Chapter 38: The Room of Memories

A shiver ran down Ji-ho’s spine, from head to toe, the moment he heard Yi-won’s words.

As Ji-ho tried to bolt from the bed, Yi-won seized him firmly. Though Yi-won hadn’t used his full strength, his grip was unyielding, preventing Ji-ho from breaking free.

Ji-ho struggled, unable to control the goosebumps that steadily prickled his skin.

“Hey, stop messing around!”

“I’m not messing around… Oh, Ji-ho, your ears are all red.”

Yi-won’s lips brushed Ji-ho’s ear. In response, Ji-ho finally lashed out with his foot, aiming for Yi-won’s center, but Yi-won easily dodged it, releasing him as cleanly as if he hadn’t been clinging just moments before.

“Is a couples’ bedroom still too soon? Well, I suppose we haven’t even had the ceremony yet.”

“We’ll never have a ceremony, not in a million years!”

“If you don’t like the newlywed room, then you can use this one.”

“Why would I…?”

“Want to share it?”

“Are you insane?”

“Then you use it. It’s more convenient to enter directly from the front door here.”

From Yi-won’s casual, offhand manner, Ji-ho was certain that this entire situation had been orchestrated from the start.

Joo Yi-won was always like that; if he wanted something, he would subtly manipulate the situation until he got his way.

It had always been this way. And more often than not, Ji-ho would eventually concede. Yi-won’s stubborn persistence, while pushing boundaries, always remained just barely within Ji-ho’s tolerance.

Thus, even though the outcome was predictable, Ji-ho argued back once more.

“Forget it, it’s your house. Just use it yourself. I stayed on the second floor at home too, so it’s not uncomfortable at all. In fact, this room feels like too much.”

“But it’s more logical for you to use this room.”

“Logical, really?”

“Think about it, Ji-ho. If someone were to bomb the rooftop, wouldn’t it be better for me to take the hit first?”

“No, what kind of…?”

“You’d be finished in one hit, but I wouldn’t die even if I got hit. I could protect the lower floor.”

While he had a point, the example was far too extreme. They weren’t in the middle of a war; what reason would there be for a bombing?

“Did a war break out somewhere without my knowing? What bombing are you talking about? Say something that makes sense.”

“Exactly. But then again, we never expected a monster to hunt down and stab people in the middle of the city, did we?”

“…”

He had a point there.

This bastard definitely earned a first-class certificate in shutting Shin Ji-ho up.

Though Ji-ho tried to voice a few more protests, it was ultimately decided that he would use the downstairs room, which was supposedly safer. After foisting the bedroom onto Ji-ho, Yi-won cheerfully opened the bathroom door.

The bathroom, too, was enormous. The bathtub, in particular, was so excessively large that it looked stark and empty for a single person.

“It’s better to have a big one if two people are going in, right? Since this is the couples’ bedroom.”

Yi-won spoke as if he had read Ji-ho’s mind.

“Because it’s good to have space if two people are moving around.”

“Two? Five people could fit in there!”

“Haha.”

As they exchanged these trivial jokes, Ji-ho thought to himself, ‘Is he telling me to use it carefully because he’ll use it as his couples’ bedroom when he gets married later?’

Indeed, it looked like the perfect room for a couple. It was ideal for enjoying indoor dates with realistic illusions, and the multi-person bathtub would also be convenient.

Thinking this, Ji-ho felt relieved that he was the first resident. If Yi-won had been living here from the start, Ji-ho might have involuntarily imagined the unknown partners Yi-won had dated.

It wasn’t his business who Joo Yi-won dated, but it still felt bothersome and uncomfortable. He doubted he would be able to sleep in a place where he didn’t know how others had used it.

Ji-ho shook his head, trying to dismiss these baseless fantasies.

****

The house tour continued past the first floor, which Ji-ho would use, up to the second floor, designated for Yi-won.

Just as the first floor held common areas like the kitchen, dining room, and laundry room, the second floor also featured shared spaces. Roughly half of the second floor was occupied by a theater room for watching movies and a training room.

After touring all the rooms, with only one left, Yi-won stopped Ji-ho just as he reached for the doorknob.

“Ah, you mustn’t open this room. All the other rooms are fine, but not this one.”

“…Are you Bluebeard or something?”

Bluebeard.

The nobleman known by that name had an ominous history: all his wives had mysteriously disappeared.

He warned his new bride that she could enter any room but one. Yet, unable to resist her impulse, she entered the forbidden chamber.

Inside that secret room, she found the corpses of his missing former wives. It was a gruesome fairy tale, implying he was not a good person.

Despite being accused of resembling a grotesque murderer, Yi-won remained completely unfazed.

“Exactly. If Ji-ho opens this door, you’ll never be able to leave this house again.”

“That’s ridiculous. The wife in Bluebeard eventually escapes, you know?”

Snorting derisively, Ji-ho flung the door wide open.

And what filled the not-so-large room was…

Photographs.

Pictures of a single person.

The room was devoid of furniture, and from floor to ceiling, every surface—except for the floor itself—was plastered with Ji-ho’s photographs.

“…”

Perhaps he would have been less startled if there had been a corpse inside instead.

The experience of meeting his own eyes everywhere he looked was truly unsettling.

“See? I told you not to open it.”

With a soft tap, Yi-won placed a hand on his shoulder and whispered into his ear. His low chuckle sounded particularly eerie today.

Ji-ho flinched, swatting Yi-won away and stumbling backward. His blunder, he realized, was stepping into the room in the first place. Anxiously, Ji-ho’s eyes darted around as he widened the distance between himself and Yi-won.

“D-don’t come any closer.”

“You’re genuinely scared. That’s a bit disappointing…”

Muttering gloomily, Yi-won gestured to the side.

“Look closely, they’re pictures of us hanging out with friends.”

“Oh…”

Ji-ho examined the photos once more.

Upon closer inspection, friends were indeed captured in every photograph. While many of the largely magnified shots featured Ji-ho almost head-on… and most seemed to be focused on him…

Right, Joo Yi-won wasn’t a pervert; why would he fill a room entirely with Shin Ji-ho’s pictures?

Of course, it was still strange to have pictures of friends displayed like this…

“I was going through a tough time while we were constantly raiding dungeons and teetering between life and death. I thought it might help if I could at least see the faces of the people I had to protect, so I started putting them up one by one, and it just ended up like this.”

Yi-won added, his eyes filled with a distant wistfulness.

…Yes, people can do strange things when they’re struggling, he supposed.

While Shin Ji-ho himself would never do something like this, with seven billion people, there were seven billion ways of coping. He shouldn’t automatically assume something was bad just because it seemed a little odd from his perspective.

Ji-ho tried to shake off his unwarranted prejudices and assumptions as he looked around at the photos.

From tiny pictures of the two of them in kindergarten, through elementary, middle, and high school, the collection spanned years. Though the faces of their friends might change, Ji-ho and Yi-won were always together.

“Why did I hang out with you so much? You were always there.”

“Your friends are my friends, and my friends are your friends, aren’t they?”

“That’s true.”

Having grown up together, their circle of friends completely overlapped. Especially when going out, Yi-won would often follow Ji-ho, who frequently fell ill, as if he were absolutely necessary. Consequently, their friends treated Ji-ho and Yi-won as a single unit.

Well, most of those friends had lost touch now, but…

Most of the photos in this room featured friends with whom they were still in contact. That made it a little less bittersweet.

“Are you still struggling?”

“Huh? No.”

“Then couldn’t you take them down? Even if there was a reason… I think you could remove them now.”

Even with a backstory, a room plastered densely with Ji-ho’s face was still rather unsettling. Yet, Yi-won simply shrugged, as if it were nothing.

“But going out and having fun like this, normally, that’s all over now, isn’t it? I intend to leave it as a room of memories.”

Though Yi-won spoke with a nonchalant tone, Ji-ho’s heart sank.

Ji-ho hadn’t experienced that period himself, but the Earth immediately after the sudden appearance of the Rifts had been pure chaos.

Yi-won hadn’t always held a firm position from the start. There were times he was in peril, and times he faced severe criticism. While Ji-ho couldn’t be by his side, Yi-won must have endured many hardships on his own.

During a time when he struggled, unable to lean on anyone, Yi-won had relied on mere photographs of friends for strength. Now, with the situation stabilized, he claimed his ordinary life of leisure was over.

It couldn’t help but feel regrettable.

“What’s over? We can go out and have fun again later.”

“Will Ji-ho come with me?”

“Of course.”

Ji-ho nodded. Yi-won, too, had mostly cut ties with his previous friends. Since neither of them had many friends left to go out with…

It wasn’t Ji-ho who had directly ended his relationships with his friends. When he first woke up, many more friends had visited him in the hospital.

However, after that, public opinion turned, and the situation became strange as Ji-ho faced criticism. Some friends had spouted odd remarks in interviews or online.

Without even telling Ji-ho, Yi-won sought out all the friends who had slandered him. Then, he severed ties with them first.

Ji-ho, who was already emotionally vulnerable at the time, also had no intention of seeing those friends again, so he blocked all their contact information.

Still, perhaps it was fortunate that a few friends remained.

‘This guy… he’s also one of the few friends who stayed by my side.’

As their eyes met, Yi-won’s eyes crinkled into a smile.

Though both of them felt their situation was somewhat pathetic, Yi-won’s expression remained bright.

“Alright. Then I’ll be looking forward to Ji-ho entertaining me.”

“There’s no need to look forward to it that much…”

“I will look forward to it.”

“Uh, right…”

Crushed by the pressure of having to devise some magnificent plan, Ji-ho closed the door to the bewildering room and exited.

He roughly understood why Yi-won had created this room, but it was not a place he wished to enter a second time.

Rubbing his still-goosebumped arms, Ji-ho checked his watch.

It was already half past six.

As they descended to the first floor together, Yi-won naturally took Ji-ho’s hand and pulled him along.

“Want to eat? I’ll make you something.”

“No, I have plans. I should be heading out soon.”

At Ji-ho’s answer, Yi-won’s expression utterly transformed, as if a coin had been flipped.