Until Melting Away into the Moonlight

"It's been a while, Oppa."

Her tone was calmer than usual. The corners of her eyes sat a little lower. Even the way she regulated her mana was so delicate it drew admiration just from watching. From everything I could see, I knew the Lee Yeon-ah standing before me was not the one I usually knew.

"Yeah. It really has been a while."

The last time I'd spoken with this personality of Yeon-ah had been at the hospital, right before I left. That made it four years.

Tap.

With a light push off the ground, Yeon-ah sprang into my arms. She closed the distance before I could even react, and yet the weight that settled against me was impossibly light.

I'd thought she'd gotten quite a bit stronger. Was this all it amounted to? That a single movement could make the gap in our levels feel this vast…

I hadn't meant to get cocky, but the sheer distance between us pulled a bitter smile onto my face before I could stop it.

Whether she could read what I was thinking or not, Yeon-ah kept her face buried against my chest, holding on tight. I stroked her hair and gently opened the conversation.

"You, if something doesn't sit right with you… you'd just fold someone like me up and toss me aside, wouldn't you?"

"When I see you doing something dangerous, sometimes I really do want to fold you up and throw you somewhere. So don't push it."

"……"

"I'm kidding."

Hey. When the person who could actually do that says it, it's not exactly funny.

"Looking at the way you've been talking and acting lately, I feel like it could actually happen. Even as a joke, don't say stuff like that."

Honestly, cold sweat had been running down my back until the "I'm kidding" landed.

"Heh. Don't worry. As long as you don't do anything too reckless, it won't come to that."

Yeon-ah answered with a soft laugh still pressed against my chest. The answer was just ambiguous enough to quietly leave the door open on the possibility that it could happen, and that was a little terrifying.

I carefully hid the tremor in my hand and kept stroking her hair. A quiet murmur slipped out of her.

"Unnie came back."

"……"

Lee Yeon-hui had returned. The only meaning you could draw from that was her regression — nothing else.

"…You haven't talked to Yeon-hui about it?"

I felt her nod against my chest.

"With Unnie… I can't…"

Not that she wouldn't. That she couldn't.

The wording snagged at me, but I decided not to press it right now.

"Is there something you can tell me now?"

From everything I'd seen so far, the time Yeon-ah could stay active didn't seem long. She only seemed to surface when it truly mattered. The fact that she had come out now meant—

There's something important enough to say.

Silence settled over my question. It wasn't long. But it was the kind of silence that needed to exist, so I didn't rush her. I simply waited for Yeon-ah to speak.

"Oppa, how much do you know about Unnie's ability?"

She asked it still buried against my chest.

Yeon-hui's ability, huh…

How should I answer? She was probably asking so she could explain — to pin down exactly how much I already knew.

"That Yeon-hui's ability… strictly speaking, isn't regression. About that much, I guess."

"……"

In that case, the best thing was to tell her exactly what I knew, so she could gauge it easily. That way the conversation would move faster.

"That's right. Unnie's ability isn't regression."

A truth that only came out in the later parts of the original story. Lee Yeon-hui's power was not regression. Because the one going back to the past wasn't Yeon-hui.

"Because the world itself loops the moment it ends."

When I first received the email titled Character Setting Compendium at the hospital, two things had bothered me most.

One was the sections that came out looking like a corrupted file. Yeon-ah's trait section was like that, and so was mine. There hadn't been much I could do about those, so I'd let them go.

But the other one, I couldn't ignore.

Lee Yeon-hui's trait: Regression.

Anyone could tell the setting book had been slapped together in a hurry. Even so, there was no way she would have glossed over something this important. No matter how carelessly she'd handled most things — when it came to the novel, she had always been sincere.

Still, there was nowhere to ask, so I set the question aside and spent whatever free time I had trying to recover the corrupted file.

Then, just two years ago, something suddenly changed in the file I'd been looking at.

Changes I didn't even know where to begin describing. And among them, the one that snagged at me hardest was still—

Regression??

What was the intent behind that?

The original novel had never been finished, but the true nature of Yeon-hui's regression had been clearly revealed in the later arcs.

Lee Yeon-hui's ability was not regression.

When the world was destroyed and everything returned to its place — she was simply the one who retained her memories from before the loop.

"The point in time Unnie thinks of as her regression point is just the moment the rewind finishes and the world starts moving again."

That much had appeared in the original too. And once that was revealed, the question that had bothered me most was—

Why does the starting point have to be Yeon-ah's funeral?

Coincidence? To call it that felt like something was—

"It's not a coincidence."

"…!"

The words landed as if she'd answered the thought itself, and I flinched. Yeon-ah went on as if nothing had happened.

"This world doesn't want to leave even the slightest opening. If Unnie looped with her memories intact and saved me, that would be a problem."

"……So you're saying."

Yeah. What she was saying—

It sounded like the world itself did not want Yeon-ah to live. As if it had deliberately stopped the rewind at a point where her death was already locked in, so that a confirmed death could never be undone.

"Oppa. The first loop Unnie believed she went through — the one she thought was Loop One — wasn't Loop One."

"What…?"

This time I genuinely couldn't follow, and something stupid slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it.

In the novel, there was almost no mention of the first loop. Or the second, or the third. From the very beginning of the original, Yeon-hui had already been through three or more regressions.

But what Yeon-ah had just said seemed to overturn that starting point entirely.

"What do you mean it wasn't Loop O—"

I needed to know this much, at least. I was about to press her when—

Huh…?

A sensation like something seizing my entire body locked every muscle rigid.

What is this?

I clenched my teeth and tried to force my body to move. Then—

"It's okay. It'll pass in a moment. Don't fight it. Just stay still."

Yeon-ah spoke without ever showing me her face. There were a dozen things I wanted to ask, but for now I followed her instructions and slowly let the tension drain out of me.

I did as she said. And yet—

What is this alien feeling?

The questions only multiplied instead of clearing up.

My body still wouldn't move, but I could turn my eyes. I rolled them upward—

Kuuung—!

A vast gaze pressed down on me from the sky, as if it meant to crush me flat. My eyes, which had been tilted up toward it, dropped of their own accord under that weight.

It wasn't looking at me alone. It felt more like a single sweep across everything nearby.

Uncanny. There was no shape of a face, no shape of an eye — and yet I knew, with absolute clarity, that I was being seen.

I stayed locked like that for several seconds. Then the gaze that had been looking down over the surroundings slowly withdrew.

"Hah… hah…"

Only after I was sure it had completely vanished could I finally let out the breath I'd been holding.

"W-what was that just…?"

Yeon-ah, who had told me it would be fine once time passed, clearly knew what that thing was.

"Sorry…"

She couldn't give me a detailed answer? Maybe speaking of it would bring that phenomenon back again.

It shows up just because you talk about it? What is this, some movie wizard?

The scale of it so far exceeded anything I'd imagined that a sigh slipped out before I could catch it. Maybe that sigh meant something else to Yeon-ah.

"I'm sorry, Oppa. I don't know everything, and I can't tell you everything I do know."

Her voice had gone very dark as she started to apologize.

"My ability is too incomplete… I'm sorry for talking so boldly when I can't even do anything impressive. But."

A thin silence opened between her words. I waited quietly for what came next — the words I already half expected.

"Please beli—"

"I believe you."

I cut her off on purpose.

The face that had been buried against my chest since the beginning slowly lifted, and she looked up at me. Those already large eyes had gone even wider with surprise, and because of that, I could see the tremor in them all the more clearly.

"Right… Oppa was always that kind of person."

Then she nestled tightly against me again, and I gently wrapped my arms around her in return.

"I'm sorry. Honestly, there wasn't much I could tell you right now."

Why apologize for that?

I wanted to tell her to stop saying sorry, but for the moment ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I just listened.

"Even so, the reason I came… is my own selfishness."

A heavy, subdued voice, as if she were confessing to having done something she shouldn't have. I couldn't fully measure the depth of that voice. But at the very least—

"Come whenever you want."

Leaving her sunk in that gloomy mood any longer didn't sit right with me.

"You told the younger me not to come, though?"

"She's still little."

"And I'm fine? ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠My mental age might be older than yours, you know."

For a second I wondered just how much Yeon-ah actually knew about me. But—

"Does age matter to a lady?"

—there was no need to dig into that right now.

I stroked her hair and tossed out the joke, and she laughed — a bright little peal, like she found it genuinely funny.

"I want to stay like this forever."

The way she said it from inside my arms reminded me of her younger personality. The same words, and yet they carried a far deeper emotion.

Listening to that aching voice, I held her tighter — as ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠if I could keep her from melting away into the moonlight and disappearing.

Why am I always like this?

Today was the Academy entrance ceremony. Park Jae-hyun had gone on ahead, excited about finding an optimal route with almost no people on it. Since he was obviously going to take a massive detour, I left a little later, at a more leisurely pace.

And then—

"Say something. What are you thinking?"

Sure enough, I'd walked straight into an incident.

Looking at the black-haired girl glaring daggers at me, a hollow laugh slipped out.

"So… what did you say your name was?"

"My name isn't the important part here."

"Min Ji-won…?"

At the continued confirmation, the girl — Min Ji-won — flicked her ponytail and gave a reluctant nod.