Chapter 1
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I lowered my hand and touched my thigh.
I felt a damp and sticky liquid.
I reached further down.
What should have been below my two thighs was gone.
Instead, warm red blood was draining the warmth from my body.
“Haa…”
What on earth had happened?
I couldn’t remember.
Who am I, and what has happened?
My vision started to blur.
Just then, familiar faces appeared.
I wanted to reach out and ask them for help.
But.
“Ah…”
The arm I struggled to extend didn’t have a hand.
Only a blunt, severed piece of flesh pointed toward them.
“What happened…”
I tried to speak but stopped.
With the vanishing pain, the memories I had forgotten came flooding back with the hand that swept down my chest.
A gaping hole in the middle of my chest.
“I’m sorry… I’m really sorry.”
The sword of the friend who promised we’d stick together pierced through my back and came out of my chest.
The hand continuing downward moved to the long slash on my side.
“No, it’s thanks to you.”
That guy next to me had swung a sword into my staggering side and completely brought me down.
“I won’t say I’m sorry. This was the only way… the only way for us to survive.”
They had cut off my legs after I had collapsed to the ground.
As everything came back to me, a bitter emotion swept over me.
Yeah, I had a feeling this would happen one day.
It made sense.
The ones we were up against were terrifying enough to make them act like this.
But at the same time, it didn’t make sense.
Given the bond we shared, couldn’t they have sent me off cleanly?
Why were they so ruthless?
“Thank you.”
The words of my closest friend, spoken as he severed one of my arms, were the hardest to understand.
Not “I’m sorry,” but “thank you”…
Though my body grew cold, my heart burned with rage toward the comrades I had thought of as family.
“Why… why go this far…”
I already knew why I was dying.
What I couldn’t comprehend was how they could inflict such terrible pain on me.
They all bit their lips and avoided my gaze.
They must have felt sorry.
“Park Chung-ho contacted us.”
Of course.
He was the one we were trying to take down.
They must have been afraid.
After all, we had inflicted irreparable damage on South Korea’s largest guild.
“We decided to join Chung-ho Guild.”
“What…?”
“As a condition for joining, Jang Han-bit asked us to kill you in the most brutal way possible.”
The one who had first stabbed me in the back gripped his bloodstained sword in a reverse grip.
With hands soaked in my blood, he approached me with the sword he had used to stab me.
“In return, he promised to forget everything and acknowledge us. I’m sorry, and thank you.”
The heavy sword placed right above my heart plunged deep into the ground.
So this is what the pain of death feels like.
It’s not as painful as I thought.
Compared to the pain I’d endured in life, it felt rather mundane.
Knowing the truth of everything and enduring the torment of being forgotten had been far worse.
It was almost refreshing.
“I won’t wish you farewell.”
But neither did I resent them.
Trusting Chung-ho Guild, huh.
They were likely staring at the end of their lives without even realizing it.
“Such an unlucky life.”
If the Grim Reaper asked if I had any last wishes, I’d want to face the days of regret once more.
If I could turn back those regrets, if I could go back and make different choices.
I would sell my soul, even to a devil, if it meant I could.
Thump.
“Please…”
As death approached, a torrent of anger, frustration, suffocation, and sadness welled up.
I screamed.
I cried out to anyone who might be listening.
If you’re there, please hear my story!
A foolish lamb is here before you!
A lamb filled with resentment, teetering on the edge of becoming a demon!
You, the one I never once believed in!
The one who never listened to my story!
Please, hear my plea and grant me one more chance!
I beg of you! Please!!!
Grant me a chance to turn back this life of regret!!
“God!!!!”
If you’ve been ignoring me until now…
I’ll consider it a mistake.
Just once… please, just once, turn your eyes back to me…
In the stillness where no one could hear, my cries vanished into the pitch-black darkness, reaching no one.
Perhaps someone might be listening to this story.
= = =
“Uh, ugh!”
Thud!
I scrambled to get up but felt a sharp pain as I fell.
“Ow…”
I tried to touch my back, but I couldn’t reach it.
Rolling on the ground, I looked around the dark surroundings.
“Is this hell?”
A pitch-black space with not a single ray of light.
“Ugh.”
The overwhelming stench hinted that this place was filled with rotting corpses.
I held my nose and groped around with my remaining arm.
“Huh?”
I felt that both legs were intact, and my arms were perfectly fine.
The pain I had felt just before death was completely gone.
Apparently, in hell, even if your limbs had been severed, they’d attach them back for you.
“Huh?”
Then, my hand touched something.
The cold and hard texture reminded me of a wall.
I moved my hand slowly along whatever it was—whether it was a wall or furniture—to examine my surroundings.
Rustle.
Amid the hardness, I grabbed something soft and cloth-like.
I didn’t know what it was, but as I unfolded it to the side—
“Ugh.”
A blinding light flooded over me, stinging my eyes.
For a moment, I writhed in pain from the intense brightness, but as my vision gradually recovered, I realized where the light was coming from.
“A streetlight…? Does hell have streetlights too?”
The streetlight wasn’t particularly bright.
But for some reason, even its faint light felt overwhelmingly intense.
“Huh?”
I tilted my head slightly.
Looking out from this place, which seemed to be on the second floor, the surroundings, including the streetlight, felt very familiar.
The faint streetlight that flickered occasionally and the tall utility poles standing in a line.
Even the sight of the drunken man who appeared every evening without fail in the distance.
The more familiar everything became, the more dissonance arose with the thought that this place was hell.
‘It’s too identical.’
Like finding an old student ID in a dusty drawer and recalling forgotten memories.
The drawer of my memories began bringing forth recollections that matched the scenery before my eyes.
Before long, I realized.
This place was a scene I saw every day in the dark past I had tried to forget.
‘Then, where am I standing?’
I turned around to face the dark space I had thought was hell.
The perfect alignment of my memories with the view outside abruptly sent chills down my spine as I looked at the room.
Because this was my old room, where I had lived as a recluse who never stepped outside.
“This… what is…”
I had heard that extreme surprise could render you speechless, but experiencing it firsthand was a first for me.
Though the dark past wasn’t clear in my memory, I was certain.
This was the room I had lived in long ago.
I slowly walked, examining the room illuminated by the streetlight.
A pile of trash in one corner and food left so long it had grown moldy.
The unbelievable sight perfectly aligned with the vivid memories in my mind.
“I used to live in a place like this?”
I awkwardly found places to step and moved forward.
I picked up a photo frame from a dust-covered drawer.
[Our eldest son’s graduation day.]
Between smiling parents, stood my past self, not smiling.
Thud.
“Huh? What’s this?”
A small object fell from the frame, and I picked it up to examine it under the streetlight.
[Bang Hyukmin]
It was an old resident ID I had used as a child.
Tick. Tick.
The sound of a clock ticking in the quiet room drew my gaze.
11:12 PM.
An insignificant time in a corner of the darkness of a past I wanted to erase.
I couldn’t help but wonder what hell wanted to show me.
“Son?”
An unforgettable voice came from outside the door.
It was my mother’s voice.
“Would you mind cleaning your room a little if you’re okay with it?”
Hearing her careful voice, treating even a worthless son as precious, my eyes welled up without warning.
My chest ached suddenly, and her small voice made my heart tremble.
“Are you okay? Son? Can you say something?”
“Yes, I’m okay.”
I replied in a muffled voice.
Tears soaked my throat, making it quiver, and my chest as well.
“I’m opening the door now~”
The sweet voice of my kind mother.
The dark door slowly opened, and the silhouette of my mother against a light brighter than the streetlight shielded my eyes from the glare.
Thanks to her, I didn’t squint.
Instead, my nose stung, and tears streamed down.
If this was hell, so what? If it was heaven, so what?
It no longer mattered.
Though it was a dark past, it held the happiest memories of my life.
If I could live in this memory, then what would it matter where I was?
This time, I wanted to say the words I couldn’t say in the past.
“Mom, I’m hungry. Please make me a meal.”
I smiled brightly at my mother and wiped away a single tear rolling down my cheek.
= = =
I devoured the food ravenously.
I didn’t understand why I had lived like that back then.
I just hated the world and wanted to be alone.
Later, I dismissed it as a common case of adolescent angst that spiraled into a mental illness and moved on.
But no matter how much I thought about it, I regretted those days, when I had called my family selfish to justify my actions.
“Eat slowly.”
Tears welled up in my mother’s eyes.
Whatever made her so happy, her flushed face and teary eyes held a bright smile.
Just stepping out of my room brought her so much joy.
Looking back, I regretted not realizing this sooner.
I stopped eating and just stared at her joyful face.
To think she was this happy.
What had locked my young heart in darkness, preventing me from giving her such a simple happiness?
Seeing her holding back her joy and watching me cautiously, as if afraid I’d retreat into my room again, made my chest ache.
I decided to overcome it.
“Can you give me some trash bags and a vacuum cleaner?”
“Huh? What did you say?”
“I’m going to clean my room.”
Unable to contain her joy, she covered her mouth with her hands to stifle her tears.
Smiling brightly at her, I decided to fix the mistakes of the past, whether this was hell, heaven, or a fictional creation.
“I won’t lock myself in my room anymore. I’m going to clean everything.”
Her radiant smile, brighter than any light, even the glaring fluorescent bulbs, reached my eyes.
= = =
I stopped my mother, who offered to help, and insisted on cleaning the room by myself.
My body seemed to have reverted to how it was back then, as I struggled to even lift a single trash bag I had packed lightly.
I managed to clean everything, but the smell and other impurities had built up for so long that it would take more than this to get rid of them.
By the time I finished cleaning, it was already late into the night.
I lay down on a dust-covered blanket.
Outside, my parents’ joyful voices didn’t stop, as if they couldn’t contain their happiness, even waking my father from his sleep.
“Heh.”
A chuckle escaped me.
“Ugh.”
It was then.
A sudden headache swept over me, and dark memories from the past flickered through my mind.
“Ah… ah… your father… your father is gone…”
“Please… please save me… please save my mother….”
“Ah… ah… how could this… how could you do this?! Why… why even you, the last one remaining…”
“What? You’re saying… it wasn’t an accident?”
The horrific past that wiped the smile off my face in an instant.
The unforgettable disaster that forcibly ended the darkness I had lived in as a recluse, only to thrust me into an even greater darkness.
And then, a name came to mind—a name that had led me to my death.
Chung-ho Guild.
Guild Master Park Chung-ho.
Hanbit Capital.
CEO Jang Han-bit.
Grit.
The very mention of those names sent uncontrollable rage coursing through my body, to the point where I clenched my teeth.
Squeeze.
My bony hands, which had struggled to even hold a trash bag, formed a fist.
Then, with a sigh, I shook my head.
“If this is some kind of last supper before going to hell, just take me there already.”
I buried my face into the dusty pillow, along with my regrets and fury from before I died.
Hoping to let go of my regrets like a fleeting dream with just one sleep, I closed my eyes quietly, tucking away love, gratitude, and happiness deep within my heart.
But…
“What… is this?”
It seemed this wasn’t a dream.
7:12 AM.
A stuffy nose filled with dust and the sharp sting of morning sunlight on my squinting eyes.
Hyukmin’s expression, waking up to this perfect morning, shifted every moment, second by second.
He had slept and woke up feeling refreshed.
So why hadn’t he escaped this illusory situation yet?
At that moment, the best method to answer his curiosity came to mind, and he immediately acted on it.
“Status Window.”
Fwoosh.
As lights burst forth in the air and the truth appeared before him, the barriers of logic that had blocked his understanding began to dissolve one by one.
But he couldn’t suppress the scream that burst from his mouth as realization dawned on him.
“Th-this is impossible!!!!”
—
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