Chapter 57: Just for a Little While…

I’m living quite happily.

At least for a little while.

I don’t want anything, but it’s a life where I can imagine wanting things.

This country might be full of equality, considering that there’s no real difference between me as a homeless person on the streets and me smoking weed in an office filled with fancy furniture.

Of course, I don’t see hallucinations.

Even with all the drugs I take, this amazing body detoxifies easily.

I rub the weed, reeking of grass, on the desk and throw it behind me.

I received so many medals for defeating the villain who completely tore up the city.

Everyone admires me, praising me for killing my childhood friend, who reached out to me hesitantly as she died, unable to finish her sentence.

They call me the hero who saved the country.

Actually, it wasn’t these people I wanted to save, but someone else.

I did the opposite.

Without knowing what I wanted, what I wished for, I did the opposite, everything the opposite.

Without even knowing what I should have done.

It was the lab, or maybe the people who wanted their children to have the same powers as them, who made Ha-rin that way, but at some point, Ha-rin became the one at fault.

Not that she was blameless, innocent people were definitely caught in the crossfire.

But is it just my imagination that I feel a strange sadness?

I didn’t know it when I lived in the slums, but the people in this big city seem to have peculiar tastes.

They package someone who kills their loved one as a hero.

[A promotional video I never filmed plays on the television.]

I turn it off, switch it to the music channel that was playing when I talked to Ha-rin, and stick a cigarette, the kind she used to smoke, in my mouth.

The smoke was harsh, and I don’t understand why she smoked them.

Nothing changed.

She said she saw all the people she killed, that they were talking to her.

I wish I could see them. I wish I could hear them.

I wish they were right in front of me.

I continued the relationship based solely on emotions, forgetting all the reasons why we bickered and fought over trivial things. Only now do I understand what I should have done.

I should have apologized right then and there.

Or if I had gone to see Ha-rin, just once, when she was alone in that village, if I had brought her out…

Even though I know nothing will change now, my thoughts won’t stop.

Especially when my work is so simple it’s boring.

I briefly push aside the simple thoughts that come to mind and recall the task I was just doing.

“Hye-yeon, I’ll be out for a bit, so keep the guest inside…”

It wasn’t something I needed to explain, so I trailed off.

“O-Okay.”

I graduated from school a long time ago.

A lot of time has passed.

Hye-yeon and I were given quite high positions, not only for our abilities but also for the credit of defeating Ha-rin.

There are practically no Awakened stronger than me, and despite my age, I’ve become quite a high-ranking figure, so much so that people question whether I’m suitable for this position.

Just because I’m good at slicing and burning people.

Thanks to that, many important people visit my home and workplace.

I don’t know if it’s because of the mysterious villain who’s been targeting high-ranking officials lately.

Strangely, no bodies have been found.

As if someone had turned them completely to ash.

So, these important people come to me, begging me to save them.

Who else would protect them but me, the one who killed Yoo Ha-rin, the cause of the Seoul bloodbath?

I take out another cigarette, light it, inhale the smoke right up to the filter, and then throw away the butt, disgusted by the stale taste.

Back then, if I had just grabbed Ha-rin.

Killed everyone around us.

Held her hand, crossed the river with her.

Sliced through all the obstacles in front of us.

Settled down somewhere suitable.

Erased this sickening city from my mind.

Forgotten about school, people, everything, and lived like we used to in that village, just the two of us.

If only.

I check my wristwatch; a lot of time has passed.

I go back inside and walk into the room where the guest is waiting.

Hye-yeon is panting, and blood is splattered all over the room.

“You can clean this up, right?”

“…I got excited.”

I see a middle-aged man lying messily on the floor.

One of his legs is mangled, and his throat is half torn, but he’s still alive.

He looks at me and tries to say something, but only air hisses out of his throat.

“How many are left?”

“Th-This is the last one. Except for the kids who took the drugs…”

Just like I completely erased Ha-rin, I erase the man lying on the floor.

I wipe the blood off the window and look outside.

As befits a very tall building, I have a panoramic view of the city.

Countless cars still moving, tall buildings, people passing by.

And the people beyond the invisible river.

Did Ha-rin have to die for something like this?

No, well. Since when did you care so much?

Did she suddenly become so precious after you killed her?

You abandoned her.

Until she came looking for you, you didn’t even remember her, you pushed her to the back of your mind.

It’s always like this.

“Hye-yeon.”

“Y-Yeah.”

“What are you going to do after all this is over?”

“…I don’t know.”

“It’s good to have a goal.”

It’s pretty common to become empty after completing revenge and then die.

“What about you?”

“I won’t do anything.”

“Nothing?”

“No.”

Everything I do is messed up.

Everything that’s praised and admired in this world is messed up.

The people who defeated the villains disrupting society and are praised as heroes are all like this.

But I can’t change it.

If I touch it, I’ll ruin it, just like these people.

I wonder how lovely a child would be.

I could have ground up a few thousand, no, a few tens of thousands more people?

Anyway, they’d have to be lovely enough to make me want to create powerful abilities by sacrificing that many people.

I don’t think I’ll ever know.

Maybe it’s because I killed my friend who said she loved me, who I’d spent so much time with, but “just because” seems more fitting.

The feeling of liking someone, the feeling I had when I first met Hye-yeon, has completely faded.

Even if I want to like someone, Ha-rin’s words echo in my head, and perhaps because of our last conversation, I can’t see people as people anymore.

Not even Hye-yeon, who’s catching her breath after slicing up the middle-aged man who funded the lab, the one who Awakened by taking drugs made from people.

Of course, she probably didn’t take them willingly.

Later, she said her father opposed it, but he was killed by villains hired by a colleague.

The same goes for the older sister who blocked the entrance to the lab.

And the teacher who taught us as if she wanted to shield us from the dirty things, even though she knew everything.

I’m not trying to blame anyone, but I want to.

That’s why I can’t get close to anyone else.

I’ll constantly think about what happened with Ha-rin, hurt the people next to me, and try to control them.

Just like when I argued with Ha-rin after entering school and left her alone.

I won’t be able to say I love someone.

Those are words I could only say to Ha-rin.

If she hadn’t asked me to remember her, I would have tried to erase her from my mind.

How can I live normally after hearing those words?

She told me to remember only this: dried-up red eyes, white but brittle hair.

She told me to remember her every time I saw something similar, every time I met someone else.

Many would say it’s a joke to grant a request after death that you didn’t grant in life, but that’s all I have left.

Ha-rin showed me that so many things I saw were fake, shattered everything that seemed real, and left after leaving only herself behind.

I don’t know if she achieved what she wanted, but if she was trying to leave only herself in my mind, she succeeded perfectly.

My childhood friend, left behind in that village, came to find me again.

To find me, completely distorted.

Maybe she came straight to me, somehow taking steps in a tangled mess.

When I first came to the city, I must have been like the people who cheered when Ha-rin died.

In that kind of world, she kept me whole, or maybe completely broke me.

With only herself in my mind.

And then she left me alone.

Even if I left the village, crossed the river, left the city and went somewhere else, she went to a place I can’t reach.

I can’t follow her.

Because she told me to always remember her.

To remember, I have to be alive.

It’s not a pleasant memory, but I remember the day I met Ha-rin.

A smile came to my lips.

Maybe this is what happiness, love, those kinds of emotions are.

I was very satisfied.

At least for a little while.

[THE END]