The Weight of Loss
I sat in a daze inside the funeral hall, filled with the quiet murmurs of mourners and the heavy scent of incense.
I hadn't slept a wink, pushing past dawn, yet I felt no fatigue. I hadn't eaten a thing, but hunger never came. Instead of the bright shirt I'd worn just hours ago, I now had on a slightly oversized black suit, sitting there in a fog.
"Wooju, your mom and I will head inside first... So, um... come in when you've calmed down."
I nodded at my father, also dressed in a black suit, and my mother sobbing in his broad embrace. Jaehyuk was dead.
After getting my mother's call about how he'd 'been hit by a bus,' I'd rushed straight to the hospital address she'd sent. But what I saw was Jaehyuk, his body covered head to toe in a blood-soaked sheet. I never got to see his face. They said the damage was worst there, so no one except his parents had been allowed to look.
"Huuuugh...! Hnnngh...!"
From deeper inside came the mournful wails of his mother. Even though she hadn't cried when the doctor pronounced him dead at the hospital, the sound of her sobbing now made me bow my head.
Just yesterday we'd been face to face, drinking coffee together. And now he was gone. On his way back from meeting me.
My head spun. Why? Why was this happening...?
"...You okay?"
"...No. I'm not."
Someone's footsteps sent ripples across the surface of the soju in my cup. When those steps stopped beside me, a voice calmer and quieter than usual rested a hand on my shoulder.
"...Did you even go home? Your hair's a mess... Don't just sit here like that. Go home and get some rest."
"I'll handle it. Right now... I just want to sit like this."
Choi Go-eun, who'd played with me and Jaehyuk since we were kids. Her eyes were a little red, like she'd been crying somewhere. She carefully lifted her hand from my shoulder, sat down beside me without another word, and hugged her own legs to her chest.
Then she gave a small sniffle, her whole body trembling quietly.
I hated it. I was sick of it. Why Jaehyuk, of all people? Today was supposed to be just like any other day. Why?
I brought the cup of soju—whose owner I couldn't even remember—to my lips and pulled a pack of cigarettes from my pocket.
"...They're all gone."
I couldn't recall when I'd smoked them all. I crumpled the empty pack, my memories hazy and fragmented since yesterday, and tapped my head a few times.
"...Where are you going?"
"Just buying cigarettes. I'll be right back. Wait here."
I didn't look back at Go-eun, whose voice shook with emotion as she tried to stop me. I grabbed the jacket I'd taken off, stood up, and left. There had definitely been a convenience store on the first floor...
My legs moved on their own, as if I were drunk without realizing it. I slipped on my shoes and leaned my staggering body against the wall, walking down the cold hallway. In the distance, an unfamiliar yet familiar silhouette was walking toward me.
"...You..."
The clear sound of heels striking the floor echoed down the hallway as the dark figure drew closer. A woman in a black suit and skirt, with hair even darker than her clothes and narrow eyes that parted just enough to reveal her pupils.
"...I'm truly sorry we have to meet again under these circumstances. I really am."
"...Yeah. Same here."
It was Kwon Noa.
"Could I get a light too...? Ah, thank you."
"...I see you smoke as well."
In the smoking area tucked away in a corner of the funeral home, I lit a cigarette for her as she stood there with one already between her lips. Noa exhaled a thick plume of smoke, then took another silent drag while staring straight ahead.
We sat side by side on the bench, quietly blowing smoke into a sky that could have been the dead of night or the approaching dawn.
"....."
"....."
The silence pressed down like the smoke itself. In the end, I spoke first.
"...This might be rude, but I feel like I have to ask."
"What is it?"
"Why do I get the feeling there's another reason you're here? Or should I ask how you even knew about Jaehyuk's funeral?"
It was too unnatural a situation to simply let slide in the middle of my grief. The last person Jaehyuk had met before his sudden accident was me, but there had been two other women. The suspicious pair who'd been talking with us at the café—Kwon Noa and Isabelle Kang.
It could have been nothing more than baseless suspicion, a hasty leap driven by personal emotion. But I couldn't shake the uneasy feeling. Even as self-loathing rose up for trying to pin my friend's death on someone else, I forced the words out.
"This time, I need to ask you two—what the hell did you do to Jaehyuk...?"
"...His death was not something we intended."
Noa's single sentence peeled away the hatred and sorrow that had been crushing my chest.
"...What did you just say?"
"Let me apologize first. I'm truly sorry. There was never any plan for Jaehyuk to die. We were going to erase about forty-eight hours of his memories after he learned about the mask and our existence. But during that process, Agent Isabelle Kang acted on her own and administered the memory-erasure drug to him earlier than scheduled..."
A ringing filled my ears.
"...The side effects caused him to fall into a delirious state, and in that condition he ran in front of a moving bus..."
"...Why? What the fuck did he ever do wrong...? I was the one who picked up the mask, so why Jaehyuk...?"
"It was our oversight. We failed to properly account for civilian casualties during the operation. As for compensation, headquarters will handle it directly once the mission is over, so you don't need to—"
The cigarette in my hand had already gone out. Noa kept rambling on about compensation while I stood there in a daze. Her voice wasn't even registering in my head anymore. My heart was pounding like it would explode.
"And given how things have turned out, we need to move our plans forward."
"......"
Click—
I looked down at the cold sensation against the back of my hand resting on the bench. Black steel, chilled by the night air. A pistol heavy enough to feel its weight when gripped. It wasn't a model or a toy—it was a real handgun, complete with a suppressor.
Noa looked straight into my eyes, which had begun to well with tears, and smiled with what looked like sympathy.
"Wooju, won't you sacrifice yourself for the sake of all the lives that can still be saved?"
"...What the fuck did you just say?"
"There's one more thing I need to apologize to you for. The truth is, there is no way to save a man who has become the Master or a woman who has become a Saintess. The Master has his humanity stolen by the mask and becomes nothing more than a slave. A Saintess is already a monster who has long since lost her humanity. If the Master dies from exhaustion, the mask recovers its strength, finds a new man, and forces a new contract. That new Master creates new Saintesses, everyone dies, and the vicious cycle repeats."
Noa gently wrapped her hands around mine as I held the gun and smiled sweetly.
"The only way to break the contract between the mask and its Master is the Master's death. So, Wooju, this may be your one and only chance to die as a human while you still have some humanity left. It may be your chance to protect the people you love. I promise you. We'll take responsibility for those left behind after you die, and we'll safeguard the mask so that no new Master ever appears again."
"........"
Noa slowly moved my hand holding the gun and placed the barrel beneath my chin. Then she positioned my finger on the trigger.
"If you need time to prepare yourself, I can give you as much as you want. And if you have any questions, I'll answer anything."
"...You'll answer anything?"
"Yes. It's the least we can do for someone who's resolved to make such a sacrifice."
My hand trembled violently. Tears streamed down my cheeks. A sigh mixed with cigarette smoke escaped me. And then came the sound of laughter—mocking this absurd situation.
"If you needed me to sacrifice myself, why didn't you say so yesterday? Why did you talk like you could save me?"
The gentle smile on Noa's face twitched slightly.
"That was... because Jaehyuk was there with us yesterday, and there was no way you would have accepted the idea of sacrificing yourself..."
"Ha, haha... That makes even less sense... Even if Jaehyuk wouldn't have accepted my sacrifice, you could've just erased his memories with that memory-erasure thing or whatever. So why are you blowing this up into such a big deal? I'm asking you right now—why the fuck are you lying to me? Answer me, you bitch."
I lifted the barrel from beneath my chin and pressed it against Noa's forehead.
"........"
Noa narrowed her eyes at my shaking pupils. I thought I saw her click her tongue, but maybe it was just my imagination. She didn't even flinch at the gun against her forehead. Instead, she let out a sigh and her eyes turned ice-cold.
"...That damn Isabelle unnie went and caused a mess she couldn't handle. A civilian got caught up in the operation and died. This isn't something that ends with a simple disciplinary action. Do you understand what I'm saying? You're the anomalous Master who crossed the Lifeline, Wooju. If you just die for us, I can bury this whole incident naturally. I haven't reported anything about you to headquarters yet, so if I write it up as the Lifeline-crossing Master murdering his friend and us having no choice but to eliminate him, it'll be clean, won't it?"
Noa laid out her true feelings so refreshingly that my tears, which refused to stop, kept falling to the ground.
These bastards were the ones managing the masks? The ones protecting people? Jaehyuk died because of them?
"...You should have started with 'I'm sorry.'"
"Ah, I see. I'm sorry. To Jaehyuk, and to you as well. But what I said earlier is true. If you sacrifice yourself, we might be able to save the others. Retrieving a mask whose contract has been forcibly terminated is easy. So—"
Click—
The same cold sensation I felt beneath my chin. When I glanced down, a small pistol was aimed at my jaw.
"The gun you're holding is empty. It was a test. To see whether you'd make the rational choice for humanity's sake or reveal your true colors in the end. Looks like it's the latter. Honestly... it would've been so much better if you'd died with the confidence of a hero who sacrificed himself for mankind. This is just a dog's death..."
"...Maybe you're right. This is all my fault anyway..."
The sense of loss felt like a hole had been punched through my chest. I tossed the gun I'd been aiming at Noa's forehead onto the ground.
It was all my fault. Picking up the mask. Jaehyuk dying because of it. If I eventually lost my humanity and became the mask's slave, if I created even more Saintesses and sacrificed more people, then maybe dying for everyone's sake like Noa said would've been the better choice.
"Still... thanks to you, I feel confident now. I appreciate it..."
"Huh...? What are you—ugh—?!"
A small hand suddenly grabbed Noa's wrist as she frantically tried to aim her gun backward. The eyes of whoever held that wrist sparkled with a jade-green light, and the character for Slave was branded on her forehead like a mark.
"S-Saintess...?! No, there shouldn't have been any reaction...! A-ahh...!!"
".........."
With an expression utterly devoid of emotion, Go-eun twisted Noa's wrist. The pistol slipped from Noa's hand and clattered to the floor.
I recalled the question Isabelle had asked me yesterday.
'I detected a total of two Saintesses.'
That meant they either had some way of sensing Saintesses or knew a method to do so. Which was why they could never have noticed Go-eun's existence. Because Go-eun wasn't a Saintess—she was a Slave.
"W-Wooju...! What is this...?! The mask created a new being that isn't a Saintess... Have you lost your mind?!"
"I thought I'd lost my mind this whole time too. Maybe I'm still going crazy even now. But thanks to you and that woman named Isabelle just now, I finally realized something. I'm more sane right now than I've ever been."
The moment Noa had handed me the gun earlier, I'd screamed Go-eun's name inside my head. Whether it would work had been another question entirely, but I'd called her name desperately—ten times, twenty, fifty, over a hundred. Because I had no intention of just letting the bitch who confessed to killing Jaehyuk walk away.
It had been my first time trying something like that, driven purely by desperation. I never thought it would actually work.
"Wooju, Wooju... please think about this carefully again. Who do you think will be next after you die? If you die, all the women you turned into Saintesses will die too! And after that? A new Master of the mask will appear. That Master might turn the precious people you left behind—your mother, your family—into Saintesses!!"
"...I'm not going to die."
"Pardon...?"
"I don't want to die. I don't want to sacrifice myself for the sake of bitches like you. Thanks to people like you, I've gained a strange confidence. I probably won't die no matter what."
I wiped the tear stains from my face with my sleeve and reached out to Go-eun, who was still holding Noa. She pulled out the mask she'd brought with her and placed it in my hand. I stared down at it blankly for a moment.
"....."
"Hic...! W-wait, Wooju...! Are you listening to me?! I said no! It wasn't me who killed Jaehyuk...! It was that woman Isabelle! No, no...!! If you want, I'll help you...! I'll help you catch her, okay?! D-don't come any closer!!"
She must have realized what was about to happen to her the moment she saw the mask in my hand. I watched quietly as Noa thrashed and screamed.
"...I didn't think I'd end up like this either."
The surprise at how much I'd changed. Maybe I'd already crossed the so-called Lifeline they'd mentioned long ago.
"Wait, wait, wait...! No, please...! I don't want this...!"
Noa began struggling with all her might, but escaping from Go-eun in her Slave state was impossible. I slowly pressed the mask over Noa's face as she shook her head in terror.
"No...! No!! Please, save me!! No—— ................."
The mask completely covered Noa's face, and just like that, her desperate screams were cut off. I ordered Go-eun to release her. Noa stood there in an awkward pose, staring blankly into space.
She was in the middle of turning into a Saintess.
"...Haah, fuck..."
It was the first time I'd placed the mask on someone with my own hands. But I didn't regret it. Not even a speck of guilt rose up.