So That Was It
The wall of unimaginable intensity instantly wrapped around my mind, blocking every external stimulus. The pressure was so crushing that I lost consciousness and pitched face-first into the snow.
“This is the end.”
As the video ended, the Advisory Chairman spoke. “We still don’t know what Han Tae-woo and Seo Ji-ah encountered inside that unidentified cloud. We don’t know the cloud’s composition, either, but it corroded the body cam itself.”
The Chairman’s voice had grown heavy, almost mournful. “We sent other teams, but they found no traces at all. We still don’t know what that toxic gas was—the one that neutralized your entire team. We performed autopsies on Han Tae-woo and Seo Ji-ah. The results were identical. Among every known toxic substance on record, we couldn’t find anything even remotely similar.”
He looked at me then, eyes carrying a trace of expectation. “Does anything new come to mind after watching the footage?”
I couldn’t answer. The Mental Barrier was vibrating violently, struggling to contain the shock that had slammed into me the moment the video finished.
So that… was the true ending of the dream I kept having.
The bizarrely colored cloud we encountered in mid-air. The sky and earth that flipped over dozens of times. The meteor falling slowly, and me screaming as I watched it. Every single scene had actually happened to me.
And the quest that appeared the first time I met Han Min-ha…
Make Han Min-ha an S-class hero.
It was exactly what Seo Ji-ah had demanded of me when she asked for my oath—the vow they made right before they died. The instant I saw Han Min-ha, who looked identical to her mother, those words had surfaced like a system window.
Then… if that was true… what was I?
Until now I had believed I was a possessor who had fallen into a ruined academy novel. I had no memories prior to the academy, and I seemed to know fragments of the future. But no… that wasn’t it.
Looking back, I had never truly foreseen the future. At most I had guessed that Yoo Hee-won would enroll and that she might choose me as her advisor. Come to think of it, I hadn’t even known her name properly before the entrance ceremony. I had simply assumed there was an arrogant rich-girl protagonist, and only after Jin Se-yeong mentioned her that morning did I decide she must be the one.
As for her choosing me—rather than already knowing it would happen, it was more accurate to say my arbitrary prediction happened to be correct by coincidence.
But the most decisive evidence was this: the web novel Han Tae-woo had been writing matched the plot of the ruined academy story I thought I had possessed, beat for beat.
Then perhaps the psychosomatic lung disease I had been suffering from wasn’t a setting from some remake novel, but the real consequence of breathing in that toxic gas…?
Wait. If my lungs had truly been damaged by the gas, why had every test come back clean? And why had the coughing stopped like a miracle the moment I met Han Min-ha?
If everything was real, there was no medical reason for the symptoms to vanish. It was impossible.
How was I supposed to explain any of this?
“Suhyeon. Nothing else occurs to you?” the Advisory Chairman asked again.
I raised my head and met his eyes. “No… I’m sorry, but nothing beyond what was in the video. However… Chairman.”
I paused, organizing my thoughts. He waited in silence.
“After that incident… what exactly did I do? I have no memory of it at all.”
“You were hospitalized for a considerable time in a facility run by the Management Bureau. No—since you say you remember nothing, anything I tell you will only breed more suspicion. Give me a moment.”
The Advisory Chairman moved the mouse and opened another folder. Several more videos were stored inside. The only difference was that the thumbnails read ‘CONFIDENTIAL’ instead of ‘TOP SECRET’.
“Strictly speaking, academy professors have no security clearance, so viewing these is illegal. The previous footage was the same. You understand what I’m saying?”
“I understand perfectly.”
“Good.”
He started the video. On the laptop screen appeared a version of me lying in a hospital bed, left shoulder wrapped in thick bandages.
“How is the pain at the surgical site?”
One of the doctors standing beside the bed asked. I slowly turned my gaze toward him.
“Who are you? And where is this place?”
“This is a hospital operated by the Management Bureau. You suffered a severe fracture of the left scapula in a fall and underwent surgery. You’ve only just regained consciousness.”
“Fall surgery…? Hmm…”
The moment I opened my eyes I was in a hospital bed. Doctors crowded around me saying I had been badly injured, had undergone surgery, and had only just woken up. The who, what, when, where, why, and how had all been omitted.
It should have been extremely disorienting, yet I felt almost no emotional disturbance. The powerful Mental Barrier was protecting my mind with absolute solidity. Instead of panic or fear, I calmly raised a hand and touched my left shoulder. The bandage felt slightly damp. An IV line was visible on the back of the hand touching it.
So they really had operated. It felt strangely stiff, though.
“How does it feel?”
“A little stiff.”
“It’s an artificial joint, so that’s normal at first. Think of it as a brand-new product straight out of the packaging. You’ll grow accustomed to it. Let’s disinfect the area and take a look.”
At the doctor’s instruction the nurses unwound the bandage. Once it was fully removed, the sutured wound covered in dried red antiseptic was revealed. While the nurses cleaned the site, the doctor examined it closely.
“No inflammation. Very good. Don’t worry about scarring. Once it heals and we remove the sutures it will disappear completely.”
“Yes… cough…!”
When I coughed, one of the other doctors behind him frowned.
“You’re coughing?”
“Yes. Cough, cough…!”
“Hmm… that’s strange…”
The doctor turned to his colleague and whispered, “The lung CT didn’t show anything like this, did it?”
“Right? Why the coughing? Did we miss something?”
“I don’t know… It was a CT, not an X-ray, so surely not…”
After their quick exchange, the first doctor turned back to me. “Since you’ve only just woken up, we’ll run the tests again. There were no abnormalities when you first arrived, but something may have developed since then.”
“Understood. Cough…! By the way…”
I looked at the cluster of doctors. “How exactly did I end up here?”
“Ah, that…” The doctors exchanged awkward glances before one of them answered for the group. “I’m sorry, but we don’t know either. ‘They’ gave us no information at all.”
“‘They’… cough?”
“Yes. To be honest, it’s difficult for us to speak about this.”
At that moment the hospital room door opened and a middle-aged man in a suit entered.
“I heard he regained consciousness.”
The doctors stepped aside at once. “He woke only moments ago. We had just finished disinfecting the surgical site.”
The man stared at me for a long moment before speaking. “Thank you for your work. You may all leave. I need to speak with him alone.”
The doctors, clearly relieved to escape my questions, ushered the nurses out immediately. Once I was alone with the stranger, I stroked the fresh bandage and looked at him directly.
“What is your name?”
“Kyo Suhyeon. And you… cough… who are you?”
The man approached and sat in the chair beside the bed. “How much do you remember?”
“I don’t understand the question. Remember what, exactly?”
“Han Tae-woo. Seo Ji-ah. What happened that day?”
“Who are they? More importantly, cough, who are you to be asking me these things?”
“Hmm…”
The man fell silent, then tried another question. “Who are you? Why are you here?”
“I already gave you my name. As for why I’m here, I have no idea. More urgently… cough… I have a professor interview at the academy… cough… at this rate how can I possibly…”
“Academy interview?”
“There’s a faculty appointment interview at Graford Academy… cough, cough… ugh…”
“Yes… professor… that’s right…”
The man muttered to himself and fell silent again. I wanted to ask him more, but the violent coughing fit left me helpless. Any harder and the surgical site might tear open.
Yet apart from my body, my mind remained crystal clear and coldly rational. The Mental Barrier truly was remarkable. It had been wise to master defensive techniques.
“We ran multiple detailed scans of your lungs but found no significant abnormalities.”
When the video ended, the Advisory Chairman spoke again. “After analyzing the body-cam footage in detail, we concluded you never entered the toxic gas’s direct lethal zone. You were able to escape quickly because you fell, so your lungs remained undamaged.”
“Then what was causing me to cough all this time?”
“Guilt.”
“Pardon?”
The Advisory Chairman leaned back against the sofa and regarded me. “It was guilt over your teammates dying because of your mistake. A kind of self-justification. Your body was physically manifesting the claim that you couldn’t help it because you had inhaled the gas.”
So I had hypnotized myself into believing I had a nonexistent lung disease out of guilt. In that case, the reason the coughing stopped after I met Han Min-ha was—
“You finally gained the chance to keep the oath you made to the teammates you failed to protect. Isn’t that it, Suhyeon?”
Because a path had opened to erase that guilt.
I said nothing and simply stared down at the green tea on the table.
“The absence of past memories is the same. The Mental Barrier activated to shield you from the shock and resulting mental damage, sealing away every memory connected to Tae-woo and Ji-ah.”
That was why the Mental Barrier had trembled the first time I heard Han Min-ha’s parents’ names. That was why I had dreamed of those events during sleep, when the barrier weakened. And when I first saw their faces in the archives, the crack in the barrier had let the memories flood out in front of my eyes.
In other words, the Mental Barrier was a dam holding back the floodwaters of my teammates’ deaths. Every time the dam developed a crack, a little water leaked through. The me on the outside of the dam had no idea what lay on the other side; I had simply stared at the trickling water and wondered what on earth it was.
Everything—every action—had been a defense mechanism against the guilt of failing to protect my team and the mental shock that came with it.
The imaginary lung disease I had given myself by convincing my body I “couldn’t help it.” The Mental Barrier that had completely blocked all memories of Han Min-ha’s parents to prevent a mental collapse. And the delusion of “possession” I had created to fill the gaping hole in my severed memories.
Even the plot of Han Tae-woo’s web novel, buried in my subconscious, had been used as material for that delusion. The quest to raise Han Min-ha—not the original heroine Yoo Hee-won—to S-class. The lung disease that didn’t exist in the original story. The organization called Secreto that I had never heard of.
I had complained that possessing a remake meant I couldn’t use knowledge from the completed original. But that wasn’t the truth. I had never possessed anything. I had simply believed I had.
“Did you never wonder how a mere C-class hero became a professor at Graford Academy, which only accepts instructors of B-class or higher?” The Advisory Chairman continued while I remained silent. “It’s because I placed you there, Suhyeon. I couldn’t simply abandon a subordinate who had lost his entire team and fallen into despair.”
He went on. “It was also because of my recommendation that Han Min-ha, the daughter of your former teammates, was able to enter the academy.”
I nodded slowly.
“And the reason Hee-won chose you as her advisor… I believed that the Kyo Suhyeon I knew would be someone I could entrust my daughter to.”
Yes. Everything fit together now.
I see.
So that was what it was.