Chapter 57: The Place That Remembered Him

Before opening the door to the 120th floor, Yoo Hee-ro decided to stop for a moment.
He rested for about a day within the rift.
The conditions weren’t good, but they were sufficient to catch his breath.

He left behind all the piled-up supplies in the rift and carefully packed only the letters Sung Ji-woo had given him, along with the pendant and other artifacts.
He checked several times over, afraid he might have missed even a single item.

“It’s been a while.”

He muttered in a voice rough from disuse.
The words carried no emotion or sentiment, as though they existed only to state a fact.
As if welcoming Yoo Hee-ro’s return, the door to the 120th floor opened with solemn grandeur.

It was as though a massive curtain had been pulled aside.
In an instant, his vision brightened.
The appearance of a forbidden place humanity had never once reached was revealed.
A land of extreme cold.

A violent blizzard raged as towering walls of ice stood in tight formation.
It felt as though the place itself was issuing a stern warning to all living beings—this is not where you belong, turn back.

But Yoo Hee-ro straightened his back and walked forward.
Step by step, his footsteps over the thinly piled snow were neither light nor heavy.
They were orderly, like someone simply walking the path they were meant to take.

–O one who defied fate.

He had heard a similar voice in the very first dungeon he entered as a high school student.
The pressure bearing down on him now was far greater than it had been back then, yet Yoo Hee-ro lifted his chin even higher.

He could see the sky.
He knew that, too, was fake.
This was the underground of the 120th floor, a place where anything could be fabricated as a lie.

After walking for a while, Yoo Hee-ro stopped in front of a towering ice wall.
Judging by his memories, this should be the right spot.

He reached out his hand.
As the frost-covered ice wall melted under his body heat, clear ice was revealed.
And within it lay a gate core, gleaming with transparent light.

Ordinary people would never imagine a gate core could exist here.
Even if they found it, they would likely dismiss it as nothing more than a chunk of ice and walk past.
But Yoo Hee-ro was different.
He recognized it instantly.

Because he had once shattered it with his own hands.

–O ruler of this place.

The unidentified voice called Yoo Hee-ro by a new title.
Even if time had been reversed, the gate still remembered him.

“I never thought I’d come back here.”

Even when he was given a new life, he had never imagined he would re-enter the X-gate.
No—he had never intended to involve himself again in this f*cking game of awakened powers.
Hunters, gates—he was sick of it all.

Yet in the end, he had returned here.
By his own choice.
Just as he said, perhaps this truly was his destiny.
From the moment he was given that grandiose name.

The name that once felt like a tag he wanted to tear off now held a sanctity greater than anything else.

Waiting for the nightmare to come, Yoo Hee-ro quietly closed his eyes.

From the moment he was born, Yoo Hee-ro had lived in a regional research facility.
Countless experiments and studies were conducted there, and Yoo Hee-ro was one of the secrets they concealed.

“Listen carefully. You must never go outside.”

It was a warning Yoo Hee-ro had heard countless times.
They even created a safety zone for him using yellow tape.

The world beyond that tape was unknown to Yoo Hee-ro.
But that was fine.
He thought it was natural and believed it was the entirety of the world.

The problem lay in what Yoo Hee-ro thought humans were.
As he grew older, watching people move about outside the window inevitably filled him with questions.

“Why can’t I go out?”

No matter how many times he asked, the answer was always the same.

“Because you belong here.”

Yoo Hee-ro’s growth was slow.
Physically, and in terms of his abilities.
No one could bring themselves to declare failure in the massively funded HERO Project, and Yoo Hee-ro was pushed onward without pause.

The title of an ability user who couldn’t use his abilities strangled Yoo Hee-ro relentlessly.
Every time test results came out, he lived with the words “I’m sorry” on his lips.

“We can’t keep him like this anymore. Let’s send him to school.”

In the winter of his thirteenth year, Yoo Hee-ro’s middle school enrollment was decided.
And there was someone who worked tirelessly to obtain that permission.
His assigned researcher.

She was the only one in his childhood who had ever given him candy.
In winter, she gave him cocoa.
She always greeted him with warm eyes, and on days when painful experiments ended, she praised him.

She was the one who gently called the test subject “Hee-ro.”

“Once you go to school and spend time with other ability users, you’ll naturally be able to use your powers.”

Listening to her say that, Yoo Hee-ro often fell into the illusion that it might really come true.
To say it again—it was an illusion.

Yoo Hee-ro couldn’t use his abilities.
And no one wanted to associate with an ability user who couldn’t use his powers.
He became lonelier than he had ever been alone before.
So much so that he thought the days when he didn’t even know what loneliness was had been better.

“Do I… not have a family?”

During his first vacation ever, Yoo Hee-ro returned to the research facility and asked his assigned researcher.
He knew the dictionary definition of family.
But he hadn’t known that it was something most people were simply given.
The researcher smiled awkwardly as she answered.

“That’s right. But it’s not your fault that you don’t have one.”

That was the first time Yoo Hee-ro wanted a family.
But he also understood that wanting something didn’t mean you could have it.
In truth, that applied not only to family, but to everything.

Yoo Hee-ro had never taken what he wanted.
He had never even asked.

“Why did you want me to go to school?”

School life became more horrific with each passing day.
Yoo Hee-ro’s world and the real world collided violently, and he was forced to witness his false world collapse with his own eyes.

“I thought… you might be able to live.”

The assigned researcher replied with sorrowful eyes.
That was where the problem truly began.
She taught Yoo Hee-ro human emotions and treated him with them.
In the end, she committed the one thing she never should have.
Pity.

“Hee-ro, should we just run away?”

At some point, she began to grow restless.
Watching her, Yoo Hee-ro felt an even greater anxiety.
He started crossing the yellow tape to visit her personal office, where he read books, chatted, and spent time.

But that did nothing to ease her increasingly paranoid condition.
Eventually, it worsened to the point where she could barely even hear what Yoo Hee-ro was saying.

And then, a large-scale experimental schedule was set.
Yoo Hee-ro was restrained to a hospital bed for a full week.
After obediently following their instructions, sleep gas was administered to knock him out.

As time passed, Yoo Hee-ro felt like he was becoming stupid.
After about three days, he could think of nothing at all.

When a week passed and he opened his eyes, Yoo Hee-ro woke up on the sofa in his assigned researcher’s office.

“We have to leave here. Right now.”

She grabbed Yoo Hee-ro and said so.
But Yoo Hee-ro, having just finished the experiment, was drugged and unable to think properly.
He couldn’t even fully process her words.
All he could barely see through his hazy vision was the researcher’s tear-streaked face.

“Why… are you crying? Did I do something wrong again?”

Yoo Hee-ro thought something had gone wrong with his experiment once more.

“Huh? No… no. You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m—I’m sorry.”

The researcher kept apologizing, muttering incomprehensible words.
What Yoo Hee-ro regrets most now is that he can’t properly remember what she said back then.

“I’m sorry. But you have to live. No matter what.”

He only learned much later that the researchers had deliberately injected him with more sedatives than usual.

Cough, cough!

Yoo Hee-ro began coughing violently.
The reason he could see nothing but the researcher’s face was because her office was engulfed in flames.

In a space filled with carbon monoxide and smoke, Yoo Hee-ro’s brain sent out emergency signals about oxygen deprivation.
But his body continued to go limp.

Gritting her teeth, the researcher tore her clothes and pressed them against Yoo Hee-ro’s airway.

Thud, thud, thud, thud!

The sound of hurried footsteps echoed closer.
No—not just one person.
Several.

“It’s okay, teacher. People are coming to rescue us.”

Yoo Hee-ro spoke while barely making out silhouettes through his fading vision, but the researcher’s expression only grew more anguished.
She then dragged Yoo Hee-ro toward the office entrance.

Crash, bang!

The people who forced the door open found Yoo Hee-ro slumped near the doorway.

“That’s enough! We’ve secured the test subject.”

“That crazy b*tch tried to run off with the test subject?”

Completely drained and unable to support his own body, Yoo Hee-ro was carried away by them.
The assigned researcher was not rescued.

Much later, Yoo Hee-ro woke up in the recovery room.

At first, he thought it had been a nightmare.
During experiments, he often entered REM sleep, and nightmares frequently tormented him.

This time felt no different.
But upon reaching the researcher’s funeral, Yoo Hee-ro realized everything had been real.

“That woman did something pointless.”

A man said in a mocking voice.
Yoo Hee-ro, wearing a vacant expression, silently blinked.
The man handed him a single sheet of paper.

It was the researcher’s family registry certificate.
At the top was her name—Yoo Ji-eun—the one he had only ever seen on the name tag pinned to her lab coat.

“……”

In the section for children, his full name was written.
The man added, sounding tired.

“Don’t get too emotional. Strictly speaking, she wasn’t really your mother.”

“……”

“She only provided genetic material, that’s all. We all made you. She was the one being strange. You being human—doesn’t that sound ridiculous even to you?”

“……”

“That level of delusion is practically an illness. She died coddling you like you were her real son, didn’t she? Well, if she hadn’t tried to run away with you in the first place, this wouldn’t have happened—”

None of his words reached Yoo Hee-ro.
The paper crumpled in his grasp.
Tears fell onto it, one drop at a time.
That was the last day Yoo Hee-ro ever cried.