Episode 29
After returning to the past, Jeong In-ho had nightmares even though he couldn’t sleep.
It was a nightmare where the vines wrapped around my ankles and calves and dragged me down, just like the situation where Chief Lee Jae-heon was dragged away.
At first, I couldn’t believe it when I returned to the past. Then, I briefly denied reality, and then I looked for something to do.
Whether the current situation was real or an illusion, Jeong In-ho did not have the courage to see that horrible sight again, and he was even less foolish to face death. He instinctively realized that he had to change somehow from the past.
However, when I saw Chief Lee Jae-heon, who was still alive, and when I saw him not encountering the green algae monster as he had led the change.
Jeong In-ho felt an unknown hope, disgust, and also anxiety.
‘Sir, are you feeling okay?’
‘…are you okay.’
Chief Lee Jae-heon, who survived that terrible incident, really felt like he could die at any moment.
He resembles a statue made of a complex mass of tangled threads or wires, neatly solidified. From a distance, it looks systematic and plausible, but when you get closer, you can see that it is so tangled that you can’t even tell what’s inside.
These are tattered strings that could break at any moment.
So this wasn’t a story about human relationships. Anyone would be upset if a machine they worked so hard to fix suddenly broke down.
Especially if the other person is a person, a boss you’ve worked with for quite some time. And even more so if that person is a damned selfless person who saved me and my friends.
Of course, relationships between people cannot be expressed in a few words, so there must be a higher-level cause, but that was what Jeong In-ho thought.
To him, Chief Lee Jae-heon was still a son of a bitch.
But still, Jeong In-ho admitted that this was his unreasonable resentment.
‘Are you okay?’
‘…yes?’
‘No, no. Forget it.’
Director Lee Jae-heon was the first person to read my anxiety.
‘…What’s going on?’
‘No… If you’re tired, just tell me.’
He was also the only one who took this into consideration.
It made Jeong In-ho quite emotional. He still hated and detested Chief Lee Jae-heon, but now he realized, even if only a little, that it was not right for a human being to act that way.
Many people would deny it, but in his opinion, Chief Lee Jae-heon was the most carefree person among them.
Even if Dr. Ha Sung-yoon wasn’t normal, at least he wasn’t a crazy guy who would slice flesh like meat, and even if Jeong In-ho wasn’t ordinary, at least he knew how to accept pain as pain.
Lee Jae-heon, who was not in his right mind in any way, could not be defined in any other way than as a ‘crazy man’.
But, that person, who had a sense of discomfort wrapped around his whole body, was so selfless that it was ridiculous to the point of making me want to curse, so I couldn’t hate him. I shouldn’t have resented him for having a hard time.
‘It’s better than going crazy alone.’
‘… … .’
In the end, Jeong In-ho had to admit that his consideration was quite comforting.
He said he would listen if I spoke. He said he would answer if I asked questions.
Jeong In-ho was the first to define the person called ‘Lee Jae-heon’ without even having a proper conversation, and he was the only one solving the absurd riddle.
Of course, yes. It was definitely Chief Lee Jae-heon who first refused to have a proper conversation. I don’t mean to say that he did a good job, but as the first person to notice Chief Lee Jae-heon’s duplicity, he should have tried to have a more plausible conversation.
First, since Jeong In-ho defined him as a riddle that could not be answered, Chief Lee Jae-heon became a question that fit that, and Jeong In-ho did not deny that fact. That was why the issue was raised.
Jeong In-ho, who had thought that far, felt an instinctive sadness.
Chief Lee Jae-heon didn’t try to drag me into reality like Dr. Ha Seong-yoon, and he wasn’t weak enough to die without me knowing it like other people, unless he had intentionally done so.
The resentment he had directed at others was turned toward himself, and he felt a sense of inferiority.
In the end, it was an undeniable fact. Regardless of what Chief Lee Jae-heon thought or what his intentions were, didn’t he shed so much blood for us?
‘Don’t follow me.’
And it was going to be that way in the future.
I don’t know why, but the previous ‘Chief Lee Jae-heon’ was fake. The real Lee Jae-heon is a crazy guy who is used to pain.
But rather, that is why he is a selfless psychopath who saves people by sacrificing himself. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and was given a parachute, so he should have never experienced hardships, but he had to go crazy in the other world.
Jeong In-ho has redefined Lee Jae-heon.
As a survivor of the other world, he was already wonderfully crazy, and he was so terribly altruistic that he didn’t spare himself.
If I could sacrifice my life to save someone else, I would do it. Without hesitation.
So how many more times do I have to experience this kind of absence?
“… … .”
Looking at the brightening sky, Jeong In-ho muttered softly.
“…It’s morning.”
It was morning.
Before returning to the present, he showed me death in all its vividness.
It was a beautiful morning, with their corpses lying in plain sight, either killed by a monster or by me.
Jeong In-ho suddenly had a nightmare.
It was a nightmare where the vines wrapped around my ankles and calves and dragged me down, just like the situation where Chief Lee Jae-heon was dragged away.
In that nightmare, Chief Lee Jae-heon was dragged into the vines and stabbed, and then he cooled down calmly and leaned against a tree without a single drop of blood remaining.
It wasn’t just one nightmare, it was tens of thousands of nightmares, and each hallucination took on a slightly different form. However, it all ended with the death of Chief Lee Jae-heon.
It started with failing to save him, and it ends with failing to save him.
Lee Jae-heon was there at the beginning and the end of this nightmare.
“… … .”
In the end, he couldn’t like Chief Lee Jae-heon even if he wanted to.
Just as no one loves their own nightmares, we don’t call such people normal.
But Jeong In-ho did not cry because he knew it was just a dream. He was not afraid of the ending that was right in front of him, nor was he sad about the repetition that could not be changed.
He just got up from his seat.
“…Are you going to move?”
“… I guess I should start looking. Now I can see the future clearly.”
“Then I will gather people.”
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Dr. Ha Seong-yoon walked forward with his characteristic green smile, and Jeong In-ho met eyes with Chief Kang Min-ah, who was watching him. He did not try to avoid that gaze like he had before he experienced death.
Jeong In-ho opened his mouth, wishing his face would be as usual.
“Would you like to go together?”
“… Give me that too, something like a hammer.”
“There is a real hammer, not just a hammer-like one.”
“Okay, hammer.”
Supervisor Kang Min-ah took out the longest hammer from the toolbox he had handed her and fiddled with it as if trying to get used to its unfamiliar weight. Now, all that was left in the box were nails, big and small.
And, Kwon Yeon-hee was quietly watching them.
She hesitated for a moment and then asked.
“…Can we go together?”
Kwon Yeon-hee asked two students, including myself, specifically,
“Not bad.”
Jeong In-ho accepted it with a smiling face.
He wished he had a sincere smile painted on his face.
I don’t hate Kwon Yeon-hee, who is trying to protect her underage siblings.
He had the reason to distinguish the object of his resentment, and he would not be angry because the object was a young and small student. That was enough.
However, emotions become sharper and harder as time passes. At least for Jeong In-ho, so before this becomes a long-lasting emotion, I just hope that I can throw this resentment away somewhere far away.
Yeah, so… .
“Everyone says they will move.”
“That might be better.”
If you see Chief Lee Jae-heon’s body.
I didn’t even know I was going to kill it.
* * *
“Please save me… .”
Please save me.
Please save me. Please save me.
The lips that were muttering, “Please save me,” trembled as if their strength had left them.
The hands that float in the air without a will shake helplessly, and the voice is even worse.
“Save me, save me. Please.”
“… … .”
“Please, ha, spare me… .”
Save me. Save me. Please save me. I asked you to save me.
I held my hands tightly together and cried. I felt the anxiety of the sand on the beach seeping between my toes, and the nervousness of it wrapping around my ankles and riding up smoothly like silk. I was so scared.
But no one said anything.
“… … .”
An eerie silence rings, as if a snake is crawling into your ear canal.
I always break down in a state of resignation and fear around that time.
He fell to the blood-stained dirt floor until his knees hurt, curled up like a shrimp, and covered his head with his hands.
I gasp for breath as I look at the blood on the soles of my shoes, on my hard, rough shirt, and on my hands.
When that time comes I say:
“…sorry.”
And I say it again.
“I told you I was sorry.”
No matter how much I say, the corpse in front of me doesn’t respond at all.
Of course it is. It was already nothing more than a piece of meat. How could it, frozen in place and unable to blink, speak to me?
Even if I could talk to it, I wouldn’t be able to hear its voice.
Even if he were to crawl out of a coffin and become a devil, he wouldn’t talk to me… .
Only then did I stop talking and lift my head, which I had been holding with both hands, to look at the corpse.
“…ah.”
The elasticity that comes from stabbing the neck.
That short scream alerts me to my blood-soaked knees.
Wasn’t soil originally a type of material that absorbed liquid very well?
But the clot of blood that flowed from the floor where I was kneeling simply flowed onto the floor, gently staining my prone body.
Slowly raising my head and focusing my relaxed eyes, I see dozens of corpses lined up one by one behind me.
Warm, fresh blood flowed from them, piled up like a tower. It was encroaching upon the entire floor.
Then, without realizing it, I count them one by one. One, two, three. Then four, five, six, seven. Then eight, nine, and ten… .
After they’ve all counted, he says the same thing again.
“sorry.”
That was my nightmare.
It was the dream of those who killed because they could not save others.
* * *
Lee Jae-heon didn’t dream very often.
Even if I had dreams, most of them were vague lucid dreams that were neither here nor there, and so I had a hard time distinguishing between dreams and reality. They felt too real for a dream.
“… … .”
Jaeheon Lee blinked slowly and looked around.
“…It’s hard to make a living.”
It’s different from the last place I remember.
If you look closely, it is a forest. If this is a dream, it would be a reflection of reality, expressing the appearance of a forest that has been transformed. If it is reality, it would be a character in a novel who was rescued and is still breathing.
Lee Jae-heon frowned at his habitual headache.
My brain felt dizzy as if it had been submerged in soda water and then came out, and my mind was blank as if I had just ridden a roller coaster five times. I couldn’t make a proper judgment as to whether this was because I was in a dream or because of the influence of the other world.
Since I couldn’t even tell my own condition apart, it was natural that I couldn’t understand my surroundings.
He was sitting there, his upper body leaning against the wall, dazed and out of breath, when he felt someone approaching him and immediately raised his head.
“Oh, sir. Are you awake?”
“… … .”
“I had my wound treated in a hurry, but you shouldn’t push yourself too hard yet….”
At the same time, I realized.
“Oh shit, a dream.”
This is a dream.
“…yes?”
“I don’t know how dreams can be this crazy.”
It’s only natural. If it were real, I would have been able to see the other person’s face clearly.
“It gets more and more disgusting as the days go by.”
The person who spoke to me was a smooth mannequin with no facial features, just like an egg ghost from a horror story.
It was so disgusting and grotesque that it was unspeakable.
Everything moved and acted like a human being, but its face was flat, a vaguely brown color that seemed to be made of wood, and it creaked whenever it moved.
Lee Jae-heon felt that this description was somehow familiar, but he couldn’t quite recall it. What could he possibly think of with a body covered in blood and a mind that seemed to have been beaten several times?
He pressed my neck in a dazed state. He soon exerted strength,
Suddenly, a cough came out.
“What, what are you doing…! Let go!”
“… Ugh, ugh…”
“Hey, this crazy guy…!”
Shit, who the hell is calling who crazy?
Lee Jae-heon wanted to refute something, but soon gave up.
Without proper treatment, the wounds would not have healed completely, but his arms and legs were moving so well. Even though his neck was pressed like this, he felt no pain, so it was a dream.
‘Then I should wake up quickly.’
Cool.
A physiological cough broke out.
He felt the movement of my Adam’s apple in the palm of his hand.
Several bones formed a single pillar, tilting this way and that, and it was twisting one by one as it was crushed by a strong force.
Lee Jae-heon felt as if he was suffocating.
It was literally a feeling. Having died in various useless ways, he had acquired many senses, and they were all reflected in his dreams.
So, all of these strangely delicate sensations and reactions were the result of such data. Such small and trivial things that Lee Jae-heon, the owner of the dream, didn’t even need to worry about.
The only way to wake up from this horrible lucid dream was always death, and knowing that all too well, he chose death without hesitation.
I couldn’t stand that mannequin.
Jaeheon Lee felt a slight nausea along with the sensation of his neck bones breaking.
“Stop it!”
“Ugh….”
I woke up with a dull pain in my wrist.
“Gasp, ugh, ugh…”
“… … .”
“… What, what is it? Are you awake? Are you really awake?”
What is this?
‘What’s the situation?’
Lee Jae-heon had to work hard to understand the current situation.
Judging by the weight and pain felt on one wrist, it seemed like the woman in front of him was stepping on it.
The owner of the grip I felt on my other wrist would be the same. The sight of the short-haired woman who was crushing me seemed very familiar, so I guess she must be a character from a novel.
Yes, then it is highly likely that it is ‘Officer Kim Yeon-woo’ that I encountered before losing consciousness.
‘…but why?’
Lee Jae-heon moved his hand again, wondering if he was still wandering in a dream, but he relaxed his strength at the sound of Police Officer Kim’s frightened voice. And those distinct facial features and vitality were clearly different from the mannequin in the dream.
No, but. So what’s the situation?
From what I could tell so far, Lee Jae-heon had both his hands bound, almost like a vicious criminal, and of course he wasn’t handcuffed or tied with rope, but it seemed like Officer Kim in front of me was aiming to keep me from moving.
But Jae-Heon Lee must have lost consciousness until now.
But was there a reason for his movements to be restricted to this extent? If there was a valid reason, Lee Jae-heon must have committed the act while unconscious.
Yeah, what did I do while unconscious… .
“…ah.”
“… … .”
“Did I… strangle you?”
After a long silence, Police Officer Kim nodded quietly with a face that looked like he was about to cry.
It was a bold and short answer that didn’t require a long explanation.
“… Huh.”
It’s hard to make a living.
