TRIPLE 8

Beep—

— This stop is Nagwon-dong.

As the rattling of the village bus ceased, Siyeon brushed his disheveled hair and rose from his seat. Being of a generation accustomed to smartphones, it hadn’t been easy to find his destination by asking for directions and checking maps verbally.

However, after a few minor mistakes, he had managed to arrive at ‘that place’ he had considered for his escape. Getting off at the run-down bus stop, Siyeon checked the destination sign.

Behind the ‘Nagwon-dong’ sign, Beom-young logos were hung on every redevelopment fence, along with notices stating, ‘Unauthorized Entry into Managed Area Prohibited.’

“…Is this really the right place?”

Surveying the surroundings, which were even more barren than he had imagined, Siyeon stepped inside the guidelines of the redevelopment district. He couldn’t help but regret if this was the right choice, but at present, he couldn’t think of a better place.

‘If I had gone down to the countryside where the orphanage is to avoid Chief Kang, I would have been caught immediately.’

Before being sold to the Alpha couple, the original protagonist’s first escape destination in the story was a countryside village where he had spent his childhood.

It was a place where he didn’t have a single good memory, but when a person is in crisis, they instinctively seek out a place they know to hide. And that choice had remained a massive regret. Because he was caught by Chief Kang’s lackey before even a full day had passed.

While it wasn’t described in detail, it was written that he had been beaten and molested just enough not to die. Siyeon felt a chill just from that assumption.

‘The orphanage is absolutely out. Forever.’

Excluding the orphanage, the only remaining candidates were the neighborhoods where the protagonist had been briefly adopted as a child. As you can see, since it was currently designated as a redevelopment zone, public security wasn’t great, but… there was no help for it.

There was too much risk in wandering around a place with no information while in such a broken physical state. Besides, since he had never fled here in the original work, it was the perfect place for the current Siyeon.

‘But, that debt the protagonist has to pay… does it really exist?’

『The Alpha’s Trap』 focused on a provocative storyline, so there was no solid plausibility or historical accuracy. Being a makjang (extreme/absurdist) novel, that was even more so. However, even then, there were a few questions regarding the basic settings.

One of them was about the identity of Chief Kang. Perhaps because he was a one-dimensional villainous supporting character, no backstory other than the fact that he was from the same orphanage as the protagonist was ever revealed.

Since the protagonist, who had no family, wouldn’t have had anyone to support, I wondered how Chief Kang had managed to saddle ‘Omega Hong Siyeon’ with a debt of hundreds of millions.

‘It just glossed over it by vaguely mentioning an unfortunate childhood… I don’t know.’

Should I stop blindly avoiding Chief Kang and actually confront him about whether the debt is real? I had considered it, but remembering how I had beaten him with a mop and run away, I immediately brushed the thought aside.

“This place looks strangely familiar.”

Setting aside thoughts of Chief Kang for a moment and looking around the redevelopment district, Siyeon felt a strange sense of déjà vu. It was a neighborhood he was visiting for the first time, yet somehow, the geography was familiar.

He knew that if he turned the corner, there was a dead-end alley; that if he turned around and walked three more blocks, there would be a shabby church. And he already knew that the church he had set as his destination was operating a temporary shelter.

Since the location of the church wasn’t detailed in the original work, I thought I would have trouble finding it, but….

‘Is this a memory this body possesses?’

There was an unsettling aspect to it, but hadn’t I already experienced things that couldn’t be explained with words? Deciding this might be one of the perks of a transmigrator, I chose to move on.

“What brings you here?”

As he was hovering in front of the church looking for an entrance, a middle-aged woman approached Siyeon. Siyeon instinctively felt that she, with her kind-hearted impression, was the mistress of the small church in Nagwon-dong.

“Did you come for worship?”

“No, ah… yes. Worship….”

In truth, he had come for the temporary shelter, but since they hadn’t even introduced themselves, it felt difficult to ask for a place to sleep without a roof over his head.

As Siyeon opened his mouth, hesitating, he saw her eyes widen. The mistress of the church then seemed to recall something and spoke up in recognition.

“Are you perhaps Siyeon? Seong Siyeon?”

“…Yes?”

“My goodness, how long has it been? Don’t you remember me? You used to follow Deacon Kim around so well when you were little.”

She, who introduced herself as Deacon Kim, held Siyeon’s hand tightly as if happy to see him. Her two hands were rough and calloused, but he could feel her warmth.

‘Seong Siyeon?’

There were questions, but Siyeon played along appropriately while looking around.

“Did you come here to visit?”

“Ah, I just thought of this place after a long time….”

“You’ve come at a good time. Yes, how did your leg get like that?”

“I just slipped on the stairs.”

“Oh my, you should be more careful. First, don’t just stand outside—would you like to come in?”

“Ah… yes.”

Flustered by the unexpected hospitality, Siyeon followed Deacon Kim into the shabby church. Inside the church, photos of smiling children were plastered all along the walls. Siyeon, whose gaze was drawn to one of those photos, couldn’t help but stop for a moment.

‘Omega Hong Siyeon?’

I didn’t know what the protagonist’s childhood was like, but I realized it after seeing the photo. The child in the photo who looked about ten years old was definitely the protagonist in the original work. Given his remarkably striking appearance, it didn’t seem possible to mistake him….

“Did you find your photo?”

It seemed Deacon Kim had noticed that Siyeon, who had stopped, was looking at a photo of his own childhood. Siyeon withdrew his gaze from the photo and nodded.

“The one next to you is….”

“Who, Yohan?”

Deacon Kim pointed to the child smiling brightly beside the young Siyeon. She looked at Siyeon with somewhat sorrowful eyes.

“He must be doing well in a comfortable place. Shall we pray together with Deacon Kim for a long time? For Yohan?”

Before Siyeon could even answer, Deacon Kim headed to the chapel. Siyeon, following behind her, couldn’t help but feel confused. Is this, too, a memory of Omega Hong Siyeon? That was likely, since even the path to the chapel felt familiar.

‘It’s strange. I only thought I’d stay for a little while….’

Regarding the ‘orphanage’ where the original protagonist spent his childhood and ‘Nagwon-dong,’ where he had gone through a short adoption process, only simple prose had been written.

Since I haven’t seen the whole thing until the end, I don’t know if there are any hidden settings in the finale, but there was no particular mention of it in what I had seen.

It was just written that young Hong Siyeon spent almost all of his teenage years in the orphanage, so I had implicitly assumed that he had been adopted into Nagwon-dong and then rejected (returned).

‘What happened here?’

Actually, being rejected wasn’t such a big deal. Many children at the orphanage, or Siyeon himself, had similar experiences, so I had dismissed it as nothing special.

But thinking about it again, the question came to me belatedly: ‘Even if the protagonist had fled to the orphanage, where he had bad memories, wasn’t there a reason he never came to this Nagwon-dong?’

“Siyeon, come here and help me a little? Let’s have a meal first.”

“Ah, yes…. Just a moment.”

Deacon Kim, who had been holding Siyeon’s two hands and praying, invited him into the inner part of the church, saying she wanted to feed him a warm meal. Siyeon hesitated for a moment, but he figured that in a situation where he was hungry and struggling, a meal would be fine, so he accepted the invitation.

And the faint suspicions regarding Nagwon-dong faded away shortly after Siyeon finished the meal and began to experience the side effects of the heat inhibitors.

∞ ∞ ∞

“You still have a high fever. I think it might be a good idea to go to the hospital.”

Siyeon had been bedridden for two full days. At first, he hadn’t been able to come to his senses due to severe fever and abdominal pain that made it impossible to even open his eyes, but thanks to Deacon Kim sticking by his side and nursing him, he had recovered much of his condition now.

“No…. I, I’m really fine. I’ll get better if I rest.”

“Yes, alright then. If you need anything, make sure to tell me.”

Deacon Kim, who had offered him a temporary shelter in one corner of the church when Siyeon suddenly collapsed, allowed him to take a rest. There might have been many things she was curious about, but it was a stroke of misfortune amidst the fortune that she didn’t question him in detail when Siyeon showed signs that he didn’t want to talk about it.

As soon as she closed the door and left, Siyeon, clutching his forehead where the heat had subsided to some extent, sat leaning against the bed.

‘Was I just doubting for no reason?’

When I first arrived in Nagwon-dong, I was keeping my guard up due to a strange sense of déjà vu, but Deacon Kim treated Siyeon comfortably throughout his time here.

While being nursed, the stories that came up were mainly about how young Siyeon used to come to the church every week and spend time there. Through conversations with Deacon Kim, I learned that the child named Yohan in the photos was the son of the house where Siyeon had been adopted.

‘After Yohan went to heaven and the Seong family moved away, I couldn’t hear any news about you, Siyeon. But I’m so glad to see you’ve grown up so well and came to find us.’

Deacon Kim brought up events from the past that Siyeon didn’t know. Siyeon would give vague answers, mixing ambiguous affirmations and negatives in response to her words.

‘Are Madam and President Seong doing well?’

‘Ah… yes, they are doing well.’

‘I’d like to see them sometime, do you think you could contact them for me, Siyeon?’

‘That… ever since I became an adult, I haven’t been in touch with them much either.’

It seemed Deacon Kim had a special connection with the Seong family in the past. But seeing as she didn’t even know about the rejection, I could deduce to some extent the point at which the protagonist of the original work returned to the orphanage.

‘Hong Siyeon in the original work’ was rejected (returned) shortly after they left this Nagwon-dong following the death of the child named Yohan.

In other words… Yohan’s death and the protagonist’s rejection might be related.

“Ugh… my head….”

As his thoughts reached that point, Siyeon had to suffer through an unpleasant headache. It was a sticky, dark, tar-like pain that was hard to attribute to the side effects of the inhibitors.