Chapter 166

Hajin was dreaming.

…what is this?

The dream carried on, shifting between multiple people's viewpoints as if it were proving to itself that it was a dream.

The first was Taehyun.

—…mo-om.

Far further ahead in time than now, Taehyun — grown into a young man — was standing somewhere.

Loaded down with a suitcase and a backpack stuffed full, Taehyun — arriving at a pension in Gangwon-do that Hajin already knew — sank crying into the arms of his mother and his uncle, who had come out to meet him.

—It's okay, son. It's okay….

Taehyun's mother, holding onto him as he broke down sobbing like a child, wore an expression more troubled and sorrowful than anyone's. Taehyun's uncle — a little older-looking than the last time Hajin had seen him — silently gathered Taehyun's things behind them and carried them inside. Alone in the main house's living room, a man who was probably Taehyun's father was quietly drinking by himself.

Ah, don't tell me this….

Hajin realized in an instant that this was one of Taehyun's 'past days.'

He couldn't tell which timeline this was, but it looked like it was the day Taehyun had finally packed in that grinding entertainment-industry life and come home.

Then the viewpoint shifted.

Not exactly A Christmas Carol — what kind of dream is this….

What Hajin now saw, remembering the Charles Dickens novel he'd read with real enjoyment as a kid, was the inside of an ordinary fast-food place.

—Heading out on a delivery.

Then a familiar voice came through.

Turning instinctively toward the voice, Hajin saw Kim Wonho — in a delivery uniform instead of practice wear, helmet on.

—Delivery.

—Ah, thank you~

Where Wonho had arrived, loaded down with burgers, was an outdoor park.

Apparently something was being filmed — Wonho, spotting the staff bustling around with cameras and lights, paused briefly and made a curious expression. When the production person who'd taken the food just turned to go, Wonho hurriedly grabbed hold of one of them.

—Ah, sorry. You had it set to pay-on-delivery, so it needs to be paid now.

—The kid who ordered said he already paid?

—No, no payment came through. Please just check once.

—Haa…. one moment.

While the production person went to sort things out, Wonho took a little more of a look around the shoot.

Soon, one side got louder with a rush of murmuring. Turning around, someone who looked like a celebrity was getting out of a big van. Cap, sunglasses, mask all pulled low — but it looked like Kim Wonho recognized who it was at a glance.

Of course, Hajin — watching the situation unfold — also recognized who it was straight away.

Their own agency sunbae, and Miro Maze's main MC. Upia's Seo Taeil.

—Driver, you can print a receipt for this, right?

—…ah, yes. I'll send it by text.

Watching Seo Taeil slowly come his way, Wonho nodded at the production person.

Card payment done, receipt carefully printed out, by the time he turned back around, Seo Taeil had walked right up close to him.

Their eyes met, but as you'd expect, Seo Taeil didn't recognize Kim Wonho. Kim Wonho, all but fleeing, slipped out of the park.

And then, the viewpoint shifted again.

—Maknae. Please eat something. Yeah?

Eunseok, knocking on someone's bedroom door, was calling in an anguished voice.

From the fact that he was calling him maknae, whoever was inside that room was probably Eunchan.

—I won't tell you to come outside. I won't tell you to do anything. Just eat, at least. Yeah?

—…just leave it there and go.

—Yeah. Okay. Hyung'll leave the food right here. Just eat. You have to eat. If it's easier for you, hyung'll go out for a bit. You've got to eat. Okay? I'll check later.

The moment Eunchan's voice slipped through the door, Eunseok nodded hard and quickly set the meal tray down in front of it. With a face like he was about to cry, Eunseok — worried Eunchan might not come out because of him — hurriedly changed into going-out clothes and stepped outside. On the ring finger of his left hand, the faint imprint of a ring remained.

…what happened, Ju Eunchan.

What on earth happened to you?

Masking his shock, Hajin let himself sink into the past unfolding in front of him.

It was quite a while even after Eunseok had left before Eunchan's bedroom door cracked open.

Inside, unlike now, Eunchan sat in front of the doorway — hair unkempt, body gone skeletally thin, wrapped in a long hoodie.

—…….

Staring blankly at the meal his hyung must have set out with his own hands, Eunchan's face had no expression on it at all.

Nudging a spoon with a soft tok, Eunchan quietly pulled his knees to him and buried his face in them.

And information about Eunchan's 'past days' flowed swiftly into Hajin's head.

So in the end that Bureau Chief and that Han Seongwoo bastard….

Unable to hold up under Han Seongwoo's cunning gaslighting and the ostracism of the trainees his age, Eunchan had, apparently, ended up putting his signature on the Bureau Chief's contract. In the young-hearted determination not to worry his hyung, let alone his parents, that contract he'd signed without telling anyone became, just like that, Ju Eunchan's shackles.

Fortunately, before it turned truly serious, Eunseok had figured out what was going on and taken it to litigation — but that process seemed to have worn Eunchan down, far, far past the limit. In the end, Eunchan — who developed panic disorder among other conditions — retreated into his room, and Eunseok, trying to look after him to the last, had ended up going through a divorce over it.

…back then, I should have wrung both those bastards' necks.

Dream or not, Hajin felt anger so hot he ground his teeth on it.

But before that anger had a chance to fully settle, the viewpoint shifted once more.

—You're really selling all of this?

…it was Lee Doha, off-loading every last piece of his composing gear.

—Yes. Feel free to take anything you need.

Like Taehyun earlier, Lee Doha looked more grown up than he did now.

Probably late 20s to early 30s.

Face carrying stronger, deeper lines than it did now, Lee Doha walked him through every piece of gear inside what looked like his workroom — a small soundproofed booth.

—Then, this, and — that pedal…. Ah, is it okay if I bring a friend tomorrow and take this one?

—Yes, that's fine.

—Excuse me, but…. you're Deon-nim, aren't you? The one who wrote 'New Wave'….

At the buyer's careful question, Lee Doha flinched for a second and then nodded.

'Deon,' evidently, was Lee Doha's rap name.

—Whoa, seriously. I'm a huge fan of your mixtapes, Deon-nim. I heard your voice and thought maybe!

—…ah, thank you.

—But why are you selling all of this? I'd heard you weren't really active these days….

In a timeline where the Bureau Chief and Han Seongwoo hadn't been removed, in the end Lee Doha, having failed at an idol debut, had switched over to rapping. No — going by mixtapes and not albums, maybe he hadn't officially made it as a rapper either.

You should have at least gone on Spirit Out, you stiff-necked idiot.

While Hajin was grumbling to himself, Lee Doha — with an expression that still didn't come easily to his face — quietly looked at his MIDI gear. Then he calmly answered the man's question.

—…making music alone just wasn't fun.

And then, Hajin woke from the dream.

---

"Hk, huk…. hooo….*

He'd only woken from a dream, but he could feel that his whole body was soaked through with sweat.

Hajin, just like when he had a really vivid dream, took a few seconds to register that this — waking — was 'reality.'

Realizing that the place he'd opened his eyes in was reality, and that the tired, beat-up ceiling in his sight was the tired, familiar ceiling of his own family's basement apartment, Hajin let out a breath of relief.

"…whoa, shit. Weird mood to wake up in."

Hajin lifted himself up off the floor of the small room he shared with Hawon. He must have slept well enough to lose track of it — the clock was already pointing to 11 in the morning.

It was his family's home for the first time in a while, but Hawon was at school and his parents were at work, so only Hajin was in the house. Only after washing up in the bathroom and rinsing the last of the sleep from his eyelids could Hajin call to mind everything that had happened yesterday.

"Finals ended… and then we were at the wrap dinner till dawn."

That the finals — where he'd cried out every drop of tears and snot he had — was literally yesterday was hard to grasp.

Hajin tried to think back through yesterday's events in a little more detail. He hadn't touched a drop of alcohol, but maybe because the dream had been so deep, none of it felt quite real.

—Sparkles. Come here.

—Ah…. Hajin-hyung.

Right. As expected, I'd been about to grab Dan Haru — the one on his own — and take him out for a meal….

—Ju Eunchan, why are you by yourself?

—Ah, hyung…. had to leave suddenly on a business trip for work….

—Why is Siwoo-hyung alone…. is your mother not coming…. no — don't say it. I'm not mentally prepared to hear the mother side of things yet.

—I haven't said anything yet, though?

—Lee Doha, are you alone too?

—Ah. My sister came by earlier.

—…came by, and left?

—Yeah. My nephew's still little. If my sister isn't home, he keeps crying, so she had to head back fast.

Hold on — for a survival-show finals like this, isn't the national rule that grandmas and grandpas, in-laws, distant cousins, relatives, cousin-in-laws' mothers-in-law and all, come out in full force?

Why are all these kids on their own?

Even so — this was, in its own way, a turning-point moment in their lives — there was no way he could leave them to head home alone like that.

And with people joining the party one by one….

—What! I'm coming too! Lee Yugeon, you guys come along! Uncle, you know Hajin-hyung, right? The one who came to pick me up that time.

—No — I was going to go home, why…. we have to get grandpa home!

—Me too! I want to come too!

—My family, all in Chicago. I lonely….

—…yeah, all of you, just come.

…in the end it turned into a Miro Maze trainees (+ some family) group dinner.

The moment Ji Suho got word that the space he'd deliberately cleared for them to spend cozy time with their families had turned into all this, he hurriedly booked out the second floor of the restaurant he'd already reserved for a staff dinner.

Add the eliminated trainees who'd come to watch the finals into that, and he remembered how yesterday they'd genuinely stayed until the restaurant was closing, loud and playing around, before heading home.

That was quite the lively night…. The System is savoring the afterglow of yesterday's intense wrap dinner…☆

Why are you like this…?

Like an office worker the morning after a proper three-round bender, Thirteen was woozy — and Hajin, watching, made an incredulous face.

Anyone watching would think you'd knocked back a whole crate of soju.

That anyone can play like that without a single sip of alcohol was the more surprising thing about the night. The world of humans really is fascinating! The System, saying there is still much to learn, burns with a fresh scholarly zeal. ( •ω•́ )و✧

At Thirteen dishing out silliness first thing in the morning, Hajin cracked a small laugh and headed toward the living room.

Routinely knocking back a sip of water, opening the fridge to check what there was worth eating, Hajin soon pulled out the side dishes Mom had made and had a quick breakfast laid out.

"…Thirteen-ah."

Yes?

"That dream earlier…. that was, right? The past timelines of the ones I've collected as Comrades."

Yes, that's right. Last night, at the Fixed Regressor-nim's request, I played them back — you don't remember? (๑•̌.•̑๑)ˀ̣ˀ̣

"I did?"

Ah…. now that he thought about it, it was faintly coming back.

—Haa, what if I've changed too much? There's no one who can guarantee that this future is a good future…. Of course I'm so happy. Obviously happy — I'm happy, but…. I can't shake the thought that maybe, because of me, someone didn't get to debut, so this whole thing kind of… (redacted)

…the dark chapter of me being drunk on early-morning-emotion the second I got home, plugging into the Unconscious Space and blathering all over Thirteen, came back.

"Was I a little…. tipsy last night?"

As you know, you didn't drink a drop.

"I mean drunk on the atmosphere, drunk on the atmosphere…."

Hajin, stirring rice deep into his soup with a spoon, quietly attempted the rationalization.

But the scenes he'd seen in the dream were still there in his head.

Watching the grains of rice slowly soak up the rich broth, Hajin said in a low voice:

"…Thirteen-ah."

Yes.

"I'm doing this right, aren't I?"

For someone who'd run this whole way on the single goal of stopping the regressions, too much had ended up changed.

The fact that he'd altered someone's life was something to be happy about, proud of, satisfied by — but at the same time, it was also frightening enough to make him want to run.

Kang Hajin was starting, of late, to faintly get why Dan Haru — now confirmed as the Selreg — had split his base personality and his Selreg-side personality in two.

Simply hiding inside the words I'm just living day by day and toughing it out wasn't holding up — his own beating of wings was driving up too big a wind….

And it was a more complicated feeling than he'd expected.

Well, hmm…. On the matter of a human life, what the standard for 'doing well' is, is something I can't give you a clean answer to either. Only….

Thirteen thought it over for a moment and then, along with a soft ding of a notification tone, left one short answer.

There are things you can only know if you wait and see. :)

And the results of the butterfly effect Hajin had set off were already unfolding.

Without Hajin knowing, in a place very close by.