What Do You See? (4)
I leaned back against the comfortable sofa.
Kim Woo-in sat down beside me and said, "We're going to search through your missing memories now. Anything you're curious or worried about, when it comes to hypnosis?"
"Am I going to end up being controlled, by any chance?"
"Controlling people through hypnosis is pure fantasy."
"Then I'm a bit worried I might end up saying everything I shouldn't."
"That's twilight anesthesia, not hypnosis. Neither applies here. Hypnosis is like the state right before you fall asleep. You block out the surrounding noise and explore your own inner self, so think of it as something similar to meditation."
Kim Woo-in dismissed my groundless worries in one stroke, then tossed the candy from his mouth into the trash can and added another remark.
Wait, what if an ant gets stuck in that trash can now……
"Also, some people are easy to hypnotize and some aren't. So I can't guarantee we'll find everything with this. We'll only know once we try."
"What kind of person goes under easily?"
"People who trust others readily. Which is why there's a good chance hypnosis won't work on you, Do-woon."
"Me?"
"You're the suspicious type, aren't you. You poke holes in everything from every possible angle."
I couldn't exactly argue with that.
"Close your eyes."
I closed my eyes as instructed. Then a white noise like the sound of wind rose up around me, and through it came Kim Woo-in's monotone voice.
"Relax. Breathe comfortably and let the tension leave your body."
I followed along with my eyes shut, and slowly my body grew languid.
"Maintain that comfortable state. When I count to three, you'll be far more at ease than you are now. One, two, three."
With Kim Woo-in's suggestion, my body sank deep. It felt heavy, as if my back had been glued to the sofa. But my consciousness was still awake, and I could listen to Kim Woo-in's voice and think.
"Now we're going to turn back time. We'll rewind, back to yesterday. Are you there?"
"Yes."
"What do you see in front of you?"
"Baek Sa-ra……"
"What does this Baek Sa-ra look like?"
"She's sitting, watching me. Black clothes…… her expression is dark……"
"What scenery do you see behind her?"
"A white wall…… there's a door, and a clock."
"What time does the clock show?"
"Eleven…… thirty……"
I answered slowly, and at the same time, something dawned on me. I had woken up yesterday at twelve. So what I was seeing now was a scene from before I came to.
"Good. Now let's go back another day. Same time. What do you see?"
"Team Leader Cha Si-eon…… he's eating an apple."
"Same place as before?"
"Yes……"
"Where did the apple come from?"
"A fruit basket…… mine……"
That apple had been bought by Section Chief Kwon Mu-seop. Having dredged that up, I felt an odd surge of indignation and muttered again.
"He's eating my apple……"
Jolt—
My leg twitched involuntarily. Kim Woo-in calmly asked what had just happened.
"The apple he'd finished eating……"
"The apple?"
"He threw it in the trash can……"
Cha Si-eon had thrown the apple core into the trash can. Food waste. Into the trash can.
"The weather's getting…… warmer now…… the apple……"
"……We're not going to worry about the apple. Let's go back one more day. Forget the apple."
The thought of that trash can, sticky with apple residue, bothered me immensely, but I turned back time as I was told.
"What do you see now?"
"……Lights."
Lights flickered back and forth before my eyes. And behind them, Kim Woo-in's face.
"We'll go another thirty minutes back. What do you see now?"
Cha Si-eon again…… but different from when he was eating the apple. A grave expression. He's calling me.
Seo Do-woon. Seo Do-woon. Can you hear me? Seo Do-woon.
Behind him stretched a wide, open space. A big warehouse. A hangar. The space you arrive in when you escape from a Special Zone.
"Let's go back just one more minute from there."
One minute……
"What do you see now?"
White. Everything, blindingly white. White. White, white, white, white, white, white—
Jolt—!
"Seo Do-woon, close your eyes."
White, white, white, white!
All white, a white like dying!
"You don't have to look. Close your eyes. Close them, and move away from that place."
Close them, close your eyes, don't look at the death.
"We'll move far away, until it's safe."
Moving away. Fleeing from the blinding white death.
"Let your mind settle again. With your eyes still closed, now try to recall. What you said there."
What I said……?
"The words you yourself spoke at that place."
"Why couldn't I…… remember you until now……?"
My lips moved on their own.
"And what did you say next?"
"What on earth are you…… who are you, really……?"
Without any thought, my lips and vocal cords reproduced that moment on their own.
"And after that?"
"What do you mean, four times……? Those words, I……"
No voice came out. Words were still lingering in my mouth. If I just opened it, exactly what I'd said back then would flow out. But for some reason, I couldn't make a sound.
"Already, already……"
Just as I was struggling to bring out my last sentence—
- It's too early still.
A small voice.
- Take something else instead.
And then, by some unknown force, I was smoothly pulled away somewhere else.
Wheeeeeeeeng—!
A siren wail that froze my heart solid. Where is this? Where am I? The fog is thick. I can't see anything. But there is something. Beyond the fog, there is an enormous hill.
Wheeeeeng—!
Not a hill. A sparse, hulking mass like tangled rebar. It was crouching there—the monster of the Railroad Station.
I have to run.
I was terrified. But I couldn't run. On the contrary, I was being drawn in. Something was lifting my body. I didn't want to look, yet it kept coming closer.
Jolt— jolt—!
"……woon! Wake……!"
A voice rang down from the sky. The fog was too thick to hear it properly. I was dragged, finally, right up before the monster's face.
At last I saw its form in full. A grotesque creature with a siren for a head and skeletal, lightning-rod limbs. Shabby and yet so vast—a thing impossible to accept.
And I knew, by instinct: if that thing wailed now, my body would be blown apart.
So as I steeled myself for death once more, it lifted its head. A terrifying sight spread out before me, as if the hill itself were moving. And what was finally revealed—its face……?
Beneath the dreadful siren, I saw a face. It was the face of a weeping man.
- Save…… save me.
The man said.
- Save, my…… save me.
You want me to save you?
The man shook his head. He said something. I heard a two-syllable name, but it failed to imprint itself on my memory and scattered.
Who are you?
The thing answered.
- I am, Lee, Seop.
That name, I remembered.
The moment I did, the fog dispersed, and Kim Woo-in's voice struck my eardrums.
"……woon! Wake up already, Do-woon!"
"Hah……!"
I shot my eyes open, like a student caught dozing off in the middle of class.
Sting—!
At the sharp pain, I looked down at my left arm. The bandage that had been clinging to it moments before was lying on the floor. There was a fresh wound on my forearm.
The letter 'B' again. And my right index fingernail, stained with blood.
What on earth is going on? Did I cut my arm again?
"Do-woon, are you all right?"
Kim Woo-in asked, his expression grave. "You were thrashing around in agony just now. You don't remember?"
I remembered absolutely nothing. We did hypnosis to find my memories, and they vanished again? This is insane, seriously. At this point, isn't this early-onset dementia?
"Surprisingly, I……"
When I started in a dry voice, Kim Woo-in gave me a serious look. Facing that doctor, I intoned:
"I seem like the type who trusts people easily."
"Is that really a joke you're making right now?"
It's not a joke. It's the honest truth.
"Never mind. How far back do you remember?"
"Up to the point where you told me to say the words I'd spoken, and I started saying them without meaning to. I think I said the part about 'what do you mean, four times.'"
"And after that?"
After that? I don't know. Like waking from a long, vivid dream that evaporates the moment you rise, only a hazy feeling remained—nothing I could properly recall.
I strained with all my might to dig out whatever trace my hippocampus still held.
"Ah."
And at last, it surfaced. "I remember. I saw a man. I had some kind of conversation with him……"
"What kind of conversation?"
"I don't know the content. But…… the man seemed to be crying."
"Do you remember what he looked like?"
"Faintly. And I heard a name. Probably 'Lee Seop'……?"
The instant those two syllables left my mouth, Kim Woo-in's expression froze over, cold as ice.
"What did you just say?"
Section Chief Kwon Mu-seop spread out a photo album, his face stiffer than usual.
"Think you can find the face you saw in here?"
I looked at the photo Kwon Mu-seop held out. It was a group shot of five or six armed agents gathered together. But either it was fairly old, or it belonged to a different organization—the combat uniforms were a slightly different color from the Bureau's.
The Bureau's combat uniform was black. The uniforms in this photo were a dark gray.
Still, there were faces I recognized in the picture. One was Section Chief Kwon Mu-seop, looking somewhat younger than he did now. The other was a baby-faced Cha Si-eon with short hair.
So this was an old Bureau photo, then?
I was skimming past the familiar faces to check the other figures when my eyes stopped dead.
"This person."
I pointed to one man in the photo. Next to the short-haired, expressionless Cha Si-eon stood a man with his arm slung around the kid's shoulder. Grinning broadly—an expression that looked quite cheerful. It was nothing like the face I'd seen, but even so, I could recognize that face without a doubt.
"I think it was this man."
It was the man called 'Lee Seop' whom I'd seen under hypnosis.
"Are you sure it was him?"
"Yes. It was exactly this face. Was I right?"
I asked back, studying Kwon Mu-seop's expression. Strangely grim.
"You said you'd never heard that name anywhere. No—of course you haven't. It's a restricted item."
"A restricted item?"
"Yeah. It's something you do need to know eventually. I was planning to tell you once you'd settled in a bit more……"
Kwon Mu-seop rubbed his forehead and muttered. Then, as if he'd made up his mind, it took him a long moment before he spoke.
"That agent's records were redacted over a serious contamination issue. Even just mentioning his name or looking at his photo can affect you, directly or indirectly."
"Directly or indirectly, how?"
"Indirectly, physical reactions like headaches or lethargy. Directly, a transference phenomenon that drags you into a specific Special Zone."
You get sick, or get pulled into a Special Zone—just from speaking that agent's name?
"That's why any mention of him is forbidden. Director Kim Woo-in must have already warned you, but you need to be careful too, going forward. If you absolutely have to refer to him, leave out the name and work around it with descriptions and such."
"Yes, understood."
As I nodded along to Kwon Mu-seop's warning, a thought flashed through my mind and I flinched in shock.
Something I do need to know. And an agent whose name must never, ever be spoken.
"Don't tell me……"
"Yeah. That's right."
He'd caught my meaning, and Kwon Mu-seop nodded. Then, in a calm voice, he laid it bare.
"The Bureau agent who kept getting dragged into Special Zones, just like you. That's this man."
I'd always found it strange.
A Bureau agent who kept getting pulled into Special Zones, just like me. If such a precedent existed, it should have been obvious to brief me on him in detail. That way I could learn from that person's trial and error, or compare our situations to get a handle on the phenomenon.
And yet I'd never once heard anything substantial about that agent. When I received the offer to join, the re-screening process only gave me a short explanation that someone similar had existed before.
So that person was Lee Seop. From the same team as Kwon Mu-seop. And officially listed as killed in action three years ago—when in reality, every record of him had been erased due to severe contamination.
Having heard all that, I understood why it had been kept from me. The restriction on speaking of him wasn't the real problem. His way of speaking was just that catastrophic.
I'm exhausted. In the end, I came away with nothing.
Still, I decided to wait a little longer. Acting Team Leader Oh Tae-oh had said he'd look for another way.
I deliberately emptied my mind and lifted my stinging left arm. The fresh nail marks carved into my forearm. Leaving something like this on my arm had to mean I wanted me to notice something when I came to. Perhaps it was a message meant for my eyes alone.
I smiled bleakly at my own tangled delusions.
And then I closed my eyes.