JKA 83

As soon as school ended, he was loaded into a car and headed for an academy. When that academy finished, he was loaded like a piece of luggage again and arrived at another academy. The boy, arriving home only after the sun had completely set, picked at his food, barely eating, and then, without any time to rest, sat face-to-face with his private tutor.

1129, along with Seonwoo, had been watching this entire routine for several days. The boy’s face was always dark, day and night. The house was as quiet as a mouse, as if the funeral had still not ended, and the boy held a pencil at his desk until the very moment he fell asleep.

“It wasn’t this bad.”

Watching the boy vigorously erasing a wrong answer with an eraser, Seonwoo placed a hand over his head, only to see it pass right through without touching. He clenched his fist tightly. The boy, untouched by the comfort, had eyes brimming with tears, which soon fell, drip, drip, onto his workbook.

But there was no sound of crying. He only kept wiping the corners of his eyes with the back of his hand, lips pouting. Just like he had been erasing the wrong answer with an eraser.

“…It’s not that I didn’t know. Still, I didn’t think it would happen this quickly.”

“What didn’t you know?”

At 1129’s question, Seonwoo let out a sigh.

“I knew Mom would treat Jiwoon the same way she treated me, but it hasn’t even been that long since I died… I didn’t know she’d do the exact same thing.”

“……”

“I hoped she wouldn’t do this to Jiwoon. If I’d known this would happen, I would have written a will or something.”

“This happened to you, too?”

Seonwoo nodded his head in affirmation. Of course, they hadn’t been like this to him from the very beginning. Because his parents both worked, he had gone from one academy to another until the evening, but that was all. They began to make him study so intensely after Seonwoo started winning awards at a math competition he had entered just for the experience.

As the award certificates piled up one by one at home, the time he spent at academies increased. Everything went wrong when his parents’ goal, regardless of Seonwoo’s own will, was set on sending him to a prestigious boarding high school.

The things he wanted to do, his dreams, and such things grew fainter and fainter, and his life became one of carrying the hopes that others wanted. It happened so naturally that by the time he realized something was strange, too much time had passed to turn back.

At first, he liked the attention that was poured on him. He was happy to see his parents’ faces light up over a single report card, and he was even pleased that their lives revolved around him. But from a certain point, it began to feel like a leash. It didn’t take long for him to start feeling afraid of their faces, which would cloud over at the slightest mistake.

Still, it was okay. He didn’t hate studying. It wasn’t as enjoyable as it used to be from the moment he realized it was something he had to do for someone else and not for himself, but it was bearable.

“It wasn’t bad for me. Sometimes it was annoying to be studying when others were playing, but it was just about that much.”

“……”

“So I kept studying hard until I died.”

Looking back now, he couldn’t understand why he had studied so hard when he had already decided to die. Hadn’t he studied with foolish diligence for an exam he might not even be able to take before coming to his home in Busan? He thought maybe it was because his mind couldn’t be calmed.

“I didn’t know when I would die. As you know, my wish was just to die suddenly. I asked to die in an accident, without even me knowing.”

“Why did you want to die?”

Seonwoo absolutely did not answer that question. It was the same no matter who asked. Even though 1129 had asked, he didn’t expect an answer. It was because he didn’t think Seonwoo would single him out to tell him the reason. But as he stared blankly at Jiwoon, who was still solving problems while sniffling, he slowly opened his mouth.

“There was a girl I liked.”

Seonwoo continued, murmuring as if he were staring into empty space. A faint smile hung on Seonwoo’s lips, as if he were reminiscing about that time.

“She was pretty and kind. When I was studying in the study hall, I would sometimes pretend to stretch and sneak a look at her. She said she wanted to be a diplomat later, you know? So she studied really hard.”

“……”

“To be honest, I just… saying this might be unfair to my other friends, but. I just did it. My mom and dad had already set the goal, and if they told me to do something, I just did it. But she wasn’t like that. I was so envious of that, and it looked so cool.”

A person with a dream, a person running with all their might for that dream—how cool and amazing they seemed. Whenever Seonwoo saw that girl, he felt himself becoming infinitely small.

“But then she got badly hurt. And not long after that, she went to heaven first.”

“……”

“The day right after her funeral was the midterm exam, you know? It wasn’t that I wasn’t going to study, I just didn’t know what to do in a situation like that, so I called my mom. But do you know what she said?”

“……”

“She told me not to stay at the funeral home for long and to go study right away. She told me to take my workbook with me since I might forget. To her funeral…”

“Did you take it?”

“…Yeah.”

“……”

“I took it. Just as she told me to.”

“……”

“My head was filled with only thoughts like that, you know? I should have told her she was cool when she was alive. That I respected and admired that side of her so much. That I really hoped she would achieve her dream. But when I took the workbook as I was told, my mind went completely blank.”

The workbook in his bag kept nagging at him. Its weight was so distinct, and so heavy, that it felt as if his whole body were sinking into the ground.

“How many workbooks must she have left unsolved, how many blank spaces must remain? There must be a mountain of questions she will now never be able to solve. Without being able to write any answers, just like that.”

“……”

“I felt like a monster. I, who carried all of that with me just because someone told me to.”

“……”

“It was truly horrible and I hated it.”

Episode 56

It didn’t take long for a small sense of disgust to swallow him whole. Though he hadn’t noticed, as he faced each of the many emotions that had always lurked around him, he felt himself become more and more pathetic. The strangest thing was the sight of himself and his surroundings, not letting go of a pen even in that dark and heavy atmosphere.

It wasn’t that he questioned the act of returning to daily life itself, since everyone has their own lives. However, he had to wage an endless battle with the question of whether living like this was the only right answer. Above all, Seonwoo wondered if the daily life he had to return to was really that valuable.

To him, daily life was a repetition of meaningless acts. He didn’t have a dream he wanted to pursue fiercely, and even his life plan wasn’t one he had set for himself. Looking back, he had been enduring every day with all his might, to the point that it felt strange that he had lived so placidly.

The funny thing was that there was no one to whom he could vent those feelings at the time. Even he himself, back then, didn’t know what the problem was and had followed that advice as he was told. He, who knew nothing but how to study, thought that no matter how hard he tried, he could never become something better than that girl who had died.

“So I told them. I said I didn’t think I could go on like this, that I wanted to quit school. I told them that I didn’t really have anything I wanted to do, and that I didn’t think I could study with a heart like this. So, do you know what they said?”

“What did they say?”

“That it was because I was too young.”

“……”

“They said it was something that wouldn’t matter after time passed, and that I was just looking at everything negatively. And then they moved on as if it were nothing. The funny thing is, in that moment, I even thought, ‘Maybe that’s true.’ I was always like that.”

“……”

“When that girl died, and even after she died.”

He wanted someone to confirm whether his own thoughts were right or not. As if there were a correct answer. And then he just lived by leaning on the conclusions others made. As if his own thoughts weren’t important. Thinking about it now, it was more accurate to say that it wasn’t that they weren’t important, but that he didn’t even know how to think for himself.

After that, Seonwoo started studying again. He did it more fiercely to turn away from the countless emotions. As he focused only on and clung to solving problems that had correct answers, his grades never dropped. And then he died. To some, it was a death of unknown cause, but not to Seonwoo.

There was a memory he wanted to forget. It wasn’t that he wanted to forget the death of that girl itself. He wanted to erase the image of himself standing there that day, at that moment, with a bag containing his workbook. Even for a very short time, how nice would it have been if he had focused not on something like studying, but on the grief of losing that friend?

But he couldn’t. Even while feeling like a monster, from a certain point on, he ran away from that emotion as well. Later, he became numb to everything. Then one day, out of the blue, he was looking at a workbook when his vision spun and a wave of nausea surged up, and he ran to the bathroom and threw up everything inside him.

At that moment, for the first time, Seonwoo felt a sensation of something clearing up, becoming vivid. That was the feeling of wanting to die. That it would be better to die than to live like this. That if he stayed like this, his life would be nothing but that of a puppet. But he didn’t have the courage to die. That’s when the demon came to him.

He knew that every word the demon uttered was sophistry, but at that moment, the only one offering him sweet comfort was that demon. The words that he could be at ease anytime felt like heaven in that moment. If I die, what will happen to the people left behind? Such thoughts occurred to him, but later on, it no longer mattered.

I’m in so much pain, so why should I have to think about others? A sudden anger even welled up. What’s the point of talking about it when it’s just a child’s tantrum? Even if I complain, in the end, I’ll have to return to my desk and solve workbooks until I throw up. Who is in a position to worry about whom?

“It’s empty and absurd, isn’t it? That’s why I didn’t tell you. If I told you, I’d be nothing more than someone who died because they didn’t want to study.”

“……”

“But look at this. The way they’re treating Jiwoon. Do Mom and Dad even remember what I said?”

If they remembered even a little bit of what he had said back then, of that conversation, they could never be like this. Seonwoo pressed his lips firmly together as he looked at Jiwoon, who had been made to carry something that Seonwoo himself couldn’t bear and had simply let go of.

1129 said nothing. Instead, he watched Jiwoon with Seonwoo. Jiwoon, sniffling as he densely filled in the blank spaces without even knowing if his answers were right or wrong, was unable to produce any answer at all to the greatest sorrow that lay before him.

That image seemed to prove Seonwoo’s answer when he had said there was no guarantee he wouldn’t die even if he came back to life. If he had been revived according to God’s will, it would have been Seonwoo, not Jiwoon, sitting in this spot.

“Jiwoon, hyung is sorry. Hyung is really… sorry.”

Seonwoo offered an apology that could not reach him, his head bowed in guilt. Even if he changed his mind and came back to life, Seonwoo, who was not confident he wouldn’t die again and, separate from his apologetic feelings for Jiwoon, simply could not find the courage to return, was frustrated once more.

1129 could not fully understand Seonwoo. While at the Decision Depository, he had seen the lives of countless humans. Human lives were at times cruel to the point of being excessive, but most of them shone brilliantly. Everyone had their own misfortunes, and their own happiness. To 1129, all of it was beauty.

That was why he couldn’t understand those who forsook that light themselves. 1129 revered life itself, something that cannot be judged by human values. Everything was sufficient in its very existence of being alive. That was why every death was regrettable to him. He had always asked why it had to be that way—because everything was overly fleeting, because no matter what life one lived, its end was a sorrow for all.

To such a 1129, the act of taking one’s own life was incomprehensible. Humans were beings who couldn’t even enjoy every moment, who would regret and lament only after it had all passed, so he didn’t know why they would rashly forsake the many things that remained ahead. But for a very brief moment, 1129 thought that perhaps the reason he didn’t know was because he was not human.

And so, Myeong Seonwoo, the eighteen-year-old who had brought an end to his own existence by borrowing the hand of a demon, was offering an apology that Jiwoon couldn’t even hear when he suddenly looked back at 1129. Towards 1129, who was watching him without a word, Seonwoo slowly opened his mouth.

“I have a favor to ask.”