Chapter 123

Episode 123

Lee Jae-heon thought that Ha Seong-yoon had enough talent as a writer. Otherwise, there is no way his past history could have been so unfortunate.

Thanks to this, the setting of Lee Jae-heon was added as ‘a person who was forced to make a sacrifice by someone in the underworld and adapted to it’, as well as ‘a victim who is tormented by monsters even in his dreams’.

I can’t believe these settings are coming in one after another at a time when I had promised myself to act like I was weak and die at the right time. I didn’t know whether to view this as good luck or bad.

“….”

Well, these are settings that will disappear once you return anyway.

I had to relax a little more.

* * *

And Ha Seong-yoon made his decision.

“Mr. Jeong In-ho.”

“Did you call me?”

“I think I need to keep an eye on the manager to make sure he doesn’t commit suicide.”

“….”

“Oh, it doesn’t have to be suicide.”

Maybe that person will die soon.

“I think you’re reaching your limit.”

Ha Seong-yoon, who said that, rolled his eyes and smiled.

On the battlefield, there is something called a thousand-yard stare. This is a phenomenon in which the tense body relaxes and makes a specific facial expression after a battle. It is a slightly different concept from PTSD, and Ha Seong-yoon has seen people with that expression very often.

The eyes that such soldiers reveal are very intense.

Sometimes it is overly shiny and sometimes it is extremely dark, but what they have in common is that they show an eerie obsession, as if they will never let something out of their sight. Even though they aren’t actually seeing anything.

From Ha Seong-yoon’s perspective, it wasn’t actually a very serious symptom. This was a phenomenon that occurred to all soldiers who experienced war.

“…Do you think he’s going to die?”

“….”

Yes.

“I think.”

If you are a ‘soldier’ who has experienced ‘war’.

There was no war here and he was not a soldier. Therefore, Ha Seong-yoon guessed that the person in the past who made Lee Jae-heon like that was a soldier, but he could not be sure.

Jaeheon Lee was not a person who easily revealed his trauma. While a typical patient would show a specific reaction when weighed down by trauma, Jaeheon Lee was busy hiding it, so it was inevitable. It seemed like he didn’t want his value to go down.

Therefore, it was difficult to openly shake off the traces of PTSD from him, but with this level of evidence, it was possible to talk about it to some extent.

“….”

“Have you ever looked into Lee Jae-heon’s eyes? Most of them had extremely dilated pupils. “But I’ve never seen Jaeheon Lee so nervous recently.”

Of course, Ha Seong-yoon was not a psychiatrist, but

“the bottom line is, the person who was holding on for so long gave up.”

There were an awful lot of things I had seen as an unspecified number of ‘doctors’.

Ha Seong-yoon was clearly a doctor by profession, so he loved all of his patients. Therefore, I had to look at each of their reactions, and it became the foundation for Ha Seong-yoon to become a pretty good doctor and person. At least for him in the past.

And the kind of helplessness that Lee Jae-heon is currently showing was never a good thing.

“In cases like this, it usually ends badly.”

There were people who lost their minds while I was fixing their bodies. No matter how well Ha Seong-yoon kept those patients alive, they soon turned into cold corpses with various faces.

However, he is a doctor who has adapted to all these deaths.

“….”

“….”

I will leave my share of decisions to you.

Ha Seong-yoon entered the secret world with a clear intention, but was confident that he would accept death right around the corner even if he could not achieve it.

Unless it was related to a patient, he was surprisingly prone to giving up. And Jeong In-ho was not Ha Seong-yoon’s patient. However, since I cannot urge my patient, the only person I can say this to is Jeong In-ho. Because he will refuse to run away.

Even if it was due to guilt.

“…Why…”

The corner of Jeong In-ho’s lips twitched as he muttered that.

He probably seemed to resent Ha Seong-yoon.

If I could, it seemed like I wanted to grab him by the collar and hit his head with the wrench he always carried. It was a glance that showed, even if only fragmentarily, that Jeong In-ho was also in quite a predicament.

And yet, still. Jeong In-ho did not run away.

“…What do you want me to do?”

Ha Seong-yoon smiled as always.

“Well… I’m not good at guiding.”

“That goes for me too.”

“If you let me pass the front, all these people will die.”

“Can I think of it as a joke?”

“I’m not saying I’m going to kill you, Jeong In-ho.”

I meant it.

Seriously, this whole situation was funny.

“It’s just that I’m going down that path.”

He will not be saved because he was not Lee Jae-heon or Jung In-ho.

Ha Seong-yoon already knew that he was quite crazy.

Even if he died alone in this crazy world, he wouldn’t be very angry or feel unfair. At least Ha Seong-yoon did not have Lee Jae-heon’s spirit of sacrifice or Jeong In-ho’s stubborn survival method.

Well, if I take the lead and light the way.

“…I don’t want to become such a bad person.”

“….”

“Because I’m a doctor.”

Ha Seong-yoon would use these weak people solely for his own benefit without any compunction.

“Isn’t that right?”

“…Only the truly guilty ones are crazy…”

Jeong In-ho’s face maintained a sincere smile, but as if he couldn’t hide it, suppressed swear words flowed out one after another. Ha Seong-yoon thought it was like ventriloquism, but he put on his usual expression so as not to make the other person even more angry.

But I sympathized with his words to some extent.

‘I said there was a high probability of that happening.’

His friend said that most people who are taken to the underworld have mental defects. At the very least, it meant that people who had experienced something more or less than ‘normal’ would come here. Although I couldn’t define what level of normalcy she was talking about.

In any case, it is fair to say that 90% of the people gathered here are crazy. According to the story Ha Seong-yoon heard, that was the case.

“Do you have any plans?”

“I guess that’s all you have to say to me. “I always have to do something.”

“Because you are always obsessed with our safety.”

“….”

“…You showed too much, Jeong In-ho.”

Although Jung In-ho is clearly a smart and realistic person, there were times when he did strangely stupid things. However, Ha Seong-yoon knew that he could do it better in a more calculated manner.

As long as the author isn’t distracted by an unknown trauma.

“Look at reality. “I’ve given you all the information, and the choice is yours.”

“What choice do I have here?”

“Should we leave it as is or take action? Otherwise, it would be a good idea to just worry about it and let several people die.”

Surprisingly, all of this was in his favor.

‘That person probably didn’t bring up the story about the murderer for no reason.’

Suddenly Ha Seong-yoon thought that he and Lee Jae-heon might look a little alike. Of course, he was not a pitiful person like Director Lee Jae-heon who was confused about even obvious common sense.

“It feels like a curse, like it’s telling me to die.”

“You may not believe it, but I am always supporting In-ho Jeong. I think it’s as true as Jung In-ho’s. “It seems like there is no one that Jaeheon Lee can trust and entrust to.”

“…what a bitch….”

“If that person dies, you will be next.”

Ha Seong-yoon thought that there was a genealogy in this world that seemed to be about to die at any moment. Right now, it’s Jung In-ho. Before In-ho Jeong, Jae-heon Lee. Before Jaeheon Lee, there must have been a certain kind of person. At least it seemed clear that something had come down from right above Lee Jae-heon.

As a doctor and a person, he would have let Lee Jae-heon die with the slightest conscience. Lee Jae-heon deserved eternal rest, and Jeong In-ho was also only human. Ha Seong-yoon’s prediction of Lee Jae-heon’s future was truly out of pure kindness and humanity.

Although I don’t know who it is for.

“Move, stupid friend.”

“….”

“Don’t do something you’ll regret because you’re just devoured by an illusion.”

Perhaps Ha Seong-yoon is also going crazy. The kind beliefs he had as a human being and a doctor are gradually fading away, and all that remains is a madman who has no regrets even after giving one of his eyes to a monster. It was disqualifying him as a doctor before he was a human being.

Nevertheless, I drew the softest and kindest smile I could. “

Because

I’m not going to help you.”

* * *

And Lee Jae-heon also expected this trend.

‘It’s weirder to keep your mouth shut.’

It’s true that his judgment is impaired right now, but it was still pretty good before. The data that Jaeheon Lee had observed and analyzed about the group at a time when things were quite good remained.

Doctor Ha Seong-yoon appears kind to the weak, but not to those who know how to move. I thought that if Lee Jae-heon had not suffered such a miraculous injury, he would have also been beaten by Ha Seong-yoon several times. Like the main character who seems to be having a mental breakdown right now.

Actually, it seems like he has another reason for being kind to Lee Jae-heon, but…

‘It’s not important right now.’

Like CEO Yoon Garam, whose awakening is delayed.

Lee Jae-heon is going to die soon anyway, and we have prepared the bare minimum for him. All that needs to be done right now is to draw the attention of the trash that falls on Police Officer Kim Yeon-woo to himself. This will make it easier to procure food for the green algae monsters.

That’s right, there’s no need to think more and blame yourself for how bad your previous plans were. From now on, all that Lee Jae-heon had to do was at least make sure to complete the deal with the green algae monster and pay attention to the probabilities for the protagonist who would remember the time before the return.

No matter how broken a play was, it had to end.

“Chief, how about you take a break for a while?”

“….”

“I know the water source and where the food ingredients are. There are a lot of people and there are no monsters nearby, so there is no need for the manager to move…”

“That’s right.”

“…yes?”

“Let’s do that.”

He blinked his eyes slowly as if he was tired and continued speaking.

“I can’t because I’m sleepy.”

“….”

“Go on your own.”

The protagonist’s eyes seemed to tremble slightly at the obvious change from his previous attitude. Even with my blurred vision, I could see it, and it seemed like I was quite nervous.

A sudden change in a person’s attitude, whether in their past life or in their current life, is considered a bad sign. The difference is that in the past life, you couldn’t die anyway, so you only had to manage your mentality, but in this life, death is also used as a concept of escape. So, there is a saying that when a person changes, he dies.

And it wasn’t improbable either.

‘That little corpse.’

It wasn’t entirely intentional, but as he half intended, Lee Jae-heon looked ugly in front of him, so there was a possibility that he would be tired to the point of death.

However, if he is the ‘Lee Jae-heon’ he thinks of, he would not die alone irresponsibly.

“Rather, should we talk about it tonight?”

“…a story.”

“There are some things I want to tell you.”

As a senior in the secret world, he would try to teach Jeong In-ho everything he could.

So it’s no big deal.

“…so.”

“….”

“How are you?”

I just lost confidence that I would definitely be able to survive…

It was just an emotional ups and downs that aren’t that rare.

(Continued in the next part)