Entrance Exam (Complete)
"Yeon-hui... are you okay...?"
A voice already fading toward death brushed past my ear.
What filled my vision was the sight of my friend, who had already lost far too much blood.
"Hehe... thank goodness."
Even with death staring her in the face, she looked at me, saw that I was barely hurt, and smiled like a fool.
Wearing that smile to the very end, she slipped into eternal sleep at my side.
I had wanted that to be the end. It was only the beginning.
"Yeon-hui, I'm counting on you."
"You can do it, right? If it's you."
"Yeon-hui..."
I'm leaving it to you.
Carrying everyone's faith on my back, I pushed forward — and at the end of it all:
Not bad. But this is as far as you go. I'll send you off cleanly. Consider it a final mercy.
I died without ever answering the faith they had placed in me.
After fighting every powerful enemy, after enduring the sacrifice of every comrade, the place I arrived was neither eternal rest nor pitch-black darkness.
"Hic... sob..."
It was my little sister's funeral.
What I saw was my mother weeping. My sister smiling out from a large portrait photograph.
At first I thought it was my life flashing before my eyes.
But before long I understood that this was reality — that I had traveled backward through time by dying.
If dying could send me into the past...
If I died one more time right now, couldn't I go back to before Yeon-ah was killed?
The thought crossed my mind. And then:
What if it doesn't work...?
What if this had been a true miracle, and that miracle would never come again?
There was still far too little I could know for certain. It wasn't something I could attempt recklessly.
And more than that—
Yeon-hui.
I'm counting on you.
I believe in you.
I couldn't simply turn my back on the voices of my comrades, still so vivid in my ears.
After that, what I did was simple.
Using everything I had lived through in the previous life, I prepared for the dangers that would come — or cut them off at the root before they could bloom.
But the final result never truly changed.
Yeon-hui, it's okay. As long as you're alive, there's still hope.
I see. So everyone died. Still... I'm glad. Glad that you lived.
You can do it.
Bearing the hopes of so many, I used their deaths as stepping stones and survived to the very end — and watched the world fade away.
"Hic... sob..."
My mother's weeping. Yeon-ah's smiling face, the same one I had seen before.
There was no time to drown in grief.
I had to carry on the will everyone had entrusted to me.
With that resolve, I gave everything I had once again — colder, more thorough than before, determined never to repeat the same mistakes.
People praised me. They thanked me, saying it was all because of me.
They didn't need to. It was simply my duty.
But for all that effort, I met the same ending. Once more, I watched helplessly as the world marched toward ruin.
Only then did I understand.
I was not traveling back through time by dying.
I was traveling back through time because the world was being destroyed.
As if the universe itself were telling me to save it.
Once I realized that much, I finally understood the reason for my regression.
Ah. So that's it.
I have to save the world.
Yes. This power was given to me so that I could save the world. And with that power, I must save it.
Even if no matter what I do, I can never bring back the sister who already died — then at the very least, as atonement, I can give the world peace.
Yeon-hui, I'm counting on you.
I can do it. I have the strength for it.
We need your power. Can you help us?
Of course. That's what I built this strength for.
Why?! Why did you let them die?! You're strong! You could have saved them!
I'm sorry. It was because I wasn't enough. Next time — next time I'll succeed for sure.
My comrades always died speaking of their dreams. They asked me to fulfill those dreams for them.
Yes. I have a duty to make their dreams come true.
If I fail, it is because of my own inadequacy.
Of course it is. I exist to save the world. Failing to save it is my fault.
So I—
So—
Lee Yeon-hui, you're n̷o̵t̶—
Ignoring the splitting headache, I swung my sword.
"That's why I can't lose!"
KRAAAASH!
Lee Yeon-hui's sword stroke carved a sharp line through the sparring hall floor.
Several exchanges had already passed since the match began. Park Yeon-chan had not seized the upper hand — but neither had Lee Yeon-hui managed to tilt the fight in her favor. They collided again and again, evenly matched in every sense of the word.
And then, in the middle of that deadlock, the first change came from Yeon-hui's side.
"That's why what?"
Park Yeon-chan closed the distance at a measured pace as he spoke.
"Who are you supposed to be, that you can't afford to lose?"
"Hah... hah..."
Lee Yeon-hui only gasped for breath. She gave him no answer.
It's okay, I — )*&*)
A headache roared through her skull like static. She clenched her jaw until her teeth ached, face twisting.
"I have a duty. I have to... save the world—"
"With just this?"
He tilted his head with a deliberately provocative lilt. Yeon-hui ground her teeth and reset her stance.
"I can't lose to anyone."
The words had barely left her mouth when—
KRAAAASH!
Her sword shot forward in a straight line and came crashing down on Park Yeon-chan.
"Kh—!"
KRRRSH-SH-SH!
He thrust out a gauntleted hand and caught the blade — but the pressure pouring down through it crushed the floor beneath his feet.
"You can't lose? Too bad. You're going to lose to me today."
"Shut up! You don't know a damn thing."
"Lee Yeon-hui."
A jolt.
At the sound of Park Yeon-chan's voice, her headache spiked.
"Be quiet... Don't say my name. Not in that voice!"
KRA-KOOM!
The pressure behind her blade surged; Park Yeon-chan was driven backward.
"I have a duty to save people."
She lowered her sword with a cold, deliberate motion and walked slowly toward him.
"I have to make it work. Somehow."
Her grip tightened on the hilt. She raised the blade and leveled it at his chest.
"So get out of my way. Don't stand in front of me."
Back when I was tearing through Freedom's operations, I used to get reports on Lee Yeon-hui's movements from people close to her.
Of course, she never showed that person everything either, so I couldn't map every detail. But from the broad strokes of her behavior, I could roughly gauge how far her regressions had gone.
By my estimate, her current loop count sat around the starting point of the original story — a point at which she had already lived through a great many regressions.
Once I realized that, I started pushing myself harder than I should have, dismantling villain strongholds ahead of schedule. The reason was Yeon-hui's fragile mental state at this stage of the timeline.
In the original, worn down by endless loops, she had begun slaughtering villains with the information she already knew — and for a brief stretch, she had even gone mad with the killing.
So I cut off anything that might become a trigger before it could take root. That didn't mean the stress she had already accumulated simply vanished, though.
I had prepared this stage to bleed some of that stress out of her.
KAAANG!
I barely caught the edge of her swinging blade and gave ground.
Thick.
The emotions rooted deep inside Lee Yeon-hui were far denser than I had expected.
I wasn't arrogant enough to believe that reading her life in a novel meant I fully understood it.
KRRRSH!
Her sword scraped past with a sound like it was chewing through my gauntlets and drove in toward me.
PAANG!
"Forfeit. Any more than this, and even I won't be able to hold back."
Lee Yeon-hui spoke through gritted teeth, breathing hard, her whole face twisted. Everything about her posture and expression said she was in pain.
"That kind of line only sounds cool if you deliver it with a stern, arrogant look on your face."
I said it to provoke her. What came flying back instead of an answer was a razor-sharp blade.
SHRAAAK!
Fast.
I pulled my body back and dodged — but the sword was faster than I'd read, and it carved a shallow line across my abdomen as it passed.
"Get— out of my way."
KAAANG! SHRAK!
The next strikes came even faster. As her sword paths grew harder to read, I stopped being able to block every blow.
"Why? Because you're not allowed to lose?"
"......"
No answer. Just the sword, swinging the same as before.
Even as blood sprayed from the cuts I failed to stop, I kept talking.
"Why aren't you allowed to lose? Because you're strong?"
KANG!
From inside the tangle of her blade work I forced out a single punch — and she batted it aside like it was nothing. The follow-up stroke came straight for me.
SHRAAAK!
I slipped the attack by a paper's width as it grazed my hair and opened the distance between us.
"Hah... hah..."
Anyone watching would have said Yeon-hui had the clear advantage. And yet the one gasping for air wasn't me — it was her.
"Why aren't you allowed to lose?"
"......"
"Because you're different from everyone else?"
"......"
She held her silence through every word. That didn't stop my mouth.
"Because you're a regressor? Because you're stronger than ordinary people?"
"Yes! That's why—"
"Don't get full of yourself, Lee Yeon-hui. Have you been reading too many comics?"
At the start, the provocations had been for her — tools to drag the knot inside her out into the open.
"You're strong? Because you're a regressor? Because you've faced danger again and again, because you've inherited other people's wills over and over?"
But listening to the things she said, the image of one particular idiot rose up in my mind.
Maybe that was why. Somewhere along the way, real feeling started seeping into the words I was throwing at her.
"Don't make me laugh. Who the hell do you think you are, to carry something like that?"
A fool. An incompetent. A hopeless wreck no amount of ugly adjectives could fully describe. Yeon-hui kept overlapping with that bastard in my head, and irritation bled into everything I said.
"Come at me. I'll teach you a thing or two."
"What would you know... I have to win. So—"
"Get lost."
He's being pushed back.
From a discreet distance, Min Gyeong-ho looked down on the spar between Park Yeon-chan and Lee Yeon-hui and let out a quiet sigh.
Under normal circumstances, he would have stopped the match long ago. He was holding off for now because Park Yeon-chan had asked him to — but anything further was getting dangerous.
He couldn't make out what the two of them were saying, yet even from this far away it was obvious how heated the exchange had become.
No idea what they're talking about, damn it.
One of the conditions Park Yeon-chan had attached when he requested this spar:
I'd like you to make sure our conversation doesn't carry.
It hadn't been a difficult favor, so Min Gyeong-ho had agreed. He hadn't expected the talk to get this intense, though.
In exchange for granting the request, he had at least asked what Yeon-chan intended to say. The answer he'd gotten had left him laughing in sheer disbelief.
"Hah... honestly, the nerve of that kid."
Even thinking it over again, it was an absurd answer. Min Gyeong-ho muttered to himself. He had no idea what was going through the boy's head — but from the look of things, staging the scene Park Yeon-chan wanted was not going to be easy.
Lee Yeon-hui's strikes were getting faster. The wounds on Park Yeon-chan were slowly multiplying.
All right. What are you going to do?
Watching him, Min Gyeong-ho asked the question quietly in his heart.
I clenched hard.
The strength was threatening to drain from the hand on my sword. I forced it back and crushed the hilt in my grip.
Why? Why won't he go down?
I was giving it everything I had. Not holding anything back the way I had at the start — every last drop of power dragged up and thrown forward.
KAAANG!
And still he wouldn't break away.
No. Just a little more pressure—
SHRAAAK!
The deepest cut I had landed so far. I carved into Park Yeon-chan through a strange, aching pain in my chest I couldn't explain—
"...!"
And he didn't care. He drove in even deeper toward me instead.
KAAANG!
I had expected him to fall back, so my reaction to the sudden punch was a beat late — but I blocked it by a hair and forced the distance open again.
"Lee Yeon-hui."
A spike of pain.
Every time he said my name, the headache bloomed behind my eyes.
I swung to drive him off as he kept trying to close in. He took the wounds on his body and showed not the slightest intention of retreating.
"You've watched a lot of people die."
SHRAAK!
I swung. My blade opened his right shoulder and flung blood into the air.
"You've been the only one left alive, crushed under a loneliness no one else could touch."
"What would you know—!"
I swung again. This time I cut deep into his right thigh.
With every strike the headache and the ache in my chest grew worse. I forced myself to ignore them and held onto the sword.
"You started to doubt, swinging that blade. Whether you really had any power at all."
Even though I never stopped swinging, he wouldn't stop coming. I tried to fall back first—
And as if he had known I would jump backward, he closed the gap instantly.
"When you held your dying comrades' hands, you decided you had to carry on for them."
Every word from Park Yeon-chan made the headache and the ache worse.
"Sh-shut up."
I thrust hard, the way you do when you want someone to know you refuse to listen.
SHUNK—!
"...!"
It was my thrust — and it was a miserable one. A stab thrown on pure emotion, the kind someone of Park Yeon-chan's skill could have slipped without effort.
And yet he neither dodged nor blocked. He took my sword with his body.
"What are you—"
"I lived because I couldn't die. I lived in order to die. Always thinking I wanted to die — that was how I kept going."
"......"
I met the eyes looking at me. In his blue irises, I saw myself reflected.
"Dying would have been simple. Drive a knife into my own throat. Put a gun to my head and pull the trigger. That would have been the end of it."
One step.
The blade buried in his shoulder sank deeper. He came toward me as if it weren't there at all.
"But I couldn't. The ones who died for me — the ones who left their wills in my hands — they would never have forgiven a death that pathetic."
Another step.
"I needed justification. My death had to mean something. I had to fight to the last and fall that way. That was how I had to die."
Before I realized it he was right in front of me, and his hand was rising slowly.
"I ran into places where bullets were raining down. I threw myself into the middle of enemy lines. In a reality that might never end, I wanted to go to a hell where I could suffer forever."
I didn't understand what he was saying.
I had thought he was talking about me. Somewhere along the way, his story had become someone else's — someone whose story was so very much like mine.
In the gaze we shared, I had the strange illusion that he understood me, and I understood him.
Softly, the hand he had raised stroked my hair.
"It must have hurt so much."
"...!"
"You've been struggling for so long."
"...I—"
"You don't have to carry all of it."
"But I—"
I started to speak, and the hand stroking my head closed into a fist.
I squeezed my eyes shut on instinct — and his knuckles tapped lightly against my forehead with a dull little thump.
"Don't get cocky, Lee Yeon-hui. You're weaker than me. What makes you think you get to save the world?"
"......"
Blood freckled across his face from a dozen cuts, and still he grinned, the corner of his mouth curling up. Those blue eyes held nothing but me, clear and sharp.
No. I can't let myself feel relief.
Too many people handed me their will. So their sacrifices wouldn't be wasted. So my weakness wouldn't get them killed all over again.
So—
"Lee Yeon-hui."
So I—
The hand clenched around my sword went slack, undone by a single sentence from him.