JKA 66

“Wh-what does that mean?”

At Hanbyeol’s sudden self-blame, Jiwoon wiped his tears and stood facing him. The situation that had befallen him was so dizzying and confusing that he couldn’t easily understand the true meaning of Hanbyeol’s words. After a long silence, Hanbyeol answered with difficulty.

“I… I know what that is.”

At that moment, Jiwoon’s eyes widened. As unperceptive as he was, he could understand at least those words. He hadn’t said ‘that person,’ but ‘that thing.’ This meant that the being Hanbyeol was referring to, the one that had just made Jiwoon flee for his life, was not human.

At that moment, Jiwoon felt a strange sense of relief. That’s right, it was impossible for a dead person to come back to life. And the coincidence of a completely different person appearing before him with such a chillingly identical face was even more impossible. As far as Jiwoon knew, Hanbyeol knew only two non-human beings, and only one of them would do something like this.

What a relief that it was just a devil’s scheme. He didn’t know why he was the target of this conspiracy, but the very fact that this devil was not his brother allowed him to breathe a little easier. But that relief was fleeting, as an unbelievable story flowed from Hanbyeol’s lips.

“I did think you looked alike. I didn’t notice from the start… since you never showed your face properly. And it’s weird, isn’t it, that a devil has a face that looks like yours. I thought you’d feel bad if I said something like that, so…”

The reason he’d realized at some point that Jiwoon and Eggyoth resembled each other but couldn’t say it right away was simple. It was because of the things Eggyoth did to him. To say that a being who crawled into his bed at night, settled between his legs, and pounced on him in his dreams wearing bizarre clothes while spreading its legs looked like you was no different from sexual harassment.

He swore he had never seen Jiwoon that way. If he had, how could he have gone around with Jiwoon so casually? Hanbyeol was not that shameless. That was why. Until then, Hanbyeol hadn’t noticed anything.

So he had rather hoped it was all just a wild guess. He had wished it was an absurd assumption. But the word ‘hyung’ had come out of Jiwoon’s mouth first as he ran out, his face pale. Hanbyeol felt as if he had been driven into a corner with no escape. Even though it wasn’t his fault.

“I didn’t know. If I had known, I would never… I would never have let you run into each other like this. I really mean it.”

“W-wait, I d-don’t know if I u-understood correctly.”

“…”

“It had th-that face from the beginning?”

“…”

“Ever since you met him?”

It felt like someone had bashed him hard over the head. The sense of relief that had briefly flickered before his eyes drained away like the tide. It would have been a relief if that were all. It felt as if someone had bored a huge hole in his body and was snatching away everything he had. Then, his vision turned completely white, as if empty.

“I-is my brother a d-devil or s-something, wh-what is it. How can that be.”

Jiwoon laughed like a deflated balloon. There’s a limit to how nonsensical things can be, how could such a kind person become a devil? Jiwoon knew well how many people had spent sleepless nights in tears when his brother died.

His brother shouldn’t have died like that. Thinking of his mother, who would laugh and say she didn’t know how something like this came out of her, and his father, who still carried a photo of their family of four smiling brightly in his wallet, that kind of death should never have happened.

He was a person who had never once let anyone down. He was a human who had always been kind, even to his eight-year-old self. His dead brother, Myung Sunwoo, should have continued to live. If someone had to die, it should have been him.

All that was left before his eyes, where nothing remained, was despair. The formless emotion strangely took on a round shape and fell with a thud before him. If there was one thing that could be picked up and put into his body, which had been completely drained of everything, it was that lump of despair rolling on the floor.

Just then, as Jiwoon swayed violently, Hanbyeol caught him. Grasping his shoulders to keep him from collapsing, he shouted at Jiwoon, who was muttering incomprehensible things as if he had lost his mind.

“No, it’s not. There’s no way your brother became a devil. It’s just that thing, for some reason I don’t know, it just took on that appearance.”

“…”

“So it’s my fault, because you and I are close. It’s just doing that to drive me crazy. Like you said, how could that be. How could your brother become a devil, there’s no reason for it.”

Hanbyeol pulled himself together. He had to, at least. He didn’t know if Jiwoon’s brother had really become a devil or not. But he had to say he hadn’t. If even he didn’t say that, what would happen to Jiwoon?

“Now I understand what that angel meant when he told me not to get involved with you. It was because he was afraid something like this would happen to you. So let’s go home for now. And once we get there…”

“Ah.”

At Hanbyeol’s words, Jiwoon felt a memory that had been submerged below the surface rise up. It was the moment Zeo had questioned him.

‘Did you see that devil bastard?’

Zeo’s voice, telling him to avoid encountering him if possible and not to get involved, echoed in his ears, and Jiwoon’s legs gave out. Hanbyeol held Jiwoon firmly, pulling him up, while at the same time thinking that he might have made a huge mistake.

“Y-you said you were with him.”

“…”

“Back then, in f-front of the pharmacy.”

“…”

“It must have been that face, b-back then too?”

Hanbyeol couldn’t answer Jiwoon’s question. Seeing his face crumble as if in self-reproach, Jiwoon was certain. Zeo knew whose face Eggyoth had. Zeo, as he had said, did not lie to him. It was just that there were things he didn’t tell him.

He could try to understand it, somehow. He hadn’t been in his right mind. Because he was a crazy person, always thinking of dying, the angel Zeo had come to him. He wasn’t entirely ignorant of the reason why Zeo, whose sole purpose was for him to live happily and not die, had hidden that fact.

Still, Zeo should have told him. He should not have hidden the fact that the devil attached to Hanbyeol, of all people, had his brother’s face. Even if he would have gone mad upon learning that fact, he should have. As long as he was living with Hanbyeol, it was bound to be discovered someday. And the same went for Hanbyeol.

Of course, Hanbyeol doesn’t know his brother’s face. But didn’t he say he thought they looked alike? He understands the feeling of it being difficult to say. But still, even so. How could everyone say nothing to him. He was the one this was happening to.

“That devil is not your brother, Jiwoon.”

Hanbyeol said, desperately making eye contact with Jiwoon. But Jiwoon’s eyes, their light extinguished, were as hazy as a dead person’s.

“There’s no way… you know it’s impossible.”

“I-is it because I l-live so pa-pathetically?”

“…What?”

“B-because you thought I might d-die?”

Because you were afraid I would try to kill myself if I found out my dead brother became a devil? With tears streaming from his eyes like a dripping faucet, Jiwoon met Hanbyeol’s gaze.

“That’s right. I, I am that k-kind of person.”

“Jiwoon.”

“I, I am that kind of person, but…”

“…”

“I know that, but…”

Jiwoon’s face crumpled in an instant. He felt so frustrated that he couldn’t fully convey the feeling he was experiencing. He didn’t know how to explain this feeling of having hit rock bottom. He could only say that everything happened because he himself was inadequate.

If he had been a dependable person, a person with a strong will who could get through anything, in other words, a person like Hanbyeol, no one would have hidden this fact from him. He knew they would have pointed it out as something he had to know. So how could this be described as anything other than pathetic?

He had lived his life making many excuses for why he had to live this way. Because his parents only saw him as a replacement for his brother, because he wasn’t good at anything compared to his dead brother. Because he wasn’t big enough of a person to comfort his grieving parents after that brother died. He had thought that he couldn’t help it, being a weak human who holed up in a dark corner of a room wasting his days, and in the end, chose to keep his mouth shut.

This was the result. Those who found out everything that had happened to him were so quick to hide the truth out of pity, and they fretted that he might try to kill himself. Even now, isn’t Hanbyeol anxiously trying to soothe him? Even though he must be the one flustered by the appearance of a devil before his eyes.

So the cause of it all was him, who had remained stuck at the age of eight when his brother died before his very eyes, and had not grown at all. A clear truth that could blame no one was right in front of him, nagging him to look at it. He felt like he was suffocating.

Jiwoon closed his eyes. Ignoring Hanbyeol’s voice crying out that it wasn’t true, he pressed his lips tightly together. He had nothing to say, and there was nothing he had to say. Just then, his body was yanked hard toward something. Jiwoon was held in an embrace by someone he didn’t even know, so tightly he felt his whole body might be crushed.

*

The house Jiwoon had left felt excessively empty. Sitting in the small one-room apartment, Zeo thought of Jiwoon. The image of Jiwoon trailing after him, begging him to order something to eat, was vivid. It had only been a couple of hours since he had gone out.

Jiwoon, with his shoes on and standing at the entryway, hadn’t left right away but had stood there stiffly and suddenly made a ridiculous threat, telling him not to follow under any circumstances. He hadn’t been scared by that kind of display. He just wanted to do as Jiwoon wished.