Episode 29
After returning to the past, Jeong In-ho had a nightmare even though he could not sleep.
It was a nightmare where vines wrapped around my ankles and calves, pulling me down, just like the situation where Director Lee Jae-heon was dragged away.
At first, I couldn’t believe it when I returned to the past. Next, I briefly denied reality and then looked for something to do.
Whether the current situation was reality or fantasy, Jeong In-ho did not have the courage to see that terrible scene again, much less the foolishness to face death. He instinctively realized that he had to somehow become different from before.
Nevertheless, when I looked at Director Lee Jae-heon, who was still alive, I saw that he had not encountered the green algae monster as he had led.
Jeong In-ho felt unknown hope, disgust, and also anxiety.
‘Chief, are you feeling okay?’
‘…are you okay.’
Director Lee Jae-heon, who survived that terrible incident, really felt like he could die at any time.
He resembles a statue made by neatly solidifying intricately twisted chunks of thread or wire. From a distance, it looks like it has a good system, but as you get closer, you can see that it’s so twisted that you don’t even know what’s inside.
These are tattered strings that may break at any moment.
So this wasn’t a story about human relationships. Anyone would be angry if a machine they worked so hard to fix breaks down in an instant.
Even more so if the other person is a person or a co-worker with whom you have been together for quite a long time. Even more so if that person was so damn selfless that he saved me and my friends.
Of course, the relationship between people cannot be expressed in a few words like this, so there must be a higher level cause, but that was what In-ho Jeong thought.
To him, Manager Lee Jae-heon was still a bitch.
However, Jeong In-ho nevertheless acknowledged that this was his unreasonable resentment.
‘Are you okay?’
‘…yes?’
‘No, no. Forget it.’
Director Lee Jae-heon was the first person to read my anxiety and
asked me ‘…what’s going on?’
‘No… just tell me if you’re tired.’
He was also the only person who cared about this.
It made Jung In-ho quite emotional. He still loathed and disliked Director Lee Jae-heon, but now he realized a little that humans should not do that.
Many people would deny this, but in his opinion, Manager Lee Jae-heon was the least relaxed person among them.
Doctor Ha Seong-yoon may not have been normal, but at least he wasn’t a crazy person who cut up raw flesh like it was meat, and Jeong In-ho wasn’t normal, but at least he knew how to accept pain like pain.
Lee Jae-heon, who was not sane in any respect, could not find a definition other than ‘crazy’, to put it nicely.
But perhaps that’s why I couldn’t hate the person who walked around with a sense of discomfort wrapped all over his body, because he was so altruistic that it was so funny that it made me curse. I shouldn’t have resented myself for having a hard time.
‘It’s better than going crazy alone.’
‘….’
In the end, Jeong In-ho had to admit it. The fact that his consideration was quite comforting.
He said he would listen if I told him. He said he would answer if I asked.
In-ho Jeong first defined the person ‘Jae-heon Lee’ on a topic that he had not even had a proper conversation about before, and he solved the absurd riddle on his own.
Of course I do. It was clearly Manager Lee Jae-heon who first refused to have a proper conversation. I don’t intend to say he did a good job, but as the first person to notice Director Lee Jae-heon’s duplicity, he should have had a more plausible conversation.
First, since In-ho Jeong defined him as a riddle with no answer, Director Jae-heon Lee became a question that suited him, and In-ho Jeong did not deny that fact. That’s why it was a problem that arose.
Thinking that far, Jeong In-ho felt an instinctive sadness.
Director Lee Jae-heon did not try to drag me into reality like Dr. Ha Seong-yoon, and he was not so weak that I died without realizing it like other people, although he may have intended it himself.
The resentment that was directed at others was directed at himself, and he felt a sense of self-destruction.
In the end, it was an undeniable fact. No matter what Director Lee Jae-heon thought or what his intentions were, didn’t he shed so much blood for us?
‘Don’t follow me.’
And it would continue to be so.
I don’t know why, but the previous ‘Manager Lee Jae-heon’ is fake. The real Lee Jae-heon is a crazy person who is accustomed to pain.
However, because of that, he is an altruistic psychopath who saves people through his own sacrifice. Even though he shouldn’t have experienced any hardships since he was born with a silver spoon and a parachute, he had to go crazy in the underworld.
In-ho Jeong redefined Jae-heon Lee.
As a survivor of the underworld, he was already brilliantly crazy, but he was extremely altruistic and did not give up.
If I could save someone else with my life, I would do so. Without hesitation.
So how many more times will we have to experience this absence?
“….”
Jeong In-ho muttered softly as he looked at the sky getting brighter.
“…It’s morning.”
It was morning.
Before returning to the present, death was clearly shown to me.
It was a morning when their corpses, which I didn’t know whether the monster had killed or me killed, were beautifully illuminated.
Jeong In-ho suddenly had a nightmare.
It was a nightmare where vines wrapped around my ankles and calves, pulling me down, just like the situation where Director Lee Jae-heon was dragged away.
In that nightmare, Director Lee Jae-heon was dragged by vines and hacked to pieces, and he calmly cooled down and leaned against a tree without a single drop of blood remaining.
It wasn’t just one nightmare, it was tens of thousands of nightmares, and the hallucinations took a slightly different form each time. However, it all ended in the death of Director Lee Jae-heon.
It started with not being able to save him and ended with not being able to save him.
Lee Jae-heon was there at both the beginning and the end of this nightmare.
“….”
In the end, he couldn’t like Director Lee Jae-heon if he wanted to.
Just as we don’t love our own nightmares, we don’t call such people normal.
But Jeong In-ho did not cry because he knew it was just a dream. I wasn’t afraid of the ending that was just around the corner, nor was I sad about the repetition that couldn’t be changed.
He just stood up.
“…Are you going to move?”
“…I have to look for it soon. “I can see clearly now.”
“Then we will gather people.”
Doctor Ha Seong-yoon walked forward with his signature green smile, and Jeong In-ho made eye contact with Director Kang Min-ah, who was looking at him. He did not try to avoid that gaze as he did before he experienced death.
Jeong In-ho opened his mouth, hoping that his face would be the same as usual.
“Would you like to go with me?”
“…Please give me that too. Something like a hammer.”
“There is a real hammer, not something like a hammer.”
“Okay, hammer.”
Manager Kang Min-ah took out the longest hammer from the toolbox he handed her and touched it around as if trying to get used to the unfamiliar weight. Now, all that was left in the barrel were large and small nails.
And employee Yeonhee Kwon was quietly looking at them.
After hesitating for a moment, she asked.
“…Can we go together too?”
Yeonhee Kwon asked two students, including myself,
“It’s not bad.”
Jeong In-ho tolerated it with a smile.
He hoped he had a sincere smile on his face.
I do not hate employee Kwon Yeon-hee, who tries to protect her underage siblings.
He had the reason to distinguish who he should blame, and because the target was a young student, he would not get angry. That was enough.
However, emotions become sharper and harder as time passes. At least that’s the case for Jeong In-ho, so I just hoped that I could throw this resentment away somewhere before it became a long-lasting feeling.
Okay, so…
“Everyone says they will move.”
“It might be better that way.”
If you see Director Lee Jae-heon’s body.
I didn’t even know I was going to kill it.
* * *
“Please help me….”
Please save me.
Help me. Help me.
The mouth that muttered, “Please save me,” trembled as if it had lost its strength.
His hands were floating in the air without any will, shaking helplessly, and his voice was even worse.
“Please save me. please.”
“….”
“Please save me….”
Please help me. Help me. Please save me. I asked you to save me.
I pray endlessly, holding my hands tightly together. I felt anxious as if the sand on a sandy beach was seeping between my toes, and I felt nervousness wrapping around my ankles and running up as smooth as silk. I was so scared.
But no one said anything.
“….”
An eerie silence rings out, as if a snake is entering your ear canal.
Around that time, I always break down in fear-like resignation.
He pounds his knees on the blood-splattered dirt floor until it hurts, curls his body into a ball like a shrimp, and covers his head with his hands.
I gasp as I look at the blood on the soles of my shoes, my hardened jacket, and my hands.
When that time comes, I say.
“…sorry.”
And say it again.
“I said I was sorry.”
Even if you say that, the corpse in front of you doesn’t answer at all.
That’s right. Because it was already nothing more than a piece of meat. How can that thing that can no longer blink and has become so cold that it can talk to me?
Even if I could talk to it, I wouldn’t be able to hear its voice.
Even if he turns into a devil who crawls out of the coffin, he won’t talk to me…
Only then did I stop talking, raise my head, which I had been holding with both hands, and look at the corpse.
“…ah.”
Elastic that comes out after piercing the neck.
That short scream alerts me to my blood-soaked knees.
Wasn’t soil originally a type of thing that absorbs liquids very well?
However, the blood that flowed from the floor where I was kneeling was just flowing onto the floor, gently staining my prone body.
As I slowly raise my head and focus my eyes, dozens of dead bodies lined up behind me come into view.
Warm, fresh blood was flowing from them, piled up like a tower. It was encroaching on the entire floor.
Then, without realizing it, I count them one by one. One, two, three. And four five six seven. Another eight, nine, and ten….
After counting them all, he says that again.
“sorry.”
That was my nightmare.
It was the dream of those who died because they could not save them.
* * *
Lee Jae-heon did not dream very often.
Even if I dreamed, most of them were vague lucid dreams, which may be why I couldn’t distinguish between dreams and reality. It felt too real for a dream.
“….”
Lee Jae-heon blinked slowly and looked around.
“…It’s hard to make a living.”
The place has changed from the last time I remembered it.
If you look closely, it is a forest. If this is a dream, it would reflect reality and express the image of a forest that has been disguised, and if it were reality, it would have been rescued by the characters in the novel and are still alive.
Jaeheon Lee frowned due to his habitual headache.
My brain felt dizzy as if it had been submerged in carbonated water and then escaped, and my mind was dazed as if I had been on a roller coaster for the 5th time, but I couldn’t make a proper decision as to whether this was a dream or because of the influence of the other world.
Since I couldn’t even tell my own state, it was natural that I couldn’t understand my surroundings.
Dazed and out of breath, he was sitting quietly with his upper body leaning against the wall, when he felt a figure approaching him and immediately raised his head.
“Ah, teacher. “Are you awake?”
“….”
“I treated the wound quickly, but you shouldn’t overdo it yet…”
At the same time, I realized.
“Ah, fucking dream.”
This is a dream.
“…yes?”
“I don’t know how my dreams are all like this.”
It’s natural. If it had been real, I would have seen the other person’s face clearly.
“It gets more disgusting by the day.”
The owner who spoke to me was a smooth mannequin without any facial features. Like the egg ghost from a ghost story.
It was so disgusting and strange that it couldn’t be put into words.
Everything moved and acted like a human, but its face was plain and brown, making it unclear whether it was made of wood, and it made a creaking sound every time it moved.
Jaeheon Lee thought this description was familiar for some reason, but he couldn’t remember it properly. What on earth can you think with a body drenched in blood and a mind that looks like it has been beaten several times?
In a dazed state, he pressed my neck. I immediately applied strength and
started coughing in an instant.
“What are you doing…! “Let go!”
“…Keuuchuk….”
“No, this crazy guy…!”
Who the fuck is calling me crazy?
Lee Jae-heon wanted to refute something, but soon gave up.
There’s no way the wound would have completely healed without proper treatment, but couldn’t my arms and legs move very well? This turned out to be a dream, as I felt no pain even though my neck was pressed this hard.
‘Then I have to wake up quickly.’
Cough.
A physiological cough broke out.
He felt the uvula moving in his palm.
Several bones formed a pillar, tilted back and forth, and were crushed by strong force, twisting them one by one.
Jaeheon Lee felt like he was suffocating.
It was literally an emotion. Having died in a variety of needless ways, he acquired many senses, which were reflected in his dreams.
So this strangely delicate touch and reaction were all the result of that data. These are very small and trivial things that Lee Jae-heon, the owner of the dream, does not even need to worry about.
The way to wake up from this disgusting lucid dream was always through death, and he knew this very well, so he chose to die without hesitation.
That mannequin was so disgusting that I couldn’t stand it.
Lee Jae-heon, who felt the bones in his neck breaking and a slight feeling of vomiting, said,
“Stop!”
“Hehehe…”
I woke up with a dull pain in my wrist.
“Huh huh huh…”
“….”
“…What is it? Are you awake? “Are you really awake?”
What is this again?
‘What’s going on?’
Jaeheon Lee had to work hard to understand the current situation.
First of all, judging by the weight and pain I felt on one wrist, it seemed like the woman in front of me was stepping on it.
The same would be true for the owner of the grip strength felt on the other wrist. The woman with short hair who was crushing me looked very familiar, so she must have been a character in a novel.
Yes, in that case, there is a high probability that it is the ‘Constable Kim Yeon-woo’ whom I encountered before losing my mind.
‘…but why?’
Lee Jae-heon moved his hand again, wondering if he was still wandering in a dream, but he relaxed when he heard Police Officer Kim startle. And those distinct features and vitality were clearly different from the mannequin in the dream.
No, by the way. So what is this situation?
From what I had figured out so far, Lee Jae-heon’s hands were restrained, almost like a vicious criminal. Of course, he wasn’t handcuffed or tied with rope, but it seemed like Police Officer Kim in front of me was aiming to keep me from moving.
However, Jaeheon Lee must have lost his mind until now.
But was there a reason why his movements were restricted to this extent? If the reason is valid, Lee Jae-heon should have committed the act while unconscious.
Yes, what could I do while unconscious…
“…Ah.”
“….”
“Did I… strangle him?”
Policeman Kim was silent for a long time, but then nodded quietly with a face that looked like he was about to cry.
It was a bold and short answer that did not require a long explanation.
“…Huh.”
It’s hard to make a living.
