It Listens to the Heartbeat
Clatter, thunk…….
“Jiho, I'm sorry to wake you, but I have to go to the two of them.”
I lifted the boy into my arms as he was and pressed his face into my shoulder so he couldn't see.
No matter how urgent things were, there were things a child shouldn't have to witness.
“Ha, hoo…….”
Carrying a kid who must have weighed twenty kilos while running left me gasping for air without even trying.
But I didn't stop. I couldn't. Not now.
“Haah……. Ms. Hwang Juyeon? CEO Yu Hyeonjae?”
By the time I arrived, the fake Buddha had already vanished into the darkness.
I pressed the boy's head down gently to make sure he wouldn't look up, and approached slowly.
My heart, already hammering, felt like it would burst from the anxiety.
“Mr. Seon Yuhan……?”
The figure I'd taken for someone crouched down slowly rose to his feet.
It was Yu Hyeonjae.
“Ms. Hwang Juyeon, she…….”
The CEO shook his head, his face drained.
Behind him, when I swept the light around, I saw her—Hwang Juyeon, lying on the blood-soaked carpet with her mottled suit jacket draped over herself like a blanket.
Hwang Juyeon was sleeping a sleep from which she would not wake.
“It's just that, that clue, I thought the cross was wrong, so…….”
The words wouldn't come out right.
My breath was coming faster and faster.
“Yes……. So it seems……”
It's my fault. My fault. It's my fault again. Again I—because I was stupid. Because I didn't catch on sooner. I should have realized it was a trap earlier. If I'd torn it apart back then. If I'd distracted Choi Jaeha. Maybe no one would have died. Choi Jaeha too. Hwang Juyeon too. No one at all.
“There's just one strange thing, though—Ms. Hwang Juyeon held back her scream, and yet the fake Buddha still came for her……. Mr. Seon Yuhan?”
Right. If it weren't for me, no one would have had to die.
Clatter…….
And then.
The voices that had been pouring ceaselessly through my head fell silent.
A chilling hush.
And then—sharp footsteps, closing in.
Splosh, squelch…….
She didn't scream.
Clunk, skreee…….
She held it in. I know she did.
“Mr. Seon Yuhan……!”
“What is it that leaves thee thirsting? Hast thou forgotten the eighty-four thousand dharma gates? Art thou still bound by the hundred and eight defilements?”
Why?
Why?
“This world is illusion, sensation is karma, memory is suffering.”
The World-Honored One was approaching. Coming toward me.
Why? What did he hear? What called the World-Honored One here?
Thud, thud…….
When I placed a hand over my chest, recalling the mercy that drew near, I could feel it—a fistful of meat pounding furiously in anticipation of the truth, beyond skin that had been flayed open again and again.
Clatter, slap.
In time with the footsteps.
Thud, thud…….
“The seat of the Tathagata rests neither upon a rotted dais nor beneath a burned sal tree.”
Oh.
“Ha—I didn't want to believe it, but.”
This heart-devouring fake Buddha doesn't come running at the sound of screams.
“Not at the sound of screaming, but…….”
“Where the blood of those blinded by craving and obsession seethes like a horde of hungry ghosts.”
The heart.
“There have I been waiting.”
It comes to the sound of a heartbeat.
“It listens for heartbeats. That's what it was doing.”
“At last, I have heard thee.”
The instant my realization merged with those two voices into one—
The whole world drowned in darkness.
“If it were possible to turn back time, what would you do, Mr. Seon Yuhan?”
“Do I…… have to stop my heart?”
“I'm sorry? Stop what? Oh—are you feeling unwell somewhere? Should we wrap up the interview here for now?”
“……Yes. I think that's best for now. Excuse me a moment.”
Shaking off the pain that had vanished as though it had been a hallucination, I helped the interviewer to her feet and stepped out into the hallway with her.
Separating emotion from information in my head, sorting everything into place as I went, I passed along what she needed to know.
“Also, on basement level 5, there's this monster pretending to be a Buddha—it seems to home in on you when your heartbeat gets louder, though I don't know the exact threshold……”
“Hmm. Well, put another way, that monster is essentially checking people's heart rates, right?”
“Yes, I suppose so……”
“Then a smartwatch—oh. Right, you're not wearing one, Mr. Seon Yuhan.”
The interviewer frowned at the smartwatch on her own wrist.
“If you use this to keep tabs on your own heart rate and mentally steady yourself, it might actually help……”
“Oh.”
So that's the answer.
Choi Jaeha and Hwang Juyeon had probably been wearing their smartwatches, so the two of them should be fine.
I couldn't say for certain about Yu Hyeonjae, but going by everything I'd seen of him so far, he didn't strike me as the type to lose his composure and fly off the handle without reason.
The problem was Jeong Jiho.
Then again—was it really my place to worry, when I'd be dying before he did?
“In any case, this has been a great help. Please go on down ahead of me. Take care.”
“You take care too, Mr. Seon Yuhan.”
The interviewer gave me a slightly worried look, then headed for the emergency exit.
3:32 PM.
Steady.
Ringringringringring—!
I timed the fire alarm to go off at the very last moment before the blackout hit.
Time to meet the accountant, the magician, and the child.
“Gkk, ugh…….”
In the library, I killed the filthy thing that had dared bring down the branding iron on itself.
“……The child is left all alone……”
In the daycare, I put the toys to bed with an indoor activity that combined rhythmic exercises and ball play.
“Ughk, urp…….”
And on basement level 5, I came face to face with the CEO of Yuwi Guild, retching up his insides all over again.
“Oh—isn't that CEO Yu Hyeonjae? Are you all right, sir……?”
While I was busy feeling a faint flicker of pity for Yu Hyeonjae's perpetually refluxing esophagus, whichever way we met—
Choi Jaeha moved first and beat everyone to the greeting.
“Mm, I'm quite all right.”
The CEO feigned composure as ever and began trading introductions without a hair out of place.
“A pleasure, Ms. Hwang Juyeon. And young Jiho as well. And you, sir, would be…….”
“Ah—hello. I'm Seon Yuhan.”
“I see……. Mr. Seon Yuhan. Understood.”
Yu Hyeonjae flashed a smile drawn straight from a picture book.
“A pleasure.”
This time, he didn't start rambling about my face seeming familiar.
Last time, I'd snapped out a crisp “sir” first, so he'd apparently jumped the gun on the assumption that I worked for his own company.
After all, if I really had been a Yuwi Guild employee, the moment the CEO so much as pretended to half-recognize me, I'd have volunteered my department and name on the spot.
“You're not with our company, are you?”
“No, I'm not.”
I dropped all the pointless chatter about whether I'd sat in on the Agent Team interview or not.
Yu Hyeonjae didn't press any further either; he simply nodded.
“Mm. Then shall we get into a simple formation? We've all put faces to names and finished introductions, so let's dim the lights as well.”
“Is too much light a bad thing? Why?”
At Hwang Juyeon's question, Yu Hyeonjae paused for only the briefest moment, then explained how his bodyguard knight had died.
He didn't know the reason, but she had suddenly begun screaming and babbling incoherently, and before long, some Buddha-shaped monster had torn out her heart and killed her.
He suspected some phenomenon that startled people was at work.
“So I assumed it might be coming for the sound of screaming.”
“Ah.”
“Wait—then all this noise we're making……”
“No. It doesn't seem to register talking at this volume.”
“Excuse me.”
When I, who had been silent for a long while, carefully spoke up, every eye turned to me.
“Could it be listening for the sound of heartbeats?”
Yu Hyeonjae showed not a flicker of displeasure; he simply raised his eyebrows a touch, as if to say, go on.
“Er—the monster takes hearts, after all. I thought that might make for a slightly more plausible theory.”
I deliberately framed it as nothing more than a guess.
I had no desire to bluster confidently, believe me because I traveled back in time, because I died and came back to life—utter madness dressed up as evidence.
After all, the sum total of what I knew as a regressor was that this crudely Buddha-impersonating monster homed in on heartbeats above a certain volume. Beyond that, I knew nothing.
And besides…….
I know how deeply a person can empathize with another's suffering. I also know how numb they can become to it.
Which is to say—I don't trust these people. Not at all.
It isn't that I think they're bad people.
It's simply that what a disaster like this reveals isn't one's true nature, but one's instincts.
Even the gentlest soul wants to live, and to live, they can turn venomous.
And that isn't a question of good or evil.
Me—I, if anything…….
I only wish they'd lived longer. More than something like me.
“Ah—now that I hear it, that does hold up. Screaming is, after all, something you do in a situation that startles you enough to send your heart pounding.”
“Yes. It's only my own thinking, of course. There'd be no need to take the risk of deliberately testing it with a scream, for instance. It aligns with the same principle—you simply mustn't be startled.”
I don't want to die. Not even a little.
So I won't speak of regression, or of the loops. Not unless it becomes unavoidable.
“So—anyone with a smartwatch, I'd suggest moving while keeping an eye on your heart rate.”
Choi Jaeha and Hwang Juyeon began fiddling with their watches.
The CEO of Yuwi Guild, with the hand that wore an analog timepiece worth dozens of times more than any smartwatch, stroked Jeong Jiho's head.
“Children's heart rates do run higher than adults', you know.”
At that murmured worry, Choi Jaeha and Hwang Juyeon froze.
They held their raised wrists where they were and exchanged awkward glances.
As the two of them stood there, fumbling to take their watches off, Yu Hyeonjae gently stopped them.
“No—please, keep them on, both of you. Hwang Juyeon-ssi's would be too big for Jiho anyway. The accuracy would be shot no matter what.”
As in the last loop, we checked the strange skid marks and, at my suggestion, set out to find the matching tire.
“Shall we split into two groups, then?”
Yu Hyeonjae made a light gesture, as if dividing the party down the middle.
Only the arrangement had shifted slightly from last time.
This round: Choi Jaeha and Yu Hyeonjae.
And me, with Jeong Jiho and Hwang Juyeon.
With the search underway in those two teams, I found the parcel box faster than before.
The three-tier shelf bearing the number GO1020 sat in the same section as before.
“Ah. Looks like you found something.”
“Yes. The moment we confirmed the tire matched those skid marks, this box appeared on the bonnet.”
“A box out of nowhere? What's inside?”
I had rejoined the other two without losing Jeong Jiho or Hwang Juyeon along the way.
“I don't think the contents matter so much as the parcel box itself.”
“Hm? So you're saying we shouldn't open it?”
“If the contents were the clue, it could have just been sitting there on its own. There'd have been no need to dress it up as a delivery parcel like this.”
When I held the shipping label out so it could be read clearly, Yu Hyeonjae and Choi Jaeha studied it closely.
“Sammae Courier?”
Choi Jaeha tilted his head, then said:
“I saw one of their delivery trucks earlier, actually.”