Delusive Fate

#081

“Get lost, all of you.”

Just die, please die. Lee Han-sol muttered incessantly. His face was red. The uneven redness spreading from between his eyebrows to his eyelids, cheeks, nose tip, and chin looked unstable.

Bang, bang, crash. Han-sol was almost compulsively disrupting his surroundings, as if something terrible would happen if it became quiet even for a moment. The sound of things breaking and shattering echoed continuously. He had been in this state ever since Jung Yi-dam left.

“Please stop. Why didn’t this just collapse and disappear long ago? Why is this thing still rolling along pretending to be a world? Nobody should be alive. Just die, all of you.”

Han-sol was out of his mind with anger. Yi-dam’s voice and the expressions he had made lingered like afterimages, floating around. The sticky voice asking, “Do you want to kill me?” seemed to be stuck somewhere in his ear. “I’ll let you kill me if you say it once with your mouth. How about it?” It hid in the depths of someone else’s ear, mocking and ridiculing Han-sol from there without stopping. Treating him like a toy, casually wielding him. It was unbearable.

Anger made his whole body’s muscles stiff. His heart was beating so fast that he couldn’t breathe. The feeling of being unable to control himself was agonizing. Han-sol hit his thighs repeatedly, feeling like he was going crazy. When that wasn’t enough, he grabbed his head and hit it randomly. He couldn’t breathe. With a dizzy feeling of being strangled, Han-sol threw, smashed, and tore apart everything in sight. Huk, huk, heok. His clumped breaths finally burst out in disorder.

What am I? Why… am I like this?

Han-sol felt empty. Self-loathing and hatred for his foolish self. Murderous intent born from disgust. Very bad feelings overwhelmed him and ran wild without order. His vision darkened from the edges. His lean body staggered from the distant dizziness.

It was overwhelming. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly what was so overwhelming. The truth he didn’t know before? The new stories he learned? Or was it the key to the escape that Yi-dam had thrown away like trash before leaving? Or was it Ki Baek-woo? Or Lee Han-sol himself?

He didn’t know. It was all just so overwhelming that he felt like he was forcing himself to endure. Not wanting to lose, he gritted his teeth harder and strained his eyes. His act of violence was like a cornered rat baring its teeth. If he stayed still, a sense of defeat would wash over him, and he felt like he couldn’t bear it without dying right away. It was miserable.

“I can’t live with how fucking awful this is… Those bastards, just all of you…”

Die! With that muffled cry, a small frame crashed into the wall of the small room and shattered. With a loud noise, glass shards scattered everywhere. Han-sol’s bloodshot eyes glared at the photo that had fallen to the floor.

In the photo were younger versions of Han-sol and Ki Baek-woo. It was a picture taken by the uncle next door as a gift before they moved to Zone A due to Baek-woo’s awakening. The two in the photo, with a shabby room as the background, look happy. They’re smiling with faces that know nothing. Foolish expressions that couldn’t even dream that their future would be more of a mess than the broken glass shards.

Han-sol crawled over and picked up the photo.

Nineteen years old, sixteen years old Han-sol and Baek-woo. If we had ended it then. Han-sol made a futile assumption. If he had said goodbye to Baek-woo, who had awakened as S-class, saying, “Baek-woo, from now on, live on your own. I don’t want to be with you anymore. Let’s not be together anymore.”

If he had done that, would things have gone somewhat better? Would his life not have been stuck in this mess? Maybe he could have lived somewhat normally as just another bug composing the world without knowing what was what, and Baek-woo as an ordinarily cool protagonist…

‘Then that bastard Yi-dam wouldn’t have gone crazy and done this shit to me.’

Han-sol bit his lower lip and tore the photo in his hand to shreds. The fragments of Han-sol and Baek-woo’s past scattered like garbage. Han-sol stood up with his body trembling from rage. He looked around, searching for something to vent his anger on. He wanted to break anything. He didn’t want to leave anything intact. It was too unfair.

Why am I the only one who’s such a mess? What did I do wrong? Why me? Why…!

He grabbed onto the drawer in the corner of the small room. Han-sol pulled out some drawers of the 5-tier drawer and threw them with a crash, while not even opening others. He rummaged through the odds and ends, crumpling, throwing, and making a mess as he pleased.

And then the last drawer. Han-sol paused as he saw its contents. His arm, stopped in mid-air, was trembling with heightened emotion. His lips, red from excitement, quivered.

“Whether it’s a planetary collision or whatever… just explode and perish completely, right now.”

Nobody should survive. Everyone die. You bastards, let’s all just die together. I don’t want to live. You don’t deserve to live either. I know without looking, you’re all trash. Just die, all of you.

Han-sol’s voice, like a breath, cursed the entire world. Heok, heok, he breathed as if he were sobbing. His gaze, as chaotic and blind as spilled ink, stared into the drawer. It was full of tattered trash. Colored paper in old-fashioned packaging that showed its age, colored pencils, paper airplanes folded from torn newspaper, notebooks with dirty worn corners, a cube…

“This is so fucking awful.”

It’s fucking awful. It’s shitty. Is living supposed to be this miserable? Han-sol cursed as he grabbed and threw those things. He tore and crumpled everything he could get his hands on. Now… he thinks. Now, even if you say this is real, it only makes me angry. If you say this was actually real, what am I supposed to do now? What am I supposed to do with Baek-woo?

It was hard.

Han-sol thought as he ruthlessly crumpled the paper airplane he had folded and given to Baek-woo in his childhood.

It was hard, he said. I was really struggling. I was in so much pain that I felt like dying, and I didn’t want to suffer anymore. So I’ve been chipping away at my heart little by little. In doing so, I became a person who knows neither happiness nor joy. I became a human with nothing enjoyable, with absolutely no value in living… But, after that, I could finally breathe. And now what? What… am I supposed to do?

This time, Han-sol’s hand picked up an already tattered notebook. He tore and ripped apart the pages inside, which were filled with clumsy handwriting: kimchi stew recipe, things Han-sol hyung likes, things he dislikes, “The weather on such and such date is clear, today Han-sol hyung did this and that,” all sorts of things written on the inner pages.

“Don’t make me laugh… You must have thought I was easy to manipulate… Did you think I’d do what you tell me to?”

He sneered with bloodshot eyes flashing. Never. He would never act the way Jung Yi-dam wanted. He swore to himself over and over. The story Yi-dam had laid out before leaving wouldn’t leave his head. It kept churning his thoughts, constantly reproducing anger.

The protagonist is bound by the system and cannot act differently on their own once the story begins. Only supporting characters without fixed scripts in the story can act differently. Yi-dam had figured this out and bided his time. In the last gate where the story and ending intersect, taking advantage of the system’s confusion, Yi-dam accessed Han-sol’s code and caused a bug.

The small error made Han-sol remember everything. How Baek-woo betrayed him in such a miserable way… It made him unable to forget in what kind of agony he died because of Baek-woo, whom he had loved with everything he had. This was all Yi-dam’s will.

The reason why… was because he was curious how Han-sol, who had gained self-awareness and free will in exchange for losing the blessing of oblivion, would act. Is Han-sol’s love real or fake? How long can he endure while still loving Baek-woo? Yi-dam said he wanted to prove that there is no such thing as love through Han-sol’s pain. He said he wanted to be repaid for his lonely faith that had worshipped an angel but received no response, through Han-sol’s frustration, sorrow, and loneliness as he fell with broken wings.

For Yi-dam himself to be comforted, to wash away his sense of defeat, to have a sense of solidarity with Han-sol alone… To monopolize Han-sol’s withering loneliness…! For just that reason!

‘But you haven’t changed, Han-sol.’

Cupping the cheeks of Han-sol, who was dumbfounded by the terribly futile inside story, Yi-dam pressed their foreheads together. With his eyes half-lowered, neat and docile with thin double eyelids, he spoke in a moist voice.

‘Once, twice, three times… you didn’t change. The other bastards I targeted changed at once, but you kept loving only Baek-woo. You didn’t give me anything at all, you kept looking only at Baek-woo. Yes, that’s right. So I messed with you one more time.’

Han-sol underwent another change as Yi-dam intended. This time, he made him realize that this world is a dating game revolving around Yi-dam. So he made him know that even if Baek-woo dies, he won’t return to Han-sol.

No matter how much you struggle, Baek-woo won’t look at you. This is set and can’t be helped. You’re nothing but a speck of dust, and the one who’s wonderful and great and beautiful and precious is Jung Yi-dam. Who would want an empty can rolling on the street when there’s gold in front of them?

The error made Han-sol recognize this devastating fact. It extinguished all hope.

Because, again, Yi-dam wanted Han-sol’s frustration and giving up. He wanted Han-sol to let go of Baek-woo, whom he had clung to like a lifeline, and finally fall into the sorghum field. To writhe in pain and roll on the ground.

‘But you didn’t change. Han-sol, you didn’t change, did you? As if you really only needed Baek-woo until the very end… Seeing that… I felt like I was going crazy.’

Love. It really existed. I thought it was a lie. I thought God’s revelation, and you who were sent by God… I thought it was all fake, manipulated by the system. I had no choice but to think that way… But it wasn’t. There was something real. To think that what Han-sol gave to Baek-woo was something like that…

So I was happy. I cried when I saw you. I hated that someone like Baek-woo, who couldn’t even overcome one system, was making you sad. I wanted to kill Baek-woo, but I couldn’t touch that bastard. There was nothing I could do to Baek-woo, or to myself… Ha, damn system.

Han-sol, you know? Honestly, it really doesn’t feel good. You making that dead expression in front of me just because of Baek-woo. Every time you were uncomfortable with me, every time you only half-listened to whatever I said during the precious time when it was just the two of us left at the gate, I felt like I was going to lose it. Do you know how angry I’ve been all this time?

‘It seems you still don’t know, so I’m telling you, you and I are inseparable. We’re the only two people who remember everything. I’m the one who knows who you love and how deep and pure that love is. Han-sol… The current you is what I created. As long as you remember the past and know what this world is, I have some ownership over you too. But you didn’t know me. You didn’t even try to look at me. Only now are you listening to me.’

Yi-dam caressed Han-sol’s small ear and sighed slowly. Their faces were so close that their hot breaths mingled. Han-sol struggled to avoid Yi-dam’s sticky behavior but couldn’t escape. Yi-dam’s hands and gaze stuck to Han-sol everywhere like mud.