Ch.129Shock Therapy

“Where have you been, oppa?”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“You’re all sweaty.”

“…I had a nightmare.”

I know I can’t get away with this excuse.

My hair’s a mess, clothes disheveled, and body drenched in sweat.

Even I can tell I don’t look like someone who just woke up from sleep.

I could have washed up in my room first, but…

I kept feeling anxious and wanted to confirm right away.

Whether I really made it back.

“Stop lying. If you had a nightmare, you would’ve gone crying to Serim unnie.”

“When have I ever done that!”

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

“…Yeah.”

Yebin probably made up some excuse too.

She’s perceptive.

Daju grins at me.

“That’s why I stayed awake on purpose. I could tell what you were planning from the look on your face.”

“Really? I was going to wake you up anyway.”

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

“Yeah. I couldn’t wake up Serim noona.”

“…”

For just a moment, Daju’s smile fades.

She’s only pretending to be serious as a joke, but…

“Huh!”

Even knowing that, my heart sinks.

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

After seeing how people’s expressions changed in an instant there, even seeing something similar makes me feel like I’m losing my mind.

“What’s wrong?”

“Huh? Nothing.”

“You just gasped.”

“Huh? No? It’s nothing. Nothing at all.”

I feel dizzy.

My stomach churns like I might throw up any second.

People destroying themselves in various ways.

Heads bursting open from hammer blows.

Chunks of flesh scattered across the hallway.

How much longer can I hold on?

What if I just died here?

Wouldn’t it be the same either way?

After I die, everything ends. What does it matter if the universe disappears or not?

“Anyway, Yebin too. I don’t know why everyone comes to me.”

Daju sits on the bed, swinging her legs.

“Oh. She came to you too?”

“Yes.”

She answers while looking at the floor, then reaches out to turn on the lamp beside the bed.

“Sit down, oppa. You need to rest.”

“No. Now that I’ve confirmed I made it back, I’ll go wash up and—”

“Sit down.”

With a deep sigh, she grabs my wrist firmly and makes me sit.

“Let go.”

“You really shouldn’t go back like this, oppa.”

“I’m fine, really. I’m totally fine.”

I can’t win with strength.

I keep pulling my trembling wrist while continuously mumbling that I’m fine.

Sitting weakly on the bed, my gaze fixed on the floor.

“Rest and you’ll feel better. You’ve just seen too many cruel things today.”

“No. You’ve been like this for a while now, oppa.”

“Can you read minds too?”

Daju silently takes out a hand mirror and holds it up to me.

“You haven’t been looking in mirrors lately, have you?”

“No, I look when I wash up, why…”

I couldn’t continue speaking.

The girl in the mirror was completely dead.

“Huh? Wh-what?”

Bloody tears flow from empty eyes.

A severed tongue in the mouth, a face drained of color.

A face covered in scratches, with skin fragments stuck between fingernails.

It was an utterly horrific sight.

Worse than any victim I had seen before.

“Why. Why do I look like this?”

There’s a metallic taste in my mouth.

Questions fill my mind.

“Why is this happening? Have I been like this all along?”

“Oppa?”

“Huh! Why? Why didn’t you tell me? Am I really like this?”

“Oppa. Snap out of it. Oppa!”

No matter how much air I breathe in, I keep feeling short of breath.

As Daju’s urgent voice rings in my head, I lose consciousness.

“Ugh.”

When I open my eyes again, the first thing I see is Daju’s face still looking at me.

“How hard has it been for you?”

“What about the mirror?”

“Here.”

Daju hesitates for a moment before taking out the mirror again.

Thankfully, I look normal this time.

But my eyes are still empty, just like the corpse I saw earlier.

“…”

Was I hallucinating?

No, it feels different.

Maybe it started when I was trapped in the elevator.

No matter how much I rest, my mental strength doesn’t replenish but keeps depleting.

I clench the blanket with trembling hands, gritting my teeth.

The floor filled with discarded items.

Daju was there, pulling out her own teeth while bleeding.

The abandoned hospital.

Flesh transformed beyond recognition by the Blood Capsule was there.

The voice echoing in my head.

So this is what kept overlapping in my vision.

Deaths.

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

Coming to this apartment was a mistake from the beginning.

But it was inevitable.

There was no escape from the start.

If I fail, the world will simply evaporate.

So what should I blame?

My weak mind?

Getting too attached to people around me, only to suffer when I see them die?

If only I had remained my original gender.

If I had stayed male.

Then with Serim noona there, couldn’t I have endured by leaning on each other like Heo Yoon and Seok Hyunmin?

These are all pointless thoughts.

Other possibilities don’t exist.

If I had remained male.

If I had been stronger.

If I hadn’t suffered.

The world would have ended.

So it’s easier to change my thinking about the future.

If I start over, I won’t be like this.

I’m just a tool needed to see the predetermined ending.

Choi Serim. Yoon Daju. Heo Yoon. Seok Hyunmin. Jung Haewon.

And everyone else I met afterward.

All of them.

They’re just characters written in a script.

Give them just enough affection, have just enough conversations, like them just enough, spend just enough time together.

No, that’s not right.

No matter what I do, everything is inevitable.

Other paths disappeared long ago.

To be precise.

The moment I make a different choice, the world…

That world collapses instantly.

The deaths of countless worlds.

The deaths of countless versions of me.

I was being subtly affected by all those deaths.

Now that the Librarian’s authority has become a powerful shield, making my mind impenetrable by ordinary means.

The only disease that could invade me was death itself.

“Hey.”

I barely opened my mouth to speak.

“Yoon Daju.”

Words and atmosphere carry weight.

A weight that would crush an ordinary person, making them unable to even speak.

But Daju seemed like she could handle it somehow.

“I really feel like I’m dying, so help me somehow.”

“…”

She’s been that way since we first met.

Daju has been staring at me blankly for a while.

“…”

“Yoon Daju?”

“Oh. Really?”

Seeing her bright smile made me feel a little better.

That’s actually better.

Who could smile so happily in this situation?

And that’s what I needed.

Otherwise, I really felt like I might die.

“But I can’t do what Serim unnie does.”

“Yeah. That’s okay.”

As soon as I finished speaking, Daju quickly got up.

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

She mutters excitedly, then brings over a suitcase.

I can guess what she’s thinking without her saying it.

“Now, let’s do all the things we’ve been putting off, one by one.”

“Does it have to be that?”

“Yes. I’ll pick out clothes for you.”

“Hah…”

I think I might have been swept up in something and made a mistake.

“Actually, I was similar to you.”

Daju keeps rummaging through her suitcase, apparently not finding clothes she likes.

I just hope there’s no swimsuit.

“After dying and coming back to life, I became a completely different person from before. Everything felt awkward. And I would be startled whenever I discovered unexpected habits ingrained in my body.”

“You were an experimental subject too.”

“Yes.”

Thud.

Daju places an outfit on the bed and dips her head back into the suitcase.

“Do you know what the experiment was? Did I tell you before?”

“…Tell me again.”

“Okay.”

Hiding behind the suitcase lid, Daju begins her story.

“Actually, the original Yoon Daju can be considered dead. She was a Foundation researcher who died in an accident while conducting dangerous research.”

“Yeah.”

“No! No, it wasn’t exactly a failure. Um… Right. I was unlucky. Actually, theoretically it was perfect! Ah, it was definitely going to succeed.”

Whether it’s her pride as a researcher or embarrassment about failing an experiment and dying, she seems quite ashamed.

Daju made excuses for a while before continuing her story.

“But someone took my corpse and extracted memories from my brain.”

“Then mixed them with other people’s memories to create a soul…”

“Huh? What? You know about that too?”

“You’ve been telling me that all along. That about a quarter of your brain is male.”

“I see.”

“So, the person conducting the experiment probably wanted to create someone with my abilities but without my consciousness.”

“Looks like they tried to mix in memories from obedient people.”

“Yes.”

Daju throws another set of clothes onto the bed.

Even at a glance, the design is feminine, but thankfully it doesn’t seem to be a swimsuit.

“…So I think my memories didn’t account for much. Probably about 10 percent of the total memories.

But the result was completely opposite.”

“Your consciousness remained as Yoon Daju, but you lost your abilities?”

“Yes.”

Daju pauses for a moment, lost in thought.

“So while I have the consciousness of ‘I am Yoon Daju!’, I don’t remember well what the original ‘Yoon Daju’s’ way of thinking, personality, preferences, or habits were like. Too many other people’s memories got mixed in. So sometimes I wonder what I’m even doing.”

“…”

“What’s even more terrifying is suddenly remembering dying painfully in unfamiliar places. But even that becomes kind of interesting if you see it often enough. It’s addictive in a way.”

“Yeah.”

“Anyway, you suddenly became a woman too. Suddenly got roles like being a Librarian and whatnot. Suddenly had to prevent the end of the world… So. That’s why I said we were similar…”

Slam.

The suitcase lid closes with a loud noise.

“Ah. Talking seriously is really killing me.”

Having finished her work, Daju stands up and strides toward me.

“Just do it. Don’t think. How do you think I overcame it?”

“With this?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Trust me.”

“You’re not just trying to fulfill your own desires?”

“Well, that’s part of it.”

The next moment.

The clothes that were on the bed suddenly appeared before my eyes.

“First, this. It’ll suit you. You’ve never tried anything like this before.”

“…”

I froze.

I don’t think I saw her take that out of the suitcase.

“I’m just going to leave.”

“You can’t leave. Do you think you can push me away and go?”

In Daju’s hand is a swimsuit from who knows where.

And it’s an extremely revealing one at that.

“Hey. Is this right? Is this how you overcome things?”

“Yes.”

“How does that work!”

“By adapting to a new daily life and getting used to the sensations. Finding joy in the process.”

If only I could argue against that.

“Right now, you only have things you must do. That’s why you’re constantly stressed.”

“Ah.”

Usually she’s just stubborn, but her persuasiveness comes out at times like this.

I just… wanted to shake off anxiety and fear for a moment.

The price was much more severe than I thought.

Almost to the point where dying might be better.

“Fine.”

With a deep sigh, I took the clothes.