episode_0129

“But where did you go, oppa?”

“Huh? No?”

“Is it drenched in sweat?”

“… … I had a nightmare.”

I know I can’t go on like this.

Disheveled hair, untidy clothes, and a body drenched in sweat.

Even I can see that he doesn’t look like he woke up from a sound sleep.

I could have just washed up in my room first… … .

I was getting more and more anxious, so I wanted to check right away.

I’m sure it’s the right thing to do.

“Don’t lie. If you had a nightmare, you would have cried and gone to Se-rim unnie.”

“When did I ever do that!”

“Anyway, oppa. Where did you and Yebin go? While everyone else was asleep.”

“… … Yeah.”

Yebin must have also been talking nonsense to some extent.

I have a good feeling.

Dazhu smiles at me.

“That’s why I didn’t sleep on purpose in the first place. You could see what I was going to do on your face for a long time.”

“Really? I was going to wake you up even though you were sleeping.”

“Wow. So that’s why you came to my room on purpose?”

“Yeah. I can’t wake up Se-rim.”

“… … .”

For a brief moment, Dazhu stops smiling.

I was just pretending to be serious as a joke, but

“Oh my.”

Even knowing that, my heart sinks.

The hell that existed on the lower floor of the hotel.

After seeing the expressions on people’s faces change in an instant, I feel like I’m going crazy just seeing something similar.

“Why?”

“Huh? What?”

“I just took a deep breath.”

“Huh? No? Just. Nothing. ”

I’m dizzy.

I feel so nauseous that I feel like I’m going to throw up at any moment.

People who destroy themselves in various ways.

A head that was hit with a hammer and exploded.

Chunks of meat strewn across the hallway.

How much longer can I hold out?

What if I just die here?

Isn’t it the same either way?

After I die, it’s all over. It doesn’t matter whether the universe disappears or not, right?

“Anyway, Yebin too. I don’t know why they only come to me.”

Daju sits on the bed and wiggles her legs.

“Ah. Did he only come to you?”

“Yes.”

Da-ju answers while looking at the floor, then reaches out and turns on the light next to the bed.

“But sit down, oppa. You need to rest.”

“No. I made sure it came back properly, so now go back and wash up,”

“Sit down.”

He takes a deep breath and grabs my wrist tightly, sitting me down.

“Let go.”

“I don’t think it’ll work out if we go back like this.”

“I told you it’s okay? I’m really okay.”

You can’t win by force.

I kept pulling on my trembling wrist, mumbling over and over that it was okay.

Sitting on the bed, listless, with his eyes turned to the floor.

“You’ll feel better if you rest. You just saw too much cruelty today.”

“No. It’s been like that lately. My brother.”

“Do you read minds too?”

Daju took out a hand mirror and looked at herself without saying a word.

“Oppa, you don’t look in the mirror these days.”

“No, I see it when I wash, why… … .”

I couldn’t continue talking any longer.

Because the girl in the mirror was completely dead.

“Huh? Huh huh?”

Bloody tears flow from his empty eyes.

He has a bloodless face and a severed tongue in his mouth.

A face badly scratched, with pieces of skin stuck between her fingernails.

It was an extremely tragic sight.

More so than any other victim I’ve ever seen.

“Why. Why am I like this?”

A bitter taste lingering in my mouth.

Question marks filled my head.

“Why are you like this? Have I been like this all along?”

“Brother?”

“Ugh. Why? Why didn’t you tell me? Am I really like this?”

“Brother. Come to your senses. Brother!”

No matter how much air I breathe, I still feel out of breath.

I felt Dazhu’s urgent voice ringing in my head, and I lost consciousness.

“으.”

When I opened my eyes again, the first thing I saw was Dazhu’s face still looking at me.

“How hard was it?”

“What? A mirror?”

“Here it is.”

Daju hesitates for a moment, then takes out the mirror again and shows it to me.

Fortunately, this time he looks fine.

But the eyes are empty. Just like the corpse I saw earlier.

“… … .”

Are you possessed by something?

No, it feels different.

Was it since I was trapped in the elevator?

No matter how much I rested, my mental strength was not replenished and was slowly being depleted.

I clenched my teeth and gripped the blanket with trembling fingertips.

A floor full of junk.

There was Da-ju, who was pulling out her own teeth while bleeding.

Abandoned hospital.

There was a lump of flesh there, transformed beyond recognition from its original form due to the influence of the Blood Capsule.

The voice that rang in my head.

This is what I kept seeing overlapping.

Deaths.

I’m just an ordinary person, but I’ve taken on too many roles.

It was a mistake to come into this apartment in the first place.

But it is inevitable.

There was no way to escape in the first place.

If I fail, the world will just evaporate.

Then what should I resent?

My weak mind?

Have you ever been too attached to people around you and then suffered after seeing them die?

If only the gender had stayed the same.

If only he had remained a man.

Then, since Se-rim was there, wouldn’t we have been able to lean on each other and endure like Heo Yoon and Seok Hyun-min?

These are all useless thoughts.

There is no other case in the first place.

If only I were a man.

If only I were a little stronger.

If I hadn’t suffered.

The world is destroyed.

So, it’s easier to change your thoughts about the future.

If I start over, I won’t do this.

It’s just a tool needed to see the ending that’s already decided.

Choi Se-rim, Yoon Da-ju, Heo Yoon, Seok Hyeon-min, Jeong Hae-won.

And the people I met afterwards.

All of them.

These are just characters written in the script.

Give as much affection as you need, talk as much as you need, like as much as you need, and spend as much time together as you need.

No.

No matter what I do, everything is inevitable.

In the first place, the other way has long since disappeared.

To be precise.

The moment I make a different choice, the world… … .

The world falls apart in an instant.

The death of countless worlds.

My countless deaths.

I was slightly affected by all those deaths.

Now that the librarian’s authority has become such a powerful shield, it is impossible to even disturb his spirit by any means necessary.

The only disease that could invade me was death.

“Hey.”

He barely opened his mouth and spoke.

“Yoon Da-joo.”

Words and moods carry weight.

It’s a weight that would crush an ordinary person and make it difficult to even utter a proper word.

But if it was Daju, I thought I could do it somehow.

“I feel like I’m going to die. Please help me somehow.”

“… … .”

Because that’s how she’s been since we first met.

Daju has been looking at me with blank eyes since a while ago.

“… … .”

“Yoon Da-joo?”

“Oh. Really?”

When I saw that smiling face, my heart opened up a little.

I think that’s better.

Who could smile so happily in this situation?

And that’s what I needed.

Otherwise, I really felt like I was going to die.

“But I can’t be like Se-rim unnie.”

“Yeah, it’s okay.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, Da-ju quickly got up from her seat.

“A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity has come to me.”

Da-ju mutters excitedly, then soon comes back dragging a suitcase.

I think I know what you’re thinking even without you saying it.

“Then, let’s do all the things that have piled up one by one.”

“Does it have to be that?”

“Yes. I’ll choose the clothes for you.”

“Ha… … .”

I think I was swept away by something and thought wrongly.

“Actually, I was similar to my brother.”

Daju keeps rummaging through her bag, as if she can’t find any clothes she particularly likes.

I just hope there’s no swimsuit.

“When I died and came back to life, I was a completely different person than before. Everything I did felt awkward. And I was surprised to find unexpected habits engraved in my body.”

“You were a test subject too.”

“Yes.”

Bam.

Daju puts a set of clothes on the bed and puts her head back into her bag.

“Do you know what the experiment is about? Did I tell you?”

“… … Say it again.”

“Yes.”

Da-ju begins her story while hiding behind the carrier lid.

“Actually, you can assume that the original Yun Da-ju is dead. She was a researcher at the foundation, and while conducting dangerous research, she died in an accident after the experiment failed.”

“Yeah.”

“No! No. Actually, it wasn’t a failure. Uh… … . Yeah. I was just unlucky. It was really perfect in theory, right? Oh. It was definitely going to succeed. ”

It seems that he still has some pride as a researcher, and that he is quite embarrassed that he failed the experiment and even died.

After making excuses for a while, Da-ju started talking again.

“But someone dragged my body and extracted the memories from my head.”

“Then he mixed it with other people’s memories and created a soul… … .”

“Huh? What is it? Do you know that too?”

“You’ve been telling me that all along. About a quarter of the brain belongs to men.”

“I see.”

“So, the person who conducted the experiment probably wanted to erase my consciousness and create a person with only abilities.”

“I guess they tried to make it by mixing it with the memories of people who listen well.”

“Yes.”

Daju throws another set of clothes on the bed.

Even at a glance, it looks like a feminine design, but fortunately, it doesn’t seem to be a swimsuit.

“… … So I think the percentage of my memories wasn’t that big. Maybe about 10 percent of my total memories.

But the result was completely opposite.”

“Your consciousness remains the same as Yun Daju, but you lost your abilities?”

“Yes.”

Daju stops moving for a moment, as if lost in thought.

“So. I only have the consciousness of ‘I am Yoon Da-joo!’, but I don’t really remember the original ‘Yoon Da-joo’s’ way of thinking, personality, tastes, habits, everything. It’s because too many other people’s memories are mixed in. So sometimes I wonder, what am I doing?”

“… … .”

“What’s even more terrifying is that you suddenly remember dying painfully in an unfamiliar place? But this is also fun to watch over and over again. Should I say it’s addictive?”

“Yeah.”

“Anyway, oppa suddenly became a woman. He suddenly had to take on the role of a librarian and all. He suddenly had to stop the world from ending… … . So. That’s what I said about them being similar… … .”

widely.

The bag lid closes with a loud noise.

“Ah. I feel like I’m going to die because you’re talking seriously.”

After finishing her work, Da-ju gets up and strides towards me.

“Just do it. Don’t think about it. Just do it. What do you think I did to overcome it?”

“That’s it?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I believe you.”

“Aren’t you just trying to fulfill your desires?”

“There is some of that too.”

The next moment.

The clothes that had been lying on the bed suddenly came into view.

“First of all, this. I think you’ll get along with me. You’ve never done anything like this before.”

“… … .”

It just froze.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen you take that out of your bag.

“I’ll just go out.”

“I told you I can’t go out. Do you think you can shake me off and go out?”

What Daju was holding in her hand was a swimsuit that she had gotten from some unknown source.

That’s also a very exposed item.

“Hey. Is this right? Is this how to overcome it?”

“Yes.”

“How did that happen!”

“As you adapt to the new routine, you learn your senses. It’s a process of finding the enjoyable parts there.”

If you can’t even speak.

“Right now, Oppa, all you have to do is do what you have to do. That’s why people just keep getting stressed out.”

“Ah.”

This normally reckless kid only becomes talkative at times like this.

I just wanted to… … shake off my anxiety and fear, even if only for a little while.

The price was much harsher than expected.

To the point where I feel like I’d be better off dead.

“Okay.”

I took the clothes with a deep sigh.