Kwon Jae-jin spent the night wide awake, unable to catch a wink of sleep.
Seo Ui-woo seemed to suffer from insomnia as well, as Jae-jin could feel his steady gaze from behind throughout the early morning, but Jae-jin deliberately ignored him, pretending not to notice.
Truth be told, Jae-jin didn’t have the spare moment to pay attention to Seo Ui-woo. After spending the night relentlessly pondering, he had finally come to a singular conclusion.
‘I was the foolish one.’
Staggering out of bed, Kwon Jae-jin made his way to the kitchen. He filled a glass with cold water and drank heartily, all the while swallowing hollow laughs inwardly.
‘It wasn’t Seo Ui-woo who was foolish… it was me.’
A grim truth. A frightening reality. An unwanted conclusion.
They all pointed to the same place.
Jae-jin’s goal was survival, but that also meant altering a predetermined future.
Altering the future.
Changing life’s second run so it would differ from the first.
‘If the preset trajectory is so altered that someone meant to die lives, wouldn’t everything else change too?’
There’s something called the butterfly effect.
Just as a butterfly’s tiny wing flap can ultimately cause a typhoon far away, Jae-jin didn’t know what changes his survival might bring about in the future.
Things that happened in the first run might not occur in the second run, and events that didn’t exist in the first run might emerge in the second.
Like dominoes falling out of line.
‘That means, even the romantic feelings that Seo Ui-woo had for me… could disappear.’
The future where he had confessed his feelings to Jae-jin might change.
The obsessive clinging, the yearning, the regrets committed, the realization of wrongs, confronting them, and realizing his own feelings… all that had been set in the future.
‘If it all gets turned upside down…’
Or has it already been turned upside down?
‘I’ve changed it all. Everything.’
This was indeed the outcome that Jae-jin intended from the start.
Not waging war with Seo Ui-woo, swiftly cutting short the unnecessary wasted time by complying with the guiding, he sought his cooperation without struggle, quickly and easily.
However, perhaps that judgment was wrong.
The time Jae-jin had skipped was actually filled with love and hatred built together by both Seo Ui-woo and Kwon Jae-jin.
Over four years, they had felt countless emotions towards each other, swallowed and digested those emotions forcefully in the face of unavoidable, harsh dilemmas, pushing forward.
Seo Ui-woo had experienced desperation and urgency, excessive obsession, pressure, impulses, passion, lust, and then regret, reflection, humility, sorrow, pain, loneliness.
Jae-jin had felt denial, anger, hatred, disgust, frustration, regret, emptiness, compromise, despondency, astonishment, acceptance, pity, compassion, understanding, and the fresh sense of a new beginning and establishment of a new relationship.
Having surpassed all those emotions,
‘How could I have been so presumptuous to think that Seo Ui-woo would regard me exactly as he did before? What was I thinking…?’
Perhaps everything Jae-jin had been doing was paving a path leading away from Seo Ui-woo.
Not running away.
Willingly guiding him, conditions aside.
Calling Seo Ui-woo by an affectionate name.
Trying to feed and put him to sleep.
Even trying to change the direction of his parting…
From start to finish, Kwon Jae-jin treated Seo Ui-woo differently from the first run. Yet, ironically, he wished for Seo Ui-woo to remain unchanged from the first run.
Only now did he realize the absurdity of this contradiction.
The future changed by Jae-jin was one where he himself survived, yet it was also one where his Seo Ui-woo had disappeared.
Because Jae-jin had returned,
Because Jae-jin had tried so hard to survive,
He lost Seo Ui-woo.
‘…So what now?’
‘What do I do…?’
‘Do I just give up my regrets like Seo Ui-woo said, cleanly forgetting them…?’
Not as lovers, but as an Esper and a Guide, just like that… plainly…?
‘…’
Long lost in deep contemplation, Jae-jin’s eyes suddenly hardened. His black pupils dilated fiercely, trembling hands betraying disbelief as he pressed his forehead into his palms.
After pretending to wash his face, Jae-jin grabbed the glass of water and threw it almost in a fit of rage as far as he could. It seemed to shatter noisily against the carpeted floor, but just before it hit the ground, it froze in mid-air.
It hung there, none of the water spilled.
…It must have been caught by Seo Ui-woo.
Without looking, Jae-jin heard the familiar soft voice.
“Why are you like this, Jae-jin? Are you angry?”
Seo Ui-woo, having loaded bullets into a cartridge, walked over leisurely.
The transparent glass obediently flew to him and stopped. Seo Ui-woo took a sip from the cold water within the glass and slightly tilted his head.
✧˚·̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥·̩̩̥͙✧·̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥˚·̩̩̥͙✧ 𝑔𝓇𝒶𝓋𝒾𝓉𝓎𝓃𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁𝓈 ✧˚·̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥·̩̩̥͙✧·̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥˚·̩̩̥͙✧
