Bonus chapter thanks to Nell’s sub to ‘Dual Rune’ via Buymeacoffee
Chapter 56 –
Memory Recovery (2)
Life is a continuous learning process.
Starting from very small learnings like how to eat, how to use the restroom, how to speak words, we acquire higher manners, postures, and dignity.
No one is born knowing anything.
By accumulating learning and broadening one’s knowledge, and through words and actions stemming from that knowledge, one becomes wiser.
Learning requires experience, experience requires incidents, and incidents require actions.
This is why the word childish contains the meaning of being ‘naive’ or ‘ignorant’ for children.
They have little experience with actions, few incidents they’ve gone through, lack experience, and have short learning periods.
With little learning, they don’t know how to act or what to say properly.
Han Jae-jung was one such child. Still unable to live even half of a lifetime, just a young child.
An orphan, yet a spirited child.
Han Jae-jung was placed in an environment very conducive to having the illusion of being mature.
Without parents, without adults to emulate, he had to stand on his own.
His self-reliance was stronger compared to his peers.
To be precise, it would be apt to say self-reliance was all he had.
There was no one to depend on, no parents to be separated from.
That self-reliance gave him an extraordinary appearance compared to peers, and that extraordinarily led his friends to rely on him.
However, this gifted him not learning, but a mistaken realization.
I have to take responsibility.
The self-reliance he gained with little learning soon led to a sense of responsibility.
Someone unable to take responsibility for himself began to have a sense of responsibility toward others.
That responsibility soon turned into anxiety, and that anxiety into recklessness.
That recklessness led him to arrive at an easy conclusion to settle the incident.
But it prevented him from foreseeing the aftermath of the incident.
It was the result of excluding himself from those he should protect.
The result of a mature child mistaking himself for an adult.
Feeling a burden beyond his physical and mental limits, while not actually an adult, he took on responsibility like one.
And he ended up crossing a river of no return.
It was a careless judgment.
A mental state that could only be careless.
He was still a child.
A child who had experienced a relationship scandal and mental abuse from unspecified masses.
Arrogant, reckless, and anxious.
He thought as long as he could put out the immediate fire, it would be okay.
How foolish.
He didn’t know how great human malice could be.
Didn’t know how fragile his own mind was.
Didn’t know how overwhelming the storms of reality would be.
Now he is paying the clear price for that foolishness.
The ragged breathing was proof that the past suffering he had only known through knowledge had become experience. And it was also proof that he was actively gaining learning.
“Oh, brother! Ca, calm down… Bag, bag. Where’s the bag?”
While the flow of time is fair to all, it does not bring the same healing to everyone.
Oblivion is a blessing. The passage of time makes one forget the accumulated pain, like the wind shifting sand, slowly. But the force of that wind differs for each person. For some it blows fiercely, for others it’s faint. Or sometimes, no matter how fiercely the wind blows, things won’t budge.
Han Jae-jung’s case was special, the sand that had blown away came back with a headwind.
Clearly, experiences from the past that he had forgotten were being forcibly dredged up to torment him.
It was one of the memories he had wanted, but not one he could welcome gladly.
“Brother! Look at me! Quickly!”
Pink Deneb grabbed Han Jae-jung’s cheeks and made him look at her. Her gem-like eyes reflected him vividly. His eyes too gazed at her clearly.
His gaze looking at the past slowly returned to the present.
“Can you hear me?! Ah! No, don’t nod. Breathe in for 7 seconds, 7 seconds! Got it? I’ll count now. 1, 2…”
Her fingers uncurled one by one from her clenched fist. Following her movement, he breathed in. The diaphragm that had been thrashing wildly expanded. A much calmer motion than before.
Once all five fingers were spread, she folded two fingers back in.
“Now exhale. This time slowly too, for 11 seconds. Got it? 1, 2…”
Her hand formed a fist again. He slowly exhaled the breath he had inhaled, following Pink Deneb’s voice and fingers. His chest, fully puffed up, gradually returned to its original shape.
“…11. Now breathe in again. 7 seconds. Just like before. You got it?”
He repeated this several times. The 7-11 breathing technique, one way to deal with hyperventilation.
His shoulders, which had been violently rising and falling like boiling water, returned to their normal state through the repetition of this breathing.
“Huhk…hukhk…”
But there were aftereffects. Like someone who had finished a marathon, he was drenched in sweat, and his arms and legs trembled like willows, unable to stand properly.
It was the result of a nightmarish memory striking him like a lightning bolt in an instant.
Han Jae-jung couldn’t even distinguish whether it was sweat or tears running down his face. He felt dizzy. He was going insane.
‘The completion of a world where no one gets hurt’, such nonsense would be common behavior for a teenager going through puberty. But the price was too heavy compared to the lightness of that choice.
‘Damn it… That’s why I committed suicide and went missing all this time.’
He realized very well why Han Jae-jung had decided to commit suicide. He could empathize deeply. No, empathizing was not enough. He actually experienced it.
In addition, he came to better understand Han Jae-jung’s thoughts, feelings, and guilt towards the other two people.
It was complicated. Originally, emotions directed at others are not simple, but in his case, it was even more so.
A loving affection that could be seen as both romantic and paternal, a sense of camaraderie, admiration, feelings of inferiority and defeat, friendship, a kind of superiority and elation from being intoxicated by his own gentle self caring for others, boredom, a sense of responsibility, apology, guilt.
All sorts of emotions swirled and struck him.
Memories contain not only scenes but also feelings. Han Jae-jung, by gaining the memory of making and carrying out the decision to leave the girl in front of him, also became aware of the various feelings he had at that time.
‘You were tired.’
Han Jae-jung was tired of being next to those shining, magical girl-like existences. Boredom.
He wasn’t tired of the people themselves, but rather the various views and attention he received by being next to them.
The dating rumor was merely an opportunity to leave. He was confident that even without it, he would have eventually gone missing one day.
This was his nature. If there was a slight emotional disturbance, he would immediately act on it.
It was behavior made possible by not having parents to stop him. In that sense, it could be said to be a nature created by his acquired environment.
In fact, he often ran away from home. He only attended school on mandatory attendance days, frequently playing truant and wandering elsewhere.
He would have freely traveled like that, and one day when the boredom disappeared, he would have returned.
They knew this personality, which is why they didn’t look for him for a while.
But he didn’t return.
“Brother… Are you okay?”
Pink Deneb asked worriedly. The hand holding her cheek became a breakwater blocking the cold wind. At the same time, it acted as a medium for emotion. Her hand was trembling no less than his.
“…Yeah, I’m okay.”
Guessing her surprise, Han Jae-jung tried to reassure her with a smile. It was actually effective. A slight sense of relief formed on Pink Deneb’s face. She sat cross-legged like Han Jae-jung.
“But, why were you here…?”
It was a legitimate question. It was also a difficult question. Han Jae-jung slightly distorted his smile as he racked his brain for an excuse. He didn’t need to arouse suspicion of being a weirdo again after barely dispelling it.
“That’s…”
The excuse he muttered couldn’t continue. The back half blurred into a hazy mist. Han Jae-jung wondered if he was seeing things wrong. There were tears forming in Pink Deneb’s eyes.
“Don’t die…”
“…?”
The response that came back was too sudden. Looking at it now, the previous question wasn’t asked with the intent of asking. It was a question she had already determined the answer to within herself.
Pink Deneb hugged his neck. In terms of reuniting, it wasn’t too sudden of an action, but the emotion was quite bewildering. With eyes wide from the heavy emotional current, Han Jae-jung waved his hands aimlessly, unsure of where to put them.
“Don’t die, brother… Hic, sob, don’t die…”
As she rested her face on his shoulder, wetness seeped through. It wasn’t because of the dried sweat from earlier. Pink Deneb was crying. It’s one thing for tears to come from surprise at seeing the painful appearance of a close acquaintance, but it didn’t quite fit the current situation.
This was a wish that went beyond concern.
It was a gesture to protect life beyond a simple prayer for health and longevity.
‘I almost died by Seol-hwa earlier. If you’re going to ask, wouldn’t it be better to ask her to let me live instead of me?’
It wasn’t the right person or situation to make such a joke.
“Don’t die… Don’t die… I’ll be good… I’m sorry… Sorry I couldn’t recognize you… Sorry I called you an old man… From now on, I won’t swear and I’ll live well, so…”
What should he do about this? He couldn’t find an answer. The excuse he had carefully thought out was bleached white and washed away by her tears. Despite her age not matching her outward appearance, Han Jae-jung forgot what to say at her desperate and childlike wailing.
“You can’t commit suicide… Don’t die…”
After reviving the memory, what came back to him was a memory. Vaguely, but Han Jae-jung remembered what she looked like crying as a child. Compared to then, her makeup had become stronger, her posture more confident, and her words and actions more decisive, but seeing her crying now, that childlike appearance hadn’t completely disappeared yet.
“You can’t die…”
Han Jae-jung even forgot the pain he had felt earlier due to her overly adamant wish.
“Why would I die! Ah-yoon, who am I! Huh? I won’t die. It’s okay. I won’t die.”
Although he couldn’t fully follow the situation, Han Jae-jung decided to calm her down for now.
He brought the hands that had been waving aimlessly in the air around to her back, embracing that small back. Like soothing a child, he stroked her head. His hands, which had been trembling like willows, had stopped shaking.
Tracing his vague childhood memories like mist, he calmed her down.
“I won’t die. Calm down, Ah-yoon. Everything will be okay. Everything.”
He repeated it several times. Slowly, like the breathing technique earlier.
After shouting I won’t die seven times and It’s okay eleven times,
The back that had been trembling desperately began to slowly calm down.
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Oh we love raising death flags around here don’t we