Each Person's Night

Evening pushing on toward night.

Off work early for once, Ji Suho, freshly showered, sat down on the couch and beamed at the ambitious late-night snack spread he'd put together before opening his laptop. There was one piece of work he still had to close out.

'I do this every time, but somehow tonight I'm a little nervous.'

Ji Suho gave the Excel file that Assistant Manager Yu from New Talent Development had put together and passed on one final careful pass, then logged into the company intranet mailbox. Keyboard tap-tap-tapping, the last email of the day came together fast.

〈Subject: [New Talent Dev] Sharing Feb Month-End Evaluation Results

Date: 20XX-02-28

From: Ji Suho 〈zprotect@miro.co.kr〉

Hello.

This is Team Lead Ji Suho of New Talent Development.

Sharing the results of the trainees' 20XX February month-end evaluation.

The trainees will be notified via a separate file,

and the contents and file below are strictly for internal sharing,

so please take extra care with security to prevent leaks.

※Miro 20XX February Month-End Evaluation Results※

1st: Jung Siwoo

2nd: Seo Taehyun

3rd: Ju Eunchan

4th: Lee Doha

5th: Dan Haru

6th: Lee Yugeon

7th: Han Seongwoo

8th: Yuki

9th: Kim Wonho

10th: Kang Hajin

…….

Thank you.

Best, Ji Suho.〉

"Tenth… definitely came right down to the wire."

Checking Hajin's detailed scores, Ji Suho took another swig of beer. If Hajin's score had put him outside the top ten, that would've been his result too, as far as Suho was concerned — he hadn't been planning to step in. But hey, when things work out, they work out.

"Well — let's call it a night. Work done."

The thoughts that had been billowing out reset along with the crisp click of the laptop closing. This was the last bit of downtime before the survival kicked off.

I'm going to enjoy tonight properly. Pushing the laptop off to one side, Ji Suho stretched out full-length on the couch with his beer can and smiled happily.

---

title: Single Quest 03. 'Want to Be Special?' The training staff isn't yet showing much interest in you, still a fresh chick of a trainee. Post an outstanding result in the month-end evaluation, make yourself stand out, and break into the top 10! reward: Clues for tracking the regressions & companion recruitment penalty: 40% increase in probability of a fifth regression triggering, 15% increase in survival-show elimination probability Quest complete.

---

Hajin was dreaming.

'…Ugh, this is annoying.'

He was aware he was dreaming, but he couldn't wake up. Even though it was just an image of a past that was over and done, his mood was demolished.

—Going forward, we've decided we're not practicing with you anymore.

—Kang Hajin. Cool it, showing off.

—Honestly, you did all this for your own sake too, didn't you?

—You're not getting it again. Seriously frustrating.

—Hajin-ah. This much you should be able to do for us.

Things from Hajin's first-life memory. Even among all of them, the absolute worst.

'What kind of thing to dream about….'

—…I can't do this anymore.

At the center of the dream, Hajin was crying. Broken to pieces, having had his entire life denied, cast off by the very things he'd loved most.

He could feel his breath getting shorter and shorter, but as if in sleep paralysis, Hajin couldn't move. It felt like his whole body had been bound tight. Before long the scene shifted.

—And you?

—Yes?

—Hajin-ssi? Couldn't you have done it yourself?

The dream was now showing a moment from the month-end evaluation.

The first time Hajin's words had failed him.

Somehow, Hajin couldn't quite meet Seo Taeil's eyes head-on.

Thud, thud.

A sound and a pressure like an enormous boulder endlessly slamming into a tiny pebble wrapped around Hajin's whole body. In the instant that fast-thrumming synesthesia warped and shattered every scene in the dream —

Hajin woke.

"…Garbage dream."

When he opened his eyes, it was still predawn — dark before the sun broke. Aware of the room's temperature, blue past blue into purple, Hajin sat up.

"……? Ah, Kang Hawon."

As he pushed his oddly heavy body up, something solid dropped off him with a thump, and just like that the weight was gone. Squinting in the dark to check what it was, he found his little brother Hawon, who he hadn't seen in a while.

'Right, I came home yesterday.'

Prepping for the month-end evaluation, he'd been clocking out to Eunchan's place every day, and had finally headed home for the break.

While Hajin had been away, Hawon's room had apparently been under some kind of construction, so Hawon had been camped in the living room — which was why the two of them had ended up laying out blankets in the living room and sleeping side by side last night. It came back to him.

That weight that had been pressing him down through the whole dream — realizing it wasn't sleep paralysis but a literal weight left him feeling oddly deflated.

"……"

There was still plenty of time before the morning proper began, but Hajin somehow couldn't just fall back asleep. As dreams tend to do, this one had gone hazy after waking — what it had been about, what he'd felt — but that chilling sensation and the mood clinging to it wouldn't lift so easily.

"……"

"…What're you doing."

In their palm-sized apartment, anywhere he went would wake the sleeping family, so once again Hajin ended up at the playground out front. He'd sat down on what had basically become his personal seat — the swing — and was letting the cold wind clear his head when a familiar voice made him look up.

"Why are you out here instead of sleeping?"

"Like you're not."

"That how you talk to your hyung?"

"Are you an old man?"

"A bit of one, yeah."

The voice's owner — Hawon — trudged over, still visibly half-asleep, and dropped onto the swing next to Hajin. Unlike Hajin, who'd just thrown a long puffer over his pajamas, Hawon had bundled up properly for the cold — sleep socks and a scarf carefully in place — and asked with a sniffle,

"…Something not going well?"

"What isn't."

"You look like you're sitting on a lot, is all."

Lot… hyung's sitting on a real lot, buddy.

Hajin swallowed down all his lot of things that had come surging up to his throat.

"……"

"……"

Hawon didn't ask anything more. His quiet, not-very-expressive little brother was always like this. Never digging, never prodding, just there. Always in the seat next to him, quietly listening.

'Consistent little bastard.'

Thinking of the twenty-eight-year-old Hawon from his first life, Hajin briefly wondered whether 'consistent' was even a fair word to slap on this eighteen-year-old Hawon. And thought about how regression made you turn over the weirdest things.

It struck him then how good it felt to be sitting face-to-face with Hawon like this, just the two of them —

and, at last, he found the courage to face what he'd been keeping from himself.

"Today was the month-end evaluation."

"Mom told me. Said that's why you're off."

"Yeah. Off until day after tomorrow."

"Did it not go well?"

"No, nothing like that. It went well. Went well, but—"

Hajin looped one arm around the swing chain, laced his hands, and pressed his fingertips together, hard. A habit of his when his head got full.

"So on our stage, there was a dance break, right? I gave it to two other guys, and one of the judges asked why I gave it to that particular guy. So, well, I gave a bunch of reasons and—"

"……"

"—and he asked me, then why didn't you do it yourself."

"…You didn't feel confident?"

Not knowing all the details of trainee life — month-end evaluations and whatnot — Hawon ran every brain cell he had trying to make sense of what Hajin was describing.

'So basically, why'd you hand off the important part instead of doing it yourself, is what he's saying?'

Right as Hawon, who'd homed in on the point exactly, was waiting for Hajin's answer, Hajin laughed, ha ha.

"No. I just didn't think about it."

"…What?"

"Right from the start, I wasn't even on the candidate list. And I only realized it after being asked. That I'd left myself out."

He'd had excuses — that his height didn't match Yoon Taehee's, whatever else — but honestly, if he'd made up his mind to do it, he could've made it work somehow. He also knew that with Gong Seok on ad-libs and Wonho hitting a solo and peeling out, having the remaining three all in on the dance break would've made for a much denser structure.

But.

"I just… didn't want to, I guess."

"……"

"That was the one move that would've given me even one more shot at the top ranks for the month-end. Guess I didn't want it."

Without Hajin realizing it, his hands had started shaking a little. It was the same kind of sensation he'd had that time on the rooftop. That awful thing where something snapped and countless emotions came rushing in like a waterfall.

(Fixed) Regressor's mental state is unstable. 'Drift and Wander' mode has activated. Mental Care System is running to suppress 'Drift and Wander' mode. Processing…. Processing…. For mental care, 〈Memory Suppression〉 is activating.

Before he could properly read the fast-stacking system windows, the emotions that had been eating painfully into his head vanished in an instant. Only then did the cold air around him register properly again.

'…What was that, just now.'

The memory from his first life that had felt like it was about to replay itself was suddenly far away. He could still recall what kinds of things had happened, but not exactly what any of them had actually been.

Like trying to call back the contents of a book you'd read a very long time ago. But thanks to that, Hajin could breathe a little more deeply again.

"You okay?"

He looked over at Hawon, who'd tossed out that concern in the same flat voice as always. Gazing for a while at the little brother who was still so much younger than the one in his memory, Hajin nodded again.

"Yeah, well. For now."

"……"

"Let's head back in. It's cold."

Hajin got up first, and Hawon hesitantly followed. The two brothers didn't add much more to the conversation. All that happened, before they lay back down and drifted off, was Hawon quietly nudging more of the blanket over toward Hajin.

That night, that was all Hajin needed to be alright.

---

And another person's night.

"……"

A space of nothing — neither dark nor bright. Not dream, not reality, but somewhere the dimensions met.

[It's time.]

The 'something' Hajin had once encountered, too, resonated.

Not a sound, not a sight, not a soundwave — some unknown thing.

And the boy standing at the center of all these phenomena breathed out slowly, keeping his balance like all of this was familiar.

[Time to make your decision.]

The 'existence' asked.

[The options are the same this time too. Go back? Or continue?]

Two options rose in the space where nothing existed.

[KEEP OR SKIP]

The boy, staring at the two options, made his decision.

"I'll continue."

[…Yeah?]

"Yeah. Give me the info."

At the nod, the space rippled and stirred as if intrigued. Soon the two options that had floated there disappeared and became a long block of text. The boy read the passage carefully, working to memorize it. He'd found, across multiple regressions, that knowing the fixed events coming in the future was absolutely necessary.

[Then — I'll wish you luck.]

As if swallowed by something that was neither light nor dark, the space compressed and expanded at the same time. Feeling almost like he was drifting through space, the boy thought,

"This time…."

This time, maybe something would be different.