Chapter 169

"—so…. I signed the contract today."

"That's great. You'll do great. And Lime's a solid company."

Listening to Kim Wonho's voice — much more at ease now — I pushed off the ground with a slippered foot. With a metallic squeak, the swing rocked backward and stopped.

"But everyone here's younger than me. Round-faced too. It was a bit awkward."

"You can rule over them. Perfect fit."

"Whoa, 'rule over.' You sounded like a proper geezer just now."

"Want to see what it's like getting cut off by a boss-tier geezer?"

I was glad I'd caught that weird SOS text Wonho sent me a few days back and called right away to see what was going on. Hearing through Wonho about Jaeyoung and Seok-hyung, and even about Yoon Taehee — the third of the No-Hope Trio — really drove home how much had actually shifted.

"When do you hyungs start?"

"Well…. we've got vacation until next week for now. Lots to sort out. They told us to think of it as the last vacation we'll get all year and rest up while we can."

"Whoa, brutal already."

"That's your future."

"Is that a curse?"

"A prophecy."

Cackling through the silly back-and-forth, I gave the sand a light kick with my foot.

Perched on the swing at the neighborhood playground I always ended up at when my head got too busy, I turned my head — the sun was setting between the buildings.

I squinted and watched that red sunset for a moment. Kim Wonho was still chattering away on the other end of the phone.

"A week's gonna fly by…. Guess I'd better play hard."

"…dunno. If it just flies by, that'd actually be good news."

"Huh? What'd you say?"

"Ah. Nothing — let's grab a meal before your vacation's over."

Whoops. I'd meant to keep that inside my head.

The words had slipped out before I could catch them, and I hurried to swap the topic for something else. Simple as ever, Kim Wonho — no suspicion at all — came back with "Yeah! When works?" ready to lock in a meal plan on the spot.

I tossed out a rough day and time, said a quick goodbye, and ended the call.

Yeah, fine. Setting a plan for the last day of a one-week vacation was all well and good, sure.

"…the problem is whether that day actually comes, Wonho-ya."

Letting the words out — almost a sigh — I looked at the culprit that had driven me back to this playground.

A blue window floating in the air.

The blue window — with not a shred of Thirteen's usual friendly, slightly loose vibe — had the word "Warning" stuck all over it in yellow letters so severe it was unnerving just to look at.

Abuse of another party's (Yoon Giseok's) timeline has been confirmed. Penalty tallying complete. Penalty 〈Butterfly Effect〉 assigned. A new event, 〈Butterfly Effect〉, has been added to the Fixed Regressor's timeline. An event of similar impact to that of the abused timeline will occur on the Fixed Regressor's timeline.

Karma-clearing time.

---

This penalty window — which had floated up the second I opened my eyes this morning — was the price for having pulled up CP Yoon Giseok's past to blow up CP Yoon Giseok and Han Seongwoo.

Not only had I badgered Thirteen into semi-forcibly showing me CP Yoon's past, I'd freely helped myself to items from it to use as evidence…. That got logged as "timeline abuse," and I'd ended up on the hook for a penalty.

Fair enough. If you had a power like this and just wandered into other people's pasts to wreck their lives however you liked, the world'd end in no time.

Because of what I'd done, Yoon Giseok and Han Seongwoo had both been kicked out of their jobs and were now living lives markedly different from their previous timeline's. The same was true of Kim Wonho and Sarin, but the key criterion, it seemed, was whether or not I'd used Time Administrator powers to do it.

Things a human does of their own free will and digging through someone's past determined to wreck them were, admittedly, two very different things — so I'd braced for something, but….

"Still though — do you have to be this fair about it?"

I was about to yell no protagonist buff!?, but then I remembered the protagonist of this rigged-against-you world wasn't me — it was Dan Haru — and got hold of myself.

Poor Thirteen — for the crime of not being the protagonist's System — had gotten slapped with a charge called "abuse of administrator authority" and some kind of disciplinary action on top of it. The penalty alone was already miserable enough, but on top of that I couldn't properly communicate with Thirteen for a while. Facing a cold, business-only system window for the first time in ages really drove home how loose Thirteen had been running the whole system-thing.

Anyway, normally a penalty like this — the price for cheerfully wrecking someone else's life — I'd have quietly accepted…. no, scratch that, I'd have just thrown a massive tantrum while figuring out how to handle it, but….

"Our fragile-hearted Selreg is definitely already locked and loaded on a regression, is the thing…."

The penalty was, no joke, "an event of similar impact to the timeline I'd abused."

I hadn't heard the CP Yoon aftermath in any detail, but from what I'd caught, he'd been hit with disciplinary action at the broadcaster, fallen out with Han Seongwoo's father, and things generally hadn't gone well for him.

Back when I was a regular civilian, sure — but right now, I've got a lot to lose too.

Going by the pattern up to now, there was no way Dan Haru would just sit and watch me go down in flames.

Meaning that if I didn't prep properly for this penalty, it was a 100% regression.

I sat quietly on the playground bench (the swing had been claimed by a neighborhood kid) and started working through the possible cases one by one. If I'd had a clear objective like "Stop Lee Yugeon from being eliminated!" it'd be easier — but with no clue what the actual event even was, working out how to handle it wasn't exactly simple either.

"Wed hyung!"

"…?"

I'd tipped my head back, watching the sky turn a deep red as my thoughts wandered off, when a bold little voice piped up beside me calling for me confidently. Curious, I looked down — the little kid who'd taken my swing earlier was gripping one side of my pant leg and grinning brightly.

"What. I gave you the swing. Go ride it."

"Uh-huh. But um. The swing, uhh, that one, from behind, uhh, li—ke thith! it'th way more fun?"

"……."

"If hyung doeth it it'd be so nithe…."

The kid — who'd been exaggeratedly windmilling his short arms in demonstration — suddenly went all humble and twisted himself up shyly.

"What. You want me to push you?"

"Yeth!"

At my dry response to the transparent play, his eyes lit up and he nodded eagerly.

Come to think of it — why on earth was this kid out at the playground alone without a guardian?

Sure, the neighborhood was old and people said everyone here was one degree removed from everyone else, but still — this kid had no clue how scary the world could be.

I got up off the bench and crouched down in front of the kid to meet him at eye level. Then I gripped his shoulder — small and soft enough that half of it fit in one of my hands — firmly and said:

"Kid. What's your name."

"Park! Thang-yul! ith my name."

"Sangyul? Sangyul-i?"

"Yeth."

"Okay, Sangyul-a. Hyung's name is Kang Hajin. But you shouldn't just talk to strangers like this and be all cute at them, should you. Did they teach you at kindergarten to watch out for bad men, or not."

"Yeth they did!"

"It's only 'cause hyung is a really kind-hearted, warm-hearted guy that it's fine — but what would you do if I got some bad idea and just carried you off, huh, punk. If someone said hey let's go to the corner store, I'll buy you ice cream — what are you supposed to do?"

"The thtore ith our houth?"

Right. So he was the corner-store kid.

When I got home I'd have to tell Mom to pass along that the corner store's youngest son needed proper safety training — thinking that, I brought the bright-eyed kid over to the swing.

"Anyway, punk, alright? If someone you don't know does that, you just run. Got it? No, please stop, back off — none of that. Just run and find your mom and dad, no matter what. Got it?"

"Yeth! Ith hyung a bad man?"

"Luckily hyung's not old enough to be an ajeossi yet, and not a bad son of a…. no, not a bad person either. But you still shouldn't just casually trust me either. You seen me before?"

"Yeah!"

"Right, you've seen — wait, you have?"

"Hyung, I thaw you on the T.V.!"

Ah, jeez. So he was a Desti.

At the appearance of my youngest viewer, my back bent forward on reflex. Oblivious to any of what I was thinking, Sungryul, or Sunyul, or Sungwool — anyway, the grinning-away kid — I settled carefully onto the swing. Once I'd made sure his hands were gripping the chains tight, I pushed him slowly so he wouldn't get scared, and a delighted burst of giggling came out.

"…yeah. As long as at least you're having fun, that's enough."

Our bunny hero was every bit as bright as this kid. Why on earth that kid was such a sunfish, I couldn't say.

What could I do to stop Dan Haru's regression?

Even while I pushed the swing mechanically, thoughts of Dan Haru and the penalty wouldn't leave my head.

In the split second I drifted, my hand went in harder than I'd meant, and the swing lurched with a clunk.

"Ah shit, Sangyul!"

The kid — who at that exact moment had been so wound up he was bouncing his little butt on the seat — went right off the swing.

First I grabbed the swing and stopped it so the recoil wouldn't catch him, then hurried over.

I don't know how many thoughts and emotions flashed through me in that short span.

What if this was the penalty?

What if this kid — who had nothing to do with any of it — got seriously hurt because of my penalty?

If that was my karma, I couldn't even regress — what was I supposed to do?

Feeling like my heart had just plummeted from the top of a skyscraper straight into the basement, I ran over to the kid —

"—ta-daa!"

…the little kid, still grinning, popped straight up and threw his arms up in a hurrah pose.

Very brightly at that.

"Hey, you're not hurt? You okay?"

"Yeah. Cool, wight?"

"Cool my ass. I told you to hold the chains tight and keep your butt planted!"

I was the one who'd messed up, but the shock had my voice going loud first.

Even while brushing the sand off the kid's clothes, I checked over and over that no part of that fragile skin had been scraped or gouged. Fortunately, maybe because the sand I'd been kicking up in front of the swing earlier had acted as a cushion, he didn't seem seriously hurt.

"You…. if you played like this and took a real fall and got hurt, that would be a huge deal. You've got to be careful."

"Thang-yul-i playth like thith every day though."

"You don't fall off and go tumbling every day though, right."

"My noona puthes way harder."

"…even so — huh? Not like this — it's not this dangerous with her, huh, punk."

"But uhh, um, one time, I fell down. And uhh, wight here, blood came out."

"That's not something to brag about. See, it is dangerous."

"But, but uhh, tho, right here, blood came out too, and I cried and cried."

Park Sangyul, the corner-store's youngest son, unfazed by anything I said, doggedly kept his own story going.

As the eldest son of a Kang household with a full seven younger cousins, I knew perfectly well that with little kids, this kind of small talk absolutely could not be cut off until they'd finished saying what they wanted to say. So I just plopped down on the sand and decided to hear the kid out.

"So then, you bawled? Because it hurt?"

"Yeah. My noona held my hand, uhh, like thith."

"Sweet noona."

"Yeah. Tho Thang-yul-i likes noona."

"So it was noona-bragging all along."

At the kid, showing off his affection with that supremely proud expression — I like my noona — a dumbfounded laugh came out of me.

But even through the silly conversation, somehow I couldn't help thinking of our own sunfish.

"…that's it. Even when you fall like this, you just — you just get up."

What was it about that that had been so hard for that kid?

If just one person had been there beside him to take his hand, that kid could have gotten up just fine.

"Hey, Park Sangyul! Get over here!"

"Oh! It's noona!"

While I was lost in thought, from far off a piercingly clear voice came through — almost a scream. Park Sangyul — 5000% resilience, quietly playing with my hair from inside my arms — heartlessly ditched me at that voice and took off toward its owner. And right after, the sound of noona firmly scolding her little brother came through.

"Why are you out here by yourself! I told you not to come to the playground alone."

"I wath waiting for noona!"

"Why would you wait for me, you're supposed to just stay home. Ugh, honestly, Mom needs to watch him a little…. And you can't just hang out with someone you don't even know like that. How many times have I told you you're not supposed to."

So he was a repeat offender, our youngest Desti.

Thinking thank god the safety training at least seems thorough, I got up. She'd apparently gotten a scare on my account, so I figured I ought to explain myself as just some neighborhood guy who lived next to the playground.

I turned around — a student in the nearby middle school's uniform stood there with Sangyul in her arms, and our eyes met. I did my best to arrange my face into the kindliest, most harmless expression I could manage, but Sangyul's noona, seeing me, went pale as if she'd seen a ghost.

"Uh, I live in the white house right here. I'm not one of those bad people or anything…."

"…H-Hajin-oppa?"

Huh?

"Noona! It's the hyung from noona's room!"

Park Sangyul pointed at me and grinned brightly.

…ah. So this was the Desti.

Between the two of us squaring off across the playground, a cool wind whistled through — fwhoo….