Chapter 8
To turn my conjecture into certainty, I had to sacrifice my sixth and seventh lives.
And in my eighth life, I succeeded in perfectly following Yu Chanhee’s footsteps for a year.
I grew up hearing that I was unusually calm for a child. That was also an assessment the original Yu Chanhee often received. Hyunjae always looked for opportunities to speak to me, but that quieted down after about six months. There was a time when being disliked by Hyunjae pained my heart, but now it felt like an extremely distant past. I basically lived the life my parents wanted and made friends at school without any issues. Dealing with young children wasn’t difficult. What was important was that I absolutely couldn’t sleep. Ignoring the past versions of Yu Chanhee dying horribly had become familiar, but I simply couldn’t overcome the terror before falling asleep.
Every night I would repeatedly doze off and wake up. And each time I woke, I pathologically checked whether I’d returned to that eight-year-old time again, whether Hyunjae was standing in front of me. When my body couldn’t endure anymore and I occasionally fell into a deep sleep, it always ended with a cruel nightmare. After dreaming of the twenty-seven-year-old Cha Suhyun I could barely remember now, I finally got out of bed. It was to drink a glass of water.
I hesitated as I opened the door. It was because Hyunjae came out of his room at the same time. As usual, I ignored Hyunjae and headed to the kitchen. Hyunjae stared at me for a moment and then followed behind me.
I took out a cup, filled it with water from the purifier, drank it, and passed by Hyunjae.
“Chanhee.”
The unexpected call made me stop without realizing it. Fortunately, I hadn’t turned around. I pretended not to hear and headed back to my room.
“Happy birthday.”
Hyunjae ran up and pressed a letter into my hand. Along with it was a flower clumsily tied with a ribbon. I recalled the small bouquet Hyunjae had made for me when I was eight in one of my lives. Tightly gripping the flower and letter, I didn’t give any response. Hyunjae, having delivered the letter, scurried back to his room. I eventually returned to my room with them. Looking at the clock, it had just passed midnight.
I lay back in bed without reading the letter. Somehow tears welled up a little. Because I remembered a time long ago when Hyunjae and I had promised to go to high school together and go on a trip. Shaking off the useless reminiscence, I closed my eyes.
Day broke. My phone was flooded with birthday messages. After checking them briefly, I went out the door for breakfast. There was the smell of seaweed soup. Smiling faintly at Mom’s birthday wishes, I thanked her. Hyunjae lingered around as if he had something to say to me. I looked at him indifferently. Hyunjae asked me in a small voice.
“Did you… read the letter?”
I answered, no. Hyunjae seemed greatly disappointed.
“I see…”
After eating, I got up first. Hyunjae and I went to school separately. Our classes were different anyway, and I’d told him not to acknowledge me at school. It was the same behavior as the original Yu Chanhee. Hyunjae faithfully followed my instructions. After receiving birthday wishes all day from children and teachers, I was finally able to escape the classroom, leaving behind the little ones who wanted to invite me to their homes.
Hyunjae was walking a little way ahead. He was wearing the backpack I’d used last year. Normally, I would’ve deliberately avoided the path Hyunjae was taking, but just for today, I followed slowly behind him from a considerable distance.
Hyunjae walked slowly. The original Hyunjae, without “my” intervention, would’ve lived like this throughout elementary school. A life of always looking at the ground and walking slowly without anyone to walk beside him. Gloomy days where he received no welcome despite being at an age where he should’ve been raised with plenty of love. Judging just by childhood, his life was as pitiful as Yu Chanhee’s. The difference might be that Hyunjae had the strength to endure, and I didn’t.
Hyunjae suddenly stopped walking. Nearby, there was a park that wasn’t being maintained at all. Hyunjae crawled under the entrance that was haphazardly blocked with a rope, crouched down, and began doing something. Unable to approach hastily, I watched Hyunjae from a distance.
“Chanhee!”
Startled by the voice calling my name, I turned around. The little ones from my class were running toward me. Not wanting these shrewd kids to catch me watching Hyunjae, I hurriedly ran toward them. After joining the group, I glanced back slightly and saw Hyunjae already standing up blankly, looking in this direction.
Afterward, I always observed Hyunjae’s behavior within the boundaries of not changing his life. Though not particularly pleasant, complex emotions surged every time I saw him, but my gaze kept landing on that small back of his head. Hyunjae lived the same routine every day to avoid upsetting our parents. He would wake up, wash, eat, go to school, then walk the thirty-minute path back home. Then he’d go to his room to study, eat dinner, spend his leisure time in his room, and fall asleep.
Even while repeating this boring pattern, Hyunjae lived his life without tiring. I sat crouched on the bed, staring at the drawer under the desk. The letter and flower Hyunjae had given me were tucked deep inside the drawer. I’d mustered the courage to throw them in the trash once, but that night I eventually retrieved them. I pondered countless times whether to read the content, but out of some unknown fear, I couldn’t even unfold the paper. Despite knowing it would obviously contain just a few words wishing me a happy birthday, I simply couldn’t look at it. Curling up, I buried my face in my knees.
It’s been a year now. Just a year has passed.
But despite having nearly ten years left, I had absolutely no curiosity about my life.
Unless one lived the life of a Ranker, power rankings had no relation to life. However, among immature elementary school students, the reverence for this power, or rather potential, was truly immense. Citizens could formally receive regular Ranker education from age fourteen, but as you know, this country’s zeal for early education exceeded imagination. It was common for children who secretly received private tutoring to lose control of their power and hurt others. The state claimed to severely punish ability training below the legal age, but no actual punishment was carried out. This was because letting a child with high-grade potential rot in juvenile detention or prison would be a national, even global loss. Once they reached the age to realize this, from that point on, almost everything was primarily valued by “power.”
Having received a Rank 1, I was treated as a celebrity within the school even though I didn’t want to care much about it. It was really not welcome at all (being rumored as the boss among little kids would only entangle me in childish fights), but I diligently maintained that position and continued a moderately arrogant lifestyle.
On the other hand, it was predictable for Hyunjae, who was deemed powerless. Moreover, rumors spread—who knows by whose doing—that Hyunjae was living as a freeloader in our house, further intensifying the disrespect toward him. Hyunjae originally couldn’t be such a cold-hearted person. He was the type who cried when watching sad movies and couldn’t stand injustice. Although not detailed in the novel, given that Hyunjae’s childhood was described as filled with only solitude and loneliness, it seemed he wouldn’t have any decent friends in the future either. How desperate must he have been to feel something like friendship toward Yu Chanhee who tried to kill him? It’s because his human relationships were so extremely narrow that he considered even that as friendship.
When reading the novel, I thought it was a common and childish setting, but directly witnessing it was another matter. Ignoring, rejecting, and tormenting the life of a child while knowing the future was harder than I thought. My eyes were drawn to that child, who wore clothes too small for his body, sat alone in the corner of the cafeteria to eat, and was still so young that his feet didn’t reach the floor when sitting on a chair. And the fact that I couldn’t do anything for that child plunged me deeper into helpless depression.
Perhaps because of this, whenever I dozed off, seventeen-year-old Hyunjae always appeared in my dreams. Shamelessly, every time I had that dream, I would run to him and embrace him deeply. At those times, a cozy feeling that couldn’t be felt in other nightmares enveloped my entire body. Hyunjae would hold me and whisper:
—It’s okay, Chanhee.
It’s okay. On days when I had that dream, I cried more than when waking from any nightmare. And I regretted. If only I could’ve escaped from Cha Suhyun faster. If only I’d been a little stronger. If only I could’ve lived for just a few seconds more until Hyunjae arrived.
All futile regrets.
I rubbed my eyes and opened the door. Something touched my feet. It was a simple bouquet of wildflowers. I naturally glanced toward Hyunjae’s room. The door was open, suggesting he’d already left. I stood still, holding the flowers. I should’ve thrown them away right then, but I simply couldn’t do it. As if I hadn’t learned anything even after dying so many times, I once again found myself thinking that I wanted to be with Hyunjae.
