Chapter 1
Chapter 1
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 1
Chapter Title: The Regression of Evil (1)
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A biting wind whipped through the air, chilling the atmosphere as it swept across the open space. Feeling the cold breeze enveloping his entire body with a spectral touch, Kim Hyun-seong looked upward toward the sky, his eyes trembling with a mixture of disbelief and sheer terror.
‘……Why the hell is this happening to me?’
Perched high above on the building’s rooftop, he could clearly discern the faces of those who were supposed to be his peers, staring down at him from where they clung to the safety of the perimeter wall. They were never truly his friends; instead, they were the human trash labeled as school bullies who had methodically tormented him from his very first year of high school all the way through to the final days of his third year. Every single day of his educational life had been a living hell of humiliation and pain, yet he had gritted his teeth and endured every strike, pushing himself through his studies to the bitter end in hopes of a better future.
Graduation was supposed to be only a few days away, a liberation from his tormentors. So why the hell was he currently falling through the air from the rooftop of a school building?
He could not comprehend the reason behind this tragic culmination of his life. Kim Hyun-seong was not an outlier or a delinquent; he had been diligent with his studies, maintained what he thought were decent friendships, was relatively skilled at sports, and was certainly not so pathetic in a fight that others would naturally look down on him with such absolute disdain. That made the situation even harder to process as gravity took hold of him. He had lived his life with such earnestness and integrity, yet he had ended up plummeting toward the pavement in this pathetic and helpless state.
One thing, however, was absolutely certain.
The sound of his bones crunching against the ground was the last thing he heard.
With a final, heavy thud, he was dead.
* * *
To be more precise, he had not actually died from the impact.
When he eventually managed to regain a sliver of consciousness, the voices echoing in Kim Hyun-seong’s ears delivered a reality far more despairing than the darkness of death.
“Grandma, please listen to reason; it has been three months since the accident already,” a voice spoke with a clinical detachment. “I hate to say this as someone tasked with caring for him, but I have never once seen a patient in a vegetative state wake up after this much time. So please, for your own sake, you need to let go and move on. You still have your other grandson who is perfectly healthy and needs you, don’t you?”
“What kind of heartless nonsense is that!” his grandmother’s voice shrieked in reply, trembling with grief. “A perfectly healthy grandson? Are you suggesting that this child is already dead just because he cannot open his eyes?!”
“That is not what I meant at all, ma'am.”
The room was far too noisy for his pounding head. From the sounds of his grandmother arguing with what he assumed was a professional caregiver nearby, Kim Hyun-seong realized the horrific truth: he was currently in a vegetative state. His mind reeled with the implications in an instant; he remembered the fall from the rooftop vividly, but he had never suffered even a minor illness in his life—how could he possibly end up trapped like this?
At first, he attempted to deny the reality of his condition. After all, wasn't his mind fully aware and functioning with absolute clarity? He believed with a desperate fervor that he would soon regain control of his limbs and open his eyes to the world, but no matter how much time slipped away, he could not escape the oppressive, pitch-black darkness that surrounded his senses. It definitely was not brain death, as he could feel the phantom sensation of hands touching his skin, hear the muffled voices in his ears, and process complex thoughts in his head—but he was allowed to do nothing else.
The realization was devastating and utterly hopeless. It took a long time for him to accept his new reality, and during that agonizing period of silence, all sorts of heartbreaking stories filtered into his ears from the people around him.
“……My sweet Hyun-seong, it is time for you to wake up now,” his grandmother would whisper during her daily visits. “How did such a terrible thing happen to a good boy like you?”
“Hyun-seong, those damn bullies are telling me to give up on you and let you go,” she wailed through her sobs. “How could I ever do that? After all the years I spent raising you as an orphan after you lost your parents, this grandma could never give up on her boy. Just once, please, give us even the smallest sign that you are still alive in there.”
For Kim Hyun-seong, she was the only pillar of support he had left in the world. Hearing her visit the hospital room every day to spend her time in a state of constant mourning drove him to the brink of insanity. She had always been a bastion of strength who rarely shed a tear, so hearing her wail with such primal agony was more than he could bear.
And it was not just his grandmother who suffered. When she was away, the voice of his young little brother would fill the silent room.
“Hyung, I can’t take this life anymore,” Kim Hyun-jin confessed in a low, broken voice. “The kids who bullied you have started coming after me now that you aren't around to protect me, and Grandma hurt her back working double shifts at a restaurant just to pay for these endless hospital bills. What the hell am I supposed to do? If you were going to end up like this, you should have just died for real so we wouldn't have to suffer alongside you. Please wake up, hyung. I’ll keep living like this, I promise, if you just wake up.”
Hyun-jin’s words were a shocking blow to his remaining sanity. To protect his brother from the tormentors, Hyun-seong had intentionally never acknowledged him at school, yet they were still targeting his innocent sibling. In a state where even accepting his own physical paralysis was unbearable, hearing about his family’s daily suffering made him contemplate the release of death countless times in his mind.
But he could not die. That was the cruelest reality of being in a vegetative state; he was unable to do anything for himself, even end his own existence, and his mind plummeted into a deep, dark abyss of despair. Time passed with a relentless and grinding pace—one day, two days, then weeks, and eventually a full year dragged on without any change in his condition.
* * *
His mind moved through the classic stages of grief: denial, anger, and bargaining. As more time passed, it should have been time to accept his reality, but Kim Hyun-seong’s mind, having reached the point of bargaining, swung back to a state of permanent and burning anger. He could not accept this fate, and the longer he remained trapped, the more his sanity began to wear away like stone under a waterfall.
What the hell had he done wrong to deserve this? Back in his first year of high school, he thought he had navigated his social life better than most, but he had been marked by a gang of bullies over a single, pointless altercation that wasn't even a big deal. From that day forward, they hounded him relentlessly in ways that made no logical sense, and the torment had dragged on until his senior year.
Transferring to another school was never an option for him, as there were few choices in their district, and with their modest life caring for his grandmother, the financial and logistical burden of moving was simply too high. So, he had endured the painful reality, telling himself to just hold out for three years while hiding his bruised and battered body under his school uniform each day as he trudged home.
And the final result of all that endurance was this hospital bed. On the very verge of clearing the final hurdle of his high school career, he had answered the bullies’ summons and ended up falling from the rooftop. He was furious beyond words, and a deep, black rage boiled up within him. His targets were clear: every single person who had tormented him, and all the adults who had turned a blind eye to his suffering.
His mind continued to fray as the years flew by like light—one, two, three years passed in an instant. His brother stopped visiting as the burden grew too heavy, and after his grandmother eventually collapsed from the strain, he could hear the indifferent caregivers laughing and chatting as they worked. Amid the silence of his room, the television blared loudly into his ears, reporting on scandals and political news that felt worlds away.
Hearing the news of the world was his only solace in his paralyzed life. When he heard a particular story about the forces behind school violence being revealed, he thought to himself, ‘If a miracle ever happens to me, I will destroy every single one of those bastards who did this to my family.’ The good-natured boy he once was had been entirely consumed by evil and a thirst for vengeance.
But no miracle came to rescue him. Of course it didn't. He replayed the events of his past endlessly in his mind, regretting that day so deeply that he planned in minute detail exactly how he would act if he could ever return—from the first punch to the final retribution. It was a mere delusion, an impossible fantasy, but as a vegetative patient who had to keep living, he clung to it just to avoid the total collapse of his mind.
His grandmother was truly a remarkable woman. Even ten years later, she had never given up on her grandson, and when word finally reached him that she had passed away, Kim Hyun-seong’s mind completely shattered. He let go of the last shred of sanity he had been holding onto; now, he could only continue to live by embracing his own madness.
* * *
How much time had truly passed? He had even lost track of the concept of time itself. From the moment his consciousness flickered on until it was drowned in darkness again, he spent his days beating the people who had done this to him in his mind like a maniac. He visualized the blood splattering across their faces and ignored their pleas for mercy, for no matter how much they suffered in his imagination, it paled in comparison to the vegetative hell he inhabited. Compared to his grandmother’s ten years of physical and emotional pain, those bullies were living happily in the sun.
He lived in a state of perpetual madness, and part of him wished that someone would finally end his life, refusing to prolong the misery any further. Then, one day, Kim Hyun-seong had a very strange and vivid dream where he met someone and engaged in a long conversation. It was a satisfying experience, and even if it was just a dream, the fact that he could speak and be heard made him smile for the first time in years.
When he eventually regained consciousness again, he was faced with a reality that his mind simply could not accept.
* * *
The gentle chirping of birds drifted through the air. Looking up toward the window, he could see the vibrant green of a tree swaying in the breeze, and turning his head forward revealed a blackboard covered in white chalk marks. This scene was hauntingly familiar; it was a sight that anyone who had undergone basic education in this country would have seen a thousand times over.
“……What on earth is this?” he whispered, his voice cracking.
Suddenly, a loud burst of laughter erupted in the room, followed by a shout: “Stand still, you crazy bastard!”
The surroundings were chaotic and filled with noise. Looking to his side, he saw two boys dressed in high school uniforms yelling and chasing each other through the aisles. The classroom was a complete mess because of their antics; chairs had been toppled over, desks were flipped onto their sides, and the girls seated nearby were screaming for them to stop, but the boys paid them no mind.
That was when his pulse began to quicken. Thump, thump, thump, thump.
The sound of his heart was so loud that it felt like he could hear the rhythmic pulse directly in his ears, and Kim Hyun-seong could not believe the information his senses were feeding his brain.
‘……Did I really manage to travel back to the past? Is this real?’
He remembered the dream from yesterday, which he had dismissed as a feverish delusion of a dying mind. The events in that dream were logically impossible, and he had experienced countless fantasy dreams during his years in the hospital bed. Unconsciously, he pinched his cheek as hard as he could. There was a sharp sting of pain, but it was not enough to convince him that he wasn't hallucinating, so he grabbed a sharp mechanical pencil from the desk in front of him and stabbed it directly into his thigh.
Stab.
The pain was immediate and excruciating. Lifting the pencil, his eyes shook with a manic energy at the sight of the real, red blood dripping from the tip. More than the physical pain in his leg, he could not tear his gaze away from the blood drops that were screaming the truth of his reality to him.
‘I really came back. This is not a dream.’
Regression was the only word that fit his current situation. The pain stabbing his thigh and the vivid scenery around him were certain proof that his desperate wish had finally come true, but just as he began to process this miracle, a sound shattered the peaceful realization.
Bang!
“You fucking bastard!” a furious voice roared from the back of the room.
Something heavy hit the floor with a dull thud, followed by a stream of vicious curses. The students in the classroom fell into a sudden and expectant silence. Even the boys who had been ignoring the girls’ screams during their chase stopped to glance toward the back of the room, then slinked out into the hallway to watch from a safe distance. Like other students gathering at the noise, they watched from the corridor with curious and fearful eyes.
“You dogshit bastard, what did you just say? You think you can figure it out yourself now? Damn it, if you could actually handle things yourself, why the hell would I even tell you to do it in the first place?”
Thud, thud, thud.
The rhythmic and sickening sounds of physical violence filled the air. It was a sound that was all too familiar to his ears. There were pain-filled groans and curses loud enough to shake the walls of the room.
Thump, thump, thump, thump.
Kim Hyun-seong’s heart felt like it was going to explode in his chest as he realized exactly where and when he was. This situation was etched into his soul; it was his first year of high school, the precise starting point where the years of systematic violence had begun.
Yes, in the very moment he had desperately wished to return to for over a decade, he now existed as the first-year version of Kim Hyun-seong.