Overlooking Something
—I'm missing something. 'Checkpoint.'
Designated.
It was dawn. Eerily quiet.
The perfect time to do something in secret.
I had two syringes laid out side by side on the bed, lost in thought.
One for suicide, the other to eliminate the side effects of this drug.
If that man's explanation was correct, it was highly addictive, the kind that floods you with pleasure chemicals.
The way my regressions worked was close to sending my body back in time.
It erased my past self's body and restored the current one in its place.
Any addiction from the drugs would carry over just the same.
No matter how much the hallucinations and auditory delusions tormented me, I couldn't use it. The moment I did, ruin was guaranteed.
I'm not stupid.
I'm a normal human. An ordinary person.
I knew better than anyone what touching drugs meant.
Hadn't I watched my father spiral into alcohol addiction right beside him?
I didn't want to repeat his mistakes.
"You think it was a mistake, huh."
"...Huh."
He always knew exactly when to pop up with his own story, like a ghost.
No, since I was thinking about my father, was my brain just conjuring him up on its own?
I wondered if I could selectively erase just the memories of my parents.
"No such method exists. You know that full well."
"Yeah, figured."
"......"
"The first time we met, you tried to kill me. Squeezing my neck."
The hallucinated father turned his head toward me.
An old face. A shabby one. As repulsive and ugly as ever. Nothing had changed.
It dredged up old memories.
"Yeah, I did."
"Why not now?"
"What was I like in your memories?"
Old, shabby, repulsive, ugly.
Ah, I get it.
Now, I was stronger than my father.
Even in Ivy Lane's body, I'd grown through several close calls.
The father in my mind was a coward—weak against the strong, strong against the weak.
That's why I couldn't imagine it.
He was the type who couldn't swing at someone stronger than himself.
I wasn't afraid anymore.
Not of my mother, who tried to kill me whenever she got the chance, nor my father, crawling home drunk.
The hallucinations, the voices... I could overcome them all with mental fortitude.
My father's form faded away slowly.
The eyes that occasionally peeked from the walls, door, and floor blinked shut on their own.
"Ha...."
Something so simple.
'So simple?'
No, something was off.
Mask had told me clearly.
This drug was prepared by my future self for my past self.
In the future seen through precognition, my future self had ordered my past self to inject it.
Why would future me say that?
Mask might have lied from the start, but let's set that aside for now.
Why would future me tell past me to use the drug?
To hasten overcoming my trauma?
I'd regressed countless times, and future me had erased my memories somehow.
'An ability that affects memories themselves.'
That much was certain.
Future me had witnessed the deaths of countless academy students and teachers.
'Obviously racking up rewards...?'
She'd thrown away all those privileges to go back.
'No, that's not the point.'
Rewards. Stat boosts, checkpoint functions... There was so much to gain from them.
Yet everything had reset. As if I'd never received them.
Think back to when I first measured my stats after arriving in this world.
Would someone who'd gotten stat boost rewards have such low strength and stamina?
Of course not.
'Deaths remembered.'
The meaning of that phrase. Literally...?
The status window only rose if I remembered others' deaths.
[ 10 / 400 ]
Erasing memories reset the status window too.
Even the rewards I'd claimed.
'Among the rewards... there are ones you shouldn't choose.'
I'd picked one, and to go back before claiming it, I'd wiped my memories?
Then what was Mask's intent in giving me the drug?
For when the right moment came?
The illusion I'd seen in Han Ye-seo's house. The other me I'd met in my dreams.
'I need to meet her again.'
I tucked both syringes into the drawer and locked it tight.
I lay on the bed and closed my eyes.
The ceiling blinked.
I fell asleep.
......
I checked my senses.
It was a dream.
Everything around was white. Black things writhed in the distance.
In the center of my vision, there I was.
"...Can I enter dreams at will now?"
"No, you just got lucky with the timing."
"I see."
The writhing black spot answered my question.
That was my past self, from before the memory wipe—the unconscious fragment I'd left behind.
'Right up to here, correct.'
Now for the answers.
"You're me. And my past self. You erased my current memories."
"Right." That black spot, when we first met, had explained it couldn't speak of future events.
It could only discuss what I already knew, nothing more.
'Probably some kind of restriction.'
A regressor's memories wiped, unconscious detached and left in dreams.
'An ability, no doubt.'
No ability worked without conditions.
Mask needed to reveal info once for teleportation. The protagonist's choices had probability corrections. Han Ye-seo's ability, Ritta's, Irene Rock's—all had conditions.
My own regressions required death as the trigger.
"Is my guess right?"
"Huh?"
"...You can't read thoughts, then."
"I'm your unconscious, the safeguard your past self prepared for you."
"What can you do besides verify answers?"
"I don't know."
Anything I didn't know, it couldn't say.
'Useless.'
It turned 99% guesses into 100% certainties.
That was useful enough—like solving a test then checking answers.
But beyond that?
No real way to help my waking self.
We just met in dreams and talked. That was it.
'I'm not stupid.'
This might sound arrogant, but my brain worked pretty well.
I wasn't great at studying, wasted time on games, failed job hunts a bunch... but still, sharp enough.
Assume my past self had equal smarts.
'She wouldn't make dumb choices.'
There had to be a reason.
"Why erase the memories?"
"You already seem to know."
"So there is a trap in the status window rewards?"
"You already know what kind."
"That's why I'm confirming it now."
Her speech was eerily similar, which grated on me.
"Yes."
"...The trap is all info on Ivy Lane."
Lucky break.
More like stumbling into it.
If I'd been even a bit more thorough or wise, I'd have prioritized digging into Ivy Lane's past first.
But I'm not that wise.
Just your average impulsive everyman with common sense.
So one loop I picked stat boosts, another checkpoint.
If I'd grabbed the paper tallying regression count early, things might've gone differently... but regrets are regrets. Too far gone to rewind and change choices.
"You know the reason too? Ah, you do—seeing how you're saying it."
"Probably knowledge I shouldn't have now, the kind that massively sways judgment just by knowing it."
All information. The phrase was vague.
If Ivy Lane's entire life experiences poured into my brain at once?
'I'd go mad.'
Compressing one person's lifetime into moments.
It would've warped my personality.
Then what was that black spot, my lingering unconscious?
A mix of my original self and all of Ivy Lane's info.
'Let me sort this out.'
Past me regressed repeatedly, witnessing and remembering over a hundred deaths.
Chose "all info on Ivy Lane" as reward.
Flooded with it, realized her personality had merged with something.
Memento Mori. Remember death.
Recalling the core ability description, she wiped memories to reset rewards and stats, back to square one.
But repeating the same choices from the start would be pointless.
She needed a way to intervene in the reset me.
'Hence, the precog-guided drug injection and the unconscious fragment left behind.'
Under the drug's influence, I impulsively chose stat boosts after meeting Dana in the alley.
The unconscious fragment was a safeguard to aid my decisions.
The precogs too.
I was running down the path past me had laid out.
And the masked man gave me another drug.
One meaning.'
There'd definitely come a time to use it.
One new question arose here.
'Was past me's goal really returning to the original world? Or just living a comfy daily life here?'
I stared at the black spot for ages, but it never answered.
What I didn't know, it didn't know either.
—I'm missing something.