SWNOVELXO Chapter 147. Kim Gi-ryeo (3)
This was when Lee Hwa-young’s escape was confirmed.
‘What future could I possibly have living like this?’
Kim Gi-ryeo was in a state of shock after his mother vanished with 27 million won, and now his leg was severely injured in a precarious situation.
If he were just a healthy twenty-something, this kind of trial might have been gradually overcome.
But the loneliness he had lived with all his life had become a great poison in the end.
Recently, Gi-ryeo experienced various symptoms in his body.
Aside from being too lazy to eat, whenever he forced some food into his mouth, his stomach felt uncomfortable and he struggled to digest it.
On top of that, his forgetfulness worsened.
His mind always felt foggy, like it was shrouded in mist; he couldn’t concentrate enough to read even a single page of a book.
At this point, he couldn’t help but realize that there was a problem with his health.
However, Gi-ryeo made no attempts to treat it.
To be honest, going to the hospital wouldn’t fundamentally change his situation anyway.
And besides, even if he tried to solve such a mental issue, it wouldn’t really matter for him…
“Ugh.”
Gi-ryeo put down the cigarette he had lit in an ashtray filled with butts.
Nevertheless, he recognized his situation. At the same time, he made a certain decision.
When he thought about it, he had worked hard to earn money since high school through part-time jobs, yet it felt like he had never used that money for himself.
He decided to try all the things he had wanted to do with this money.
He chose to use two months’ worth of his part-time earnings for this purpose.
After organizing the things he wanted to do, a list of about twenty items emerged.
But he quickly accomplished his goals.
—————
Bucket List
① Ride a cable car
② Donate to a shelter
③ Buy and drink coffee at a cafe
…
—————
Most of his wishes were simple.
.
.
.
————=
⑮ Try dyeing hair
————=
A while later.
In order to achieve the last item on his bucket list, Gi-ryeo visited a hair salon.
“Welcome~”
Since he had never bothered with his appearance in his life, he felt awkward from the start.
“Please have a seat. What can I do for your hair?”
“Well…”
However, Gi-ryeo had a definite style in mind that he wanted to request.
Tap. Soon after sitting down, he pointed at one side of the dye color chart.
“Please dye it like this.”
“Blond? For this color, we’ll need to do double bleaching~”
“Yeah. That’s okay.”
The reason he wanted to dye it blond was…
There was a student among his classmates who always dyed his hair blond.
At the high school graduation ceremony, that very student was the president of the student council.
He was well-off, did well in his studies, and even had a nice personality, so he often spoke to Gi-ryeo, who had few social connections.
‘He was really nice.’
Thinking about having his hair done suddenly reminded him of that student council president.
Realizing he had envied that classmate all along—or maybe it was jealousy—made him want to imitate him.
“Alright, all done~ Wow, the color turned out so pretty.”
But as expected, dyeing hair didn’t really change a person much.
It just felt bland.
‘Not much.’
Still, he had now done everything he wanted to do, so he was finished.
Gi-ryeo paid for the dye job and headed home.
And then he never came out again.
.
.
.
[Device System Reset]
[All personal data and downloaded apps will be deleted, and deleted data cannot be recovered.]
[Delete All / Cancel]
The first thing Gi-ryeo did after returning home was to reset his phone.
He wanted to organize his life somehow.
Next came cleaning his room. Originally, he planned to throw out all the books in the house afterward, but suddenly remembered he had already done that.
“Oh right. I put out my textbooks last week.”
As for remembering things…
Truthfully, after achieving his past bucket list, Gi-ryeo had hoped to feel like he wanted to live again, but clearly, that attempt had been in vain.
No matter how hard he struggled, he couldn’t regain the motivation he had lost.
“I’m tired…”
At first, it was just eating and working that felt bothersome, but now even moving, or thinking, felt like too much effort.
What kind of ending do you think such a weak person faced in this state?
Afterward, Kim Gi-ryeo shut himself in at home, doing absolutely nothing.
He felt no hope for his future.
During his seclusion, it became common for him to skip meals and there were even days when he didn’t drink water at all.
Interestingly, there was a time when missing a meal would at least make him feel hungry, but as time passed, he gradually stopped feeling hunger altogether.
Days passed where he didn’t even notice what month it was or what time it was, just lying around in lethargy.
Then one day.
Gi-ryeo woke from his stupor and got up for the first time in a long while.
“Ugh…”
That day felt particularly strange.
Aside from the pounding headache, he was so cold.
Looking at his phone’s lock screen, it was July and the outside temperature was 29 degrees. But he felt cold enough to shiver?
Gi-ryeo got out of bed.
Not knowing why, he thought warm water might help, so he took a shower. It had been a while since he had shaved too.
“Cold.”
After showering, when he checked the hanger for clothes, he noticed a black suit hanging there.
It was a two-thousand-won suit set he had bought in advance to wear for when he would eventually have a civil service interview.
It was a new outfit he hadn’t worn once since checking if it fit his body.
‘Such a waste.’
Following a sudden thought, Gi-ryeo decided to try on the suit.
‘How do I even wear this?’
But halfway through, he got lazy and tossed the tie aside, rolling back onto the blanket…
That’s when he realized.
His physical condition was significantly different from usual.
Outside it was a sweltering summer day, yet he was still shivering, and most importantly, he felt so unusually drowsy that he couldn’t even utter a word.
‘Ah.’
Oh, today was the day.
Only then did he sense that death was approaching. He quietly thought.
Come to think of it, he was young and had good eyesight. If he died like this, he’d probably still have plenty of usable organs.
‘To donate organs… I feel like I heard I need to make some kind of vow or something…’
If I had known it would come down to this, I should have gone through the donation procedures in advance.
Even as he faced death, he felt no resentment toward the world. Just the thought of having abandoned patients in need of organ transplants weighed on him.
‘What a shame.’
He stared at the ceiling for a long time before eventually closing his eyes slowly.
‘If there’s anyone who needs it… it would be better for them to have it.’
Tears flowed from his closed eyes.
The man lying down let out a long sigh.
*
When he opened his eyes again, he was greeted by a familiar sight.
The faded ceiling of a shabby studio apartment, discolored and yellowish.
“…….”
As the soul of Ta-seong, I had managed to shake off the stunned Ahn Yoon-seung and barely returned home.
Just after hearing Lee Hwa-young’s name, memories began flooding back, and I had spent a whole seven hours in a faint state.
Anyway, that was over now.
With the memories just fading away, Kim Gi-ryeo’s past no longer came to mind. The body’s original owner had passed away at that point.
“So that’s what it was.”
It was now clear.
Kim Gi-ryeo hadn’t simply starved to death.
The owner of this body had lived a life filled with loneliness, and attempted to resolve that by clinging to his mother, only to be abandoned again.
His cause of death was social isolation.
Starvation.
And suicide.
Having come this far, the mystery surrounding the reincarnation gradually began to dissipate.
‘The reason Kim Gi-ryeo’s mind was empty.’
The [Reincarnation] magic I used needed to restore the corpse to a reasonably good condition before entering it.
But there were limits to that process. For instance, I couldn’t reverse the corpse of an eighty-year-old back to when they were forty.
The fundamental structure of my magic was to restore the targeted body to a state from a few weeks prior to death.
However, as you know, Kim Gi-ryeo had already…
“He had severe memory loss.”
Brain damage from severe depression.
I hadn’t factored such a thing into the potential variables of reincarnation magic.
.
.
.
8 AM.
Lee Hwa-young sat in front of her vanity, having woken up early.
Today was the day she would meet her son. Not just any ordinary son…
[(Breaking News) South Korea, 4th S-Class Emerges!]
Her son, an S-Class Hunter.
As she usually didn’t keep up with the news, she couldn’t help but hear about her child’s updates.
He had rescued the body of a D-Class Awakened at the risk of his life.
He had reportedly taken down all the Sirens.
In any case, this S-Class had shown incredible prowess just months after revealing his identity.
“Oh my goodness! Gi-Giyeo… has become an Awakened?”
Recognizing her son’s face appearing on the news, Lee Hwa-young decided to contact him.
It took her a while to find his number since they hadn’t been in touch for a considerable time, but fortunately, she had managed to find the necessary records on her phone recently.
[Blocked Contacts]
1533-09…
02-2109…
010-1287…
“Aha! 1287! That’s it.”
Honestly, it’s debatable whether there was any hesitation during this process.
She clearly remembered the last time she spoke to her son.
“Gi-ryeo, can you help mom just this once?”
It was just after borrowing 27 million won and leaving home.
Of course, she felt sorry too. But what could she have done when there were no options?
“Ugh.”
The days when she suffered from debts she irresponsibly borrowed in her youth.
While cleaning the house, Lee Hwa-young had come across Kim Gi-ryeo’s bank statement by chance.
[₩27,001,839]
Seeing such a large sum while being tormented daily by debt collectors was enough to tempt anyone.
‘There’s no way anyone wouldn’t do that.’
Hwa-young thought that her choice was of a kind that couldn’t be easily condemned.
What’s more, she had avoided coming home after choosing to leave for the sake of Gi-ryeo because it was clear she wouldn’t be able to pay back the debts through her restaurant work, and she felt guilty facing him.
Ultimately, it all stemmed from the pressure Gi-ryeo put on her to return the money.
If he hadn’t pressured her, she wouldn’t have run away.
2.7 million won. She could have just given that to the parents who raised her.
“Honestly, that child…”
But now, all those trivial worries were over.
Gi-ryeo had awakened as an S-Class in the meantime.
Her kind son, free from poverty, would surely forgive a minor mistake.
Just yesterday, hadn’t he greeted her call so warmly?
As if he had completely forgotten all about the past!
“Oh, I’ve been so worried about my back acting up again lately… finally, my luck is changing in my later years.”
Lee Hwa-young hummed as she finished her makeup.
Now, it was time to go see her son.
Not long after, she arrived at Mapo Station.
From there, she followed the main street and walked a few minutes until she finally turned into an alley.
“I’ve never been here, so I’m not sure where anything is.”
Let’s see, her son said he lived around here…
“Oh!”
Just as she rummaged through her pockets to make a call, she spotted someone walking from a distance.
A young man in a jet-black suit, like something you’d see at a funeral.
“Gi-ryeo!”
Lee Hwa-young spotted her son and waved.
The son she hadn’t seen in a long time had become quite striking in appearance.
Although she had recognized him from TV, she couldn’t help but wonder how much he was earning to afford such fine clothing.
“Did you… do well?”
Hwa-young put down her backpack and hugged her son tightly.
“I’m glad you look healthy. Even though mom has had a tough time lately, I never forgot to pray for you to be safe every day.”
Originally, she planned to explain how she had been living in the meantime.
“Gi-ryeo, now that you’re here, I need to tell you what happened back then…”
“Mom.”
“Yeah? Huh?”
But her son cut her off, bringing up a new topic.
“I have something to ask.”
He looked down at Hwa-young, his gaze piercing through her.
His face clearly bore his father’s lineage.
“Thinking back, I realize I have very few memories of Dad.”
“Huh?”
“What is dad doing now? Do you know his contact info?”
However, Lee Hwa-young never expected such a question to come up.
She was taken aback as she answered.
“What are you talking about? That man died from lung cancer ages ago. It’s been a long time now.”
“Ah.”
Did I not tell him this story before?
Hwa-young loosened her embrace, tilting her head in confusion. But her son continued to mumble things she couldn’t understand.
“There was a family history.”
The blond hunter asked an additional question to Hwa-young standing before him.
“Mom, but have I changed at all?”
“Changed…?”
“Don’t you feel like I’m different when you look at me?”
Could this be a light-hearted joke from a young man to his family?
“Well, I wonder how my son has changed…”
Hwa-young pretended to ponder but honestly, it was unnecessary.
This hunter was easily recognizable enough in terms of differences.
“Yeah. You dyed your hair beautifully! Haha, son, did you maybe get a girlfriend? Look at how nicely dressed you are.”
She said with a smile.