Transformation or Death

Chapter 57

Bonus chapter thanks to Nell’s sub to ‘Dual Rune’ via Buymeacoffee

Memory Recovery (3)

Sniff.

As Joo Ah-yoon sniffled, Han Jae-jung silently handed her a tissue. She muttered with a stuffy nose.

“Damn it…”

Then she blew her nose. 

Her eyes, nose tip, cheeks, ears, and neck – there wasn’t a single spot that wasn’t red. It was hard to tell if this was Pink Deneb or Red Deneb. Her body flushed red from tears and shame looked pitiful.

“Why did you do something so stupid?”

“Then why did you make a scene on the rooftop, brother?”

Having no words to say, he closed his mouth. His throat felt dry for no reason, so he just swallowed his saliva. Han Jae-jung averted his embarrassed gaze and looked around.

This was Pink Deneb’s house. 

After calming down a bit, she invited Han Jae-jung here. 

It was close to a kidnapping.

Before Han Jae-jung could come to his senses, she wrapped him in her Hong-Ik-o and brought him here.

It’s not like she did anything particularly harsh. Han Jae-jung didn’t complain about it.

As a place to hide himself and talk at the same time, it was quite a suitable choice.

The overall interior looked hip. The flamingo neon sign decoration on the table and the rock band and movie posters plastered all over the house. There were modern avant-garde artworks framed.

The famous character dolls on the sofa slightly softened the rough impression.

The house was bigger than where she used to live, and there were more decorative items, but it gave the same impression as the house Han Jae-jung used to know.

“…What happened?”

Joo Ah-yoon asked, hugging a pink doll that looked like a cute deformed bird. It was a clear display of anxiety.

“You said you’d come back, but didn’t contact us for years. Why were you dressed like a homeless person before? Why are you involved with a villain? No, no, why… You said you’d live properly, that you were just going on a trip. Is this the result of that trip?”

A barrage of questions came at him all at once, but he remained silent for all of them. They sounded less like questions she wanted answers to and more like a projection of her frustration.

Han Jae-jung felt like a criminal. In fact, he was in a state not much different from one. In a moral sense, he was clearly a criminal.

“I should have definitely found out something before… I shouldn’t have just left it alone… A suicide counseling center? Why did you go there? Weren’t you the one who always advocated cherishing life? Did your values change over time?”

“No, that was…”

He tried to say he went there to take advantage of the government subsidies but stopped himself. It would have only provoked her needlessly.

“We…”

Pink Deneb’s voice began to mix with tears again.

“Do you know how long we searched for you? Three whole years! A measly three years! Long enough for a kid to graduate from high school!”

Han Jae-jung disappeared without giving them a chance to stop him. He vanished while Pink Deneb and Blue Sirius were hospitalized after being attacked by the villain.  

Leaving behind only a letter and a few gifts.

The first line of the letter is still an impressive memory.

‘What do you think ethical behavior is? Respecting the other person’s will? Or protecting the other person? To me, it’s the former. Let me clarify one thing first.

Don’t look for me (not a distorted melodramatic expression from movies. This is real. If you don’t believe me, three generations of your family will get sick). 

You can criticize my actions, but don’t try to deny them.

I won’t deny it. This is running away.

But sometimes running away can also be a good strategy, friend! 🙂

That’s what my case is this time. I need to stay alive too.

Don’t worry too much. I’ll come back once I’m ready. I’ll contact you too!

Do our pretty ones believe me? ^^ Love you~’

That was just the first paragraph. There were a few more lines that made Yoon Seol-hwa and Joo Ah-yoon’s minds reel. In fact, Yoon Seol-hwa couldn’t even read half of this letter before passing out.

The casual use of “I Love you” at the end stripped it of any weight.

It was a runaway letter laced with sarcasm.  

That’s when Joo Ah-yoon learned what it felt like to have her heart sink.

The pain of lead pieces of anger and sorrow tangling in her heart, dragging her down into the abyss.

“What were you even doing? What were you doing behind our backs…”

Her words trailed off. Recalling the pain made it hard to control her emotions.

“You said you found me? Hey, I told you not to look for me since I’d come back eventually.”

“But you didn’t come back, you jerk!”

Joo Ah-yoon suddenly shouted loudly. A faint yet fierce anger. Han Jae-jung could only keep his mouth shut in the face of her justified rage.

Silence fell in the house that had once been filled with the music of her voice.

Her pink eyes widened as if she was more surprised than the listener. Her lips trembled similarly. 

She frowned sharply as if holding back tears, then buried her face in the doll.

“You didn’t come back… This damned brother of mine…”

The sound of her stuffy nose clashed with her sobs, making her voice sound even more pitiful and miserable.

“…I originally believed you’d come back. Because you said so. But a year passed and you still didn’t show up… Do you know how hard we looked for you? We even used authority that’s not supposed to be used privately. Of course, I used my Hong-Ik-O, but we also checked records of your moving and CCTVs… But then the records just ended abruptly? Like you’d just vanished. We couldn’t find you…”

“…?”

Han Jae-jung felt a sudden sense of puzzlement. No matter how powerful the Organization was, they shouldn’t be able to delete all records of a person’s existence.

It was an impossible feat.

A magical girl used her abilities and even national information to look for someone, but couldn’t find that one person?

Of course, given the times, she may have only been able to access information within the safe city, not external information….

But still, it was odd.

Han Jae-jung tried to recall his memories. The memories he had just regained only showed about half a year after he had run away from home. He had no memories after that. 

It has been a year since they started seriously looking for him.

There was a blank.

Han Jae-jung was convinced that something had happened during that blank period. Had he been kidnapped or something?

‘Or did I do something crazy…?’

There are limits to the places where a person can hide. A human’s range of activity is limited. 

But the moment you go beyond that range, you gain infinite possibilities in terms of being able to go into hiding.

Areas where even magical girls couldn’t find you no matter how hard they tried.

There are places that have been excluded. Regions of exclusion that have gone beyond the boundaries. Lands seized by villains. Uncharted territories that have fallen out of human habitable areas and have not been approached by anyone for more than a decade.

Collectively called the Dark Matter.

A nickname derived from being marked in black on maps.

If he had been there, it would explain why they couldn’t find him. But the probability was low. Unless he was out of his mind, he wouldn’t set foot there, and even if he did, he wouldn’t be able to return alive.

“Not being able to find you at all… After you said you’d come back… You liar… Bad guy…”

On the other hand, Han Jae-jung was anxious because there was information he didn’t want revealed.

‘I hope they didn’t look into my hospital records… Please let it be that way.’

The hardships he had gone through while separated from them would have been a fatal blow to Joo Ah-yoon’s already poor mental health.

Being attacked by a mentally ill person was not something newsworthy to begin with, so he brushed it off.

In a society where people die at the hands of villains every day, it’s not uncommon for someone to be stabbed by a mentally ill person.

It could have killed him, but he didn’t end up dying in the end.

Moreover, after the first attack, he didn’t go to the hospital.

The mentally ill person kept coming back, but only managed to slightly graze him with a weapon, and he ended up beating them up severely and sending them away instead. This was thanks to him being extremely vigilant and on edge after being stabbed by the mentally ill person.

All these attacks happened at night in secluded areas without CCTV cameras. He remembers it clearly because he just saw it again. The unpleasant feeling kept creeping up on him once more.

Even considering all this, it doesn’t prove that he didn’t know.

Han Jae-jung looked at Joo Ah-yoon with a conflicted heart. She was also peeking out from behind the doll, looking at him. When their eyes met, she hid her face in the doll again.

She spoke again.

“…I was scared.”

Her arms hugged the doll tighter.

“That my actions were just troubling you… That I wasn’t respecting you like the letter said… That even if I looked for you, I’d just get yelled at… When you got angry before… It was scary. At first, I endured it thinking that way. But I couldn’t take it anymore. It’s so stupid and I know I’m an idiot, but I still wanted to find you. Annoyingly so.”

What is the path of respect? It was a problem without an answer. It was clear that if she went looking for him again, she would only get hurt. That thought never left her mind. And yet, she still acted on it.

To respect her own heart.

“But… I couldn’t find you. I don’t even know where you are, what you’re doing, or if you’re alive or dead.”

But in the end, everything failed.

She didn’t avoid looking for Han Jae-jung out of respect for him, and she couldn’t find him out of respect for herself either.

“So… I just hoped you were doing well.”

Give what needs to be given. Abandon what needs to be abandoned. Jo Ah-yoon defended herself with this way of thinking. It was one of her many defense mechanisms.

Move on calmly, act like nothing happened, and look ahead to the next thing. Rationalization is a barrier that protects the self. It’s a breakwater that makes you think the harsh reality is nothing to you.

“That you were doing well… That you, being the shameless and positive person you are, were doing well wherever you were… That you went abroad or somewhere and could live happily… That the reason you didn’t come back was because you were living so well that you forgot about us… Like that… Over and over and over…”

She didn’t consider the possibility of not giving up.

Because if she didn’t confirm it, it remained a possibility. There was hope.

Joo Ah-yoon was afraid. She chose to remain in that fear.

Hoping that he was happy wherever he was that she couldn’t see right now.

“But what is this?”

Joo Ah-yoon raised her head. Tears had already started welling up in her eyes again.

“That you received suicide counseling and were raving on the rooftop, or that you were attacked by a villain and hospitalized, or that you were in the hospital looking like a homeless person! And why!”

Bang! Her frail hand slammed the desk. Her other hand was still holding the doll as she stood up from the chair.

“That villain knows you…”

Han Jae-jung squeezed his eyes shut. He wasn’t surprised. He expected this would come.

“Do you know how I found you today? That villain bastard’s reaction led me to the last place you were… What is this? Why did that bastard’s reaction come from you?”

One of Hong Ik-o’s abilities was being able to track the power of the stars.

Since the last place he had transformed was on that rooftop, it was only natural that his trace would be left there.

Han Jae-jung looked at Joo Ah-yoon again. Her gem-like shining eyes were sparkling even more beautifully with the moisture they held.

“It could really… really… be so unfair. But if there’s a place you’ve been lurking, please tell me, brother… Please…”

Han Jae-jung took her hand in his.

“…Ah-yoon. There are two things I need to tell you.”

Her slightly cold body temperature hadn’t changed even after all this time.

“I’m currently suffering from memory loss. I know our relationship, but I can’t recall most of the memories we had together.”

Her cold hand twitched.

“What, what do you mean…”

“And one more thing.”

Before she could fully express her surprise, he opened his lips with a stern demeanor.

“Brother…?”

“Ah-yoon. I don’t hate that you’re suspicious of me. It’s a suspicion you can naturally have. It’s okay. I won’t hate you. Rather, I’m sorry. I must have made you anxious.”

He made up his mind.

A villain’s transformation leaves clear traces. There is no such thing as a perfect transformation.

Therefore, paradoxically, if one is perfectly preserving their human body, it means they are not a villain.  

“Ah-yoon, I’ll be completely naked for just 5 minutes.”

“…?”  

“Check me.”

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Anyways… Happy Reading!!!

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