# Chapter 161
The world went mad. Like someone with a head injury, his vision went dark and then returned, and his senses were so numb he couldn’t even feel himself falling to the ground.
When Taesung regained consciousness, he was driving his car. A heavy anxiety pressed on his chest.
He wanted to see Lee Hwan as soon as possible. He needed to confirm. Whether Lee Hwan had left the house unable to wait for his arrival and gotten hurt, or whether he had experienced a faulty regression due to his increasingly abnormal skill.
Joo Lee Hwan. Joo Lee Hwan. Joo Lee Hwan. As he repeated his name, somehow only the memory of his happily smiling face kept flashing before his eyes. The pain intensified. Taesung felt like his head was on fire.
But near Lee Hwan’s house, he ended up turning the car around. Taesung found himself even gasping for breath. He didn’t want to show this side of himself to Lee Hwan.
Right now was supposed to be Lee Hwan’s moment of joy after successfully regressing. He couldn’t plant anxiety in the emotions of someone who would be relieved that they had both survived. Besides, at this hour, Lee Hwan would be in the middle of showering. He shouldn’t knock on the door and disturb his peace.
Taesung suppressed his breathing and drove. He entered the nearest department store and chose a plush toy of a suitable size.
Lee Hwan never showed it, but he quite liked these soft, fluffy things. In fact, Taesung had given him a similar plush toy during the second cycle. At that time, Lee Hwan had complained, asking why he was giving such a thing, but later when Taesung visited his house to organize his belongings, he found the plush toy placed on the bed with a blanket covering it, as if he had hugged it to sleep every night.
Since then, Taesung bought plush toys for Lee Hwan every time he regressed. He hoped this would serve as a good sedative for his heart this time as well. Even better if he complained about it again.
Returning to Lee Hwan’s house again, Taesung stood outside the door, patiently waiting until the faint sound of water stopped. After more than ten minutes, when Lee Hwan finally seemed to finish his shower and leave the bathroom, Taesung counted to 10 in his heart and rang the doorbell.
Ding-dong.
Lee Hwan from seven years ago, with moisture still clinging to him, opened the door. Perhaps he should have waited about a minute longer. He hadn’t even put on clothes yet. With each joint of his body flushed slightly red, he widened his eyes a little, then reached out without warning and touched Taesung’s stomach.
He was probably checking where Taesung had been injured during the monster wave. Even that small gesture was heartbreakingly tender.
He had endured as much as he could. Taesung finally embraced him. Through the soft and supple body that seemed as if it had never experienced hardship, he could hear the pounding heartbeat. His wet hair smelled of a familiar scent he had missed.
After freezing for a moment in surprise, Lee Hwan soon surrendered his body and nestled into the embrace. He wrapped his arms around Taesung’s waist and patted his back. As if trying to comfort him, the fumbling movements were transmitted clearly.
Taesung had thought his tears had dried up after countless regressions. But feeling Lee Hwan’s small gestures and body heat, his face quickly became wet.
Why had he worried needlessly? He would never become numb to Lee Hwan’s death. He had rewound the world eight times for him. If the opportunity had continued, he would have repeated the regression endlessly.
But regardless of his wishes, now the attempts were coming to an end. If the unavoidable end came… he would have to follow him.
Even in the midst of these miserable and grim thoughts, Taesung checked Lee Hwan’s pulse and examined each of his limbs one by one. Worried that he might have been injured or left incomplete due to a faulty regression.
Then, when Lee Hwan gently caressed his face and met his eyes, for a moment, all the pain seemed to melt away. Taesung held him tighter and buried his head in his shoulder.
“Just a moment. Just a little longer.”
It was a moment he would never experience again. He wanted to feel this sensation a little longer. Enough to remember it vividly even if the end came.
The scent of his warm skin kept stirring Taesung’s heart. It seemed it would take a bit longer to sort out the emotions that kept welling up.
***
“Let’s go home.”
Taesung grabbed Lee Hwan’s hand as if it were only natural. This was the last chance. With everything needing extreme caution even when moving carefully, he had no intention of leaving him in this shoddy and dangerous neighborhood.
Lee Hwan followed without any particular response. After seating him in the passenger seat, fastening his seatbelt for him, and placing the plush toy on his lap, Lee Hwan slightly raised the corner of his mouth. It was quite adorable how he fidgeted with the toy, avoiding Taesung’s gaze.
However, once the car left the neighborhood, Lee Hwan’s face began to harden. Taesung could easily guess what he was doing without turning his head. By this time, Lee Hwan would usually discover his newly acquired skill.
Soon he would start a conversation saying there was something strange. Then Taesung would listen about the skill and, as always, pretend to be surprised together.
But unexpectedly, Lee Hwan, despite looking around anxiously, didn’t open his mouth. Even after waiting for a while, his voice didn’t come. Feeling strange after waiting for him, Taesung spoke first.
“Are you uncomfortable somewhere?”
“…No.”
He flinched and then denied it without any hesitation. Taesung nodded, saying he understood, and then quietly turned his head to stare ahead.
His heart sank. Did he just hide his skill?
No. He must not have seen the skill window yet. This behavior was unprecedented throughout all previous cycles. Just as he was about to dismiss it as coincidence, the completely broken skill flashed grimly through his mind.
* ▦X ▦▦▦▦ ▦▦▦▦▦▦▦ (▦▦▦ ▦▦▦▦▦▦▦▦)
Out of concern, he reopened the skill window, but it was still not in its right mind. If it had collapsed to the point where the system couldn’t read it, perhaps some new change had occurred in the regression.
The effects the skill had on him were regression and memory theft. If there were any problems, strange points would begin to appear from there.
“Are there one-time skills too? After using it, it just completely disappeared.”
“That’s a shame.”
“I know. If it could be used multiple times, it would’ve been a real windfall. If I failed, I could go back, and if I failed again, go back again.”
Only after returning home and sitting him down did the conversation about the skill flow out. He still didn’t mention the newly acquired skill. He just muttered a few words about regression.
Would an infinitely usable regression really have been a windfall? Taesung made a bitter expression. Certainly, it was an unprecedented stroke of luck, but if asked whether it was good because of that, he couldn’t affirm it.
Still, it was true that he had an opportunity that others could never obtain. Now that opportunity was bottoming out, so he needed to control everything meticulously until the very end.
“Nothing else?”
Lee Hwan nodded at the question. Taesung couldn’t understand his psychology at all. What was he thinking? What went wrong that made him hide his skill?
If it were anything else, he would have looked into what story was behind it and let it pass. But there was one problem with his skill. A penalty he had never anticipated.
Whatever he had picked up, since the regression, monster pheromones spread whenever he used his ability. The tragedy of the first cycle began there. The image of him coming out of the operating room with bandages wrapped all around his body wouldn’t fade from his vision, as if engraved.
Which cycle was it? There was something Jade had said after smelling Lee Hwan’s scent. He said that although Lee Hwan was just a human with monster genes affecting his DNA, there was something faintly perceptible.
He had said the sweet smell wouldn’t make monsters recognize him as food or an enemy, but it would make them want to take him away. Even a small piece would do, rushing in to somehow break him into pieces.
It was a chilling story. He needed to somehow warn him, but he couldn’t pretend to know. Even more so because he shouldn’t know the skill information that even Lee Hwan himself didn’t know.
The first night of the last cycle. Taesung couldn’t sleep. Partly because of the pressure that if he ruined this chance too, there would be no more hope, and partly because of Lee Hwan’s subtly different attitude from other times.
When dawn broke, he would surely try to use his newly acquired skill. No, perhaps even before the night passed, he might leave the house saying he was going out for a brief exercise. It was predictable.
Just in case, he sat in the living room waiting for him. He had no intention of sleeping anyway, so it was the perfect position for thinking about various things.
Then, how much time had passed? Very faintly, the sound of breathing began to be heard. Irregular and drenched in emotion.
Lee Hwan was crying. Taesung felt all his thoughts shatter and his mind snap to attention. His heart suddenly raced.
Both he and Lee Hwan had been through so much in the world on the brink of destruction. Some memories were so intense that even Taesung, who had returned to the same time countless times, occasionally shuddered, let alone Lee Hwan who had just believed he’d returned from there.
However, Taesung was supposed to be someone who shouldn’t be awake until Lee Hwan came out to the living room and tried to leave the house. Unable to go in to comfort him, he just sat in the same spot as if nailed there.
In the end, as expected, he received comfort from Lee Hwan who came out. While it was he himself who had cried his eyes out as soon as he woke up, why was he worrying about someone else first?
Hugging him and gently touching his messy hair, Taesung was more worried than happy. Although he wanted to be with him all day, there was no time to delay. When dawn broke, he needed to request a meeting with the Chairman as if handling overdue tasks, and prepare for what he had methodically planned.
Besides not having confidence to maintain a normal face in front of Lee Hwan throughout this anxiety, judging by how he was hiding his skill to this extent, it was clear that Lee Hwan would not just stay at home.
‘Should I forcibly stop him again?’
At least during the time he kept him confined, no accidents occurred. But now he could no longer erase all memories and turn back. He didn’t want to be hated until the very end either.
Was there really no way to face a happy future with him?
Taesung followed Lee Hwan back to the room, and sitting in the armchair, he was lost in thought until dawn broke.
