, but Gyo-ha didn’t respond to any of the system window’s words.
Since this happened within Hwi-kyung’s subconscious, there were no more beings to grant wishes in exchange for payment. No matter how godlike it was, it was impossible for it to shake off Gyo-ha without a way to regain its power. Hwi-kyung was already in a state where his wish had been fulfilled, and Gyo-ha had become a being that grants wishes rather than a human who makes them.
This was a predetermined defeat. Humans needed other humans before gods. It was always people who could save people.
After a long resistance, the system window completely disappeared. However, since it was merely detached from Hwi-kyung, Gyo-ha couldn’t know whether its existence itself had vanished or not.
So when he returned to the morning of the first semester of his master’s program, he thought, “We’re fucked.” He feared that the system window might still be intact and that Hwi-kyung might still not have regained his form. It was okay if he failed, but it would be a problem if Hwi-kyung suffered because of it.
Such fear was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for Lee Gyo-ha. He finally understood why people are so afraid of failure. It wasn’t the failure itself that was the problem, but the fact that there was something to lose because of it.
Blood was still flowing from Gyo-ha’s right hand. Even with emergency treatment, he wouldn’t be able to hide the marks left on his entire hand like burn scars.
“How am I going to explain this…”
He had already lied that he had gotten rid of it without any problems, but he had no idea how to handle the situation if his hand remained in this state. Still, isn’t losing one right hand a small price to pay for solving the problem? Gyo-ha thought so, but he didn’t think Hwi-kyung would accept it so easily.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
