Chapter 72

While Suho reeled like he'd taken a baseball bat to the back of the head.

Hajin's face was remarkably calm. Feeling a strange sense of betrayal, Suho stumbled over his words a full three times.

"Uh, um, so — that, uh, so… you were… lying?"

"Nope, it's real. It's true, I did come back from the past."

For all three of those stumbles, Hajin's answer was simple. And smiling, no less.

Feeling thoroughly toyed with, Suho was still working his mouth to find something to say when Hajin shrugged and continued.

"But whether it's true and whether you believe it are two different things, right?"

About to snap that Hajin was messing with him, Suho shut his mouth again.

Hajin was clearly wearing his usual easy smile, but at the edge of that smile, a loneliness he couldn't quite place showed through.

Barely pulling himself together at that smile, Suho pressed back, as if lodging a complaint.

"You didn't even know if I'd believe you or not. Why say it? What if I'd treated you like a crazy person?"

"Team Lead, you sure have a lot of questions today."

"Like I said, I need to know. Who the artist I'm going to be managing actually is."

Suho was curious about Hajin.

At first it had just been a casting move to check the Department Head,

and when they'd learned each other's secrets, he'd figured, well, we're locked into the same boat now.

And then, after seeing Hajin's stages a few times, a small dream had started to form in him — a manager's dream.

"That's just how being a manager works. No matter what happens, you have to be on your artist's side."

The dream of seeing this person shine even brighter on even bigger stages.

"I believe you, Kang Hajin-ssi. Everything you've said."

Suho wore a comfortable smile, rare for him.

For that dream, first he needed to earn Kang Hajin's complete trust.

To Hajin, who was still looking at him without saying anything, Suho continued in a steady voice.

"What I'm saying is, I'm on your side, Kang Hajin-ssi. So if there's anything you want to say, you can say it anytime."

"……"

"Honestly, it's kind of a relief for me too. To have someone who knows my secret."

Suho smiled, keeping it light.

"You have no idea how shocked I was the first time I saw light coming off a person."

"……"

"This is between us, but early on I actually got counseling a few times, went to the doctor a bit. Ended up with a clean bill of health, but for a while there I really thought I'd lost my mind."

"…I know that feeling."

Hajin, who'd been listening the whole time, huffed out a small laugh and nodded.

"I thought I was dead and seeing my life flash before my eyes."

"When you first went back? Yeah, I'd imagine so."

"One moment I was clearly lying in bed, and when I came to, I was in a high-school exam room. I thought I was dreaming."

Hajin drifted for a moment, seeming to look back on that time.

Suho waited quietly through it.

Hajin had been drumming his fingers on the table out of habit, and it was a few minutes later that he opened his mouth again.

"…I was twenty-nine."

"Sorry?"

"When I first regressed. I was a twenty-nine-year-old jobseeker, and when I opened my eyes I was seventeen."

With that as the starting point, Hajin's story rolled on at a pace that was neither rushed nor slow.

Through four regressions and into the fifth life he was living now, and how he'd gotten to this exact point.

Sometimes tersely, sometimes seriously, Hajin walked him through his own life.

Every last piece of it was hard to believe, but Suho could believe it. If anything, he felt a little more settled now, actually. Because he could finally, at least partly, explain the surreal ability that had appeared in him.

"So then, the person you said you had to find back then — that's the guy?"

"Yeah. The bastard who made me live over four times, and made you see weird colors on people."

"And that's supposedly one of the trainees in our company right now…."

"Which is why, Team Lead — if you notice anything at all off, tell me right away. A sixth life? I'm honestly begging out."

Shivering as if the very thought made his skin crawl, Hajin shook his head. Suho nodded like he got it.

He still had plenty of questions and curiosities about this "regression" thing, but there was no point pushing for more today — he wasn't going to understand all of it anyway.

"Thank you for telling me."

Once he'd heard everything out, Suho offered his honest reaction. He felt like he could finally see who Kang Hajin was, if only a little.

Why he seemed to draw such careful lines around everything.

'Because one day, out of nowhere, all of it could be undone.'

Being able to relive your past — he'd always thought of it as an incredible chance, but apparently it wasn't only that.

Around then, Hajin refilled his empty cup and continued.

"…Thank you too."

"For what?"

"For saying you're on my side."

Ah, there was that smile again.

The one with that indescribable loneliness caught on the edge of it.

"Something I realized just now, talking with you — I guess I was kind of lonely."

"……"

"Because I lost all of it. Friends, dreams, the life I'd been living up till then, memories, all of it."

"……"

"If you asked me whether I want to go back to being twenty-nine, I honestly don't know…. But when I think about how all those years are stuck with just me forever, sometimes it gets to me. It hurts a little."

Thanks to the Mental Care System still running, when Hajin thought back to a past life, it felt like reaching for something in the distant past.

But that didn't erase those memories, either.

"It was a life full of nothing but mistakes and regrets…. And even in a life like that, apparently there were still things I missed."

The first day the whole family went on a trip.

The friends he'd made anew in college.

The movies and songs that had comforted him on rough days.

The various stories and mishaps from his time working.

All of it was left only inside Hajin.

And every now and then, that made Hajin very lonely.

"That's probably why. Why I kept telling you about my past life."

"……"

"I guess I wanted to tell someone — anyone. That I'd lived that kind of life."

Only then could Suho put a finger on the source of the loneliness he'd been seeing in Hajin.

He could probably live his whole life over and still never fully understand Hajin.

No — probably no one in this world could completely understand that loneliness.

'Maybe that Selected Regressor person could. But no regular person, no chance.'

Even so, as someone who'd lived just a little more of life than him, maybe there was some comfort he could still offer.

Suho opened his mouth, carefully.

"Being human, it's kind of like this."

"……?"

"You only figure it out after getting burned once. Ah, this hurts. Better not put my hand there. And from then on, just seeing something similar and your body braces up. Instinctively — you don't want to hurt again."

Suho had never lived his past over the way Hajin had, but he too had been burned by the world, and by people.

He knew, well, how someone who'd been hurt starts eating themselves alive and cutting themselves off.

"But even so. Even so, once enough time goes by…. Every so often, moments like this come along. Maybe this much is okay? Maybe this much warmth, I could bear."

"……"

"When that moment comes, you just try. Really — is it? Would holding on to this hurt, or not? Ah, maybe this much is actually fine. I can bear this. That's how you learn. What you can handle."

Hajin's face turned slightly bewildered at what sounded like Suho grasping at clouds. But Suho pressed on, unbothered.

"Everyone's like that. Isn't it lonely — a world with no warmth?"

"…I don't think you're telling me to go stick my hand on a gas burner."

"I mean, don't be so scared of the hand someone's holding out to you."

"……"

"I hope you don't watch each moment of life so coldly. You're a warm person, Kang Hajin-ssi. Passionate, you like people, and… you love being on stage."

Only then did Hajin seem to catch Suho's meaning; his pupils trembled slightly. Watching him, Suho spoke on with all the warmth he could put into it.

"Averting your eyes from everything because it might one day disappear — wouldn't loving without regret be better? You said you're begging out of a sixth life."

"……"

"You've got someone to talk to now. If you want to talk about memories from a past life, come to me. But I hope you'll remember that the life Kang Hajin-ssi is living right now is also Kang Hajin-ssi's life."

"……"

"If you really do find that person and the regressions end — then right now, all of this, will become Kang Hajin-ssi's memories. His experiences."

Consider this the advice of a hyung who cares about you.

With that, Suho closed his mouth. Hajin seemed to be turning the words over, sitting with them.

Suho waited calmly through those minutes too.

Hajin, it seemed, probably hadn't even fully realized himself that he'd been badly burned and was still hurting.

Realizing it, gathering himself, rinsing the wound in cold water — it would take him a good long while.

'Taeil, that bastard — sharp instincts.'

Something Taeil had once said about Hajin came back to him.

—You said he was at some agency before?

—Yeah. Some new startup, apparently. Ended up folding, from the sound of it.

—…the kid got burned pretty bad there, didn't he.

—Why?

—He grew up too fast. Way too much on his mind for a twenty-year-old. At that age, a few things ought to still be beyond you.

Without knowing a thing about Hajin's regressions, Taeil had read him like that.

'You really can't underestimate thirteen years of experience in this industry.'

While Suho was resolving never to talk about Hajin lightly in front of Taeil, Hajin seemed to have finished sorting his thoughts. Watching Hajin's face — a bit less shadowed than before — Suho relaxed.

"Did that help at all?"

"…yeah, sure."

"Glad to hear it."

At Hajin's nod, right on cue, there was a knock at the door. When Suho signaled them to come in, a server carefully wheeled in a large tray.

"I'll get your food set up now."

Dish after dish landed on the table, each looking as good as it likely tasted. Watching the traditional Korean meal being laid out until the table almost buckled, Hajin — eyes lit up as though he'd tossed his earlier shadow out somewhere — picked up his chopsticks.

The sight of it left Suho with a mild case of whiplash.

"So… am I imagining that all of your accumulated trauma healed the second you saw food?"

"You're imagining it."

"…doesn't look like it, though?"

"The earlier conversation more than took care of my spirit; now, filling my body with a meal this good — I can only be grateful."

The stream of talk was Hajin at his most usual.

Suho shook his head, laughing helplessly at the slick, buttering-up flow.

There really was no beating that mouth of his.

"Honestly now — you sold drugs in a past life, didn't you?"

"You want honestly? You won't be able to handle it."

"…isn't that a little reckless, when I can't fact-check?"

"But how lucky, really. If I'd sold, that's one thing — if I'd used, an idol debut would've been out of the question."

"…did you actually sell?"

"Ha, hardly? The strongest stuff I've ever taken is cold medicine, so drop it and eat."

Watching Ji Suho look genuinely relieved at that, Hajin let out a helpless laugh. From that laugh on, a slightly easier current started running between them.

Since the regressions had begun, it was the first time Hajin had opened the lock on his heart completely — to anyone.