IDSEGI Chapter 82

Chapter 82

The one-eyed being staggered and spat blood.

When Yeoul saw the stream of crimson, he realized the operation had failed.

The creature’s odd-colored eye was also a light. If it couldn’t be completely dark… Yeoul pulled out the knife and drove it again into the upper eyelid.

With a strong downward pull, the one-eyed being’s eye shut.

“Grahhh! Let go!”

As it writhed in pain, the surroundings trembled, sending countless rocks tumbling down.

Every time the creature moved, Yeoul was dragged along, but he didn’t hesitate—he shut his eyes tightly.

With one hand, he gripped its eyelid and hung on, while with the other, he pulled out the rose knife and stabbed it in the same spot again.

If he could extinguish the creature’s gleaming light and shut his own eyes too, then perfect darkness would fall between them.

If his theory was right, this had to work.

“Ghhhk!”

The one-eyed being dropped a rock onto Yeoul’s shoulder, knocking him away.

Yeoul rolled across the ground from the impact.

The creature blinked and grumbled.

“It just stings and I still can’t die. Isn’t this a huge loss for me?”

Yeoul struggled to lift his head and look.

The creature was completely healed, as if it had never been injured.

It didn’t work.

He had thought blocking the light would stop its regeneration… had he underestimated it?

Now what?

If darkness wasn’t the answer…

Then, suddenly, a thought came to him.

Yeoul muttered softly.

“In the darkness… shadow.”

It was a gamble. But if the choice was losing or dying, there was no reason to hesitate.

A gambler who goes all in never backs down.

Yeoul stopped his attacks for a moment and pulled out his phone.

The screen was cracked and barely responsive to touch, but the light still came on.

He wedged the phone in place with a rock and placed another stone under the light.

The stone’s sharp shape cast a shadow.

Yeoul placed his foot on the shadow.

“After all that fuss, what are you doing now?”

The creature rolled its eye upward in boredom.

“You said you’d kill me, and now you’re just leaving me like this?”

It shook the gate again, showering Yeoul with fine stone dust.

Yeoul didn’t move, standing there without dodging.

It seemed the creature still wanted to toy with him, so it didn’t attack as hard as before.

But sharp stone fragments fell in countless numbers, embedding themselves into his body.

Hundreds of small scratches formed all over him, thin wounds bleeding in thin streams.

It wasn’t killing him with one blow, but letting him bleed out slowly.

This wasn’t a fight—he was just a plaything.

At this rate, he’d die from blood loss.

The spots where the shards struck stung so badly they burned.

He could feel hot blood running all over his body.

Yeoul clenched his teeth.

He couldn’t win against the creature with strength alone. He was far outmatched in attack power.

So while it was off guard, this was his only chance.

“If you don’t come over here soon, I’ll just kill you,” it threatened impatiently.

Yeoul, who had been listening quietly, raised the rose knife high.

“Alright. Let’s play.”

“That again?”

Its gaze narrowed in disapproval.

“I told you, that kind of trick won’t kill me. No matter how much you stab me with a toy like that…”

Before it could finish, Yeoul turned the blade toward himself.

And then—

“Khuhhh…!”

He stabbed his own eye without a moment’s hesitation.

This time, he drove the knife into the other eye.

Hot blood dripped down, soaking his face.

A searing, melting pain spread through both eyes.

With his optic nerves severed, he could no longer perceive any light.

It felt like standing in a pitch-black void.

A flicker of fear passed through him, but even as he staggered, Yeoul stood firm.

True darkness wasn’t this—true darkness was losing Yoo Ihan forever.

That was the real void.

Yeoul pressed his toes to gauge his position, then brought the knife down hard.

The blade skimmed past the tip of his shoe and plunged into the stone’s shadow.

“Aaaghhh!”

The creature’s sharp scream stabbed at his ears.

Jackpot.

The attack had landed.

Yeoul moved the knife around as if tearing the shadow apart.

The blade sank deep into the ground—not because his strength was enough to pierce solid rock, but because inside the shadow, it was soft and mushy like mud.

It wasn’t the floor he was stabbing, but some kind of core.

The deeper the knife went, the sharper the creature’s screams became.

“You… ghhkk… how…?”

“In the darkness… you said shadow. A shadow doesn’t exist without light. So the darkness you were talking about…”

Yeoul pulled out the knife and stabbed the same spot again.

“…was asking whether I’d willingly step into it or not, wasn’t it?”

“In the darkness, shadow.”

At first glance, it sounded like the shadow existed within the darkness, but there was a word missing in front.

The shadow within my darkness.

In other words, it wasn’t about where the shadow was—it meant I had to be inside the darkness.

It was a trick, deliberately omitting words to cause a misunderstanding. Yeoul had already experienced the one-eyed being’s love for wordplay during the last hallucination. So this had to be the answer.

Closing his eyes alone wouldn’t be enough. The optic nerve could still detect the faint light passing through the eyelids.

But if he stabbed the shadow while truly blind, inside his own darkness where he couldn’t see at all—

Yeoul’s guess was correct.

“Graaahhh!”

He couldn’t see, but the creature’s scream confirmed it.

With this attack, the one-eyed being would certainly die.

Yeoul twisted the knife again, tearing apart the shadow from within. Alongside its ear-splitting scream came a loud, booming laugh.

“Kahahaha! This is so fun! I said it’s fun!”

The laughter echoed inside the gate, bouncing back like a roar.

The ceiling broke apart and rocks poured down fiercely onto Yeoul.

But they didn’t hurt. The stones were soft and squishy, sticking to his body and slowly swallowing him into darkness.

“I’ll grant your wish! In exchange for killing me!”

The one-eyed being’s gleeful voice grew distant, and Yeoul’s consciousness faded.

His awareness slipped away, impossible to hold onto.

* * *

When he opened his eyes, he was in a familiar room.

Yeoul blinked his dry eyes.

He could see the light fixture on the ceiling.

“Did I… come back?”

He had gone blind before, yet now he could see.

Did this mean he had returned? Or was this another hallucination?

Yeoul sat up. His body was uninjured and spotless, without a single wound.

That might mean he had succeeded in returning.

But he couldn’t relax. The one-eyed being loved to toy with people.

Yeoul quickly turned on his phone to check the date.

The calendar looked normal—when thirty days passed, the month changed.

He let out a sigh of relief, but then an odd thought crossed his mind.

Something felt different.

At that moment, there was a knock at the door.

Was it Ihan?

Yeoul hurried to open it, and the person standing before him was someone familiar.

“Geon-hyung?”

“Did you sleep well?”

Yoon Geon smiled softly and patted Yeoul’s head.

It was familiar, but not the touch Yeoul had longed for.

“Why are you here, hyung…?”

“What are you talking about?”

Yoon Geon frowned slightly, as if not understanding his words.

Yeoul lowered his head and muttered, “Why is this… Where is this…”

Confused and bewildered, Yeoul’s gaze wandered around the room.

Yoon Geon’s eyes quickly filled with worry.

“Did you have a nightmare?”

Without answering, Yeoul looked around.

A clean, simple room.

A bed larger than a single, but small enough that it would feel cramped for two grown men.

“Why… is the bed so small?”

“Huh?”

The bed was small.

Strange. If he were sharing it with Ihan, it should be bigger.

Ihan had broad shoulders and was tall… to sleep together…

“I’ll buy you a new one. Was it uncomfortable?”

Yoon Geon’s gentle words snapped Yeoul back to his senses.

He looked up and stared at him.

“Hyung.”

Calling his name, Yeoul slowly looked around again.

It was familiar—completely familiar.

Of course it was.

This was Yoon Geon’s house, where Yeoul had lived for five years before moving to Zone 1.

“What… what year is it today?”

The strange question made Yoon Geon look puzzled, but he didn’t press for details and answered right away.

“It’s the year 2302. December 31st.”

A faint smile touched his lips.

“Happy birthday.”

Even at the warm greeting, Yeoul only blinked.

“Year 2302… December 31st?”

Yeoul counted the dates in his head.

If it was 2302… the day he first met Ihan was…

“…January 9th, 2303.”

He had gone back to over three years ago—before he ever met Ihan.

Before they ever imprinted.