Episode 232 Lee Jae-
heon woke up late and blinked his eyes slowly.
“….”
Perhaps because I was sleeping curled up, my vision was not on the ceiling but on the nightstand next to me. A withered and withered rose came into Lee Jae-heon’s eyes.
“…Water….”
You didn’t change it.
‘…No matter how much I didn’t change the water, it dried out like that.’
Maybe the room was dry.
Lee Jae-heon got up from his booth and headed to the kitchen with a vase. I discarded the water that seemed cloudy with green algae, washed the dirty vase, and placed it on the drying rack. I thought about throwing away the withered flowers, but the colors remained pretty, so I stopped. You can use it as decoration.
I cut off any stems that seemed too long with scissors and discarded the unattractive flowers. I took out the ribbon that was left over from the previous bouquet, gathered the dried flowers and tied them together, and it became a pretty decent decoration.
“Where should I put it?”
In the end, the unintentionally dried flower ended up decorating the middle of the table. Putting it in a nice little bottle made it look pretty good.
After finishing his simple chores, Jaeheon Lee looked at his watch.
“…I slept a little long.”
The current time is 3:17 PM. Although he had never overslept like this, Jaeheon Lee decided to relax as he was on sick leave. He always needed more sleep, and now he had no one to criticize for oversleeping. It seemed like this would be okay.
Should I eat rice? I had no appetite. Should we play a movie? I wasn’t interested. Should I tidy up the house? I had no energy. It’s not that there wasn’t work to do, but there wasn’t anything that needed to be done right away, and there was no one pushing me to go outside and take a walk.
Lee Jae-heon put one leg on the dining table chair, hugged it, and rested his chin on it.
“….”
Even after 10 minutes had passed, Lee Jae-heon, who had been still for a long time, muttered softly in a voice that still seemed sleepy.
“…Let’s take a shower.”
It was almost like a struggle to do something.
Lee Jae-heon washed his body moderately in the shower booth provided in a corner of the spacious bathroom and entered the bathtub that had already been filled with water. The bathtub was made so large out of vanity that there was still room for a long time even after Lee Jae-heon got into it. The temperature of the water was as cold as if it had ice in it, but I actually liked it this way.
The water in the bathtub turned red.
“…It’s cool.”
The wounds all over my body felt hot, as if they had been on fire, but more than that, a pleasant coolness enveloped my entire body. However, the pain and pleasure were only for a moment, and soon I became numb again.
I felt numb, as if my limbs and brain had been anesthetized.
“….”
My head is buzzing.
Cold sweat ran down my calm face, and my forehead was hot. It seemed as if the red blood slowly spreading through the water was staining the pure white bathtub. I thought my physical condition was not normal, but the problem was that I didn’t really care.
My mind goes blank…
“…that’s funny.”
I muttered in the cold water with a smile on my face.
“What about your first murder?”
Jaeheon Lee made his own objective judgment. In his past life, he killed people like eating food, but in this life he has never done so, so he is acting dull like this because he is influenced by that soft spirit. This means that a body that has never experienced this much pain in real life is having a hard time.
I suddenly felt funny and let out a low laugh.
“Ah, if it were a company, it would have been a mess…”
Lee Jae-heon is an old man who is very harsh. And, strictly speaking, it was almost like he was trying to punish me because he liked seeing other employees who were bothered by me like that and was happy that they were trying to take care of him.
‘It’s a lack of affection.’
Maybe that was true.
Before remembering his past life, Lee Jae-heon clearly did not like someone’s attention. Although he disliked people, he enjoyed people’s gaze and touch. I didn’t realize it myself, but Jaehyung Lee’s assessment may have been right.
Therefore, in the Lee family, where no one would accept one’s cries, people got angry when they got angry, but did not necessarily punish them. Why would you do that when there is no one to force you to worry?
“…Ha….”
Snap.
Jaeheon Lee came out of the bathtub and exhaled.
I think the fact that my thinking became slower and my body stiffened was probably due to a little more blood, but it didn’t feel too bad, even if it wasn’t good. The dulling mind and the smell of blood that assaulted his nose reminded him of his past life. I felt very comfortable. In the mirror that occupied one wall of
the bathroom
, I
saw Lee Jae-heon soaking in the bathtub. It was the face of a previous life and the body of a previous life. As soon as I waved my hand, I saw that even that was followed perfectly, and I suddenly felt like I had returned to the world of my previous life.
“Are you giving me medicine?”
I muttered softly, and the face of my past life laughed at me.
When that ugly face disappears, something else appears. It was something else.
“….”
It was as if mud had been lumped together.
If someone ate a shadow and vomited it up, would it look so squishy? The image, which shimmered as if it were a mirage, was transparent despite being black, and was one-dimensional without any sense of three-dimensionality. He had a knack for making people uncomfortable just by looking at him.
But it was a human shape.
“…Huh.”
The face is blurry enough to be unrecognizable, but Lee Jae-heon knows who it was imitating. No, maybe it’s me.
“Isn’t this too much?”
As he smiled slightly, the figure of a woman approached him.
He walked lightly with bare feet, brushed back his long hair, gently bent his knees, crawled into the bloody bathtub, and stretched out his long arms, which were pretty to look at… “I know you guys come a little later.
”
Jaeheon Lee grabbed the hand that was facing my face.
“Well, now I wonder what the content of the original novel has to do with it… but I guess I had a hard time. Just from here to Busan, it takes 8 hours for a round trip. “But how terrible is it that you came here bleeding?”
“….”
“Were you originally monsters created by the mental remnants of the survivors of the other side of the world? I thought it would reflect the characters in the ghost story, such as large centipedes, monsters, crustaceans, etc., as they appeared in the novel. Has there ever been a story about creating a monster that resembles a person like this? Well, it could look something like this. That’s possible…”
I thought about it for a moment. Should I be angry at this monster for imitating the person I love or…
“You made this up too.”
He gently took the hand he had grabbed and placed it on my cheek.
“Then I don’t think there’s any need to be angry.”
“….”
“Baby, I’m having a hard time.”
With a slight smile on his face that was not difficult at all, he hugged the monster in his arms.
Perhaps it was true that the setting that no one other than the survivor who created the monster could have any influence was true, but even though the translucent monster moved in the water, the only waves that remained on the surface of the water were Jaeheon Lee’s. Without him, this monster was nothing more than a hallucination.
Jaeheon Lee laughed slightly.
“I have a question.”
“….”
“If I die in real life, will I regress?”
As I muttered that, the monster in the shape of a woman grabbed my face with both hands as if stroking it. Lee Jae-heon burst into laughter, which was rare, because his behavior was exactly like that of someone I know.
It was a laugh that came from sincere joy.
It hurt so much.
“I think I’m going to die.”
Jaeheon Lee now admits that he is not in his right mind. If I had really been conscious, I would have double-checked the information I had researched immediately after waking up, and I would not have washed with cold water while I was feverish, and I would not have entered a bathtub full of water with my bleeding body.
And he wouldn’t have been so welcoming to a monster who only resembled his wife from his previous life.
“I really feel like I’m going to die like this…”
Still, he was in a good mood right now.
It was clear that I was going crazy.
* * *
The news that Manager Lee Jae-heon took sick leave on Monday caused quite a stir.
“…Director?”
“this is right? “Did you really take sick leave?”
If it were anyone else, you might think so, but if the person who took sick leave was Manager Lee Jae-heon, the story was a bit different.
In the first place, wasn’t he someone who came to work early because he wanted employees? Unlike ordinary employees who shudder and don’t want to go to work, Lee Jae-heon went to work early in the morning even if there was nothing going on. It’s no exaggeration to say that he’s living like an old man, but that kind of person took sick leave?
Here, the employees’ reactions were largely divided into two.
“AC… Didn’t you go somewhere to play? The sick leave is a mess, but the guy who was busy until last week….”
“I’m going to have to take care of my duties again.” Manager Lee Jae-heon, are you really saying that people are bad? “I still have a lot to do.”
“Don’t we have papers due by Monday this week? What about payment?”
It’s obvious that he cheated the first time and went out to play alone, so I feel embarrassed.
“…Really sick leave? “I see where it really hurts.”
“Yes? A person who, no matter how sick he was, never went home and suffocated in the office…”
“Is he dying of a fatal disease? “I thought my day would come one day after being so dirty.”
Second, he was a person who came to work even though he thought he was going to die, so he became deathly ill.
What they had in common was that no one was worried about Director Lee Jae-heon’s safety. If it was all karma, it would be karma… but the feelings of the Taching chicks who saw it couldn’t help but be subtle.
“…I feel strange.”
“Me too…”
“Me too.”
The survivors of Ohseong Corporation who gathered together during lunchtime were each munching on boxed lunches or sandwiches that had been delivered from a location of their choice, recalling the reactions they had when Manager Lee Jae-heon did not show up for work.
“Actually, something happened to me, so I understand, but why do I feel strangely wronged?”
Kwon Yeon-hee nodded loudly as she scribbled the beef bulgogi in her lunch box.
“’Are you the kind of person who deserves such criticism?’ Even if you want to, ‘He was a person who would be criticized that much.’ And I agreed… But then again, ‘Hey, no matter what, it’s not okay to curse at a sick person.’ I think about it… I understand again… I can’t escape from the bondage of these thoughts.”
“Meanwhile, the manager isn’t answering the phone again.”
Jeong In-ho smiled and responded to Noh Yeon-seok’s words.
“Then what else are you trying to do?”
Last time, when all the survivors gathered together, In-ho Jeong and other survivors of Ohseong Corporation invited Jae-heon Lee to their group chat room. Lee Jae-heon, who was disgusted at first, seemed to recognize his mistake on the first day of escaping from the underworld, and uploaded at least a survival report every morning.
But apart from that, from the weekend until today, Monday, Lee Jae-heon did not receive any contact, including phone calls or texts.
“….”
Jeong In-ho, who briefly remembered Detective Hong Gyeong-jun’s phone number, quickly shook his head.
‘It’s a bit strange to be so worried about a man over 40.’
Unlike the underworld, an environment where he had no choice but to cling to people, reality gave In-ho Jeong enough leeway to think with his usual cool-headed mind. While I was gradually getting used to the mannequin monster popping out of the mirror, there was no reason not to feel at ease. I don’t know the circumstances of the other survivors, but at least Jeong In-ho was like that.
When he thought about it, no matter how unreliable Lee Jae-heon was, worrying about this was not only rude but also excessive.
‘There is no guarantee that Detective Hong Gyeong-jun would know Lee Jae-heon’s private number.’
They seemed quite close at the last Survivor meeting, so I thought they must have met separately often, but that didn’t mean they knew their personal numbers. If I were to ask Hong Gyeong-jun, with whom I was already having an awkward relationship for unclear reasons, about Lee Jae-heon’s condition, it would have been better to just stay still.
“…We’ll meet again on Tuesday anyway, so you can ask what happened then.”
“Well… I think I’ll be doing something alone again rather than being really sick. “I don’t ignore contact for even a day or two.”
“Haha, the manager is probably busy too.”
I didn’t want to be swayed by Lee Jae-heon’s crazy behavior even in real life.
I was slowly getting tired of worrying that I might fall into the secret world again at some point. The survivors gradually felt like a dream about the events that took place in the other world, and each of them regained their former selves. As student Seo Jang-hwa said earlier, all the memories and achievements they accumulated are in reality, so In-ho Jeong wanted to maintain the strange tranquility of the present. .
And the day after he thought that, he was at a loss for words when he saw Lee Jae-heon with a bloody nose.
“….”
“… Manager?”
The blood I’ve been sick of seeing in the underworld.
Jeong In-ho’s spine went cold with an unknown ominous feeling.
