JKA 71

As soon as he came to his senses, Jiwoon shot upright, gasping for breath as if he had woken from a long nightmare. Still, things didn’t feel real, so he pointlessly reached out his hand, clenched it into a fist, and then released it. Looking around, he saw that he was in a hospital.

Jiwoon quietly retraced his memories. So, he had gone out to meet the sunbaes from his film club, and there he saw his dead brother, who had appeared claiming to be the new actor they had found. He was not human; he was the demon who had been relentlessly pursuing Hanbyeol all this time.

Why the demon had the face of his dead brother was a mystery, but recalling his conversation with Hanbyeol, it seemed he’d had that face from the moment he first appeared. Was he a demon disguised as his dead brother, or had his dead brother truly become a demon? He didn’t know yet.

Unable to resolve that question, he had tried to somehow collect all the emotions churning inside him, and then he had lost consciousness. He had wanted to ask why they hadn’t told him from the beginning, if they really couldn’t trust him that much. But that was the truth, and a wave of sorrow washed over him.

They probably couldn’t trust him. Wasn’t that only natural? Who could tell the truth to someone like him, who hadn’t moved a single moment past the day his brother died, who was always chanting that it would have been better if he had died instead?

But they should have told him. Others might not have known, but he, of all people, should have. Wasn’t he a party to this matter? He had to know how, just why the demon had that face. Even if no one else knew, shouldn’t he have been the one to know? That face belonged to his brother. It was Myeong Seonwoo.

Jiwoon hated his weak self. What’s more, he couldn’t figure out where this unbearable sense of betrayal was coming from. He knew it was no one’s fault, yet he wanted to pour out all these feelings onto someone.

Why did you make me into a complete fool? How could you hide it when you knew everything? But he couldn’t quite think of who that target should be. There was no one who deserved such resentment, yet he kept wanting to grab onto someone, to cry and cling to them. He had never had such a person in his life.

It was strange. A peculiar sensation, as if he was on the verge of remembering something, swept over his entire body. Suddenly, Jiwoon’s gaze fell on the empty chair next to the bed. Jiwoon stared blankly at the chair, as if mesmerized by something.

It felt as though someone had been here all night, whispering for him not to die. He didn’t know who it was, and he knew there was no one who would do such a thing, but Jiwoon desperately tried to recall that presence. There was something. He had forgotten it completely, but he felt certain he had heard such a voice.

But just then, someone pulled back the curtain that had been drawn around the bed and entered. The moment Jiwoon saw the face, he let out a sigh of realization, “Ah.”

“You’re awake. I’m glad.”

The person who naturally sat in the empty chair, meeting Jiwoon’s eyes, was 17. He let out a sigh of relief as he looked at Jiwoon.

“There are no major issues. They said you likely fainted due to extreme stress.”

Jiwoon stared at 17 without a word. As soon as he faced 17, his complicated mind became strangely clear. He couldn’t remember what he had forgotten, nor what he had been trying so hard to recall. But he still felt uneasy inside. It was suffocating, as if something was lodged in his chest.

“…I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

At Jiwoon’s question, 17 let out a small sigh. At that moment, Jiwoon confronted the stuffiness within himself. Yes, it was because 17 hadn’t told him about the demon. 17 had definitely met the demon before. He had seen that face, so he must have known full well who it was, but he hadn’t told him.

But was that something to be tormented by such a gut-wrenching sense of betrayal? Jiwoon couldn’t tell. Logically, he fully understood why he hadn’t told him. It was upsetting, but he also knew it couldn’t be helped. But why did he keep feeling this way?

17 was merely an angel who had come down to help him. He had helped him in many ways, and Jiwoon trusted him, but he hadn’t thought of him as special enough to feel such a terrible sense of betrayal. If Hanbyeol had been here instead, he felt he could have resented him, asking why he did it. Although, he had already done all of that before fainting.

“For not telling you about the demon’s face.”

“…”

“I knew you might encounter him someday, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell you properly. At first… I hid it because I thought I should investigate more before telling you, and after that, I was so worried about you, Mr. Myeong Jiwoon, that I couldn’t get the words out.”

“S-still, you should have told me.”

Thinking of his brother, the corners of his eyes grew hot. The tip of his nose tingled, and his chest tightened. The moment he faced that face he thought he could never see again in his life, the emotion that came before longing was guilt. An overwhelmingly huge emotion washed over him, and he couldn’t bear it without running away.

“H-how could I be the only one who d-didn’t know? Other people might not know, but… I, I’m the one who absolutely h-had to know. It should have been that way, shouldn’t it?”

He had been nearby. Though invisible, the demon with his brother’s face might have been hiding by Hanbyeol’s side, watching him. The thought alone felt like it would drive him mad. Did that mean that while his brother had become a demon, he alone was struggling to somehow survive? He had crossed a river of no return.

“Y-you made me into a f-fool… a f-fool who knew nothing. You made me like that…”

“That’s not it.”

“Then what am I, if not a f-fool?”

“…”

“A p-person who d-died because of me became a d-demon and was l-lurking around my friend. And I was trying to h-help with that. W-when I don’t even know how to do anything properly, I was just making a fuss!”

Jiwoon’s face contorted. His throat kept catching, so he couldn’t even raise his voice. Don’t say anything, what’s the use anyway. There was no one listening; no one had ever properly listened to him. As that thought came to him, it felt as if someone was shoving a fist down his throat.

In that moment, Jiwoon realized. Ah, the one I wanted to resent and blame wasn’t someone else, but myself. There had been no one to listen, so I had given up on speaking altogether; there was no way such a person would be by my side now.

17 was the same. He had helped him a lot, and he had been helped by him, but this person too was someone who would one day leave him. He wasn’t human, so he couldn’t be with him forever. Hadn’t he made that clear from the moment he first appeared?

Therefore, he didn’t need to listen to this resentment of his. But he silently listened to every word he spat out. Of course, that was the duty of an angel. It was his mission to make sure he didn’t die. That was the reason he sought him out, his purpose. He had simply come on someone’s orders.

Jiwoon’s head began to throb with a strange ache. When he thought about 17, everything about him was so clear it was vivid, but that very clarity tormented him. This wasn’t it. He couldn’t say exactly what ‘it’ was, but the one thing he was sure of was that this wasn’t it.

There was a memory he wanted to recall, but only other things kept appearing vividly before his eyes. They held him captive, as if there was nothing else but this. For some reason, everything felt like a lie to Jiwoon. He even felt as if he himself was going crazy.

“That is not what happened, Mr. Myeong Jiwoon.”

17 placed his hand over Jiwoon’s trembling one. Amazingly, Jiwoon’s shaking subsided in an instant. 17 looked at Jiwoon anxiously. It had only been a few hours since he had erased Jiwoon’s memories. If he let Jiwoon, who was about to sink into deep thought, be, he might suddenly find a clue and regain all his memories at once.

Erasing and recreating a person’s memory was a difficult task. This wasn’t simply about the difficulty of the act itself. It was because memories were intricately intertwined with emotions. Erasing memories was simple, but erasing emotions was impossible. If those emotions were touched in the wrong way, everything that had been erased would resurface.

17 couldn’t let all his hard work go to waste. Everything that 1129 and Jiwoon had shared had to exist only in the abyss, beneath emotion. He had to prevent it from ever being brought to the surface. To do that, he had no choice but to plunge Jiwoon into other worries.

“Mr. Myeong Seonwoo did not die because of you, Mr. Myeong Jiwoon, nor did he become a demon. That demon is a distinctly different being from Mr. Myeong Seonwoo.”

“…”

“Mr. Myeong Seonwoo did not become a demon. I can promise you that on everything I have. If this is a lie, I will willingly bet everything and bring your brother back to life.”

“H-how can you bring a d-dead person back to life?”

“Exactly.”

“…”

“That is what I am saying I will do. If what I am saying now is a lie, I will do so, even if it means trading my own existence for it.”

At 17’s persuasion, Jiwoon let out the breath he had been holding. The dead cannot be revived; one cannot take the place of someone who has already died. That was the first thing 17 had said after looking through the collection of complaints that he had supposedly sent.

It wasn’t that the wish couldn’t be granted, but that the problem itself was fundamentally impossible, so he couldn’t help. Even if Myeong Jiwoon willingly gave up his life, he couldn’t save Myeong Seonwoo, he had said. That was the natural order; the dead cannot be brought back to life, he had stated firmly.

Jiwoon recalled that memory and calmed his heart. If that was the case, how did that demon have his brother’s face? 17 opened his mouth as if he had read Jiwoon’s mind.

“It is impossible for weak demons to disguise themselves as humans. It is because their power is weak. So… they buy the faces of people who are already dead at an auction.”

“…W-what do they buy?”

“They cannot disguise themselves with the face of a human who does not exist at all, and disguising themselves as a living human is against the rules, so they buy the right to imitate the face of someone who has already died.”

“…”

“And among the dead, they only target those who are in hell.”

Jiwoon’s mouth fell open in shock, and he couldn’t say a word. Imitating a dead person’s face—hearing that far, he could understand. But the part about only being able to imitate people in hell was unexpected.

Does that mean his dead brother, Myeong Seonwoo, is in hell? How can someone who died in an accident go to hell? He had never committed a wrong great enough for that; it was unbelievable that his brother, who had been nothing but perfect, was in hell.

People used to say such things to comfort his parents. They said Seonwoo was so outstanding, so beautiful, that heaven had taken him first. They all agreed that Myeong Seonwoo had surely become an angel. They said they had no doubt that he had become a very capable angel there and was making someone happy, just as he always had.

But what was this? Contrary to the hopes of those people, his brother was in hell. On top of that, a demon who had copied his brother’s face was running rampant in the human world. How could there be such a cruel ending?

“Th-that’s im-impossible. It’s s-strange. Th-that can’t be, can it? M-my brother was only e-eighteen years old. E-eighteen.”

“Yes, he was too young to die. And… he shouldn’t have died like that.”

“…”

“Mr. Myeong Seonwoo’s death was an unexpected event. Furthermore, you, Mr. Myeong Jiwoon, witnessing it was also something that should not have happened.”

Jiwoon’s eyes went dead black, as if a light had been turned off. He slightly bowed his head and said nothing. It was impossible to tell if he was listening to 17’s words or if he could no longer hear them. But 17 didn’t stop. He, too, believed that even if all this was as shocking as Jiwoon said, it was something he absolutely had to know.

There were some truths in the world that could not be hidden. If Jiwoon were a human living in ignorance of things like angels and demons, it would have been right to just leave him be. The living couldn’t go about their lives trying to comprehend all the circumstances of the dead.

The living had to live. If there was someone who would grab the ankle of a person moving forward and volunteer to tell them what became of the person they loved, that person themselves could be called a demon.

Though things had turned out this way, 17 was an angel, and he regarded humans as pitiable beings. That was why he was sitting here, filling the void left by 1129, volunteering to insert himself into Jiwoon’s memories in his place.

“There are two reasons I came to you, Mr. Myeong Jiwoon. The first is because I truly do not wish for your death, and the second is…”

17 paused, thinking of 1129. That night, when the sun had not yet risen and the world outside the window was dusky, when the space felt strangely cool and deathly pale as if all color had vanished, 1129 had looked at him and spoken.

His face, flushed red and deeply contorted, was not at all angelic. He seemed to be barely holding back tears. With his fists clenched tightly, he sat in this very chair that he was sitting in now, glaring at him as he opened his mouth.

‘Don’t you ever say anything like compensation for damages.’

‘…’

‘Don’t you dare say that you came here to compensate for your damages. Do you understand? If you talk to Jiwoon like that, I won’t let you get away with it.’

1129 had said that was the condition for erasing the memories. 17 still couldn’t understand why the phrase ‘compensation for damages’ was wrong, or why 1129 was so angry.

This was clearly compensation for damages. Myeong Jiwoon had experienced something he should not have, and as compensation for that, an angel had been dispatched. He didn’t understand what other words he was supposed to use to explain it besides ‘compensation for damages,’ but 17 accepted 1129’s words. It was because he was glaring at him with such a fierce gaze. He truly looked like he had the will to crawl up from the very bottom of hell.

‘At that time, I swear to god, I’ll break your fucking neck, no matter what it takes. So, never… please. Please don’t say that to Jiwoon.’

The threat-like words had quickly turned into a plea. 17 couldn’t understand 1129. Of course, at that moment, 1129 was not an angel, but a single human being.

“The second is.”

17 chose his words, thinking of 1129.

“Because we were unable to prevent Mr. Myeong Seonwoo’s death.”

“…”

“That accident was caused by a demon. To be precise, it was the work of a demon who had a contract with Mr. Myeong Seonwoo. Mr. Myeong Seonwoo wished for an accidental death in exchange for his own soul, and in the process of the demon granting it, two innocent people were dragged into it.”

Even as 17 spoke, he wondered if this was the right thing to say. When you looked at it, Myeong Seonwoo’s death wasn’t a matter of being able to prevent it or not. It was the job of demons to grant wishes in exchange for human souls. Two innocent humans were involved in the process, but to say it was something that couldn’t be prevented was a contradiction.

It was an accident that happened because the demon who was trying to take Myeong Seonwoo’s soul at the time was inexperienced at his job. The fault for not being properly trained lay with the demon, and the responsibility was elsewhere. How could they stop every single instance of a demon taking a soul? The world was designed to allow it, after all.