Chapter 256 - Episode 32. The World After the Fall (6)
Chapter 256: Episode 32. The World After the Fall (6)
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Once the new year began, Jaehwan immediately applied to enlist. It was an impulsive decision.
He passed the physical examination without issue.
Naturally, his counseling sessions with the Teacher did not qualify as a history of mental illness. He might have received help if he had gone to the Teacher and explained the situation, but he had no desire to do that. Jaehwan no longer wanted to see the man’s face.
More than anything, Jaehwan needed somewhere to confine himself. A place with strict rules, where he would not have to sink into pointless thoughts. A place where he could push his body to its limit.
Jaehwan was assigned to a unit at the front line known for having the strictest discipline, and he endured a harsh military life moving between the GOP and his unit. He memorized the basics of soldiering and stood guard duty. He cleaned places outside his assigned area in place of senior soldiers who had run off, and whenever there was snow removal work, he was the first to carry out the roof rake and the last to return. After the day’s duties ended, he always trained alone or read books.
In the quietest part of the unit, Jaehwan lived as though he were hardly there at all.
The officers liked Jaehwan because he was blunt, lacking in clever tricks, and strict about following regulations. Some senior soldiers disliked how inflexible he was, but even they quietly acknowledged him.
“What’s this? Cleaning your rifle again during personal maintenance time? You should just make the army your career. You were born to be a soldier.”
Jaehwan stopped moving at the Officer of the Day’s words and gave a bitter smile.
“No, sir.”
“What do you mean, no? This is great. How about applying to become a noncommissioned officer after you make corporal? Huh? Come under me and I’ll treat you well. You’ll have it easy in the army. Or you could at least become a short-term NCO...”
Jaehwan smiled bitterly as the Officer of the Day began complaining about his own life.
Born to be a soldier.
It was something the man could never have said if he knew even a little about Jaehwan’s life. Jaehwan had lived a life as far from that of a soldier as possible.
He had always been someone who broke rules rather than followed them.
After talking for a while, the Officer of the Day grew bored and grumbled, “What a boring guy,” before leaving the barracks. Jaehwan was left alone in the empty room. The sudden silence frightened him, so after returning his rifle, he searched for something else to do.
He had to keep moving. Keep moving so strange thoughts would not arise.
So he would not cling to false hope again.
Jaehwan polished the combat boots of the senior soldiers who had gone to the karaoke room or the internet café. He rinsed rags and scrubbed the corners of the lockers and the insides of the narrow window frames until they were spotless. Only the songs of girl groups playing from the military-issued smart TV disturbed the silence at regular intervals.
Rubbing at the worn knees of his fatigues, Jaehwan continued cleaning every corner of the barracks. In the meantime, the girl group songs changed several times. One song ended, then another began. The girls sang and sang again.
When had it started?
Jaehwan stopped mopping the floor and stared blankly at the television screen. Girls around his age were dancing and singing there.
For a moment, Jaehwan felt as though the world were speaking directly to him.
“I knew you would return
After a long wait
The world you and I made”
The girls sang, and Jaehwan watched them. Looking at them reminded him of the Parts from old memories.
The 「Parts」 the gods had bragged about. Symbols of desire created by a single world.
As he watched the elaborate stage and dazzling lights, Jaehwan felt as though he had entered someone’s perfectly constructed Sanctuary.
Sanctuary?
What was that again?
Where the question disappeared, a vast desire remained. Jaehwan saw a huge eye looking at him from beyond the television screen. He thought of the Little Brothers who would be watching that eye alongside him, all chattering as they pleased.
The Little Brothers lusted after the girls on the screen, hurt them, and in the end, came under their control. The girls kept singing without a care.
They sang and sang again. As though this world would never end, as though this age would last forever, as though no end would ever come.
As though that song alone
was the only reality they could accept.
How much time had passed? The senior soldiers who had gone to karaoke came rushing back in. One of the seniors who usually kept an eye on Jaehwan playfully put him in a headlock.
“Our youngest was here working hard, watching girl groups all alone? Wow, you always act like such a bookworm, but... huh?”
The senior’s face turned pale. The other seniors crowded around Jaehwan as well. When they saw him, they asked in alarm.
“Holy shit... Who made our Jaehwan cry?”
“Did someone haze you? Tell me. Come on.”
Jaehwan wiped at his eyes without realizing it and shook his head.
The seniors kept pressing him, but as time passed, their voices seemed to grow farther away. The hands shaking his shoulders and the voices calling his name all felt unfamiliar.
When he looked at the screen again, the song had ended. Even after the girls bowed and disappeared, the melody lingered. It sounded like an old prayer heard after a world had set. Listening to it, Jaehwan realized he now had to accept something.
I see. That world had ended.
Like a Tower collapsing, Jaehwan felt cracks spreading through his entire body.
That world no longer existed. Because that world...
The senior soldiers desperately grabbed hold of him, but his body swayed like a scarecrow that had lost all support. As someone called for a medic, Jaehwan’s consciousness slowly drifted away.
I had already destroyed that world with my own hands.
* * *
That night, Jaehwan had a long dream. In the dim darkness, someone was having a conversation. Before long, Jaehwan realized the voices were terribly familiar.
They were all his own.
“Is this the ending you wanted?”
“...”
“You brought me all the way here because you wanted to live in a nightmare like this?”
One was Jaehwan with the appearance of a twenty-year-old. The other was Jaehwan with the appearance of a ten-year-old.
The two Jaehwans were arguing. No, to be precise, the twenty-year-old Jaehwan was unilaterally driving the ten-year-old Jaehwan into a corner.
The ten-year-old Jaehwan opened his mouth as if making excuses.
“I thought it would be different. The world you lived in.”
“You know by now that it isn’t different.”
“Yeah. It was very different from what I thought.”
Jaehwan was confused. He wanted to join their conversation.
I want to talk too. I want to say something too. Where am I? Where am I watching them from?
The twenty-year-old Jaehwan spoke.
“Our power does not work here.”
“Of course not. There is no Adaptation or Awakening. There is no Transcendence, so there is no Big Brother either.”
“So what will you do now?”
“What do you mean, what will I do? There is nothing I can do.”
Both Jaehwans looked resigned. Jaehwan wanted to tell them something. Yet he did not know what he should say. In truth, he had nothing to say.
“Maybe we need to disappear for ‘Jaehwan’ to be happy. For him to live well here, he has to abandon every part of the history we lived through together as ‘Jaehwan.’ Those things are not accepted here.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. This is where it all ends.”
Then the two Jaehwans faced each other. Only when they did did Jaehwan understand who he was.
He was nowhere, yet he was both of them at once. Those two Jaehwans were himself.
The ten-year-old Jaehwan and the twenty-year-old Jaehwan were becoming one again.
They were becoming him.
Jaehwan felt the lingering regrets and attachments within him slowly fading. Like new clothes becoming old and worn, every memory he had protected was disappearing.
Do not disappear.
Jaehwan cried out toward the fading memories. But they scattered helplessly through his grasp and through the echoes.
Had all of that truly happened?
What did it even mean for something to have truly happened to a human being?
Darkness filled the space around him, and the dream ended.
Jaehwan never had a dream like that again.
* * *
Watching countless suns and moons rise beyond the GOP’s barbed-wire fence, Jaehwan became a private first class, then a corporal, and finally a sergeant.
He adapted to life in the army. He endured ordinary routines and built an ordinary history. Guarding a front line that no one ever invaded, he gradually became an ordinary human being.
“Sergeant Jaehwan is amazing. You don’t make us deal with even the usual cleaning hazing.”
After Jaehwan became a squad leader, his barracks became a clean squad. Once, the timing happened to overlap with some barracks reform project, and the unit even received a commendation.
A barracks where discipline was strict, but hazing did not exist. That was Jaehwan’s barracks.
Still, no matter how much people praised him, Jaehwan felt nothing in particular.
“I only protected what needed protecting.”
“Come on, do you know how difficult that is?”
“It’s annoying, not difficult.”
“Ha ha, that’s the hardest part. Even when I become a sergeant, I don’t think I could be like you, Sergeant Jaehwan. How can you become a sergeant and never once think about getting out of cleaning duty? I could never have that kind of diligence...”
The other junior soldiers chimed in from all around.
“That’s right! Isn’t being diligent the hardest thing?”
“Exactly. Honestly, is there anyone in this unit, soldier or officer, more diligent than Sergeant Jaehwan?”
Diligent. It had been a long time since he heard that praise, and a fragment of memory flashed through his mind.
Memories of performing Stabs every day. Of counting numbers every day, never resting until he had fulfilled that day’s quota...
Jaehwan closed his eyes for a moment and muttered quietly.
“You have to perform at least a hundred thousand Stabs a day before you can call yourself a little diligent.”
“Pardon?”
The junior soldiers exchanged confused looks, but Jaehwan said nothing. His eyes were unfocused. He looked as though he did not understand why he had said that himself.
Trying to ease the mood, the junior soldier directly below him cried out.
“Hey, hey, he was joking. It was a joke! What are you all doing? Why aren’t you laughing?”
“Ha ha ha!”
“Ha ha! That is hilarious!”
“Sergeant Jaehwan, but what is a Stab? Are you talking about that thing?”
“As expected, Sergeant Jaehwan is amazing!”
Jaehwan smiled bitterly and flicked each junior soldier on the forehead.
As though performing Stabs.
Stab.
Now, even when Jaehwan remembered such things, they did not hurt anymore. As time passed, the bond between his memories and emotions weakened. Old emotions wore away until they could no longer cling easily to anything.
Jaehwan had become that sort of person. He was not especially sad about having changed that way.
* * *
Before long, Jaehwan completed his military service. Yoonhwan was discharged around the same time, and the two began attending school together again.
“How did you two go to the army and never send a single reply until you got out? Did you even get my letters properly?”
At Seoyul’s pouty tone, Yoonhwan answered with a sly grin.
“Hey, whose letters are you talking about? Oh, the photo you sent was useful. I stuck it on my locker and said you were my little sister. The senior soldiers went crazy over it.”
“Ah, shit. Was that you, Kim Yoonhwan? I wondered why I kept getting DMs from guys I had never even seen...”
Jaehwan slipped back into an ordinary life.
It was no longer as difficult as it had once been.
He still read books and trained alone, but he no longer sank into lonely fantasies as before. He accepted the new body he had, and he accepted his new life.
‘Reality’ was a world fundamentally different from the 《Great Realm》 or the 《Tree of Illusion》.
Jaehwan now had a body that steadily grew old, and he had become someone who would certainly die with time. Whether he wanted it or not, he would live for a short while and someday meet death.
Then what was the meaning of life?
The wall of mortality he encountered for the first time allowed Jaehwan to think in an entirely different way.
Human beings lived lives too short to change anything.
That thought was a great help whenever Jaehwan rationalized his actions, or turned away from questions of justice and uncertain problems.
He remembered Professor Sakamoto’s lecture.
“If it were another parallel universe.”
If this were a world where Skills and Awakening existed, where he could overcome himself simply by performing Stabs.
If it were a world where an obvious and immense malice existed, he surely would have been different from how he was now.
But this universe had none of those things. No Skills, no Settings, no Unique Worlds.
There was nothing.
Even if other parallel universes existed as Professor Sakamoto said, even if all the things Jaehwan had imagined and fantasized about truly existed somewhere in another universe, that was not the business of this universe.
And this universe was where Jaehwan had to live.
A place where no miracles existed.
A solid world that could not be overcome through effort alone.
A place where he could not even know what he should strive for or how he should strive, and where life ended before he could properly learn it.
That was this ‘reality.’
That place was this
「First Nightmare」.
Footnotes:
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