It was a moment of near panic. Once again, it felt like the ground beneath my feet had given way, dropping me into an endless void.
“……”
Whoooosh. A cold wind sliced across my skin.
My eyes, which had been tightly shut, fluttered open on their own.
My vision was filled with the cityscape—countless lights twinkling in the darkness of night. I was standing on the rooftop of the company I used to work at, staring down at the night view.
…Another memory, then.
I instinctively took a deep breath in and slowly exhaled. A white puff of breath escaped from between my lips and scattered in the air. Whenever I felt stifled during work or things weren’t going well, I often came up here to get some fresh air.
I turned slightly, as if about to leave.
And then—I came face to face with someone watching me from a distance.
“Shi—ah, you scared me.”
Startled out of my wits, I barely managed to swallow the curse that had risen to my tongue.
He was a large adult man. The pants were one thing, but he was wearing nothing but a clinging shirt on top… It looked completely out of place in this weather. The kind of cold that called for two coats, at the very least.
Maybe that’s why he seemed to be shivering. I squinted toward his face, which I couldn’t quite make out from this distance, and asked,
“Are you okay?”
“……”
“You seem really underdressed for the weather.”
In this winter?
I muttered with a puzzled tone—
And that was when the man began to approach me slowly. At first, I just stood there watching, unsure what to make of it…
But he was coming straight at me. Not just in my direction—directly toward me. It was the kind of behavior that anyone would find strange or unnerving.
I instinctively started backing away.
My back hit the railing. I flinched and hastily glanced back and forth between the drop behind me and the man ahead.
And then— And then, fuck.
His features finally came into focus as he drew closer, and the part of me that had just been silently watching from inside… completely shut down.
No way.
Jang Hee-gang.
It was Jang Hee-gang.
My brain, already locked in a fog of confusion as if frozen by a glitch, just… stopped working altogether.
How is Jang Hee-gang in my past life…?
“……”
Jang Hee-gang closed the distance in just a few strides, his long legs carrying him right up to me. His face—now inches from mine—Was smiling while crying.
Tears streamed down his cheeks even as the corners of his lips curved upward, like he was overwhelmed by emotions he couldn’t contain. Excitement and euphoria were written all over his expression. There was a kind of mad intensity to him that made it impossible to look away.
He suddenly yanked my bewildered body into a fierce embrace. He held me like he’d never let go again, squeezing tight enough to crush the air out of my lungs.
“……!”
Frozen by the sheer force of his presence, I finally started to thrash in his grasp.
“What the hell are you—!”
The difference in strength was overwhelming. Jang Hee-gang didn’t budge an inch. Instead, he casually buried his face in the crook of my neck and inhaled deeply.
As I felt the sharp ridge of his nose and the chill of his lips brush against my bare skin, I sucked in a sharp breath—And then, something sharp stabbed into my chest.
“Ah—urk!”
The searing pain tore through my body, sending an electric shock of agony straight to my brain. Everything went white for a split second.
My head snapped downward, eyes bulging in disbelief.
From the dagger buried in my chest—plunged in by Jang Hee-gang—an eerie light began to glow.
“Ugh… ah…”
Real or not, supernatural or otherwise, none of that mattered in the moment. What mattered was that I’d just been stabbed—out of nowhere. I writhed in pain, desperately trying to escape his grip.
But it was futile.
He held my waist firmly with one hand, the other gripping the hilt of the dagger with terrifying strength. There was no way to overpower him, no angle to break free.
“S… save—”
The words I tried to say came out broken, choked. My teeth clattered violently against each other, making coherent speech impossible.
…Right.
This was how I died in my past life—stabbed to death by a stranger.
But that stranger… was Jang Hee-gang?
Fuck. What the hell is going on?
“If we get to start over,”
For the first time, Jang Hee-gang spoke. His voice was low, trembling with joy. His face, looking down at me, was filled with pure, unfiltered happiness.
“Then this time… we’ll really be together.”
“……”
I wanted to ask what the hell he was talking about.
My mouth opened, but my tongue was already growing numb.
My limbs were turning cold, while the place where the blade had pierced—my chest—was burning. Each heartbeat made it blaze hotter, like something inside me was about to ignite.
Eventually, my stiffening body collapsed backward.
A dizzying sensation swept over me—as if I were falling, plummeting past the railing.
Even in that brief, plunging moment, I could feel Jang Hee-gang’s obsessive embrace clinging to me. The distant rush of noise. The pitch-black night sky.
Every detail of death felt like something out of a dream.
Fsshhhhhh. Suddenly, the weapon in Jang Hee-gang’s hand began to glow brilliantly. Then, in an instant, it crumbled into glowing white dust and vanished.
The last thing I saw was the madness still gleaming in his eyes.
And then, before my body hit the ground—I shut my eyes.
……At some point after that,
I realized everything around me had gone utterly silent.
I opened my eyes of my own will.
As though time had frozen, my body hung suspended in midair, still in the same falling posture. The cars speeding below me, everything except myself—none of it moved.
Ding!
[We understand this is confusing for you.]
[Don’t overthink it. You were nothing more than a pawn—deceived and sacrificed by that world’s system.]
Floating text boxes popped up one after another in the air before me.
Judging by the tone, it seemed to be the system from my past life.
I found it odd that, unlike before, the text now displayed without any typographical errors. And almost as if reading my mind, the system responded at once:
[Because this is within your memory, there’s no issue with me exercising my authority here.]
[The shock must be immense. I’m sorry for forcing you to remember everything. But you had to know the truth. There was no other way.]
…The truth.
[Yes. I heard everything that con-artist system told you. Not everything it said was false—but it was riddled with cleverly mixed lies.]
[It’s true that the concept of “cores” exists in that world, and that the S-Class Espers you were assigned to guide were, in fact, cores. It’s also true that if the cores disappear, that world will collapse.]
[However—]
[The reason the world collapses when the cores die from a lack of guiding… is because that is the predetermined fate of that world.]
[A destiny already written.]
[Every system is meant to humbly accept the fate of the world it oversees. But that fraudulent system—refused to accept its destined end.]
[According to fate, no guide for the cores would ever appear in its world. So, what did it do? It infiltrated other worlds, searching for beings who could potentially act as guides for its cores.]
[That’s when it found you—a soul with a high probability of compatibility. But it couldn’t simply bring you into its world outright, because doing so would risk exposing itself to me. So instead, it implanted a game linked to its world into my world, and made you play it.]
What?
My dazed mind snapped back to clarity.
[Without even knowing it, you were actually guiding them through the game.]
“So then… what you’re saying is… those people were experiencing everything as reality, while I was just seeing it in the form of a game? Is that it…?”
My voice came out halting, dumbfounded.
‘Reading web novels is kind of a hobby of mine. A lot of them use games as their premise.’
‘Aha.’
‘You know, that kind of setup—where someone’s been enjoying a game, only to find out it’s actually another world… That sort of story. It’s interesting.’
My coworker’s words—ones I’d barely listened to at the time—flashed through my mind like lightning.
[That’s correct.]
The system’s affirmation sent a shiver down my spine.
No wonder, fuck. I was exhausted beyond reason the entire time I was playing. Both physically and mentally. It got so bad I ended up quitting altogether.
[But interacting with the world in the form of a game naturally came with limitations. You never logged in again after completing the routes, after all.]
[They must have waited endlessly for your return in that world.]
[Eventually, the con-artist system resorted to kidnapping you into its world. And the way it did that—was exactly what you just remembered. It sent one of the cores into this world to kill you. By stabbing your heart, it bound your soul to that dagger, then took it back with them.]
I looked down at my chest—where the dagger had definitely pierced me—but now, there wasn’t a single trace of the wound.
“Why… why send Jang Hee-gang of all people?”
[The con-artist system likely didn’t want to risk sending one of its precious cores into another world either. But the only ones capable of retrieving your soul and returning with it… were the cores. Their minds and bodies are strong enough to cross worlds.]
“……”
And maybe—of all four of them—only Jang Hee-gang could bring himself to use violence against me without hesitation. Maybe that’s why the system chose him to kill me.
[I became aware of the foreign world’s intrusion at the very moment it happened, and I moved quickly to prevent your physical death. Though your soul—and the core—were already gone by then.]
[It was only afterward, during my investigation into the con-artist system’s actions, that I uncovered the full truth.]
[The fault is mine, too. I realized it far too late.]
“Wait—wait a second.” I fell from that height, and still didn’t die…?
[I’ll show you.]
In an instant, my vision flipped upside down.
