Echoes of the Past
When you sit quietly and focus on listening, you realize a hospital is filled with far more sounds than you might expect. The chatter of people outside the rooms, the bubbling hum of a humidifier. Not every ward is the same, but occasionally the heart-rate monitors in the ICU produce their steady, repetitive beeps, and if visitors are present, the soft scrape of someone peeling fruit drifts through the air. This was the soundscape of a hospital.
Scratch. Scratch.
Seo Seyeong, who had been quietly focused on the apple, lifted her head and looked at her father. His arms and legs were covered here and there with casts, yet his face wore a bright, cheerful expression that suggested he felt no pain at all. It was an act of consideration.
Ever since the accident, his daughter had worn such a gloomy face that he was exaggerating his words and actions, even a little, just to cheer her up. If she had truly been the twenty-year-old Seo Seyeong, she might not have noticed her parents' thoughtfulness. But now, with years of experience in the world behind her, she could feel once again just how deep their love truly was.
At her mother's playful joke, a burst of laughter escaped Seo Seyeong's lips. For the first time in a long while, the three of them shared a warm, harmonious conversation, exchanging stories of the past. The time they all went to the amusement park together when she was little, or the silly Christmas when her father had dressed up as Santa. Watching her two parents laugh and reenact those old moments filled her with an emotion so overwhelming she could barely hold it back.
Yes... this was what our family was like.
If the accident had never happened, they would surely have continued living these happy days. But it was already in the past. As she quietly arranged the fruit between her joking mother and father, a sudden wave of melancholy washed over her. She rose from her seat.
At her father's voice, Seo Seyeong forced a light smile even as she fought back tears. Illusion. The past. Regret. She didn't know which word could properly describe this moment, but staying here any longer felt like she would be devoured by her own emotions. She had no choice but to stand.
Her mother gently placed a hand on her father's shoulder, cutting him off.
Her mother's kind smile saw her off. As Seo Seyeong carefully stepped out of the hospital room, she could hear her mother inside scolding her father for not reading the room, but she pretended not to notice.
...It's too identical.
She knew full well that this was an illusion created by the Tower. Even so, when the two people she had cherished most in the world were right in front of her, talking and laughing, she simply didn't possess the coldness required to deny it.
Let's just walk for now...
She forced her heavy feet to move. Hospital staff who recognized her greeted her warmly. They seemed like people absent from her memories, yet she wondered if she might have seen them once or twice before, which was why they appeared in this illusion.
Whoooosh...
Stepping outside the hospital, a cool autumn breeze greeted her. The wind had blown like this back then too. After her parents' fatal car accident, right after the funeral. At the time, the indifferent wind had felt utterly hollow, and she had felt irritated by the people leaving the hospital, smiling and commenting on how the weather had finally cooled down.
But now...
This... is dangerous...
The denial she had clung to back then was completely gone. Instead, she found herself feeling an immense, involuntary joy at the current situation. A greedy desire to stay here forever, coupled with an excessive sense of satisfaction that made it feel as though all other desires had vanished.
Slap! Slap!
She struck her own cheeks hard enough to make a sound, then walked toward the crosswalk visible ahead. There was a small convenience store near the hospital. It belonged to a fairly well-known brand, though it was smaller than most of their other locations. Still, to her, it held deep meaning.
After her parents' funeral, she had stopped by this very store to buy a single apple, intending to follow them. It was here that she had found the courage to keep living.
I wonder if that person... is still here?
The part-timer who had seemed around her age. The male student with messy hair and eyes that looked like they had seen the whole world had casually tossed her a few words when she was on the verge of giving up. She couldn't quite remember exactly what he had said. But those words had become a powerful driving force for her to continue living, and even in this moment, Seo Seyeong wanted to receive that help from him once more.
Ding-dong.
The convenience store bell chimed softly, announcing Seo Seyeong's entrance. ...He's here?
A single young man stood alone in the narrow space. Seo Seyeong, who had walked in with a faint hope, felt a rush of warmth the moment she saw him. But that feeling lasted only a moment.
A familiar face. The part-timer's face, which she hadn't recognized back then, looked exactly—almost eerily—like Kim Siin.
I suspected as much, but you really don't recognize me.
Han Gamin, who had run into Park Jocheol at the bank, had greeted the high-school-aged version of him with genuine delight. But this was a timeline from the past. Park Jocheol wouldn't meet her for another eight years or so; there was no way he could recognize the elementary-school version of Han Gamin.
"Still, this is a bit strange..."
Just in case, she decided to tail him. If this world was made solely from her memories and her timeline, she shouldn't be able to see what Park Jocheol was doing. Yet after leaving the bank, he walked straight into a shabby loan-shark office with a faded sign that read "Happy Cash."
"So this world isn't created only from my memories?"
Han Gamin had no recollection of Park Jocheol taking out a bank loan or borrowing from loan sharks. She decided to pay closer attention to her surroundings from now on.
But that was when a problem arose.
...I'm hungry.
Perhaps because of the "returned to the past" setting, the superhuman strength she had built up since the tutorial wasn't working. The only thing she could see was a system alert listing her mission. With neither her status window nor the coin shop accessible, problems with the basics of survival—food, clothing, and shelter—naturally followed.
I need to eat something...
What had the old her done in the past? As an elementary student from a poor family, Han Gamin had naturally relied on eating massive portions of free school lunch to get through breakfast and dinner. The lunch program was provided through welfare support, after all. If there were items like yogurt that could be saved for later, she would secretly take two or three extra lunches to stock up. In her own way, she had managed not to starve.
But the problem was...
"Why does it have to be summer vacation of all times!"
Naturally, elementary students didn't go to school during vacation. Without access to school lunches, summer break had been like crossing a barren ridge for the young Han Gamin, who had barely survived day to day on those meals.
What did I do during vacation back then?
She tried to recall her hazy memories of the past. She didn't remember being this hungry during breaks. When she was in the lower grades, her mother had still been alive, so she never went without food. But after that...
"Ah!"
Han Gamin had once thought of herself as a good, honest child who could live without breaking the law. But after going two full days without eating, hunger had ruthlessly dismantled that sense of morality in her mind and tossed it aside. The result was the thought of stealing food.
I'll pay you back ten times over when I grow up.
It was an absurd idea in hindsight. But since she still couldn't open the coin shop, there was no other way to obtain food. And since this wasn't even reality, stealing a little wouldn't change anything.
Still, I can't help feeling guilty.
She headed toward a small convenience store visible nearby. But the moment she stood in front of it, a memory surfaced.
"Wait... this place...?"
It was the place where she had received grace. Only now did Han Gamin remember why she hadn't starved during her elementary school summer vacation.
Working part-time at a convenience store was one of the most common jobs for Korean college students. I had chosen the simplest option—a store I saw everywhere on the street—and for some reason, I started working the very next day after my interview.
Generally, unless a customer came in frequently, I didn't remember every person who stopped by to buy something. I dealt with far too many people, and I never had deep conversations with any of them anyway.
But every once in a while, a particularly memorable customer would leave a strong impression. And the two people currently standing in front of me were exactly the ones who had remained in my memory. Their faces had been blurry, but seeing them again, there was no way I could fail to recognize them.
Her beautiful appearance seemed to declare that even exhaustion could be charming. The woman staring at me with eyes that looked half-dead was unmistakably Seo Seyeong, no matter how you looked at it.
I almost called her by name but stopped when I saw her eyes, instead simply pointing to where the apples were displayed. To uncover trauma, it seemed best not to drastically alter the past. Besides, she was nothing more than a remnant within my memory—not the real Seo Seyeong.
She gave a small nod at my answer and moved away. But my eyes clearly caught the elementary-school-aged girl who had followed her in.
"Hmm-hmm~"
The little girl, who still carried the unmistakable air of youth, was carefully scanning her surroundings while grabbing bread. Her suspicious footsteps and humming seemed to declare to anyone watching, I'm about to steal some bread right now. Seo Seyeong noticed it too. She quietly approached me with those same half-dead eyes and spoke.
At her words, I glanced at Han Gamin. Her pupils were trembling. She must have been incredibly nervous; it looked like a major earthquake was happening in both her eyes. Her face was flushed bright red, yet cold sweat rolled down her forehead. She had always been short, but as a shrunken elementary student she looked even smaller. Feeling a pang of guilt, I let out a sigh, opened the counter, and walked over to the trembling little girl.
Seo Seyeong quietly watched Kim Siin's actions. It was a memory from the past—an event that had strangely given her strength at the time.
His voice was sharp enough to cut. Kim Siin spoke those words to the elementary-school girl—Han Gamin—then disappeared somewhere for a moment.
Is he going to report a child like this...?
That was what Seo Seyeong had thought back then. That the world was harsher than it seemed. And that this man, who looked like he had his own story, was no exception.
But her prediction was completely wrong. She realized it the moment he returned.
The man held out a carton of milk to the little elementary-school girl.
He handed the hungry child both bread and milk.
No...
Tears welled up in the child's eyes as she accepted the food. In the moment she thought she had lost everything, a hand had reached out to save her. What the man gave her in that instant wasn't just bread and milk.
What had been passed through his hand was a clear conscience and a small spark of hope. The past Seo Seyeong, watching the child receive the food, realized that her world had not yet come to an end.