Chapter 578 – Memory Journey (2)
—
User: Han Kain (Wisdom)
Date: Day 114
Current Location: Searching…
Sage’s Advice: 3
—
– Han Kain
I’m on a memory trip to bond with my comrades and check my past at the same time.
The first stop is my elementary school, as I can’t recall anything before that.
Naturally, with all the loops I’ve gone through, my former school is nowhere to be found.
In its place, a rather shiny building stands, looking entirely normal from the outside.
…That is until I slipped inside and checked the status window.
“Great, the location is weird again.”
“Oppa, doesn’t it seem to change just as you step inside?”
“Go in further?!”
“Are you curious about what’s inside?”
As we lingered at the entrance, a security guard approached us.
He looked a bit shocked when he spotted Miro and Songi, but quickly snapped back to reality.
“Hey, don’t cause a ruckus! This isn’t a playground.”
Two comrades turned to me, asking what to do next.
Advice: 3 -> 2
‘Is there even a need to go in?’
“You don’t need to involve yourself in every matter of the world.”
A response came back similar to my own thoughts.
In the past, would I have listened to Miro and gone deeper, clattering around in search of the secret of this building turned alternate dimension? Probably.
“I’m sorry. We’ll be going now.”
I have no interest in such antics anymore.
As the owl said, I don’t need to solve every problem.
Plus, it seems I have no memories worth recalling here anyway.
“Miro, report this to the Management Bureau.”
“Okay.”
That’ll do for now.
“Don’t you think stepping inside would jog your memory, Oppa?”
“Not happening. I barely have any elementary school memories, and the school doesn’t exist anymore. Let’s move on to the next place.”
“Don’t you think it’s intriguing?”
“What is?”
“That the internal space of the building is twisted, like a calamity?”
“Right.”
“Is it common for a calamity to happen that much? Like, do you get these every time you wander around town?”
Had calamities really become that common?
The answer to this question came from Ahri multiple times before.
To the Management Bureau that encompasses the entire Earth, it might seem ordinary, but for the 8 billion individuals, a calamity is a once-in-a-lifetime experience at best.
So…
“Maybe the frequency is a bad omen.”
“Whoa! That was so prophetic!”
*
Interestingly enough, my middle school was exactly where I remembered.
“Isn’t it because there are only a few obvious places to build schools in Seoul?”
That makes sense.
“Can we go in?”
“Many schools these days refuse entry for outsiders—”
“Gahin! I got permission!”
As I stared blankly ahead, the security guard was vigorously waving for us to come in.
With glazed eyes and a fuzzy expression, it was obvious he was under some sort of spell.
“…”
“…”
Miro spoke up.
“Miro, you…”
“I wanted to go in, didn’t I?”
Seeing her grin made it hard to chastise her.
To be fair, I’ve pulled similar stunts at Sunrise, so who am I kidding?
“Let’s just take a quick look.”
We wandered around the gym and sneaked into the school’s interior.
During that process, I realized that while the location was the same, the name and internal structure of the school had completely changed.
It was practically a different school altogether.
At that moment, a young woman approached us from a distance.
“Hey, kids! You’re not students here, right? You can’t come in!”
A teacher?
At that, Songi took charge.
“How can there be guards and—”
“Ma’am, I graduated from Saebyeol Middle School two years ago!”
“Oh? Is that so?”
Even if the school banned outsiders, it’s hard to be tough on an actual graduate.
“But what about the others—”
“She’s a friend and this oppa is…”
“Oh my! Is he your boyfriend?”
In that instant, all three of us fell into silence, eyeing one another.
I mean, I wouldn’t blame myself for thinking of Songi as my fiancée back in Room 206, but…
Miro’s face just froze.
“Of course.”
The teacher let us in this time but warned us it wasn’t going to happen again next time.
As she walked away, the two began to bicker.
“Such a strange story.”
“What’s weird?”
“What do you mean ‘boyfriend’? I should’ve just sent him back!”
“Are you going to make your voice heard again? Are you an idiot? Didn’t Ahri tell you not to misuse your powers?”
“…”
It was hard to tell if Miro was answering or just stammering.
Seeing this, Songi chuckled and ruffled Miro’s hair.
“Fool! By the way, did anything come to mind for you? You’ve been awfully quiet since earlier.”
“…”
This middle school is not the school I graduated from.
So I wasn’t expecting much…
But for the first time, I felt an odd sense of discomfort.
What’s that? I feel like I’m close to remembering something, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.
Advice: 2 -> 1
‘A simple hint! We’ve found the place, now just offer a little feedback.’
“Were you the only one who went to that school?”
“Were only you attending school?”
“Oppa?”
“…”
I remembered.
“I had a younger sibling.”
“What?”
“I had a younger sister.”
“I know. What was her name? Han Heekang?”
“She was three years younger than me.”
“I’ve heard about her before.”
“When I was in 9th grade, she was just starting 6th grade.”
“…”
Songi fell silent.
Soon enough, Miro noticed something strange too.
“This is odd, isn’t it? If there’s a three-year gap, then when Gahin was in 9th grade, wouldn’t his sister still be an elementary schooler?”
A puzzle of memories that doesn’t quite fit.
Am I just misremembering my past?
Spending so much time in the hotel might’ve made my memories blurry, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility.
Then, Songi spoke up.
“Oppa, the next stop is high school, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I got some thoughts from what you said. Let’s change venues. Where was it again? Jeollanam-do, the place where your great-grandfather lived.”
“…”
“Let’s go there first. We might just catch a clue, and if we go to another place first, my memories might fade again.”
“Right.”
*
After night fell, we arrived at our destination.
Long ago, this was the setting for the event “A Lineage with Substance” when I met the hotel’s painter.
“It looks like the countryside house is a goner as well. I wonder where we should head…”
The location where the countryside house once stood now housed a green tea processing plant, and nearby it looked like a teahouse run by the enterprise.
“The riverside looks just like that art gallery event from ‘A Lineage with Substance.’ Must be the natural surroundings, huh?”
“Do you remember anything?”
“I’m thinking.”
“Ugh… Oppa, think faster! It’s freezing out here!”
“True!”
Standing by the riverside on a winter night was incredibly cold.
“Hmm… What about you? You mentioned something was coming to mind.”
“Oh, right? Back when you were entering your memory at the gallery, the starting point was always this riverside, right? Remember?”
“Exactly.”
Faded memories began to resurface.
I had been playing with my cousin there when it all started.
“At that time, we each went in one by one to help Oppa.”
“Though to be honest, we kind of interfered…”
“That’s a bit sad. Everyone was just trying to help!”
“… I’ll consider it a slip of the tongue.”
While it was certainly interference, that part is still true!
“Those who entered played the role of your sibling, right?”
“True.”
“But in the first attempt and the last attempt, no one actually went in, right? We saw your sibling who had not changed from that time.”
“Right?”
During the initial and final attempts, my comrades had not intervened.
Was there something strange from an outsider’s perspective at that time?
“It’s similar to what you felt before. You said your sibling was three years younger, yet the Heekang I saw looked like a little kid.”
“…”
“Was Heekang in 7th grade? 8th grade? 14 or 15 years old, so your younger sibling should be in their early teens yet…”
“How old did they look?”
“If I’m being generous, around six or seven.”
“…”
Now, there’s a minimum six-year age gap between me and my sister.
Miro couldn’t hold back and blurted out, “At first, it was a three-year gap, then two years, and now it’s a six-year gap? Is there a chance Gahin had three siblings or something?”
“…”
At this point, it became clear that there are contradictions in my memories of the past.
I felt the need to reveal one of ‘my secrets’ to the two of them.
“Songi, Miro. Listen up. During that art gallery event, I discovered something odd.”
Perhaps sensing a fun atmosphere, Miro’s eyes lit up in anticipation.
“During the last attempt, I was… killed by an agent.”
After a brief moment of silence, both their eyes widened in shock.
“Eeeh?”
“W-wait, what do you mean? Why does an agent just pop out during the story of Oppa’s grandfather?”
“…”
An individual who appeared in the last attempt that my comrades hadn’t seen.
Agent KD, Kim Dohyun.
He isn’t tied to the “A Lineage with Substance” event at the countryside house; he’s affiliated with the Management Bureau.
He showed up at the climax like a Deus Ex Machina and solved all the problems in an instant, as well as being the one who killed me in my childhood.
“Gahin Oppa, isn’t that memory really strange? If you died at 14, how can you have memories of going to high school, taking entrance exams, and entering university?”
“And if Gahin died then, how did he come to the hotel?”
Songi and Miro reacted strongly.
It’s no wonder because this contradiction in memories can’t just be brushed off as ‘I got confused’ like my sibling’s age.
“… There might be one answer to this.”
I recalled KD’s last words.
‘Death is the end for an ordinary human. But it seems you have more opportunities.’
That thought had been vaguely circulating in my mind since then.
“What answer?”
This seemingly incomprehensible contradiction can be clarified with one additional hypothesis.
“I was a regressor even before stepping into the hotel.”
The ‘past’ I remember wasn’t a single life.
*
Late at night.
The three of us sat around a round table in a shabby motel room we had reserved beforehand.
Both Songi and I have had our eyes on Miro since earlier.
“…”
“D-don’t stare at me!”
Once I proposed the theory of being a regressor even before entering the hotel, the issue with the conflicting memories unraveled.
However, I still lack further information to advance from here.
After all, there’s far more I don’t know compared to what I do about the ‘phenomenon of reality regression.’
The only person besides Ahri who could possibly answer this is…
“Miro, try a little harder. I came believing in you.”
“Liar! You came believing in the creepy, creepy Miro, not me!”
“You two are one and the same.”
Of course, my grandfather was an agent too, but the mythic Miro from the Deep Sea Hotel is likely to know better.
This part is fine, but calling upon the creepy Miro was proving more challenging than expected.
“Repeat the conditions for summoning the creepy Miro.”
“There’s, um, an elephant plushie beside my pillow in my room?”
“Yeah.”
“I think it was last week, right? I was sleeping and saw the elephant plushie moving suddenly! I freaked out and screamed—”
So basically, she’s saying that if she gets scared at night and sees the plushie, that’s when creepy Miro shows up.
So, it’s suspected that when Miro gets terrified, that’s when the creepy Miro manifests.
Hearing this, Songi became annoyed.
“Ugh, this is so frustrating. But why isn’t she coming out now?”
“…”
“I’ve been showing you tons of horrifying visions since earlier!”
“…I know it’s a vision, so I’m not scared.”
She has a point.
If I were Miro, I doubt I’d be scared just because Songi is showing me visions.
Should we just leave Miro alone?
Isn’t she terrified even just looking at that elephant plushie at night?
“Songi, step outside for a second.”
As soon as we stepped out, I said, “What if we leave Miro alone and go far away?”
“But, Oppa, Miro knows we wouldn’t just bail on her and leave.”
“…”
It’s getting late, so it’s time to drop the last piece of advice.
After all, as dawn approaches, the chance to hitch a ride back will come again.
Advice: 1 -> 0
‘I’m trying to summon the creepy Miro for advice, but the summoning is tricky. Any easier methods?’
‘You don’t necessarily need to be scared. The key is creating a ‘situation where she would show up.’ She’s ready to learn.’
“… So fear isn’t what’s crucial?”
A few horror movie clichés popped into my mind.
“Alright! Let’s sleep for now and think about it tomorrow.”
“Yeah, yeah. Miro, let’s hit the hay for now.”
*
– Miro
— Rustle!
“…”
I felt a bizarre presence.
“Ugh….”
When I rubbed my eyes and looked up, I realized my bed was empty.
“Songi?”
Where did Songi go?
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