79.
Ryu Ho-yeon walked without knowing where he was going. He followed Lexy’s footsteps ahead of him, endlessly, endlessly.
Lexy walked firmly through the gate of the nearest open dungeon, continuing to walk without paying attention to the monsters he encountered. As if under some spell, the dungeon monsters couldn’t even recognize the presence of Lexy and Ryu Ho-yeon. In this case, rather than magic, it should be seen as a result of brilliant scientific technology that the current era couldn’t even dream of catching up to.
Lexy seemed to wander aimlessly from this dungeon to that dungeon, and from that dungeon to this dungeon. If someone asked Ryu Ho-yeon to retrace the path he had come alone, he wouldn’t be confident in succeeding. In the dungeon, where there was neither day nor night, the flow of time wasn’t even felt.
Ryu Ho-yeon also learned for the first time that there were barrier stones that led to other dungeons, not just barrier stones that created escape gates in dungeons. Probably no one in this time period would have guessed it.
The two walked endlessly, occasionally stopping to rest their tired legs and substituting meals with a few nutritional supplements that Lexy said he had brought from the future.
After doing this for quite some time, at some point, the place where the two were no longer seemed to be a dungeon. Although they were still moving their legs and taking steps, the place where their feet touched was clearly not “ground.” But it wasn’t empty space either. Rather, the surroundings were a bit brighter.
From then on, they weren’t hungry even if they didn’t eat, and their legs weren’t tired no matter how much they walked. In a place where “time” didn’t flow, no change applied to any object. In this mysterious space, the only movement was the steadfast footsteps of the two people, Lexy and Ryu Ho-yeon.
By the time Ryu Ho-yeon realized the change in their surroundings, Lexy said that they would soon reach their destination. According to his explanation, the two had now passed through numerous mirror dimensions where only dark matter remained. Their destination was some kind of source where all parallel universes of this time period converged.
Ryu Ho-yeon, with his innate intellectual curiosity fully activated, tried to ask Lexy more questions, but unfortunately, Lexy could hardly answer anything. This was because the only criterion for selecting legacies to send to the past was the guiding matching rate for the unknown Messiah. Lexy was just a fairly ordinary person, except that he was born several centuries later than the present and was an S-class Guide with an absurdly high matching rate with Ryu Ho-yeon. He didn’t know much about the theoretical background or basis of the task he had to perform. What he knew was closer to an injected sense of “that’s how it should be done.”
Ryu Ho-yeon, getting closer to his death place, found his steps becoming lighter. When he left after putting Choi Jae-won to sleep with a few drops of guiding substitute, he only felt sad, guilty, and at the same time, determined, but during the endless walking, his complicated feelings seemed to have sorted themselves out quite well. It must have been at least a few weeks.
He felt light in body and mind, as if he had become like Dorothy from a novel, setting out on an adventure to find the end of a rainbow. Even the heavy responsibility of saving the world had melted away like snow. He was just going to do what needed to be done.
Something that only this universe’s Ryu Ho-yeon could do among tens of hundreds of millions of parallel universes that had already perished and disappeared. Therefore, something that had to be done.
His name and destiny, Ho-yeon (浩然), meant water that flows without stopping. This universe. He was the mighty stream of water that filled the space between heaven and earth and more.
Perhaps it was a future already predetermined from the moment he was named Ho-yeon, as Hee-yeon’s lifelong wish and once-in-a-lifetime love.
If he was born as water, he wasn’t a modest, trickling stream. He was born as the crashing waves of a vast ocean. Born as a wave, shouldn’t he crash against a steep, noble cliff? He wouldn’t complain even if he died doing so. Born as a wave, it was his destiny to break into beautiful foam. If he was going to crash into a cliff anyway, the higher and harder it was, the better.
“This is it. We’ve finally arrived.”
Having reached his destination, Ryu Ho-yeon felt neither happy nor sad. He was just a little surprised.
“This place…”
It was the strange space that appeared as the background in his recurring nightmares. This place, which seemed like an abyss or a hazy universe, was exactly the same as when he had seen it in his dreams. Because of this, Ryu Ho-yeon wondered if he was dreaming and pinched his cheek hard. It hurt, so it wasn’t a dream.
“What are you doing all of a sudden?”
“No, just… It doesn’t feel real.”
There was a hint of disdain in Lexy’s eyes and voice.
He hadn’t known why such a dream, where nothing particularly bad happened, felt so stifling and he wanted to escape from it, but was it because it was actually his death place? But this was an issue he had already calmly accepted. Ryu Ho-yeon took one deep breath. Even the slightest hesitation and any remaining fear disappeared with that breath.
They say everything depends on your mindset, don’t they? Even in this endless, dark void filled with despair, Ryu Ho-yeon recalled Choi Jae-won’s love. He had thought in a dream once. That this darkness resembled the bathwater with blueberry-scented bath essence that he often enjoyed. Therefore, this empty universe becomes love again.
Ryu Ho-yeon’s universe was now filled with love. He somehow detected a sparse cluster of stars, whether they twinkled or not, and well overlaid them with the dark blue color of the blueberry-scented bath essence that his devoted lover always bought for him so it wouldn’t run out, and the silver sparkles floating in it.
If not bathwater, how about the night sky? On a late-night flight to Berlin. The deep blue night sky and the softly scattered purple clouds. The sight of moonlight shining on the carpet-like clouds was simply beautiful.
Someone naturally gave up the window seat and happily watched Ryu Ho-yeon, who was busy gazing outside as if enchanted, and that gaze made his heart flutter even more.
It was then that he thought he was glad to be alive. On the sacred altar built by Choi Jae-won, all the previously numb sensations of life awakened and cheered in unison. And that realization was still true now.
He was glad to be alive. Glad to be loved. Glad to have loved.
He felt a bit sorry that what he had given back seemed so trivial and insignificant compared to what he had received… But he dared to hope that by guaranteeing the rest of Choi Jae-won’s life in his place, by saving the world for him, that gap would be somewhat reduced.
On Ryu Ho-yeon’s finger, there was still a ring with a sparkling particle embedded in it.
With the finger on which he had sworn eternity, he pulled Lexy’s arm. The eyes he met seemed somewhat sorrowful. Wasn’t he happy to return to his own era?
“…”
“…”
In that moment when their eyes met. Ryu Ho-yeon, with an inexplicable intuition, suddenly realized. That Lexy’s words about returning to his own time period were a lie. That he too, at this moment, would embark on the path of eternity with him.
But Ryu Ho-yeon dared not offer inadequate comfort. He didn’t ask premature questions either.
Because sometimes there were answers that didn’t need questions.
The two people, bound by fate if not by love, share a sacred kiss at the end of the world. Guiding rushed in explosively. Ryu Ho-yeon just wriggled his heavy fingers for no reason.
All the energy that had been trapped in his entire body throughout his life began to burst out beyond life and death.
Soon.
Ryu Ho-yeon, who was saved by Choi Jae-won, saves Choi Jae-won again. The ring-shaped barrier resembling the sparkling ring gifted by Choi Jae-won blocks the convergence of future and past.
Repeating the tactic.
Therefore, this empty universe becomes love again.
Ryu Ho-yeon’s universe was now filled with love.
* * *
About half a year after Ryu Ho-yeon’s complete disappearance.
On that day, a brilliant ring of light appeared above the heads of all people on Earth. It was permanent salvation from the extreme destruction invading from the future.
The light cast on the foam of broken waves became a rainbow of hope that saved all of humanity.
But beyond the rainbow where the bluebird began to chirp. Ryu Ho-yeon did not return.
Still, Choi Jae-won decided to just wait. Because he had promised that if he could come back, he would.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
