Chapter 75
I took a deep breath and knocked on Yu Hyunjae’s door.
“Aren’t you going to school?”
There was no answer. I knocked harder.
“Hey, let’s go to school.”
The door slowly opened. Yu Hyunjae stood there, looking exhausted and slightly swollen. He was already wearing his school bag, fully prepared.
“Should we go?”
Yu Hyunjae’s voice was hoarse, as if he hadn’t slept well. Despite his appearance, I couldn’t even bring myself to ask what was wrong—it would have been insincere. And I was afraid of what his answer might be.
“Chanhee.”
But Yu Hyunjae was different from me. As soon as we stepped outside, he spoke in a low voice.
“Last night, I heard something from your dad.”
“……Yeah.”
“I think I need to hear it from you to be sure.”
His voice trembled, despite the firmness of his words. I stayed silent and bowed my head.
“You…”
Yu Hyunjae hesitated for a long time before continuing. I waited quietly. The sounds of passing people and their murmured conversations filled the air like white noise.
“……Are you dying?”
I finally looked up. When I met his eyes, they were already filled with tears. I felt myself being pulled into that emotion and stammered a reply.
“They said it’s not certain. They said there’s still a way to get better…”
“Chanhee.”
I swallowed the rest of my excuses. Yu Hyunjae spoke again, his voice strained.
“What I’m asking is… whether you’re in that situation.”
I couldn’t deny it anymore. I nodded heavily. Yu Hyunjae’s fists clenched and unclenched repeatedly.
“Why?”
“……”
“Why didn’t you tell me? Is this what you’ve been hiding?”
It wasn’t everything, but it was a big part of it.
“I was scared.”
“What?”
“I was scared of telling you and seeing you hurt…”
“……Is that your reason?”
“Yeah, I just…”
“Yeah.”
Yu Hyunjae slowly composed himself and started walking again. I hurried after him. We didn’t bring up the subject again during school or class. I was anxious the whole time, dreading the words I didn’t want to hear from him. But as long as he didn’t say them, I couldn’t say anything either.
***
As soon as we arrived at school, we changed into our gym clothes and headed to the field. The students from each class were already in place, excitedly chattering. The class president spotted us and dragged us to a corner.
“You guys have to come in first.”
“What? Suddenly?”
“The 9th-grade bastards came and provoked us.”
“Provoked us?”
“Lee Joohyun said he’d definitely beat you, Yu Chanhee.”
“Me?”
I pointed at myself, confused. The class president grumbled in dissatisfaction, complaining about how he didn’t understand Rank 1s and why they were so competitive when they were already the best.
“You want to lose to Lee Joohyun?”
“Well…”
“Well? Wellll?”
The class president grabbed my hand and Yu Hyunjae’s, forcing us to hold them together.
“You two go over there and practice until it’s your turn.”
“No, let’s rest a bit first.”
“Rest? Rest? You’ll rest forever when you’re dead. Now, work hard.”
At the word dead, Yu Hyunjae’s hand trembled slightly. To escape the situation quickly, I deliberately exaggerated my response.
“Fine, fine. If we mess up, we’ll really die.”
“Everyone else trained like crazy except you two. Just worry about yourselves.”
We ended up shuffling toward the back of the gym. Tying our ankles together with a rope always felt a little ridiculous.
“Lean on me more.”
As I stood up, Yu Hyunjae suddenly said to me. I looked at him blankly and replied, “Huh?”
“Lean on me more.”
“Oh, okay.”
The practice continued quietly. I thought the tension would rise after some time, but it didn’t. I kept getting tangled up because I was too conscious of Yu Hyunjae’s movements. He caught me a few times and warned me to be careful. My feet tangled even more. Eventually, Yu Hyunjae grabbed my shoulder tightly and started walking as if pulling me along.
“No, I can walk.”
“This is better. No need to match each other.”
I finally shut my mouth. I was the one who had established this one-sided relationship where we didn’t need to match each other. I couldn’t point out the problem with that.
“Hyunjae.”
“What?”
“Are you scared of me dying?”
Yu Hyunjae looked at me silently for a moment, then ran his hand through his hair in exasperation.
“You’re really…”
“I’m more scared of you leaving me than of me dying.”
“……”
“If I die… I won’t be separated from you even if I die. But if you leave, that’s really being separated.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What I mean is, you’re more important to me than I am to myself.”
“You think I’d leave you if I knew you were dying? Where does that come from? Chanhee, I’m trying to get angrier here.”
“If I’m going to die anyway, it’s better for you to remember me being happy rather than suffering.”
“You really don’t know anything.”
Yu Hyunjae muttered as he looked at me. If I died, the current Yu Hyunjae would leave, and a new Yu Hyunjae would approach me. Whether that Yu Hyunjae would be happy or unhappy depended entirely on me. I didn’t want to repeat that futile cycle anymore.
That’s when it happened. For the first time in a while, the background around us rapidly turned gray. The system had appeared.
I looked at Yu Hyunjae, who still had a stiff expression. Red lights began flickering all around.
“You think I don’t know anything?”
“……”
“The one thing I don’t know is…”
“What…”
“You.”
“So…”
A creaking sound grew louder. Something began pressing down on my head. Unable to bear the pain, I grimaced and clutched my head.
“……Anyway, don’t worry.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m okay.”
As soon as I said that, the pain subsided. The system’s warning was not something to be ignored.
“I was just… so angry that you were suffering and I couldn’t do anything about it.”
“I see.”
“When I awakened from being a powerless nobody to a Ranker, I thought my whole world would change.”
This was the first time I’d ever heard Yu Hyunjae talk about mana. I waited quietly for him to continue.
“Back then, I had this strange sense of mission. I thought I had to achieve something.”
That made sense. The original Yu Hyunjae was born for that purpose.
“But at some point, that vague feeling disappeared, and only one thing became clear.”
I didn’t need to ask what it was. Yu Hyunjae was looking straight at me.
“But I’ve been living like an idiot, knowing nothing about you. My goal became singular at some point.”
Yu Hyunjae, who knew nothing about me. It was a cruel assumption, but it was also the truth.
“Your dad called me to talk about you.”
“……”
“He said I can’t do anything for you even if I’m there.”
“……Father?”
“Yeah. At first, I didn’t believe it. I thought I could definitely do something to help. But talking to you this morning, I realized it. I can’t do anything.”
Yu Hyunjae’s expression turned bitter.
“After I come back from England, maybe. If I can earn recognition here, maybe it’ll be better.”
“So you decided to go?”
Yu Hyunjae nodded.
“What if I die? What if I die while you’re gone?”
“I… I hate the thought of you dying while I’m just standing around, unable to do anything.”
“Why can’t you do anything? Why do you think that?”
“Chanhee.”
Yu Hyunjae looked down at me calmly, despite my agitation. I blinked and took a slow breath. He smiled slightly and placed both hands on my shoulders.
“You said it yourself. Even if you die, we won’t be separated.”
“……”
“I’ll believe that.”
“On what basis? Why would you believe that?”
“Because you’ve changed. You’re not just the Yu Chanhee who hated me anymore. You’ve become someone else.”
“……”
“For whatever irrational reason, the answer I came up with is that you were never Yu Chanhee to begin with.”
“……That’s…”
“I’ve thought of every possible reason to justify my flimsy feelings, but that’s the only answer that fits.”
I couldn’t say anything. Fortunately, the system didn’t seem to care as long as I didn’t say it directly.
“It doesn’t make sense, I know. It might not even be true.”
“Hyunjae.”
“But if it is true, then you can be with me even without wearing this skin. Isn’t that what you meant?”
It was half right and half wrong, but surprisingly sharp. In other words, Yu Hyunjae had gone beyond thinking of himself as a “novel character” and deduced that Yu Chanhee had become someone else at some point.
“I’ll really get stronger.”
Yu Hyunjae said firmly. He was someone who could truly do that. The one unquestioned premise since I fell into this world: Yu Hyunjae would grow stronger. Ironically, the catalyst, just like in the novel, would be Yu Chanhee’s death. Thinking that far, all the strength drained from my body.
What did the world want, anyway?
