Chapter 71
Chapter 71
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 71
Chapter Title: An Illusion of the Past
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“Gasp—.”
Juyeol shot up, gasping for breath.
Sitting in the recliner, he clutched his forehead, slick with a cold sweat. His head throbbed as if it were about to split open.
“Again…”
Juyeol muttered, wiping his deathly pale face.
“Let’s do it again.”
“Ghost.”
The counselor looked troubled.
Ever since learning of the suspicious circumstances surrounding his sister’s death, Juyeol had visited the headquarters’ counseling office every day.
The counselor sitting beside him was an Awakened with hypnotic abilities.
She usually helped Heroes or key witnesses recall memories with clarity to solve cases.
“You look terrible. You should rest for today.”
But vividly reliving a memory bordering on trauma every day was no different from torture.
Juyeol was overworking his body and mind.
“I think I just saw something.”
“Being hypnotized like this every day is hard on you—.”
“I said we’re doing it again!”
Juyeol shouted, clutching his throbbing head. He was being completely unreasonable.
The counselor flinched, then recalled Hunter’s instructions to do as he wished and let out a sigh.
Juyeol’s state, growing more sensitive by the day from the successive hypnosis sessions, was nothing short of precarious.
She’d heard he had wandered the streets of the old districts since he was a child. Perhaps he should have been sent to school instead of being made a Hero, she thought.
Once Juyeol’s breathing had calmed down somewhat, she placed a hand on his forehead.
“You are now returning to the time and place of your choosing. Look around you.”
The moment she spoke, a sea of flames unfolded before his eyes. The acrid smoke felt like it was choking him.
The rat-hole of a house where he and his sister had lived.
A home that had at least shielded them from the rain and bullets.
His sister’s grave.
Suppressing the rising nausea, Juyeol peered into the blazing house through the window.
Just as his ten-year-old self had done.
‘Ugh…’
Even knowing it was just a memory, it was difficult to look at his sister’s charred corpse every time.
He gritted his teeth as a sharp headache stabbed his brain with every thumping beat of his heart.
There was definitely something incongruous.
What had Halo hoped to gain by killing a child, a former test subject, after all this time?
This might be the clue to uncovering what was entangled with his sister’s death.
Even as he scanned the scene, his sister’s death, a black presence at the edge of his vision, grew clearer.
A suffocating feeling rose in his throat, and he gasped for air, desperately trying to find something, anything.
‘What was it? There was something strange. Quickly…’
Then, just as a bolt of lightning flashed through his mind.
“You are returning to reality.”
His eyes snapped open at the voice that came from the air.
Before he could even regain his sense of reality, Juyeol tumbled out of the recliner.
[You must pull yourself together!]
He pushed away the mechanical hamster trying to support him and bent over.
Only after he emptied the contents of his stomach into the trash can the counselor held out did his mind begin to clear.
He now noticed a nosebleed was dripping steadily. He guessed the counselor had woken him up after seeing it start.
“Ghost. This really can’t go on. Don’t come back for the rest of the week. Even if Hunter approved it—.”
The counselor’s words didn’t register. Drenched in a cold sweat, Juyeol replayed the scene from his memory.
Thump. Thump.
A throbbing headache hammered his skull in time with his pulse.
Thump. Thump.
The uncontrollable flames and smoke.
Thump. Thump.
The inside of the house, seen through the window.
Thump. Thump.
His sister’s corpse, lying inside.
Thump.
‘The house was filled with smoke… but I could see the body so clearly?’
Having identified the source of his unease, Juyeol stared at the window like a rusted machine. The counselor’s back and a bookshelf were faintly reflected in the glass.
His eyes trembled erratically.
Ten years ago, when he looked into his house through that window, his own face wasn't reflected in it.
The mirror beside his sister’s body also reflected nothing.
Whatever he had witnessed through the window must have been a hallucination.
Like the optical illusions Halo created with light.
* * *
“If I say no, I mean no.”
“What in the world is the problem!”
At Hunter’s sigh-laden response, Juyeol slammed his fist, veins bulging, onto the desk.
He had stormed out of the counseling office and run straight to Hunter’s office.
The body he had seen through the window was certainly his sister’s, but what he saw after the fire died down was nothing but a pile of ash, burned so black that it was impossible to identify.
What if that ash wasn’t his sister’s body?
If that was all a hallucination, then Hyeseong must have…
“She might not have died that day. She could have been taken back as a test subject. Let me meet the scientists who participated in the human experiments.”
Juyeol clenched his fists, his voice trembling as he continued.
“It’s been ten years, so she might be dead, but even so, I have a right to know how she died.”
Hunter gazed at him steadily before speaking.
“The scientists who participated in that experiment are gone. So are the records.”
“Are you saying they fled the country?”
“I’m saying they were all killed by Halo’s hand, right before the official investigation began.”
“…What?”
“Halo was the one who found that lab and reported it in the first place.”
“……!”
Juyeol’s pale face was awash with confusion. It was all a string of incomprehensible events.
* * *
It was a familiar nightmare.
“Run! Don’t look back!”
The terrorists’ mana engineering devices burrowed under people’s feet.
Haon tried to move shields under their feet and set up a large net under the bridge.
But her dream-self, as always, only tried to block the mana attacks. Even though she knew what was going to happen.
‘Please, just…!’
BOOM! CRASH! RUMBLE—.
Half of the bridge collapsed completely. Along with countless people.
Haon stood blankly, choking back sobs.
‘When will this ever…’
After reliving the horrific yet familiar scene over and over, the morning that felt like it would never arrive finally came.
Haon blinked slowly, her body limp, lost in a lingering daze that wouldn't clear.
Her unfocused mind seemed to be somewhere else entirely, and the helplessness from the dream still covered her like a blanket.
As she slowly regained consciousness, Haon thought.
‘How could I have saved them?’
Her body still moved according to the predetermined dream, preventing her from saving anyone, but she tried to devise a way to save them, as if by inertia.
It was a matter of course for Haon. She had, after all, lived in such a world.
That had been true, but with each passing day, she grew more and more exhausted.
‘Could I have even saved them?’
Stretching her stiff body, Haon looked down at the back of her hand.
56.
About five of them would be terrorists, and the other fifty…
The screams of the people falling from the bridge echoed in her ears.
Haon squeezed her eyes shut, trying to focus only on reality.
‘Today is the day I meet Juyeol.’
The headquarters had said they would send someone to inspect the place weekly for a month, so she had decided to cooperate for now.
After getting ready to leave, she went down to the first floor and found Nova waiting for her, just like every other day.
“Good morning, darling.”
He placed a soft kiss on her cheek and immediately handed her something to eat.
“Darling. You’re coming down later and later in the morning. Are you not feeling well?”
“Mm. No, I’m fine.”
Every morning, Nova would come to the lab to pick her up. He was so insistent, acting as if it were his duty to escort her all the way to Old District 1.
“I’ll try to come down a little earlier tomorrow.”
“I’m not rushing you. You can come down even later. My boss.”
“Are you going to keep calling me that?”
That word, ‘boss,’ still felt strange and awkward to her.
She had asked the people of District 1 to call her ‘Doctor’ rather than ‘Boss,’ but Nova stubbornly stuck to ‘Boss.’
“Which do you like better, ‘darling’ or ‘boss’?”
“You could just use my name.”
Nova’s eyes widened as if he’d heard something completely unexpected.
Then his lips parted, and he mumbled softly.
“…Haon.”
When Haon nodded with a slight smile as if to say, *that’s the one*, his lips moved again as if mesmerized.
“Haon.”
“Yes, Nova.”
Nova, who had been staring intently at Haon’s bright, smiling reply, lowered his gaze.
“Nova?”
“…Darling.”
“Why ‘darling’ again?”
When he met her eyes again, he was smiling beautifully.
“Why, darling? You have to hear ‘boss’ often to get used to the position, don’t you think? Hmm? My boss.”
“Geez. You just do whatever you want.”
As she grumbled, a thought occurred to Haon, and she quietly popped a piece of fruit into her mouth.
‘Does saying my name remind him of ‘Eun Haon’?’
Nova still wanted to kiss her cheek in greeting, and he seemed uncomfortable saying the name ‘Haon.’
‘His face even flushed a little. Maybe he's holding back tears.’
Thinking her guess was probably right, Haon decided to let him call her whatever he wanted for the time being.