Transformation or Death

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

Memory Recovery (1)

As usual today, I was simply massacring villains. Knowing it wouldn’t look good to others, I continued this act quietly in secluded places. 

What is going on here?

Han Jae-jung had a headache.

“So… Were the S-grade villains plotting something together?”

“Wait, don’t misunderstand. I have nothing to do with those people.”

Sudden uninvited guests disrupted this peaceful and serene routine of killing.

Each one of them was fatally dangerous.

One weird guy. 

“Haha, it’s true though. We’re not that close yet.”

One even weirder fellow.

“Is that so? Well, I don’t care.”

One person making things strange over here.

Each of them disturbed the peace of mind.

“Anyway, I have the same task to do.”

“Um…sorry but I won’t let you rest today.”

Blue Sirius raised her three swords. Botis also swung his wand, not to be outdone. At the same time, plants and ice moved.

The two were like conductors leading an orchestra. When they waved the long objects that seemed unrelated, the plants and ice shook.

The vines that had covered the back alley like swarms of insects lost their vitality and froze upon meeting the icy mist. Part of the alley became the midst of a winter mountain in full bloom with snowflakes.

“Looks like you have no intention of doing so.”

Botis stroked his chin and made a troubled gesture, though it wasn’t properly visible under his hood.

“My comrade, I have a request for you.”

“Jason, be quiet for now. And you there, Miss? We didn’t come out intending to kill anyone. We just wanted to talk a little…”

“Something that may not happen today could happen tomorrow. We can’t just sit and watch.”

“Help me find my purpose!”  

“That’s quite a violent idea. Do you think you can justify violence just by considering some future possibility?”

“I already know you’ve hurt people. Don’t make excuses.”

“Haha, I’ve been caught.”

“Tracking and achievement! A beautiful adventure journey!”

This place now resembled the clamor of various human figures heard in bars in the evening. Nonsense and serious conversations were mixed up, ultimately resulting in noise.

The one suffering from this noise is the kind and lonely ordinary citizen. This time was no different.

Han Jae-jung sighed, grabbing his throbbing head.

‘I haven’t even properly gathered the starlight yet.’

Having to face such a formidable foe to take down now and such a terrifying person just to meet properly was quite tiring.

Progress on activating the stars was slow. Was it because I was only killing enemies with weak starlight, or was this pace normal?

After activating one star, I still haven’t been able to turn on any additional stars. 

So naturally, I haven’t been able to find the lost fragments of memory either.

Time doesn’t wait for people. Even people don’t wait for other people. It suddenly barges in before you’re ready.

I had imagined various conversations I might have when meeting Blue Sirius, but when our eyes actually met, all that remained was guilt and an equally large discomfort.

The problem was that we happened to meet as Watchers.   

She resents villains. The coolness of ice reflected her current emotions.

But I can’t reveal my identity either. 

Revealing my identity might make this complicated relationship easier, but on the contrary, it would only cause her great discomfort.

It’s different from Red Vega’s case.

Even now, Han Jae-jung regrets his identity being exposed to her.

If he had been just a little less fortunate, he could have remained outright enemies with Red Vega and unable to show his human face.

More importantly, she is still young and rash. There is a good chance she might inadvertently expose me to someone else.

Han Jae-jung hoped Blue Sirius still didn’t know his true identity. Neither of them was ready to accept it.

Most of Blue Sirius’s mental anguish stems from the person Han Jae-jung. What’s the point of revealing his identity only to cause her further pain?

But if I continue to endure her resentment, how can I deal with it if she finds out the truth later? Can I even handle it? 

It was a cycle of problems creating more problems.

‘It’ll go around and around.’  

Literally spinning around endlessly, chasing its own tail.

Ultimately, it was a problem of deficiency. If I had the power and memories, I could be more upright.

The encounter with Blue Sirius soon led to a confrontation with reality. A re-realization of how pitiful and contradictory an existence I am now.

[Quest Appeared]

It was probably not a coincidence that this quest appeared when I met her.

[Escape from Blue Sirius]

Quests reflect the user’s ideals, psychology, and current reality as immediate tasks.

This quest now was Han Jae-jung’s most vivid state of mind more than anything else. 

This must have been Han Jae-jung’s lingering mindset since their breakup.

I confront villains.  

I spar with and encourage growth in magical girls.

But she is different.

Special.

In front of Blue Sirius, he could not be a Watcher. Just a weak human with a four-character name.

Han Jae-jung feels the urge to run away from Yoon Seol-hwa.

‘Miserable. Unjust too.’

It was an objective attitude towards his own matters.  

He vaguely knows what kind of life he lived, but not the entirety of that life. He only knows the past as knowledge, not experience.

He knows the whole but is ignorant of parts of it. He has the puzzle frame but not the pieces.

Yet the outline printed on the puzzle frame lets him guess what should fit inside.

That outline was emotion. 

There is no substance, but there are traces.

There is emotion, but no memory. 

It was dreadful.

Is this how it feels to see a debt incurred for reasons unknown?

Having to avoid others due to emotions I can hardly call my own.

How miserable and unjust this is.

I didn’t even understand if I had left many emotions for her in the first place.

If we missed each other, there would have been plenty of opportunities to see each other.

The size of the emotion was too immense to be dismissed as merely wanting to cherish beautiful memories of a first love.  

But there was no way to know.

“…Alright.”

Han Jae-jung wearily responded to the quest’s instructions.

He slowly approached the front. Vortis and Blue Sirius continued in a subtle standoff. She emanated a chill that Botis defended against with vitality. It seemed an all-out fight would soon break out.

Jason kept spewing long-winded but empty words.

He was the most similar person to Han Jae-jung here.

A wanderer.

Also, the one with the most useful power.

“Hey.”  

Tap.

I grabbed his shoulder. The meaningless rhetoric abruptly stopped.

“Since today doesn’t seem to be the day, why don’t we get lost instead?”

Jason nodded, ending his long-winded epic fantasy narrative. 

“That’s great! Venturing down an unknown path is the true adventure!”

Jason grabbed the long rod on his belt buckle. When he moved it like rowing a boat, the surrounding air rippled.

“Oh dear.”

“…?!”

Botis laughed hollowly as if stabbed, and Blue Sirius seemed flustered, probably because this was new to her.

While I couldn’t use Alkaid, there was a power here that had a similar effect.

The rippling of the air gradually intensified. I gazed blurrily at the distorted light, like when submerged in water.  

The sights of the four gathered in the damp alley experienced a shared disorientation.

What was ahead wasn’t ahead anymore, and the ability to perceive space gradually faded. Instead,

“Ah, then I should give this to you later.”   

Botis waved his hand with a wry smile. In that hand was a belt.

“See you again.”

Was he trying to give me that? Why? Han Jae-jung couldn’t understand.

He was kind, but also suspicious. Kindness too risky to readily accept.

Soon, Botis’s figure disappeared.

“Then let’s meet again next time!”

Following him, Jason bid farewell and vanished. And finally, even through the swaying vision that made him feel seasick, Han Jae-jung met her gaze.  

“I wish you good health.”

“I wish you ill health.”  

With that exchange with Blue Sirius, everyone who had been in the back alley disappeared.

***

Ippotranslation

***   

[Quest Complete.]  

[A Star has been discovered.]  

[Would you like to activate it?]

Before I could even figure out where I had moved to, a voice came from my belt. My head was dizzy from being lost, and my stomach was upset from the recent encounter.

“What…?”

It wasn’t unusual for me to mishear and ask again.

[Approval Received.]  

“What is it?”

The problem was that the belt took this simple murmur as approval.

If the reward for the quest to defeat the villain was to seize the starlight the villain possessed, then the reward for quests that did not defeat the villain was to enhance the starlight already possessed.

As the starlight gathered and became brighter, the simple flickering of light became a more intense and shapely light.

That was a star.

It seemed this quest was the last key to activating a new star, quite by chance.

It was fortunate that I had just thought about wanting to gain strength and memories.

But it was unfortunate that I was still experiencing mental and physical confusion and hadn’t prepared to receive the memories.

Time and people do not wait for one to be ready. 

Machines were the same.

[Activating the Star.]

***   

Ippotranslation

***

“Um…Are you serious?”

The reporter in front of me asked. He was one of the reporters who frequently wrote articles about Blue Sirius that I was somewhat familiar with.

“Yes.”

“You’re going to manipulate the incident?”

I calmly responded. 

“Eh~ It’s not really manipulation! I just added a little seasoning!”

I showed the conversation on the mobile messenger on the smartphone screen on my desk.

It was a typical conversation attempting psychological control, mixed with curses and somewhat friendly tones. 

In that messenger, Seol-hwa was the pitiful victim, and I was the perpetrator constantly swearing while showing off my position as her lover.

With a little more manipulation, this structure would become even more solid.

“Look here. These words are here, here, and here. If you combine them, ta-da.”  

“We call this manipulation.”

“It’s just rearranging. The words aren’t completely made up.”

“But there are words that aren’t there at all? Look at this curse word here.”

“That’s a device to enhance immersion in the story.”

“This seems like a joke to you?”

“It would be great if it was a joke.”

Some of the records did contain actual conversations we had.

Of course, it was a device for recording and driving a wedge between us, but it wasn’t completely insincere either.

Over the past few weeks, I had fought a lot with Seol-hwa. Not just Seol-hwa, but I also frequently fought with my beloved younger sibling.

My nerves, which had become overly sensitive due to the incident, were enough to ignite a fire with just a little friction.

It wasn’t just an act to obtain these records, my feelings were genuinely hurt. 

To be precise, I was exhausted from the stress caused by the incident.

For a little while, living as the boyfriend of a celebrity had become agonizing. 

Day by day, I came to understand how painful it was to be an acquaintance of a magical girl.

I needed a break.

Time for us to think about each other and settle our emotions.

For that, the incident needed to be resolved first.

It had been almost a month since the incident broke out.  

The heat of the incident had cooled down enough, so if I released this, I could turn public opinion around.

By clearly assigning responsibility, I could conclude the incident.

“So, you’re not going to release this? It’s a huge scoop.”  

“Blue Sirius will obviously release a rebuttal article…”

“They won’t. It’s a decision made after consulting with the association. They’ll get it cut before release? The surveillance will be strict for a while too.”

That’s how I handed over my final move to the reporter to resolve the incident.

I’ll probably get a lot of criticism going forward.  

But it’s okay.

Besides, I have no intention of completely cutting ties.

She’ll probably feel the same way.  

After some time passes, the incident cools down, and our emotional wounds heal, I’ll get in touch again.

I even left a letter behind.

Saying I’m doing okay and that I’ll return, not to worry too much.

That was the plan.

But I couldn’t do that.

So many people came looking for me that I had to move constantly, and my phone would ring nonstop from who knows where, so I had to change my number. But it didn’t stop there.

I had underestimated it. For fan devotion, for fun, for anger, people poured out their malice for various reasons, and I was fully exposed to it.

In the face of overwhelming malice, my previous resolve became powerless.

It was something I had steeled myself for, but it wasn’t as easy as I had thought.

Still, I could manage somewhat.

The internet was something I just had to avoid looking at, the cell phone that kept ringing I could just destroy, and if people kept coming to my home, I could just abandon that home.

By compromising reasonably and keeping my distance from the world, I could solve everything.

But then another problem arose.

The critical mistake was that there were more weirdos in the world than I had thought.  

“Are you Han Jae-jung?”

A strange man came holding a kitchen knife and tape in one hand.

“You, you, you, you bullied our sister, didn’t you? Bad guy… bad guy…”

He was a man who appeared to be several decades older than me.  

I couldn’t understand what he was saying.

Later, I heard he was mentally ill. Delusional or autistic, I’m not sure.

It wasn’t particularly comforting news. By the time I heard that news from the police, I had already been stabbed in the stomach.

After encountering about six more people similar to him.

I became a recluse.

***

Ippotranslation

***  

“This fucking…!”

It would have been better if he had revealed secrets about the belt or sweet dating memories.

I had painstakingly turned something I already knew about into an experience. I felt chills from the vivid terror, as if I had just experienced it. 

“That crazy belt bastard…revealing something like this… Fuck, fuck…”

My field of vision narrowed. A common symptom for someone facing terror. I was slowly having trouble breathing too. Symptoms of hyperventilation. Also a common symptom for those suffering from trauma.

Only then did I realize where I was standing. On top of an extremely tall building. A rooftop high enough that losing my balance could lead to instant death. Not exactly a great place for someone in the midst of trauma. 

How far had I gone astray?

I tried hard not to lose my balance as my body gradually deviated from normalcy.

I slowly knelt down and calmed my body. Reckless movement could mean death. As I was trembling slowly and nearing unconsciousness from lack of oxygen, someone came down beside me.

“Brother! What, what’s wrong? Are, are you okay?”  

A woman in flowing clothes approached, emitting a pink radiance. Her beauty made me think she was a celestial being.

Of course, she wasn’t. But she had an incredibly similar existence.

“Breathe! Breathe!”

Pink Deneb, reading the memory fragment from earlier, my beloved younger sister.

It was Joo Ah-yoon.

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