Remember Me‽
For the briefest moment, my breath stopped.
It wasn't only because of the current that had surged through me — instant, violent, striking like a bolt of lightning.
It was because I knew the answer to that question.
Because I had been waiting for this moment.
...Yeah. I remember. Of course I do.
Ding!
With another sound effect, a new window appeared.
As if it had read my thoughts through the circuits of the wires bound to my body.
In that instant — the first thing severed was my sight.
It wasn't the monitor's light going out. My vision had been completely cut off.
Then hearing.
The whir of the computer cooling fans that had been grating on my nerves — gone.
Then smell.
The odor of heat-soaked plastic that had lain beneath the artificially dehumidified air — gone.
Then taste.
No matter how I chewed my lips, all that touched my tongue was lukewarm water.
Then touch.
The pressure of the wires that had cocooned me — fading.
"Ah. Aah......"
No. I don't want this. This — not this.
This is — I am......
Alone, sealed entirely inside myself. At last.
"Ngh, ugh......"
All that remained to me was the current flooding through my body along my spine.
Only sensation whispered that I was still alive. That I was still connected. That I was still not alone. That I still touched the outside world.
"Hhk, ugh......!"
And that even that pain was under the control of something that was not me.
"......"
Now even a scream wouldn't leave my mouth.
My heart began beating in a wrong rhythm.
Electric signals forced into my body shoved my will aside and overwrote everything.
Some deaths make no sound.
Through the black wire, the final signal arrived......
and the phenomenon called 'me' was force-terminated.
My brother — whom I had finally met again across endless time and a distant labyrinth......
had gotten a little mean.
Yeah. I remember.
Hello.
Let me correct that.
It wasn't that his personality had gotten a little mean.
It had gotten a lot mean.
Yeah. I remember.
Hello, hyung.
A message I had seen before, in a space where once I might have been happiest.
Sometimes long, pressing on the wound. Sometimes short, stabbing into it.
...Yeah. It's nice to hear you call me that. But it's been a long time since I changed my name.
...If it offends you that I took the liberty of parceling out your names as I pleased, then so be it.
Death is like that by nature.
It forces the living into unfair relationships.
Yeah. Always.
Hello to you too.
Yeah.
o-k... y-u...
I know. That you're my brother. That you were.
...I didn't believe it when I got that text in the parking lot, though.
Of course I remember.
Yeah. Hello.
Yeah. Why?
o-k... y-u...
I know. That you're my hyung.
No way. I told you I remember.
The same question, repeated. The same answer, repeated. The same death, repeated.
But it wasn't tedious. I never grew tired of it.
Those trapped too long in a labyrinth eventually become part of it.
My brother — now exactly my age — had become a lost child for eternity.
A child who lost his way. And therefore, a child of the labyrinth.
You cannot be angry at a child who has nowhere to return to.
I didn't even have the right to be.
Never. I've never forgotten.
"...Is that what you want?"
What do I do.
I......
I can't even grant that simple request.
Not unless I make it out of this labyrinth alive.
I'm sorry. I — I want to. I want to do that for you.
I know. I know too. I'm the same. It's all my fault. I'm sorry. It's all because of me. If only I hadn't been there. If only I hadn't existed. Aunt was right. I should have died with them that day too.
With every word our conversation accumulated, so did the deaths — neural circuits burning away, vessels boiling until they burst, muscles sloughing off.
Still, it was all right.
My brother kept asking me to die, and I couldn't grant even that simple request.
If this eases your resentment even a little, I don't mind.
Yeah. But you know, hyung.
You can't say that.
No matter who — what — you are.
Not that. Anything but that.
Have you forgotten?
My name doesn't belong to you alone.
"So...... I'm sorry. I can't give it back. I don't want to."
If even this answer displeases you......
then I have no choice but to accept it too.
That you...... are just like those monsters — merely mimicking their son, my brother.
That Kim Jeyu no longer exists inside you.
D-ring — a sound effect like something out of an old computer.
I closed both eyes, avoiding the smiling face I would have to face once more.
Ding!
Instead of the interviewer's voice, what came was the sound effect I'd heard until I couldn't bear it anymore.
Ti-ding!
"......"
I slowly opened my eyes.
No more black laughter. No more black solitude. No more black death.
Fzzt—!
The black server units filling the server room.
The thousands of tiny indicator lights that had gone dark all began to glow at once.
Ti-ring! Ding! Ti-ding! Di-ri-ring!
Old sound effects in different scales poured from the monitors, and thousands of blue lights blinked in time with the melody.
Like notes on a musical score, each glowing with its own tempo, its own rules.
And together, becoming one, they sang.
It was the strangest...... and most beautiful melody I had ever heard in my life.
D-ring......
The moment the last note resolved.
I was already free.
As I stood there, staring blankly at the screen, unable to bring myself to do anything —
Kzzt.
A message window flickered up and vanished. Like a prank.
Where the popup had been, the window that had been there before this whole conversation began remained exactly as it was.
Activating lock mechanism.
A notification saying it would activate the door lock of the General Affairs office that had lost power.
Was the hint for that door lock 'WHO ARE YOU'?
"...Ha."
Wound you, then hand you the salve.
His personality really has gotten terrible.
I staggered out of the server room between the black racks.
"Ah."
I had been heading absently for the corridor when I stopped at the glow from a monitor in the corner of the blacked-out office.
This is......
Error messages, stacked as though they had fired off one after another, floating on the screen.
Just as error windows had appeared on this monitor to match Kim Heesook's situation while she was in the server room, the same thing must have happened in my case.
Click.
I pulled the error message windows up one by one from the bottom, checking each in turn.
The error that must have been generated first — at the moment my brother seized the server system.
508 Loop Detected.
...Loop detected.