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Delusive Fate

#097

※This chapter contains detailed descriptions of scenes that may trigger trauma, including extreme choices. Please be cautious when reading.

#097

“Can things really go this badly? It’s so shitty I feel like throwing up.”

Lee Han-sol thought this as he kicked a pebble on the road. His feet in mere slippers looked pale today too. His toes, visible under the slipper straps, were red at the tips as if frozen. Yet he couldn’t feel the cold. Lee Han-sol was practically the embodiment of rage.

“Everyone’s a fucking idiot. Ah, I wish they’d all just die.”

May everyone in the world go to hell. May all of humanity, without exception, eat shit. May they all just get diarrhea and die of dehydration after spending three days straight on the toilet. Lee Han-sol thought that would be the least they deserved to make things fair.

How much further can I fall? Han-sol felt newly miserable. Things not going as planned was a problem so familiar to him that it felt boring. He had always failed. From a certain point on, that is, after Jung Yi-dam had invaded his life and manipulated his mind at will, Lee Han-sol had never once succeeded. No matter what he did, Ki Baek-woo always left, he could never forget his feelings, and he couldn’t end time. Lee Han-sol was always sad. Even in moments when he thought with dry eyes that he wasn’t sad, he actually was.

For a long time, all Lee Han-sol could do was make failure a habit and normalize resignation and giving up. He helplessly waited for his heart to be depleted. In the meantime, he gradually became a person without dreams or desires. If there was one thing he wanted, it was just this:

Lee Han-sol simply wanted to be alone and do well.

When he died again, returned to the tedious time, and this iteration began, Lee Han-sol made a seemingly plausible resolution for the first time. I don’t like Ki Baek-woo at all anymore. I don’t care if that vile traitor leaves for someone else’s sake. Blankly staring at his annoying back as he walks away ends with my previous life. So this time, I’ll just live apart without having to see Ki Baek-woo’s irritatingly handsome face. Just comfortably alone, at ease… That was all.

Lee Han-sol knew his own limits well. Therefore, he never thought about enjoying a glamorous single life in a nice house and being envied by others, or throwing parties every day to gather lots of people, or finding someone to replace Ki Baek-woo among them and falling in love anew. As someone said, living happily is the best revenge, but he never fantasized about showing off with some other great guy by his side to Ki Baek-woo and Jung Yi-dam, or overcoming this wretched fate to be reborn as a brand new Lee Han-sol and live properly as a real human. He never harbored such dramatic delusions. Lee Han-sol never dreamed of anything grand. In fact, it would be more accurate to say he couldn’t dream at all.

During several iterations, Lee Han-sol was overwhelmed just trying to hold onto his sanity and endure. He cared about nothing except Ki Baek-woo. Entrusting all his consciousness and thoughts to Ki Baek-woo, he only did his best to please him. Lee Han-sol was Ki Baek-woo’s colony.

Existing like that for a long time, Lee Han-sol lost himself. He had long forgotten what his original personality was like, what he liked, what he enjoyed doing in his spare time… He had no tastes or hobbies left, and having lost his goals, Lee Han-sol was an empty can. He was too hollow to want anything. He just wished to be alone. If only he could be in a space all his own, with no one and no memories, thinking nothing and just sleeping like the dead. Because the apartment he had shared with Ki Baek-woo held too many past memories, making him think of Ki Baek-woo even when he didn’t want to.

The house in Zone A felt exactly like a minefield. A danger zone densely packed with Ki Baek-woo instead of bombs. On the sofa where he lay down to rest, on the bed, Ki Baek-woo came to mind so naturally. Ki Baek-woo leaning on the sofa looking out the window one day. Ki Baek-woo lying face down on the bed whining about something. Ki Baek-woo resting his chin on the kitchen table drinking coffee, Ki Baek-woo kissing him in the middle of brushing his teeth in the bathroom…

Lee Han-sol now didn’t care about Ki Baek-woo at all. His heart had eroded away, and he had quit all the futile hoping for Ki Baek-woo to return. Nevertheless, Ki Baek-woo had seeped into every corner of that house without exception, and there was no helping those remnants suddenly invading his subconscious. He hated that so much. Lee Han-sol didn’t want to think about Ki Baek-woo unnecessarily. That’s why he decided to move.

A space where he had never once been with Ki Baek-woo.

That was all Lee Han-sol wanted. In a new space of his own, not recalling Ki Baek-woo who had become like a conditioned reflex, just lazing about comfortably like a hibernating squirrel. At least until he died.

“That’s… not even a big deal, is it?”

But why can’t I even do that as I want? Why?

“Whyyyyyyyyy!”

Lee Han-sol screamed at the top of his lungs, not knowing what to do with the rising sense of injustice and self-loathing. “Huh, what? Is he crazy?”, “Isn’t that that guy? They say there’s some weirdo wandering around the neighborhood these days…”, “Hey, don’t look at him. You might get in trouble if you make eye contact.” The passersby were startled and muttered to themselves, but he paid no attention. He just dragged his slippers along with hysterical steps, as if venting his anger.

‘It’s all shit, shit, shit. Everything’s shit.’

Lee Han-sol was having a terrible day. He had expected it would be. The signs that today would be shitty were already visible from yesterday.