Say My Name (3)
Say My Name (3)
Because they were people affected by starlight, Han Jae-jung and Baek A-hee recovered quickly.
Injuries that would keep others in the hospital for weeks or even months took them only a few days before they were discharged.
During those days in the hospital, Baek A-hee had exchanged nothing but idle chatter with Han Jae-jung, never attempting to go any deeper than that.
Even on the day they were finally discharged, she never once asked about his identity.
Baek A-hee spoke as she wrapped a scarf around her neck.
“There’ve been a fair number of people exposed to starlight recently, so apparently people with healing abilities like Jae-jung aren’t all that rare. Lucky, really. No need for shady government agencies to haul you off for a physical. Ha... haha....”
Her gaze was strange and her laugh awkward. A suspicious expression that clearly broadcast she was hiding something.
“...Ah, yes. That’s very good news.”
Han Jae-jung stared at her with cold eyes before he finally responded. The brief silence held the question of whether to sigh or click his tongue before answering.
The conclusion was to do neither.
‘I’ll have to make sure she keeps her mouth shut.’
Baek A-hee was outwardly acting as if she didn’t know Han Jae-jung’s true identity.
But her ability to keep a secret was remarkably poor.
Was she trying to tease him, or was she so excited she couldn’t keep it from showing on her face?
‘Either way, it’s not good for me.’
Han Jae-jung tapped the ground with the crutch he still hadn’t put aside, conveying a warning.
“Look here, Vega.”
“Are you really never going to fix that address?”
“People need a certain amount of distance, don’t they? What’s the matter? This distance feels friendly enough to me.”
“Distance...?”
Baek A-hee stared at him for a moment before she lowered her head and stroked her stomach with a worried touch.
“Didn’t we lack... a little too much distance?”
“Oh, come on.”
Back when he’d been forced to keep seeing her, she had put him through that several times a day. Han Jae-jung swallowed a curse. Directed at himself, of course. Using another person’s sin like a weapon was the rightful privilege of the one who’d been wronged.
‘Yeah, I’m the bastard. I’m the bastard. Ugh, fuck.’
He suppressed his anger and corrected himself.
“To be honest, I have no particular desire for any personal friendship with you, Vega.”
“What?! Why not!”
He’d originally thought getting close would be fine.
He’d intended to stay close to the magical girls and avert the ending where the world was destroyed.
But there were several drawbacks.
“Because it’s a deception.”
One was the problem of his own identity. Even if his goal was to protect magical girls, his transformed appearance was the very cause of their suffering.
The problem was that even heroic actions ended up damaging their standing and support.
On the other hand, if he thoroughly hid his heroic side and acted the villain outwardly, that would only give them even more stress.
There was no answer to this.
The moment you found an answer, another problem formed, creating an endless cycle.
As sure as the sun rose and the moon set, his identity—neither monster nor human—was, in its very essence, a source of pain for them.
So, hiding his identity while staying close to a magical girl was a deception. A deception in a different sense from meeting an acquaintance without his memories.
Of course, that was only the stated reason.
“And it’s a personal issue. If I stay close to people like you, I can’t avoid being the center of attention.”
He couldn’t forget the puzzled and curious looks from the medical staff every time Baek A-hee came to visit him in the hospital.
Eyes that chased interesting gossip resembled a hungry predator’s craving for meat.
This hospital specialized in managing magical girls, so they wouldn’t seriously dig into his private life or leak it, but in any other place they’d try it without a second thought.
It wasn’t just unpleasant; it was disgusting—and beyond disgusting, horrifying. That was what exposure to other people’s attention meant to him.
As Watcher, it was a little better. His entire body was covered, and even his speech and gestures were slightly different, so no one could imagine the person inside.
But handling that in Han Jae-jung’s own body was still difficult.
Other people’s attention was still terrible.
The rejection that rose from deep within his body was like magnetism.
You could force identical poles together for a moment, but they’d only repel each other again—you could hold out for a while through sheer force, but you’d ultimately collapse.
Trauma was like fear but different.
If fear was a momentary disturbance, trauma was a scar carved long ago.
A psychological wound.
Just as you couldn’t ask someone whose nose had been cut off why they couldn’t smell, trauma was that kind of mental impairment, a deficit.
Something you had to overcome, but something that couldn’t be overcome in a single moment.
“...Is it that severe?”
Baek A-hee asked with concern. Han Jae-jung didn’t do anything in particular.
“W-Well then, we can just meet more secretly!”
“How are you planning to handle it when we get found out later? You’re still young. Look for some other guy instead of an old man like me.”
“What does age have to do with people becoming friends? And anyway, the gap really isn’t that big.”
“In terms of appearance, there’s a gap.”
Han Jae-jung turned his head and examined his reflection in the glass window.
His beard was unkempt, and his hair was more than long enough to be considered long-haired.
He looked like a homeless person you’d often see in the subway or a park, or perhaps some famous performance artist. Whatever profession came to mind when someone looked at him, they would never entertain the assumption that he was still in his mid-twenties.
“That’s... but still!”
Baek A-hee couldn’t deny that either.
“But that’s all because Jae-jung doesn’t get his hair or beard cut! I could understand the hair, but you had plenty of chances to shave while you were in the hospital—why haven’t you done it yet!”
There was not a single thing wrong with what she said. Anyone living in society tidied themselves up no matter how busy they were. Especially someone in their twenties, when they could take the most pride in their appearance.
Han Jae-jung’s answer to that question was simple.
“Winter... preparation?”
“...Excuse me?”
He stroked his considerably grown-out beard with satisfaction and continued his answer.
“Winter gets cold, you know.”
“Yes...?”
“Look at animals in high latitudes. They all have fluffy fur. They evolved to withstand the cold. So this is my personal evolutionary process.”
You could cover other parts of your body with clothes, but protecting your face was hard.
And even those clothes were all terrible at keeping him warm, so enduring the cold wasn’t easy.
This was the kind of suffering poverty brought.
“If you just take good care of your head’s temperature, you can spend the winter much more warmly.”
“That’s sophistry! Just let me buy you a hat and coat. Please, tidy up that grimy look!!”
“Grimy...?”
Han Jae-jung rechecked his reflection in the glass. To his eyes, it didn’t look particularly grimy.
“Honestly, it’s got a kind of disheveled middle-aged-guy-in-his-forties charm. I sort of like it.”
“What kind of twenty-something is happy about being called middle-aged! You’ve got another twenty years before you get there!”
Baek A-hee rummaged through her clothes and pulled out her wallet. Then she took a few bills from it and held them out.
“Here! Use this!”
“...What?”
Han Jae-jung stepped back in bewilderment, and she didn’t stop, shoving the bills toward his face. She had to raise her hand quite high because of the height difference.
“Use this to get a haircut and shave! If your face is as satisfying as you say, then show it a little! Stop hiding it!”
So at last he was even receiving charity from a young kid like this. Han Jae-jung marveled at just how far his life had fallen into the abyss.
“Ah, even so, taking Vega’s money to do that is a little...”
“You’ve already used my money for your hospital room, so why act like this is something new.”
True. Han Jae-jung nodded.
“Besides, don’t you find it strange to say you hate attention and then go around looking so conspicuous?”
“...!”
A perspective he hadn’t considered. Han Jae-jung was impressed.
Like a stroke of lightning, the blade of words struck his mind, cutting off the path of endless sophistry.
It was a fierce and novel retort, like a king’s slash cutting the Gordian knot.
“Right? We have another appointment in a week. Come back then looking a little more presentable.”
Pieces of paper were placed on Han Jae-jung’s frozen hands. Afraid they might fly away, she moved his fingers to grip the bills. A few crumpled bills came to rest neatly in his palm.
Proof that at her young age she had shed blood and sweat. Proof of her labor and effort.
Baek A-hee placed her hand on his fist and smiled.
“Got it? You’re coming back looking so handsome you could charm every woman in the world, alright?”
“What if Vega ends up falling for me?”
“Then you’ll be the one who gets caught, I guess.”
Han Jae-jung gave a small smile.
“Very well. Then I’ll come back looking handsome enough to charm every woman in the world, but at a level where Vega won’t fall for me.”
“You picked up on that exactly! Oh, right, you heard the counseling building changed, right? Don’t get lost and show up late!”
“Of course.”
Baek A-hee waved and ran off. When she’d gotten a suitable distance away, she met his eyes again and bowed her head. Then she ran off once more—this time backward, waving her hand the whole way.
That’s quite an elaborate goodbye.
Han Jae-jung waved back at her.
Like a ship vanishing over the horizon, the girl’s figure gradually faded as she blended into the busy city world.
Watching her retreating back, Han Jae-jung felt a pointless sting in a corner of his heart.
‘Maybe I really should clean up this grimy look...’
Once again he examined his own reflection in the glass window.
A shabby appearance with no basic upkeep whatsoever. People who saw him like this would stare as if he were a curiosity, but no one would try to approach him. And at the same time, they wouldn’t bother trying to figure out what kind of person was under that face.
There were almost no people left who remembered him now, and even if anyone tried to dig it up or find out, all they’d get were insults—the dating scandal of Blue Sirius. Even the cyber-investigator squads who’d been fervent about the incident back then would have a hard time linking him to that past case.
Like most controversies, it was forgotten with time. And that dating scandal was even more so. The public’s attention scattered much faster, and interest evaporated, because Sirius’s record was so outstanding and the investigation revealed she’d been blameless in the matter.
Of course, most of those circumstances had been fabricated by Han Jae-jung himself.
As a counter-reaction, while sympathy had grown for Blue Sirius, hostile public opinion had grown toward Han Jae-jung.
The people who came right to his house to curse him were the polite ones—at worst he’d faced people wielding weapons. He’d seen countless personal messages demanding nude photos of the magical girl and heard requests far worse than that.
It was the period when Han Jae-jung had fallen to become the scum of society, the moment he’d been cut off from it.
Now, he didn’t care for his appearance. He’d unconsciously felt no need to. Any desire to belong to society had disappeared long ago.
The memory was forgotten, but the pain was eternal. Even without the memory, if the pain remained, controlling his behavior was simple enough.
He’d grown his hair shaggy and stopped shaving. Of course, the smells and itching bothered even him, so he managed basic hygiene, but that was all.
It was a self-expression—stated in a very roundabout way—that he was a person cut off from society and intended to stay that way.
An expression whose meaning had taken even him a long time to realize.
Han Jae-jung stroked his beard. He felt the rough, prickly texture.
He didn’t want to become friends with magical girls. Because it was a deception, because he had no memories, and because he hated being the center of attention.
But if that was the case, then when was the moment to become friends supposed to be?
When could he hold his head high and show his face to people from his past?
When would this aversion to attention ever go away?
They were all problems with no answer.
Would he make excuse after excuse, wait until he was perfect, and then scramble toward people only when he was satisfied with himself?
If he kept putting off the chance, repeating rejection and distance, would that bring him any closer to perfection?
Would that day of perfection ever even come?
And even if a day came when he was perfectly prepared, how many people would be left who wanted to approach him? Even if he approached them, could he ever go back?
Han Jae-jung sighed deeply. His head ached.
He didn’t know how he had to change, but he felt the need to change.
He knew the easiest way.
Changing the exterior was far simpler than changing the interior.
For a first step, he would after all follow his counselor’s advice.
Han Jae-jung stopped by the bank.
He put the money Baek A-hee had given him into the donation box and withdrew a very small sum from an account he’d been forgetting about.
It was the account Seol-hwa had been sending money to. Han Jae-jung didn’t consider this his own money. Whatever her guilt, this was money he had no right to receive.
So, this act was theft, a loan—and every one of these bills in his hand was debt.
Debt that he would have to repay someday.
A sin creates a duty to atone, and a debt creates a duty to repay.
No matter how much you run, the day will inevitably come when you must face the duties you’ve shouldered.
Yoon Seol-hwa.
An excuse to continue his connection to her had been created like this.
Han Jae-jung wanted to impose on himself, even in this form, the obligation to meet her again, anticipating the day when he would see her again, hold his head high, and repay the debt.
He left the bank and walked onward.
The destination was, of course, a barbershop.
**
Baek A-hee had arrived early at the counseling office, her steps full of anticipation.
Until now he had always been first while she was late, but this time it was the opposite.
“Ribbon, what hairstyle do you think he’ll have?”
[I wonder... pomade?]
“Put a little more enthusiasm into it! This is the day that homeless-looking Jae-jung comes back changed!”
She waited excitedly for the door to open.
[You’re not doubting for a second that he’ll cut it.]
“Of course not.”
Five minutes before the appointed time, the door opened.
“You have to trust things like this if you ever want to be able to trust everything.”
Looking at the man who walked in, Baek A-hee’s eyes grew wide.