How Much Time Do I Have Left? (1)
Being dropped from the party didn't mean I could skip dinner.
The plan was to toss my bag into my room and head straight back out. One hour until the student cafeteria closed. If I left now, the line would still be short.
I was opening the door and setting my bag down when I heard footsteps at the far end of the corridor—more than one pair.
I poked my head out. Yoon Seoa was sprinting at the front, with Lee Serin and Baek Harin behind her. Even mid-run, Seoa's low-tied black hair barely came loose. All three looked exactly as they had in the party room.
Harin, the tallest of the three, had bandages wrapped around one arm, and a brown stain had spread across the hem of Serin's skirt. Her waist-length pale silver hair had drifted forward over one shoulder as well. She'd apparently spilled tea on herself and hadn't even thought to change.
What could be so urgent?
Had their plans with the new party member changed? Or did I need to sign something separately on the roster? If it were just that, a message on my terminal would have done.
One notification had popped up in front of me on the stairs, too.
The Fate Community has been terminated.
That was all the information I could pull up. When I tried to summon it again, the vanished line never reappeared. It must have shown up because I'd left the party—what more was there to find out? If the community was over, I'd never need to look at it again anyway.
"Kang Hyunwoo!"
Harin called my name, and before I could even answer, all three of them reached my door. Seoa bent forward, lips pressed shut as she fought for breath; Serin braced one hand against the wall. Harin, the least winded of the three, grabbed my wrist first.
The hand on her bandaged arm.
"What's wrong?"
Harin didn't answer. She flipped my wrist over and, without knowing the first thing about taking a pulse, pressed her thumb against it, then shifted position and pressed again.
"What are you doing?"
"Checking if you're alive."
"Can't you tell by looking?"
"Hold still."
Her fingers wandered over the inside of my wrist. A moment later, whether she'd found my pulse or not, some of the pressure eased.
Now that I looked, all three of their faces were wrong somehow. Was it just from running?
It wasn't only the sprint. Seoa was clutching a crumpled roster sheet. Serin looked at my face, then let her gaze slide down to my mouth and throat. Wondering if I had blood on me, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, but nothing came off.
"What's going on?"
This time it was Seoa who raised her head.
"Why didn't you tell us?"
I could guess at plenty. That I'd known I was getting dropped. That I hadn't found a new party yet. That I wouldn't be eating with them at the cafeteria today.
None of those were things you asked with faces like theirs.
Behind Seoa, Serin clenched both hands tight, rubbing her thumb again and again beneath clean fingernails. As if scrubbing away blood that wasn't there.
The notification from the stairs came back to me.
"Did you remember?"
Instead of an answer, the grip on my wrist tightened. Seoa's lips stayed parted; behind her, Serin said nothing at all.
"How far back?"
"I asked how far back."
Seoa thrust the crumpled roster toward my chest. She hadn't written anything on the paper, but she shook it as if everything she'd come to demand were right there on it.
"Harin, fifty-seven years and four months. Me, thirty-one years and two months. Serin, forty-four years and nine months. All of it floating under your name."
What was the total again?
I started adding up the months in my head, then stopped. What would be the point of me doing the math now?
"So."
Seoa's expression crumpled.
"'So' is all you have to say?"
"What else would you have me say?"
"I asked why you didn't tell us."
"Would it have changed anything?"
Seoa shut her mouth.
"It would have."
Harin answered for her.
"If I'd known, I never would've agreed to cut you. When I asked why, you would've answered me. I would've said keep you—you gave me fifty-seven years, for god's sake."
"I did tell you."
The hand on my wrist went rigid.
"What?"
"I told you at first. After you woke up, I told you what I'd done. I asked if you didn't remember telling me not to."
Harin's lips parted slightly.
"But you said that never happened."
"...Me?"
"Yeah. You said I must've been seeing things from losing too much blood, and told me we should head back to the hospital first."
Harin's thumb slid off my captured wrist. Her grip was weaker than when she'd been hunting for my pulse.
"At first I wondered if that was it. I wasn't in any shape to argue either. But the others were all the same. I told them, and nobody remembered a thing. When I explained, they all acted like I was the one misremembering."
The roster crumpled further in Seoa's hand. Serin kept rubbing under her nails.
"You should've kept telling us anyway."
"Why?"
"Because—"
"You didn't believe a word I said, though?"
The hand holding the roster lowered.
"There was nothing to prove it with. You were all fine, and I was E-rank. The lifespan I'd spent was visible to me alone."
Harin looked down, still holding my wrist.
"So I stopped telling you, later on."
"..."
"And even if you'd believe me now, it'd be the same. Me saving your lives shouldn't become the reason you have to keep me around."
"That's not what we mean."
Seoa's answer came fast.
"Why do you twist it into that? At the very least we deserved to know. What you did. Why we're alive."
"You did know why you were alive. You thought you'd awakened successfully, the treatment had gone well, and you'd gotten lucky."
"And all of that was a lie."
"The result's the same."
"It's not the same."
This time it was Serin.
She couldn't even look me in the face, but those words alone came out crystal clear.
"We took it for granted that you'd be beside us. We forgot why you were there in the first place."
"And if we'd remembered, what would've changed?"
"We wouldn't have done what we did today, at least."
"You wouldn't have dropped me from the party?"
Serin couldn't answer. Instead, she covered the stain on her skirt with her hand. The fact that there was no place for me in combat wasn't going to disappear along with everything else.
Seoa knew it too. On the crumpled roster, my name had been crossed out, and beneath it the name of a new support-track student was already written in.
"So were we supposed to ruin the whole roster because of you?"
"It's not about ruining—"
"You said the new kid was better than me."
Seoa's gaze dropped to the roster.
Crossing out that name and writing mine back in would be easy. Whether a name written that way would still be needed in the next practical exam—that was a different question entirely.
In the end, Seoa pressed the roster against her side.
Harin was still holding my wrist. Weaker than before, but she didn't let go.
Serin was the first to speak.
"I told you."
Her voice was so small it took me a beat to catch it.
"Told me what?"
"That I like you. When you collapsed, I said it. I said I'd tell you every day once you opened your eyes."
Serin stopped there and bit her lip. The tea she hadn't taken a single sip of in the party room was drying stiff on her skirt.
"But I forgot even that."
I remember what Serin said back then. I hadn't been in any state to really listen, but I kept hearing it even after I woke.
I also knew those words had grown fewer since she entered the academy. I never asked why. I hadn't saved a person so I could keep collecting "I like you"s.
"You remembered?"
"Yeah."
"All of it?"
"Probably."
The hand braced against the wall came down.
"You knew... that I'd forgotten?"
"I didn't know for sure. At first I thought you'd only forgotten that day."
"And you still didn't say anything?"
"I brought it up. When you woke, I asked if you didn't remember what you'd said that day."
The hand rubbing under her nails stopped.
"What did I say?"
"You said the medication must've confused me. That we should talk again once you were feeling better."
"..."
"You kept saying you liked me after that, so at first I thought you'd only forgotten the promise. When the words thinned out after you enrolled, it seemed like other things were slipping away bit by bit, too."
"So you never asked again?"
"Yeah. Because digging to find out what you'd forgotten felt like demanding you keep saying you liked me."
Serin parted her lips, then closed them again.
There was a time she'd carry a conversation all by herself even when I didn't answer. After enrolling, more and more days she'd check her terminal first even when we sat across from each other—I figured she'd just gotten busy.
Had I not asked again for Serin's sake? Or because I didn't want to confirm it for myself, either?
"I'm sorry," Serin said.
"For what?"
"Everything."
Isn't that scope a little broad?
"You don't have to apologize."
"How can I not?"
"It was my choice. You never ordered me to do it."
"We told you not to."
Harin cut in.
Strength returned to the hand gripping my wrist.
"I remember now. I told you not to, and you pried my hand away. I said I hated it, and you did it anyway."
"If I hadn't, you would've died."
"I still told you not to."
You can't wait for permission when someone's dying in front of you. If the same situation came again? I'd probably press down all over again.
But had I ever once thought about how Harin—the one who survived—would take that choice?
I hadn't.
"I'm sorry for that."
The fingers around my wrist stiffened.
"Why are you the one apologizing?"
"You just got angry at me."
"That's..."
Harin couldn't find the rest of the sentence. Only her grip stayed where it was.
"Why did you keep doing it?"
This time it was Serin.
"Doing what?"
"It wasn't just once. We didn't remember when you told us, and we told you to stop. So why did you keep going?"
Even as she asked, Serin couldn't look at my face. She dragged her thumb under her clean nails again and again. Harin didn't loosen a single finger around my wrist, and Seoa kept pressing her thumb into the same corner of the crumpled roster for a long, long moment.
The answer hadn't changed since the first day I used it.
"Because back then, you were worth more to me than my own life."
No one could find the next words right away.
Harin's hand didn't move on my wrist, either.