PIA 124

“I think I remember when hyung knotted…”

“…”

“Here.”

Ji-an stroked his lower abdomen, recalling the vivid sensation as if it had just happened. Jeong Hee-seo overlapped his hand over it. He feels trapped in the warm heat.

“Again…”

He cleared his slightly hoarse voice.

“I want to do it again.”

It was a burning truth. An aAlpha’s knotting was always at the endpoint of possessiveness. Jeong Hee-seo looked straight at Ji-an and said,

“Not when swayed by such drugs, but once more with my fully conscious mind.”

The moment Jeong Hee-seo whispered, Ji-an’s eyes trembled. Now he was certain. The day he came into this world, the day he first met Jeong Hee-seo was at the party. Though he clearly remembered meeting someone identical to himself at his brother’s wedding and getting into a traffic accident, he felt that this current certainty was also true.

He kept hugging Ji-an, kissing him, and hugging him again. Whenever Ji-an recalled somewhere beyond this world, he instinctively felt anxious.

Perhaps it was from excessive mental exhaustion. His eyelids grew heavier and heavier. Ji-an drifted off to sleep while clinging to Jeong Hee-seo’s solid embrace.

* * *

Ji-an opened his eyes to a completely white space devoid of anything. It was an endless white space with no ceiling or walls. All that could be seen was his own body and his elongated shadow.

Strangely, he felt no fear about this unfamiliar place. A strong sense of anticipation filled him—he was certain he was about to meet someone here.

Moving forward aimlessly, he finally met himself. In the middle of the pristine white ground stood a white block—its form was ambiguous, somewhere between a stone and a bed. Ji-an concluded it resembled an altar.

‘Seo Ji-an’ was lying there quietly. He looked very tired and exhausted. He slowly opened his eyes. His gaze was directed somewhere far away.

“Do you understand now? That it was all you.”

‘Seo Ji-an’ asked.

“Who are you?”

When Ji-an asked back instead of answering, he finally turned his head to look at him. Identical colored eyes met.

“I am ‘Seo Ji-an’ created by your brother, Seo Ji-hyuk. And yes. I am the villain ‘Seo Ji-an’ from that world you lived in for the past several months.”

Haah— he let out a long sigh between his lips. Deep fatigue was visible.

“I died dozens of times in there.”

“…”

“The traffic accident I showed you as an illusion was just one of my many deaths. I somehow managed to succeed in bringing you to my place, but maybe because you’re too kind… or too oblivious… you wouldn’t awaken. So I decided to give you a harsh reminder.”

“You say that was an illusion?”

The surprise at the unbelievable story was brief. After all he had been through, to sum it up in one brief sentence made anger well up inside him.

When Ji-an stepped forward with his heated emotions, ‘Seo Ji-an’ sat up. He continued speaking while staring at some far-off point, somewhere Ji-an couldn’t even imagine. It was closer to muttering to himself than speaking for Ji-an to hear. One had to listen carefully to understand.

In this world, there are occasionally beings who can create other worlds. Whether it’s due to some strong wish or grudge, I don’t know…

Other worlds that we can’t even understand how they work, worlds that even their creators don’t know they created, keep emerging endlessly.

At my first death, when I was falling off the cliff with Jeong Hee-seo, I realized it. That something was wrong.

When I regained consciousness, I found myself back at the beginning. After three or four repetitions, I noticed the starting point was always the same, as was the ending—a death scenario. If I avoided one deadly trap, another would emerge.

No matter what I did… I couldn’t change the predetermined fate, the core ‘story’ set by Seo Ji-hyuk.

When ‘he’ looked up at Ji-an, Ji-an noticed the reddened, swollen eyes for the first time.

“No matter what I did, no matter how much I struggled, in the end the baby died.”

“…”

“No matter how hard I tried, I was always hated by everyone and I lost him—Jeong Hee-seo. Eventually, I came to hate him, the one destined to be my mate. Watching him fall apart, over and over again, was unbearable.”

Tears rolled down his heated eyes. Ji-an sat down in front of him. In this moment, he felt sympathy. Perhaps his heart had already aligned with him and understood everything. For some reason, Ji-an couldn’t muster any resentment.

Ji-an reached out and held his hand. Unlike Ji-an’s, it carried no warmth.

“With each regression, I gained power. At some point, I began to faintly sense the creator’s existence. Maybe it was because of that trash-like jealousy and greed projected onto the character ‘Seo Ji-hyuk’.”

So I tried to kill my creator and destroy this world.

“But you know what really makes me angry?”

“You couldn’t do it.”

Ji-an said calmly. Seeing that the world with himself, Poggles, and Jeong Hee-seo still remained intact, perhaps it was too obvious an answer.

It also seemed implausible that such a huge, independent world could disappear so futilely.

“Not only that, but because I’m a creation, I couldn’t even kill him, Seo Ji-hyuk. I paid a steep price to cross dimensions… and even took your place. I thought it would take just a year, but not a single thing worked out”

He reached out and touched Ji-an’s cheeks. Entrusting his face to those hands cold as marble and looking at each other, it felt strange, like looking into a living mirror.

“But Ji-an, you changed my world so easily.”

“…It wasn’t easy.”

He let out a laugh mixed with tears.

“You protected the baby, and Jeong Hee-seo didn’t break. Thanks to you, that world has completely changed and might have moved beyond the influence of the ‘story’.”

“The baby…”

Ji-an recalled his voice urging him to have an abortion.

“Actually, I didn’t believe you could do it. So I mocked you. If I didn’t do at least that, it was hard to bear my dozens of deaths and failures.”

His raw, painful confession struck Ji-an deeply. The figure before him, who seemed more like a marble statue than a living being, was now marked by only one emotion—pain. When tears flowed down the bloodshot eyes, it created an illusion of blood tears flowing.

Ji-an thought for a moment. Just as the essence of the people in this world he had possessed resembled the people from his original world like mirror images, he too must have initially had the same nature as himself.

Perhaps he changed like this after going through so many deaths and regressions.

He suddenly twisted his lips into an unfamiliar smile.

“Even at a moment like this, you worry about others.”

A deep sigh escaped him. Ji-an didn’t know how to respond.

“Who knows. You might also be someone with… your own special ability.”

Perhaps it was because it was you that ripples were finally created in this world.

‘Seo Ji-an’ lowered his eyes and seemed lost in thought for a long while, fiddling with Ji-an’s hand. Feeling a human body heat in his hand that he hadn’t felt in a long time, he sank into deep thought. Ji-an, looking at him, thought how very human the trembling of his eyelashes was. Thus they shared each other for a moment.

When ‘Seo Ji-an’ finally raised his head, there was a crooked smile on his lips. Like someone who had forgotten how to smile, with an expression twisted between crying and not crying, he whispered to Ji-an.

“Thank you.”

At that moment, white light filled and spread across his vision.

***

“Ah!”

Gasping for breath, Ji-an opened his eyes to find Jeong Hee-seo’s arm wrapped tightly around him. Jeong Hee-seo groggily woke up and reached out to adjust the headboard light brighter. Then, discovering Ji-an drenched in cold sweat, he urgently sat up.

“What’s wrong? Ji-an, Seo Ji-an.”

Jeong Hee-seo pushed back Ji-an’s damp hair and put his hand on his forehead. Just as he was relieved to find no fever, Ji-an sat up with a dazed face. His hands naturally rested on his lower abdomen. Ji-an stroked it, feeling Poggles’s presence inside.

“Hee-seo hyung.”

‘Seo Ji-an’ said that thanks to him this world had changed, but Ji-an thought differently. Ji-an quietly looked at Jeong Hee-seo, who was looking at him with worried eyes.

“It’s thanks to you.”

“What is?”

“Everything, just everything.”

Everything was thanks to him. Coming this far, protecting Poggles.

‘Seo Ji-an’ said that Ji-an had protected Jeong Hee-seo from breaking, but Ji-an thought the opposite. Jeong Hee-seo’s existence had protected him until now. Perhaps even the fact that he was breathing was thanks to him, Ji-an vaguely thought.

“…”

As he embraced him while only muttering the feelings he couldn’t fully express in words, Jeong Hee-seo, as he always had, opened his strong arms and embraced Ji-an. Perhaps he could hear him, surely he could.