Chapter 31: Baeksan
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 31: Baeksan
Chapter 5 – The Regressor, Baeksan
1
A man I’d never seen before stood before me in the hospital room.
His face was etched with a deep weariness as he slowly swept a hand over his forehead.
“Don’t bother calling for anyone. They can’t see me anyway. You’ll just look like a crazy person.”
As if to prove his point, he reached a hand toward the bedsheet.
His hand passed right through it, like a ghost’s.
As I stared at him with wide eyes, Baeksan clicked his tongue.
“You’re probably wondering who the hell I am, just showing up and talking to you like this.”
The aura he gave off was anything but ordinary, so I quietly nodded.
Seeing this, the man tapped his cheek, as if trying to decide where to begin his explanation.
Then, having made up his mind, he spoke.
“First, an introduction. I’m Baeksan. A Regressor.”
That’s his introduction?
The word “Regressor,” dropped so casually alongside his name, left me utterly dumbfounded.
Even in a world where Returnees were common, a Regressor was something else entirely.
It wasn’t something I could easily accept.
But as I looked at him, semi-transparent and floating in the air like a ghost, a strange chill ran down my spine.
Am I being haunted?
“Don’t think you’re being haunted. I’m the one who helped save you. You’d be dead if it weren’t for me.”
I flinched at his words.
So my memory from back then wasn’t fake after all.
“Then I was…”
“Yeah, you were on the verge of death. That was also the condition for me to appear to you.”
A condition.
The condition was for me to be on the verge of death?
There were still so many things I didn't understand.
“Don’t worry. I’ll explain everything I can, step by step. The problem is how much of it you can hear. First, ㉫¨┳、ˇΥΨ㎘Ⅷ. Can you hear this?”
Suddenly, his mouth twisted, and a voice mixed with static echoed in my head.
What the…
“Uh, pardon?”
“Right, so you can’t hear that far.”
As I blinked, Baeksan crossed his arms as if he’d expected it.
He seemed to be contemplating just how much he could tell me.
Then, he nodded as if he’d found a good starting point.
“First off, in the original timeline, you die in four years, the year you turn thirty.”
A death sentence, delivered just like that.
I die the year I turn thirty?
I could feel the sharp blade of a guillotine against my neck.
I glared at him, as if to ask how he could say something so ominous, but Baeksan’s expression remained unchanged.
“And according to our deal, that was originally when I was supposed to appear in your body.”
“But.”
“Right. You ended up dying much sooner than in the future I knew.”
I didn’t trust everything he said, but I listened in silence.
Because I was just now recalling how Si-ho and Ms. Baek Seol-hyang had reacted.
‘What Si-ho said about me having ‘come back’.’
The fact that my body was perfectly fine despite being fried by electricity, and my missing memories.
All these facts piled up, compelling me to listen to the man’s words.
I still couldn’t believe the part about him being a Regressor, but I could believe one thing: that he had saved my body.
‘Though it’s also possible the electricity fried my brain and I’m just having a delusion.’
But thinking like that would just make my life too miserable.
I decided to set my doubts aside for now.
“Are you saying the future has changed?”
“Looks that way. …I expected it, but this is fucked.”
It seemed he had a rather foul mouth.
He kept habitually sweeping his hand over his forehead, stopping just before he could pull all his hair out.
“The future probably changed because of my intervention. A few incidents that occurred because I regressed must have had an effect. The problem is, I don’t know how much has changed.”
Baeksan tapped his crossed index finger, looking a little agitated.
Why did he regress?
No, why did he appear before me in the first place?
He could have just returned to his own body.
“Curious why I regressed?”
“Ah, yes.”
As if on cue, he seemed to notice my question and spoke.
He mulled over how to explain it, then the corner of his mouth twisted up as if he’d thought of something good.
“You’ve probably played some games or read some novels, right?”
Of course. I play every day.
I was planning on going home to play tomorrow after being discharged.
“Then it’s simple.”
He let out a hollow laugh.
As if he had given up on everything.
The moment I saw that reaction, a thought flashed through my mind.
Why do countless regressors in novels turn back time and return to the past?
The answer was so simple it was obvious.
“This fucking shitty world is going to end.”
Just as Baeksan, the Regressor himself, said.
My mouth hung open for a moment.
It was the answer I’d expected, but I didn’t know how to react.
From the perspective of an ordinary citizen, it felt like a story from another world.
It was like listening to someone hysterically claiming the world was going to end in 2032.
“So, are you here to stop it, Mr. Baeksan?”
“Just call me Baeksan. And the formal speech is annoying. If you just count our ages, we’re the same age.”
“Uh, then… San-i?”
Reminds me of a rapper I listen to.
“……Make it Baeksan.”
As if he knew exactly what I was thinking, he instructed me to use his full name.
“Alright, Baeksan. Then why did you come to me?”
Now that we’d dropped the formalities, I decided to ask my questions more comfortably.
He said he’d answer everything he could, so I resolved to ask everything I was curious about.
Hearing my question, Baeksan casually dropped another bombshell on me.
“Because you’re the catalyst for the apocalypse.”
“……Hold on.”
My head suddenly started to ache.
What kind of bullshit was this now?
Me.
Me?
How?
“Do I turn evil and become some supervillain? Or do I have some kind of special ability?”
“Don’t worry. You were perfectly ordinary with no powers right up until the moment you died.”
Well, that’s a sad story.
While I was smiling bitterly at the fact that my only accomplishment in life was reaching Grand Master in Lord of Academy, Baeksan told me the truth.
“You’re not the problem. The people around you are.”
“The people around me? The only people around me are…”
I carefully thought about the people in my life.
One Returnee, two, three, four…
One Hunter, two… three?
Something about my social circle was starting to feel less and less ordinary.
Or was it just my imagination?
“I don’t know how many have gathered around you at this point, but your social circle is not normal. There are way, way too many people with special powers, like Returnees and Hunters, gathered around you.”
He closed his eyes, as if just thinking about it was exhausting.
“And the focal point for all of them is you, Kang Ha-chan. An ordinary person is at the center of all these powerful figures. Do you have any idea what that means?”
“That I’d be a target for every lunatic out there.”
“Yeah, shit! That’s exactly right!”
He even clapped, his voice full of high tension as if to say, ‘Correct, Kang Ha-chan!’
It seemed regressing had driven him a little mad.
“So, in that situation, what do you think happens when you, a target from all over the world, get killed?”
“Re…venge? No, but still, would they really go that far for me?”
“What would you do if the Heavenly Demon were killed?”
“I’d go kill the bastard who did it.”
“See? It’s simple, you idiot.”
Maybe he’d reached enlightenment from regressing, because he was great at explaining things simply.
Even I would surely chase the person who harmed my friends to the ends of the earth to get revenge.
If the others were like me…
‘Maybe not the end of the world, but…’
It did seem like all hell would break loose.
I copied Baeksan, crossing my arms and humming in thought.
Okay, I understood what he was saying.
If things played out like that, I could certainly see how my life might be in danger.
But there was still something I didn’t get.
“Couldn’t you just return to your own body and come protect me?”
“Shit, like that would be so easy. You think I can stick to you 24/7?”
“Oh, no thanks.”
A shady-looking guy watching me 24/7? Absolutely not.
“Exactly. No matter how hard I try to prevent your death after regressing, if some unforeseen situation occurs and you die, it’s all over.”
He’s treating me like I’m made of glass.
“But it’s a different story if I possess you directly.”
“You can save me in a crisis, like you did this time?”
“But even that isn’t possible often. Your body, as it is now, can’t withstand repeated possessions. It needs at least a month, or to be safe, more than three months between them. That’s why I deliberately set the condition for my possession to be the moment right before your death. So, I’ll help you in other ways.”
I understood why he had come to me like this, but I soon looked up at him.
“Are you okay with that?”
“With what?”
“Your life. Are you okay with giving it up like this?”
This was the life he had returned to after regressing.
His reason for regressing, the world being doomed to destruction—I could believe it if I had to, I could accept it if I must.
But what about the rest of Baeksan’s life, having regressed only to end up as a floating spirit by my side?
What meaning would that have?
If he had regressed into his own body, he could have stopped the apocalypse with his own hands and lived out the rest of his life.
Having regressed, he would obviously be able to do things much better than before.
But he had given all that up and chosen to regress to my side for the sole purpose of saving me to stop the end of the world.
I couldn’t begin to fathom what must have been going through his mind to make such a choice.
Hearing my question, Baeksan uncrossed his arms and began to let out a small laugh.
Then, as if recalling a distant memory, he gazed at me intently.
“Right, this is the kind of guy you were. This is why they were all so obsessed with you.”
Baeksan looked at me with eyes filled with a profound emotion I couldn’t comprehend, then quickly erased it.
“It doesn’t matter. I was on the verge of death before I regressed anyway. Saving you and stopping the apocalypse is enough for me.”
I wanted to say something, but I kept my mouth shut.
I felt that whatever I said would only undermine his firm resolve.
“Besides, I’m the most brilliant bastard in the world. I can do just fine on my own without anyone’s help. So I don’t really need memories from a past life.”
The arrogant words flowed out naturally.
He showed an unwavering confidence, as if he didn’t doubt that fact in the slightest.
“In any case, you’re the problem. Now that the future has changed, I don’t know when you might die. Originally, that woman was supposed to stick by you until you turned thirty, but for some reason, she’s nowhere to be seen.”
“‘That woman’?”
“I’m talking about your older sister, Kang Ma-ri.”
Huh?
“My sister?!”
My expression shifted dramatically.
I never imagined her name would come out of his mouth.
Seeing my reaction, he gave me a dubious look and tilted his head.
“What is it? You don’t know where Kang Ma-ri is?”
“……I don’t. She disappeared after a dimensional shift when I was eight.”
“What the hell? That can’t be right.”
It seemed that wasn’t the case in Baeksan’s future, because he looked completely bewildered.
Could it be that in his world, my sister never disappeared?
“Dammit, what the hell keeps going wrong?”
He ran a hand through his hair, messing it up, then something seemed to occur to him and he whipped his head toward the window.
“……Don’t tell me the Tower twisted the prophecy.”
“What do you mean?”
“I sent a prophecy to Kang Ma-ri, from the future to the past. Asking her to protect you.”
And the Tower of Revelation twisted it?
If so, the reason my sister disappeared was…
“……Son of a bitch. I’m sorry. It seems your sister’s disappearance is my fault.”
He bowed his head to me, his face dark.
I stared at him blankly, my head throbbing for a moment before I let out a sigh and shook it off.
For a moment, the memory of having to grow up alone made me flare up with anger, but it wasn’t Baeksan’s fault.
If everything he said was true, he had actually been trying to protect me.
Maybe back then, it would have been different.
But I wasn’t a child anymore, not enough to get angry at him for that.
So, before his expression could darken any further, I changed the subject.
“The Tower of Revelation can do something like that?”
“Interfering with time has huge repercussions. The Tower of Revelation is the reason most of the prophecies scattered across the world are a complete mess. That’s why I went so far as to use a forbidden text… but to think it would twist even that.”
He wore a complicated expression, clearly with a lot on his mind.
Hearing that he was originally supposed to appear right before I died at thirty, it was probably natural for his head to be a mess.
“Forget it. I need to focus on the present. Whatever changed because of me, I just have to change it back.”
With those words, he floated down and sat on my bed.
“So, Kang Ha-chan, let’s do some training to get you stronger.”
And just like that, I was about to receive special training from a Regressor.