The Price of Five Years
"What?"
"From this moment on, I'm going to explain something to you... and I'm going to show you something as well."
She said nothing.
"You must not speak of it anywhere. Not to anyone."
I said it with complete seriousness, pouring every ounce of sincerity I possessed into the words.
This was a secret.
"We have to start with this promise. Can you give me your word?"
At my demand, Kim Hye-in stared at me with dazed eyes. She didn't understand what I was talking about, or why I was asking it of her. She couldn't couldn't grasp, in that moment, what any of it was supposed to mean.
She sank into thought for a brief while.
"...Yes."
She answered at last, as if sealing a vow.
The moment the word left her, I slipped a hand into my inner pocket and drew something out.
The device I had received from the 6th Research Institute of Mastis Corporation.
Oracle Argos.
A prototype. Classified technology that must not yet be revealed to the world — and still unfinished.
When I fastened it around my wrist, it sat there with the sleek, refined weight of a high-end smartwatch. Without taking it off, I held the device against Kim Hyeyoon's arm.
A moment later, a brief vibration ran through the band, and the results bloomed across the screen of the Oracle Argos.
B-Rank.
Kim Hye-in was a B-Rank. And Kim Hyeyoon, it turned out, was a B-Rank as well.
I switched off the display and looked back at Kim Hye-in.
"...First of all, I had to have the two of us alone for this conversation."
She was still staring at me blankly.
"Do you want to save your sister?"
I asked her. Did she want to save her sister.
But at that question, Kim Hye-in only tilted her head, ever so slightly. She did not answer right away. Her face looked as if it were asking, What are you even talking about?
She would already have heard from the doctors that there was no hope. She would already know, at the very least, that the side effects of the forced awakening had left her sister brain-dead.
"If things continue as they are, there will be no hope for your sister. Not ever."
She said nothing.
"She'll spend the rest of her life on this bed, a vegetable who only breathes because the machines keep her lungs moving..."
"I know."
Kim Hye-in cut me off, saying she already knew. She covered her face with both hands and shook her head.
"I know too... I know. I already know."
"I know! I know, but... even so... but President..."
She knew. She knew all of it, and she simply could not bring herself to accept it. That was what she wanted to say. Of course she did. This was her one and only family.
Looking at her, I spoke.
In that instant, Kim Hye-in's eyes flew wide and began to tremble violently. She looked up at me as if she had no idea what I was saying — as if she couldn't possibly believe it.
Everyone had said it was too hard. Everyone had given up on Kim Hyeyoon. And now I was standing here, stating with certainty that I could save her. Of course she was thrown.
"Choose."
"Ch... choose what?"
Her voice was already shaking in fine, broken tremors. Whether from joy or hope or fear, I couldn't tell.
"Whether to go back to before she became like this."
She stared at me, wordless.
"Or..."
I let the pause hang, and swallowed once.
"To go back to before she ever fell ill."
Kim Hye-in's pupils shook even more violently than before. For a moment she seemed to forget how to breathe; the rise and fall of her chest simply stopped. Her eyes, and the lips that had gone pale as ice, said it for her.
What on earth are you talking about?
To her, it would have been a story she simply could not comprehend.
"We're short on time."
I said it that way, but if I was being honest, the situation wasn't that urgent. Kim Hyeyoon wasn't in immediate, life-threatening danger. This was different from Kim Eun-hyung's case. Her brain function had simply stopped. As long as the machines held, her life would hold with them.
Even so, I had to press her.
She clutched at her head and muttered as if the words themselves hurt.
"I really... I genuinely don't understand what you're saying right now. What exactly... what are you trying to tell me?"
Of course she couldn't understand. An ability like this — one that went beyond healing, that turned the clock of a human body back into the past — was something even I had never heard of, never seen. And even if I tried, I had no confidence I could make her understand the skill. Explain it, and she still wouldn't believe me.
"Don't try to understand it."
"President..."
"If you want to save her, all you have to do is choose."
She was silent.
"And depending on that choice... the result is going to be quite different."
At those words, Kim Hye-in's breathing turned rough. A storm of feeling moved through her eyes. Suspicion. Shock. Confusion. And question after question.
She swallowed hard, then asked me in a trembling voice,
"...Then you're saying you can really send Hye-yoon back to before she got that disease?"
I nodded without a word. No further explanation was needed. That single fact was enough.
I was about to say yes when Kim Hye-in cut across me.
"...Then. She goes back to that time?"
I looked at her, a little startled by the question. She hadn't asked whether her sister could be healed. Somehow, remarkably, she had understood exactly what I meant.
Not treated. Returned.
"Yes. That's right."
I nodded as I said it.
"Ah..."
A sound escaped Kim Hye-in's lips, half sigh and half prayer. She gathered both hands against her chest.
"President, is that... is that really possi—"
"What will you do?"
I cut her off as she tried to ask again, and pressed her.
"How you choose, Hye-in, will decide your sister's future."
Now all she had to do was choose. That was what I thought. But then something I had not expected at all came out of her mouth.
"Then what about you, President?"
A question from nowhere. I stared at her, not following, and Kim Hye-in bit down hard on her lower lip and looked up at me.
"If my sister goes back to the past... then you're going to be fine, aren't you?"
I said nothing.
"...No. You're not. Are you?"
I couldn't answer her lightly. To say no would have been a lie. There was a penalty — the damage information, taken on in full. With that sitting on my shoulders, I could not tell her that nothing would happen to me.
And yet, looking at that face, I couldn't bring myself to tell her the truth either. She looked as if she might come apart at any second. Her expression had completely fallen to pieces. She must have been going out of her mind with the need to save her little sister somehow. And now, with that desolate look, she was asking me what the price would be.
Hope and despair and apology, all tangled together in her eyes. She spoke to me in a shaking voice.
"Every awakening ability has an action and a reaction."
"Then... in exchange for turning my sister's body back, what do you lose, President?"
She muttered it as if she were resenting someone. Whether that someone was me, or herself, I couldn't tell.
"I have never in my life heard of an ability that rewinds the time of a human body. I couldn't even imagine that something like that could exist."
"So what on earth do you have to give up for it?"
I didn't know why. Tears were welling in her eyes, slowly, steadily.
I had been about to tell her the truth. That I would take on pain beyond anything she could imagine. That I would have to endure it. I parted my lips to say so — and she got there first, with a guess of her own.
"Don't tell me you use this ability at the cost of your life..."
The words died in my throat.
"If you're turning someone else's time backward... then surely you..."
"Hye-in."
"You're not using this ability at the cost of your own lifespan... are you?"
Lifespan, is it.
"Then... then when you saved Hunter Jo A-young, too... you sacrificed yourself...?"
It was a fairly plausible guess. A reasonable inference. This was an ability that required me to endure the pain in someone else's place. And in the process, I would cough blood and take damage to my body — that much was certain. Could I really say that had nothing to do with my life force? With my lifespan? Recalling the sensation that came every time I absorbed it, it was hard to deny.
And if I told her I used it at the cost of my lifespan, what then? To deny it would be a lie. Sitting here listening to her, it almost sounded true.
Even so, I was about to open my mouth — if only so she wouldn't carry too much guilt — when I saw the tears running down her face. And in the end, I couldn't say a word.
So I simply stayed silent. Neither confirming nor denying.
And she took that silence as a yes.
"Ah..."
A suppressed sound broke from Kim Hye-in's lips. She looked at me with both hands clamped over her mouth.
"I'm sorry."
The apology came out of nowhere. I looked at her, not understanding. Sorry for what?
Her eyes had already gone red. She looked at me and said,
"Then just... just send her back to before she became like this. To right before she became a vegetable."
"...Hye-in."
"The disease... I can do something about the disease. I'll earn the money, I'll commission the research... I'll find a way to save her somehow. So..."
"So please! That's already a whole year. Going back to before she got the disease would be five years...!"
She shook her head hard.
"I can't. I won't. No matter how precious my sister is to me, I can't ask for that."
"You'd lose five years of your life, President."
"That's not how it works. That's far too much of a leap—"
I started to speak, afraid that if I left it alone her misunderstanding would only sink deeper. But she had no intention of listening. Whether she couldn't hear me, or didn't want to, I didn't know. She caught hold of my sleeve and spoke with a desperate, pleading intensity.
"Please, just do as I ask. Don't push yourself. Instead... if you can just save her from the vegetative state."
She bit her lower lip and looked straight into my eyes.
"I'll work for you for the rest of my life."
"So please..."
She clung to me and begged with everything she had. I nodded slowly, as if I had no choice in the matter.
"Understood."
I said it, then turned my head toward the closed door. The conversation was over. The moment Jo A-young returned, I would begin.
But a minute passed, then five, and Jo A-young did not come back.
Did something happen?
I took out my phone and sent her a message.
I hit send. Another minute. Five minutes.
I let out a long breath and slipped the phone back into my pocket.
"A-young seems to be running late... I'll just go ahead and start."
As I said it, I took Kim Hyeyoon's left hand in mine.
Kim Hye-in nodded as well, gathering both hands together in a posture of prayer. She watched with her breath held, not daring to make a sound.
Looking at her, I slowly closed my eyes.