# Chapter 158.
It wasn’t normal to have an unfamiliar voice echoing in his memory, or to recall someone he’d never even spoken with.
Yet the certainty rising in his chest kept shaking his reason. The more he traced his memories, the more clearly that voice and atmosphere came to mind.
Lee Hwan closed his eyes tightly, then opened them and took a slow deep breath while picking up trash from the floor. Only after organizing it did he manage to calm his confused mind.
Then he carefully retraced what had just happened.
‘I don’t think I was in my right mind.’
The first thing he considered was mental illness. Though somewhat extreme, it was worth first assessing his own mental health.
Could the long battles, horrific scenes, and gradually despair-soaked unfortunate experiences have triggered PTSD? He had been considering getting counseling with Taesung once everything was settled.
But Kang Dongying appearing in his memory with such a vivid voice, despite having nothing to do with combat, seemed somewhat different. Lee Hwan straightened his back, plopped down on the bed, and considered the next possibility.
What if his regression hadn’t been to March 8th?
If he had regressed earlier and somehow lost the memories of that period, it would somewhat explain Taesung’s attitude that he had found strange all along. From suddenly acting like he knew things to trying to look after him at home like a houseplant.
Also, he had never heard of skills appearing randomly without his knowledge, so it must be something he had gained at some point but couldn’t remember.
If his memories had been completely wiped out, he must have suffered a head injury. If he had experienced memory loss from a severe injury, it would make sense for Taesung to be frantic.
‘But…’
Jade clearly seemed not to know Lee Hwan. He had also pinpointed the time Taesung became strange as around March 8th.
Most importantly, this unidentifiable memory was about Kang Dongying, but the man who had just appeared treated Lee Hwan like a complete stranger.
‘Perhaps mental illness is more likely.’
While his reason was concerned about brain health, his instinct kept sending signals that it wasn’t that. Lee Hwan buried his face in his knees, listed everything he had experienced one by one, and became convinced.
Whether there was a mental problem or not, there was clearly something strange about the regression. And Taesung knew about it.
Lee Hwan’s eyes sharpened as he grasped a clue.
‘Are there more memories like this?’
Occasionally when waking up, he would be engulfed in emotions so intense he couldn’t understand them. Though it was just groundless deduction, perhaps he had unconsciously glimpsed some memories.
If his body remained the same but only memories of events that had never happened in the same time period were added, how should he categorize that?
‘Regression.’
* A Amplification
* B Spatial Control (★)
* C Gravity
The skill window he had checked repeatedly still only showed Spatial Control, Amplification, and Gravity. But regression was a fact, not an illusion. There had definitely been an explanation attached to it, but what was it?
‘The explanation was all erased… right, the name was EX Broken Clockwork.’
He had worried a lot because the name sounded ominous from the start. If the situation hadn’t been urgent, he would have deliberated more before using it.
Still, he had thought it fortunate to have returned to the past safely without any damage… but perhaps, true to its name, there might be something he had lost.
‘Could there have been a regression moment I don’t remember?’
Having reached that point, Lee Hwan stopped his speculation. It was close to an unwarranted assumption, and he felt he had gone too far.
But once started, the question kept branching out, thoroughly exploring the single clue he had barely found.
“Haah…”
After rummaging through his head for a while, when he finally let out a long sigh and raised his head, Lee Hwan was a bit surprised to inadvertently see outside the window.
The sun was already setting. Even considering that days were shorter in spring, he seemed to have been doing this for quite some time.
Pulling out his phone from his pocket, there were already two missed calls. Naturally, the only person who would call him was Taesung.
Wondering if he had somehow missed feeling vibrations or hearing the sound, he checked his phone and found it was set to silent mode like magic. He must have accidentally touched something when flipping the phone case to insert a business card.
‘Let’s go back for now.’
Carrying the collected trash, Lee Hwan walked out into the setting sun. Throughout the return journey on the bus, he thought about Taesung. More precisely, he replayed every word and action Taesung had taken after the regression as he remembered them.
Taesung’s quick adaptation after the regression. The strange anxiety he kept showing despite that.
Come to think of it, he had never told Taesung his first day of work, yet he somehow knew in advance and had taken measures.
Even if he had looked it up sometime… is that the first thing that comes to mind right after regression, normally?
Clunk! The bus shook heavily once. Lee Hwan hit his head on the window with a thud but remained dazed.
Whatever he was doing, he still didn’t doubt Taesung’s intentions. He firmly believed in his promise not to harm him.
But whatever he was hiding, Lee Hwan had a right to know. Especially if it was about the regression…
‘If he won’t tell me, I’ll just dig it out.’
He didn’t consider himself an exceptional detective, but he prided himself on knowing Taesung well. Lee Hwan pursed his lips and leaned his head against the window that had stopped rattling.
* * *
‘You’ve been like this all day without turning on the lights?’
‘You’re back?’
‘I heard you haven’t been eating well lately.’
‘Why do I need to eat when I’m not moving?’
‘…What I said about finding a way to reverse it wasn’t a lie. Just wait a little longer.’
The blanket he looked down at with a bitter smile didn’t move. Lee Hwan adjusted the respirator attached below his nose with a miserable feeling that he had already chewed over several times.
Then suddenly, the world flipped, and he was sweating coldly inside the blanket.
“Huff… huff…”
It was a strange dream he had again after several days. Some melodramatic conversation had taken place, and he was lying in a hospital bed like a drama protagonist.
Trying hard to hold onto the memory that was about to fly away, Lee Hwan hurriedly picked up his phone. But before he could write down the dream’s scenery, the memory blurred like a dream.
Lee Hwan had been diligently collecting fragments of what might be memories or just random dreams for days. Seeing that he sometimes flew in the sky or traveled to a mole world through a bathroom drain, most seemed like nonsensical dreams, but still, he was faithfully keeping a dream diary in hopes of finding more clues.
At the same time, he was secretly observing Taesung’s every move. For example, he drank 800 milliliters of high-calorie powder from the cupboard every morning, and his morning departures weren’t just for work.
Now he seemed to sleep properly in bed, but he still occasionally walked to the living room. Even when he didn’t, he paced in his room, so Lee Hwan would come out to check on him at the slightest rustle.
However, apart from all of these being suspiciously odd, upon closer examination, they weren’t really impossible occurrences. If Taesung dismissed it all as mere dreams, if he attributed his sleep disorder to the monster wave, Lee Hwan had no way to refute that.
So he simply waited in silence, hoping to catch more definite circumstantial or material evidence to extract the proper story from him.
The long-awaited day came sooner than expected.
On a weekday afternoon when Taesung was away, Lee Hwan, returning from buying snacks, witnessed an unexpected sight.
His car was abandoned in some corner of the apartment complex. Looking inside the car, which was oddly parked, it was a mess, unlike the owner’s usual temperament.
Wondering if something had happened, he hurriedly came up, and surprisingly, Taesung was sitting on the sofa, pressing his head with one hand and breathing heavily.
“…Kang Taesung?”
Only after calling his name did he turn around with surprised eyes. As if he hadn’t even heard the door opening due to his headache.
Lee Hwan felt his heart drop seeing his pale face covered in cold sweat.
“Are you… okay?”
At the question, Taesung struggled to raise the corners of his mouth.
“Yeah, it’s nothing.”
However, when he approached and placed a hand on his shoulder, the grip on his arm that pretended it was nothing was surprisingly hot.
It meant he had used a lot of ability somewhere and returned.
‘Where did he get hurt…? There’s no wound on his head.’
There were no visible injuries, and he didn’t seem to be in a condition to rarely fall ill. To begin with, he had never heard of an S-class Awakened person getting a fever.
Then what remained was a penalty, but as far as Lee Hwan knew, his penalty was usually limited to numb hands. There had never been an unreasonable case of penalties increasing without reason in this world.
‘It doesn’t make sense. Unless he swallowed a wrong skill stone.’
As he was thinking and shaking his head, Lee Hwan suddenly recalled the two skills that had inexplicably taken residence in his skill window.
‘…’
Lee Hwan’s face stiffened uncontrollably.
“I’m really okay.”
Lee Hwan firmly grabbed Taesung’s wrist as he tried to reassure him. His light eyes cooled sharply. Noticing the suddenly changed atmosphere, he quietly looked into Lee Hwan’s eyes.
“I want there to be trust between us.”
Lee Hwan gestured slightly at Taesung’s forehead. As his frost-like voice cut through the air, Taesung seemed to already realize what he was about to say.
“I feel like I’m reaching my limit of patience, so I’d appreciate a proper answer.”
“…”
“That just now, it’s a penalty, isn’t it?”
At the question close to certainty, the smile gradually disappeared from Taesung’s face.
