Blood That Doesn't Hurt
Nine in the evening. Free time granted after the Plus filming wrapped.
"What are you thinking about?"
In a deserted outer warehouse, I sat cross-legged atop a neatly organized stack of equipment, facing Kwon Do-ha and his thoroughly displeased expression.
"Why the hell are you eating those damn chicken legs?"
Arms crossed as he leaned against the wall, pressing his fingers into the crease between his brows—the look was oddly striking.
"It's not a problem if I eat them, is it?"
"Not a problem? Is that something a man with a hole punched through his side should be saying?"
"Are you worried about me?"
For a fleeting second, Song A-seong's face seemed to flicker across the scowl he wore. I tilted my head for a better look, and just like that he was back to his usual self.
"Let's talk about the finals."
"…"
That dry, businesslike tone of someone preparing to force-feed me necessary information. I rested my chin on my knee and simply watched him without answering, until Kwon Do-ha finally exhaled a sigh.
"You've seemed completely out of it lately. It doesn't feel like it's just the penalty. Is something wrong?"
Those flat, emotionless eyes—he'd already reined everything in. It was less like he was speaking to a person and more like a repairman inspecting a broken machine.
"It's not that nothing's wrong."
I couldn't pinpoint exactly where the breakdown was, but problems were scattered all over the place. And the one Do-ha would probably flag as an issue was this:
"According to you, I shouldn't remember anything. Yet every night I keep recalling the deaths I've already been through. If that's a problem, then yes—it's a problem."
Memories from previous cycles. Every single night they arrived like a warning that this would be my future if I didn't get my head on straight, and the ways I died were endlessly varied.
Falling from a high bridge. Hit by a car. Drowning. Burning to death in a fire.
Skull cracked open, organs pierced by broken ribs, shivering in bone-deep cold, choking on smoke—none of those were memories that faded easily.
If anything, the sensations in those recollections felt more vivid than now, when I could be stabbed by metal and spill blood without feeling the slightest pain.
"…"
The moment he heard I was remembering, Kwon Do-ha's face turned deadly serious.
"Since when?"
"I'd rather not say."
He'd claimed no one ever recovered their memories mid-cycle, so this was a case even he didn't know. Following the rule he'd set himself—stay silent about unnecessary information—I dodged the question.
Instead, I laid out one by one every thought I'd been having for this repairman who was sizing up just how badly I was broken.
"There was a time I thought you and I were similar. People standing on the border between reality and a game."
Aside from me, Kwon Do-ha was the only person who knew the system existed.
"I thought you were someone like me, dragged into a situation you never wanted and suffering for it. That's why I wanted to trust you. But now… I'm not so sure."
He controlled situations and handed out only the information he deemed necessary. The only thing he seemed to expect from me was that I would move exactly as he wanted, safely, without introducing any variables. When you looked at it that way, he was no different from the system itself.
"Lately I even wonder if you're just another thing the system created."
I hadn't said it just to needle him.
The thought truly did drift through my mind now and then—that this entire situation might be nothing more than a carefully tuned virtual environment designed to make the character called me operate a little more efficiently, and that everyone around me, Kwon Do-ha included, was nothing but a tool generated by the system.
Like something out of a movie: was I also just being steered according to someone else's whims inside a game?
The thoughts kept unspooling without end. What if I was nothing more than a machine-human nailed to the red carpet the system had rolled out for me, with no way to escape?
That strange, persistent drive to adapt to this situation might not be an innate survival instinct at all, but the product of mechanical control.
I looked down at my open palm. Exercise had left a few calluses, but the skin still looked soft. When I turned it over, though, a long scrape across the back of my hand showed blood seeping between the lines. I licked at the sluggish trickle. I couldn't even tell what it tasted like.
"I'm bleeding, but it doesn't hurt at all."
Is this even my body?
"If you're the system, just tell me. How long am I supposed to keep doing exactly as I'm told?"
Layer upon layer of uncertain information had woven a curtain right in front of my eyes.
"How long am I supposed to keep apologizing, keep treating this like a second chance and feeling grateful for it?"
The moment the taut thread snapped, every thought I'd shoved aside under the excuse of being too busy came flooding out in a rush.
Should I try dying the way I do in the dreams? It doesn't even hurt—maybe running the experiment once wouldn't be so bad if it meant getting cleaner data. For all I know, everything might just be a dream I wake up from the second I die here.
And if not, then maybe it wouldn't be so terrible to keep resetting until death felt familiar. The memories seemed random anyway. If something went wrong, I could just do it again. Eventually everything would wear down and fray completely. Wouldn't that actually be easier?
My thoughts spiraled while I still had no idea what I actually wanted. Right—just like Han Min-hyeok said, I'd been bottling up far too much. One step and it already looked like this.
I couldn't be certain of anything. Sensation, experience, memory—none of it.
"…There was a time."
While I watched the blood drip with blank detachment, Kwon Do-ha finally spoke.
"I once lived through a version of you who remembered everything. Memories jumbled together so badly that even when we shared the same moment, it felt like you were living in a completely different time."
His unfocused eyes, as if gazing somewhere far away, slowly rolled toward me.
"You never told the people around you what you were looking at. You thought alone, moved alone. You'd rush off on your own, come back badly hurt, and just say it was fine. That was all you ever offered—frustrating nonsense."
A low, even voice, yet a trace of laughter he couldn't quite hide still clung to it. Laughter?
"Everyone was jerked around like crazy. I was no exception. You did whatever you wanted, and even your death was the same. You left behind nothing but empty words—that we could resent you if we wanted. So when I came back to a time where you remembered nothing at all… what do you think I was thinking?"
Kwon Do-ha tilted his head to the side, asking as if he were recalling something. He didn't look like he expected an answer.
"I turned the you who remembered nothing into a puppet, used the memories of the past, and climbed higher than I had ever even imagined. I pushed you into the back room, tossed you a few scraps, and lived as if I were the protagonist of the story. The result? What do you think it was?"
If it had succeeded, he wouldn't be standing here. His cool face twisted into a self-mocking smile.
"Answer me this once. You used the information you had as a weapon and swung it around however you liked—so why am I not allowed to swing the memories of the past? Why do I have to turn my own past completely inside out?"
He took a step. Once his foot moved, Kwon Do-ha didn't stop.
"You have no idea how goddamn miserable that powerlessness you forced on the people around you felt…"
He bit down on his lip. It was an expression I had never once seen on Kwon Do-ha before.
"Build relationships? Grow attached? What meaning is there in memories only one side can remember? Why am I the only one who has to treasure feelings that will vanish anyway?"
Like a child left alone in a garden no one ever visited. The voice he directed at me—or rather, at the ties of the past—was thick with a resentment he had kept buried. But then it settled. Or at least, it looked like it had settled.
"I have no desire to reset this miserable world ever again."
So don't go bouncing off on your own, he said, smiling—and a laugh slipped out of me without permission.
"There it is. Your true colors finally showing."
"I'd rather not have to watch you acting however you please with everything all mixed up the way you used to."
"It's not like I can put them in and take them out whenever I want."
"Then control your own damn memories."
Between the cold features, a thoroughly headache-ridden look showed through with perfect clarity. I felt a little brighter. Right—so he was human after all?
I kept grinning stupidly, ignoring the blood still dripping, until Kwon Do-ha, watching that face, dug into his pocket.
"I intend to see this cycle through to the end. The flow so far hasn't been bad, and there are aspects that differ from every previous one."
"Differ how?"
Was he talking about me remembering the previous cycle? I asked, and he tossed a handkerchief at me.
"Well, that too, but…"
Kwon Do-ha paused and simply stared at my face. The look of someone examining something completely unfamiliar.
"Thinking about it, this is the first time I've ever heard Lee Han-hee say something like 'How long do I have to keep doing what I'm told?'"
From psycho to scarecrow—the versions of me Do-ha claimed to have experienced covered quite a range. And among all of them, not once had I ever laid my insides bare like this?
"…"
Maybe that was true. It was easy enough to picture the two of us always holding back, always keeping one step of distance, never once clashing emotionally.
"If you really want this to be the last time, then how about giving me some useful information? Debut member count, for example. Or the next main mission."
"I could tell you, but it wouldn't mean much."
When I kept looking at him expectantly, Kwon Do-ha sighed and, surprisingly, continued.
"If it always followed a fixed pattern, it would have ended ages ago. The survival program itself seems to rotate through roughly similar formats, but after that? Nothing is set."
From minor things like taking first place on a music show all the way to performing in the largest concert halls—duration, content, everything was completely arbitrary. A faint note of hatred even colored his voice.
"When even the major threads keep snapping and twisting like this, the small details aren't even worth mentioning. What use is information you can only force into place after the fact?"
He clicked his tongue and muttered just loud enough for me to hear.
"You're already dying like a killifish as it is. Piling more pressure on top of that would only…"
"…"
Killifish. That single short word was packed with genuine feeling.
"So the number of members changes too?"
"It isn't fixed. Last time it was six."
"Six?"
Fewer than I'd expected.
"It's been as high as eleven, so it doesn't mean much."
No wonder they hadn't announced it until the last minute. It looked like the higher-ups really were deciding based on the contestants' skill levels as they went.
I planted my feet on the ground and brushed the dust off my pants. We'd talked for a long time in this dirt pit.
"And one more thing."
Just as I was about to wrap up and leave, his quiet voice continued.
"You should stop using the penalty to kill your senses soon. You know what I mean."
"I'll consider it."
The game-addiction penalty. I already had some sense of how far the detachment from reality could drop, so I nodded. It was a bit like how one drink leads to another.
"If I were the system, I would have destroyed this world a long time ago."
"…"
The words slipped out like a muttered complaint at the back ahead of me.
When I glanced down, my eyes caught on the handkerchief loosely wrapped around my right hand—the one I'd cut. Clumsy work, but at least the blood had finally stopped seeping through.
"You got hurt again."
"…"
The second I stepped into the room, Han Sang-jin spotted the handkerchief around my right hand and spoke up. On the bed, Han Min-hyeok, who'd been leaning back tapping at his phone, sat up and asked,
"Did you win?"
"Huh?"
"Against Kwon Do-ha. Looking at that hand, you at least got one punch in, right?"
I looked down at my fist under his completely casual question. So this looked like a fighting injury?
"I didn't hit him."
"Still? Then when the hell are you two actually going to fight?"
Han Min-hyeok thumped his own chest in frustration and flopped backward again.
"Aigoo, what am I going to do with you. The kid's too soft—doesn't even know how to fight. Doesn't know how to fight."
"…"
He was complaining exactly like a mother who'd just watched her child come home after getting beaten up.
"Why would I fight with Do-ha hyung?"
I asked as if I hadn't just returned from a full-blown uproar, and two pairs of eyes fixed on me without blinking.
The stares were heavy enough that I looked away; Han Sang-jin just shook his head slowly from side to side.
What are these people, my guardians?
It was so absurd that a short laugh slipped out of me.