He leaned in, pressing his ear close to catch the unfamiliar noise. A sharp, irregular screech—screek, screek—echoed through the silence, like metal scraping metal. Tae Woon closed his eyes, focusing intently. Beneath that high-pitched sound, he could also hear something heavy dragging across the floor, mixed with faint tap tap noises like something being lightly kicked.
A thief…!
To a child’s mind, any sound in an empty house could only mean one thing: a break-in. Kim Sibaek used to joke there was nothing worth stealing in their home, but that wasn’t true.
In the back of a desk drawer, hidden away, was a bronze medal from the Asian Games. It was the only relic Kim Sibaek hadn’t discarded from his fencing days—a memento he’d left behind at the orphanage, asking them to throw it away. The one thing he couldn’t let go. He should’ve soared higher, reached greater heights, but because of Tae Woon, he’d fallen. That medal was all that remained of his final moment of glory.
It was something that could never be lost. He couldn’t let a thief take it. Tae Woon’s heart pounded, blood surging through his small body.
Calling the adults or dialing 112 would take too long. The thief could grab the medal and be gone before help arrived. He had to protect it himself. Kim Sibaek’s last piece of pride.
He opened his pencil case and pulled out a compass. Even an adult would feel pain from its sharp metal point—it might buy him a few seconds. He didn’t care if the thief hit him. If he screamed, someone would come. That was enough.
He crept toward the kitchen window, planning to climb in, but paused and tested the door handle. It creaked open with a rusty groan. The thief must’ve broken in this way. Clutching the compass tight in one hand, Tae Woon charged toward the source of the sound.
And then—he saw.
A necktie. Tied to the bars of the window.
Hanging from it.
Hanging.
Screeeeech. The bars twisted, groaning with a sinister sound.
An ordinary child wouldn’t think to cut down someone who’d hanged themselves. Even a child who’d watched their parents murdered and had been kidnapped, imprisoned, and abused might not know what to do in that moment.
But Tae Woon did.
His memories before meeting Kim Sibaek in that basement room were a blur. Tangled, chaotic, endlessly repeating. They crushed his small brain like pulp.
In those memories, Tae Woon died—stabbed beside his parents’ corpses, beaten to death by Tae Chul-hoon, starved, burned, crushed in an earthquake, frozen in winter. He died in a train derailment while being dragged from Gyeongsan to Seoul, hit by a car while escaping, suffocated in a bag filled with vomit.
Five years old. Tae Woon never lived past five.
[Child, what is your truest yearning?]
[No matter how many times your fate ends in death, it does not change. Let us try once more.]
Each time he opened his eyes in that moment of death, layered voices echoing in his mind, he would see his parents being murdered by Tae Chul-hoon all over again. Tae Woon couldn’t tell if it was a dream or reality. All he knew for sure was this—no matter what he did, he always died.
He bit Tae Chul-hoon’s leg. Stabbed him with scissors. Took the knife. The child learned violence. He understood it. He knew what a blade could do.
He remembered.
Meeting Kim Sibaek had finally allowed him to live through his sixth year. So he buried all those deaths, all those nightmares. Locked them away. But now, he reached back into that darkness—and there it was. The knowledge of how to cut a necktie.
He didn’t even notice when the dull kitchen knife sliced into his hand. Blood dripped down with a soft patter. Still, he cut—desperately, sobbing so hard his body shook.
“Hyung… please don’t be hurt… I don’t want you to be in pain… If you leave me like Mom and Dad did, I’ll die too…”
He just wanted to die with him. Not again and again—just once. One final death. Together.
But the cycle of death returned when Tae Woon turned fourteen. Until he reunited with Kim Sibaek, it kept happening. Again. And again. Without end.
Now, thirty-six years old, Tae Woon stared down at his bare hands. His left, blackened by Magi. His right, still human. Both scarred, marred with wounds of all shapes and sizes.
The scars were all different—but the very first one had never changed. The one he got while cutting the necktie that held Kim Sibaek. Even after all these years, after time had dulled it and new wounds had formed, Tae Woon could still see that first scar.
He remembered everything about that day. The temperature, the humidity, the way sunlight filtered through the window. The groaning twist of the bars. Kim Sibaek’s gasping, vomit-choked breaths. The heat of the tears that fell on him. That desperate, burning longing deep in his chest.
He knew now—he couldn’t die with Kim Sibaek. He never would.
[To be faced with a new choice by something that was never recognized—such is the thrill of an unobservable future.]
Tae Woon ignored the voice of Chaos ringing in his mind and remembered something Kim Sibaek had said.
“If Siwoon hyung had lived… someone like me, who ruined your future… he would’ve meant so much more to you, right?”
Kim Sibaek had looked dazed at first, but then gave a soft, almost silly smile.
“Why do I have to choose? You’re both my little brothers. I want to keep you both.”
It was exactly the kind of answer he would give. Honest. Unwavering.
He had said something else, too.
“What if I didn’t go back? What if I stayed here with you?”
Tae Woon could feel it—he was being etched deeper into Kim Sibaek’s heart. But that wasn’t enough. He would carve himself in even deeper—so deeply, Kim Sibaek could never forget him.
And the more precious he became to him, the heavier the chain would need to be.
[What will you do, our child? Make your choice. Will you tell the Apostle of the fledgling god—or deceive them? We affirm you, no matter what. Any choice you make is acceptable.]
“Shut the hell up, you voyeuristic freak.”
Tae Woon spat the curse under his breath as he slammed the enter key. The email sent immediately. A chorus of laughter exploded in his head—snickers, cackles, giggles, peals of mirth layered atop one another in an unsettling cacophony.
By the time Cloud returned to the lab after finishing the dissection of a new type of monster, the email had already arrived. He didn’t even get a chance to compile the data. He just stood there, staring at the monitor.
The message was short. His biological mother had passed away—but his half-siblings were still alive in Korea. Attached was a file containing brief profiles of those siblings.
It wasn’t spam. It wasn’t a virus. He wanted to reply—Who are you? What do you want?—but the sender’s account had already been deleted.
…Are they trying to blackmail me?
Maybe someone made up fake siblings to try some kind of con. It crossed his mind, but it didn’t quite make sense. He wasn’t worth the effort. Neither were his family. Sure, his older sister was a well-known Hunter, but it’s not like she was in the government or working on top-secret projects.
The only thing someone might want from him was the confidential research from his lab. Cloud thought carefully, going over everything he had access to—was any of it valuable enough to warrant this?
Eventually, he picked up the phone.
He contacted someone in his network to trace the sender. That night, Cloud didn’t sleep. The results came in the next evening. The IP had bounced through several countries. The fifth stop was Albania. The trail went cold there—no way to trace it further.
Cloud opened the email again, along with the attached sibling profiles. He sat there, staring in silence.
Should I trust this? Go meet them?
If they really were his siblings, it could be confirmed with a DNA test. All he had to do was collect the samples himself and send them to a reliable lab. Simple.
If it were just about the siblings, this wouldn’t be such a big deal.
He had no memories of his biological mother. They’d been separated when he was too young. With no memories came no emotions. He didn’t resent the mother who’d abandoned him and his brother. He didn’t miss her. Even if a woman showed up tomorrow sobbing and claiming to be his mother, he’d walk right past her without a second thought.
The only reason he even acknowledged that she once existed in his life was because of his brother.
“Mom used to make the best pork cutlets. Way better than this.”
His brother, face blurred in memory, had said that with a smile as he cut up the food and fed it to him. Maybe that was why. Cloud couldn’t remember what those cutlets had tasted like anymore, but even now, he didn’t buy fancy schnitzel or gourmet katsu. He went to the Korean market and got cheap frozen pork cutlets. They didn’t taste particularly good, but they helped him remember.
He didn’t care about his mother. Which meant he didn’t care about her other children either. Whether they were alive, dead, thriving, or suffering—it had nothing to do with him.
Rationally, the conclusion was clear.
And yet, Cloud couldn’t look away from the screen.
There was only one reason why.
