INV 70

Only then did those who vaguely understood the meaning of Kwon Yihyeon’s words let out sighs.

It seemed the fool who supposedly woke Jae Angshin had finally been completely bewitched by the ghost-like disaster.

“Why… do you deny someone’s existence? Even if we aren’t the same species, we can still feel pain. We know the ache of being discarded. We know the suffering of having everything about ourselves ignored… It’s the same.”

Almost everyone was certain that Kwon Yihyeon had gone mad for Jae Angshin.

“It’s a misconception to think he has no emotions. He hurts, he grieves, and he rejoices too. He isn’t different from us.”

“…”

“Of course, he was born as Jae Angshin, and he slaughtered countless lives and committed sins. I’m not saying he’s without fault. It’s right that he should pay for his crimes. But you all are denying his emotions, his ego, his existence, and even his birth… As if, such a being was never even born into this world…”

If one were sane, there would be no reason to empathize with something like a disaster.

“Why are you acting so cruelly…?”

Kwon Yihyeon was mistaken. Jae Angshin was the filth of the world. If a disaster is something that is finally conceived only when the misfortune and impurity of the universe have accumulated for eternity, then how massive of a filth must he be to be exalted even as the god of that concept of disaster?

Jae Angshin was a freak of nature that should not exist in the world. His birth was his sin. He was called Jae Angshin only out of concern that one might suffer harm by daring to belittle him; there was no one anywhere who truly held him in high regard. Except perhaps as an object of contempt and loathing.

Of course, the theories on how Jae Angshin was created vary since it happened ten thousand years ago, but whatever the theory, he was not something that should be born in a normal way.

It meant he should not be treated as a personal being with an ego.

The same as a person? Ridiculous. Just because that thing laughs or cries, would it truly have emotions? It is nothing more than a mere imitation! It likely intends to bewitch and fascinate with a beautiful shell only to gobble one up. Kwon Yihyeon, who was deceived by such a thing, is truly pitiful.

That didn’t mean they had any intention of helping him or snapping him out of it.

Regardless, they needed a shield. A bait that could be pushed toward Jae Angshin while they escaped, a meat shield. Kwon Yihyeon’s value as an existence ended exactly there. That was all.

Therefore, Kwon Yihyeon’s scream does not reach them.

“…”

It was merely denied as if it were only natural.

Kwon Yihyeon felt a final sense of devastation at the gazes that brushed past him as if looking at a stranger or a monster.

No matter how much he shouted, no one listened. There wasn’t even anyone who looked him properly in the eye.

He was so afraid of what kind of expression Gwak Deukcheon, who stood behind him, might have that he couldn’t even turn around.

‘If even the Team Leader has the same expression as the others, I feel like I’ll truly go mad…’

At that moment, Pungbaek sent a small whisper through the wind into Kwon Yihyeon’s ear.

At a volume inaudible to others, yet so only Kwon Yihyeon could hear.

“If that is so, then I shall also ask you. Have you, even once…”

The wind announced.

“Ever called that person by his name?”

The harrowing truth.

⋆˙⟡

‘No way.’

It can’t be. There’s no way.

He looked back, repeating those words to himself, but it was no use. Realization flashed like an electric current, and the shock came in the form of paralysis. Once again, a void of sound arrived. This time, it wasn’t intended by Pungbaek. Kwon Yihyeon’s mind was bleached stark white, erasing all surrounding noise and focusing all its power toward a single topic.

In the end, Kwon Yihyeon froze on the spot. All that remained in the place where the frost-laden melody had brushed past was a chill. A thrill close to terror crawled up slickly like the cold scales of a snake and bit into the back of his neck with venomous fangs. Like the moment you drop your phone and lock eyes with a doll under the bed, only to realize your house doesn’t have a doll that realistic.

Once realized, there was no turning back. Like an axe for a frozen sea, that topic shattered Kwon Yihyeon’s inner self and awakened him to the cold truth.

No matter how much he reminisced, Kwon Yihyeon…

‘Groom.’

Had never once called him by his name out loud.

When he realized that fact, Kwon Yihyeon was seized by a terrible loneliness that made it impossible to breathe.

There was not a single person in the world who called him Chacha. Even Kwon Yihyeon was now called by his name in the team, but he remained an existence whose name was never called.

‘How much longer must it be that way?’

As long as he is Jae Angshin, forever?

Must a certain existence remain nameless (Myeong) simply because of the fact they were born? Because they are a being born wrongly, because they are a person who should never have been born from the start?

‘…Wrong, it can’t be like that!’

Everyone at some point in their life must think it would have been better if they hadn’t been born. Kwon Yihyeon was the same. He wanted to die, thought he was born wrongly, and every time he saw a death on the news and the wailing of the bereaved, he thought he should have died instead. Because he was a broken puzzle piece that didn’t fit anywhere. Because even if he died, there would be no one to grieve for him. Because he was an existence that could be replaced anytime, anywhere.

Young Kwon Yihyeon, who smiled as if he were deep and fine at home while everyone at school ignored him like a ghost, created an imaginary friend to reassure his worried family. Even though, in truth, he didn’t even believe his family truly loved him. Even while telling himself he should be grateful just for being allowed to live as a child without parents. He decided to keep it a secret that he cut his arms every time he made up a false story day after day. Scarring his own body wasn’t an expression of wanting to die. It was simply contempt, resentment, and loathing toward himself for not dying when he deserved to. You’re surviving quite tenaciously. You’re getting through another day so pathetically.

Kwon Yihyeon thought that way and lived that way. All the way until his wrist was caught by his cousin, Kwon Haseon.

While everyone else merely worried indirectly, thinking the sensitive boy was at an age to have his own secrets, and failed to pierce through, Kwon Haseon kicked right through his mental barricade without hesitation. She closed the distance as if it were nothing and distorted Kwon Yihyeon’s dry face.

Not with a fist, but with a voice. With a single question of a sentence.

‘Do you wish I weren’t your family?’

While Kwon Yihyeon bit his lip in agony, unable to say anything. Kwon Haseon, like a big sister, took the lead.

She layered her tears over the tears he shed, and covered her warmth over the wounds he cut.

‘You dummy, I like that you’re my younger brother…’

That day, Kwon Haseon insisted so much that she wouldn’t let Kwon Yihyeon go that he was carried into the dinner table on her back. The adult relatives, who had been flustered by the absurd sight, smiled gently upon realizing that a painful knot had been untied through the conversation between the grandmother and Kwon Yihyeon that followed.

‘Has the youngest of our house arrived?’

‘Yes, Grandmother.’

Even if it is a birth no one desired, as long as one stays alive, the day will surely come to be welcomed.

From that day on, Kwon Yihyeon’s attitude changed, but his family never once made it a topic or gave him a look. To the boy who had finally approached after failing to find a place to rest his heart all that time, they naturally accepted his existence, as if tenderly whispering that we had been waiting for you all along.

They taught Kwon Yihyeon love.

They taught him the heart that wants to live, the desire to live well, and the ambition to protect.

It was a miracle that made him look back and think it was good to have survived.

⋆˙⟡

Everyone at some point in their life must think it would have been better if they hadn’t been born. But as long as a person stays alive, they can eventually think it was good to have lived.

Being given that opportunity is a person’s life.

Therefore, the lament that one should not have been born becoming a reality was a story on a completely different dimension. The fact that all creation regarded oneself as a person who should not have been born was also a concept on a completely different dimension.