Looking back, it had been a truly unlucky life.
Age five, a year I cannot even remember. My parents were sentenced to prison side by side. The orphanage I was placed in afterward was steeped in corruption as well, an environment no one could possibly call good.
Horrific days filled every moment of my childhood.
The Republic of Korea was a country that gave anyone with Phantasm Aptitude a chance to enlist in the Hwadam Army.
And in the winter of my sixteenth year, I was certified in the 2021 Phantasm Aptitude Examination.
Be thrown out into society after nothing but unjust treatment at that damned orphanage, or fight Otherworld Creatures, protect the country and its people, and earn money and honor.
There was nothing to think about for long. I meant to choose what might have been my only chance to turn my life around. But that hope was blocked by someone else.
Before the enlistment exam, I was handed over, sold off, to the crime syndicate that had been quietly bankrolling the orphanage.
Spring, seventeen. Somehow I stepped into a place that did not seem to be reality. After wandering for several days and nights I barely made it back to reality, but my circumstances did not change. If anything, they got worse.
Summer, seventeen. The syndicate boss wanted to put me to serious use. It was because I had come back from that strange world with a strange power.
Beaten to the edge of death, occasionally fed expensive meals, and any warmth I let slip without thinking came back to me as a blade.
I committed my first murder draped head to toe in luxury brands. It was a bottom-of-the-pit mire I could never climb out of again.
Autumn, nineteen. An investigation the government had been preparing for a long time came down on me and the organization I belonged to. Naturally, since I had reached as far as murder, I was sent straight to trial the moment I was caught.
Winter, nineteen. The death sentence was finalized.
Neither the fact that I had been coerced nor my status as a minor helped me. I had already fallen too far for that.
"We are short on manpower to fight the Otherworld Creatures. It would be a waste to kill......."
"To begin with, he beat three dispatched Hwadam Army soldiers with nothing but low-grade Phantasms......."
"The killing began under coercion, and taking into account that he surrendered first......."
None of those outcomes felt particularly unjust to me. Or did they?
It simply was what it was.
"I will give you a choice. Do you want to go to the execution block? Or do you want to extend your life a little longer, even if it means laboring as a soldier for the rest of it?"
Even after things had come to that, I did not want to die.
"Wow. They're using death row convicts now?"
"What if he raises hell and gets us all killed......."
"I heard he can be executed on the spot at the field commander's discretion."
"The bastard has to die anyway. If he takes a monster down with him, that's a net gain."
Fighting Otherworld Creatures was grueling, but not beyond what I could stomach.
The identical deployments day after day, the discrimination for being an ex-death row convict, the anxiety of knowing one small mistake could get me executed. All of it was more or less fine. At the very least it was better than living while killing people. It was bearable.
"Good to meet you. My name is Seong-gwon."
But at some point that daily life of mine changed. How was it again.
"Why do I treat you without discrimination? A strange question. You are my subordinate, and as your superior I have a responsibility to treat my subordinates equally."
Twenty-three. The platoon leader I somehow ended up eating from the same pot with was the starting point of every problem.
"A criminal? And? Your past is not particularly important to me. You are already settling your crime in the manner the nation has prescribed. That is the only thing that matters to me."
Because you, because you were the one who was kind to me first.
Because you were the first to extend humane treatment to me, when everyone else was pointing fingers.
"If a man deserves to be cast out even while he is answering for his punishment, then why does the concept of corrective justice exist at all? What meaning does rehabilitation have? I simply follow what I believe to be right."
Because you made me realize how happy it can make a person to be treated as an ordinary human being instead of a criminal.
"Captain. Was I an existence of any help to you?"
Twenty-six. A life I had lived only because I did not want to die had somehow turned into something I wanted to live.
"Wait, Ya-hwi——"
"I will stay behind. You still have things left to do, Captain."
And that was exactly why I chose death by my own will.
"Wait——"
"I am all right."
There was no other way. It was a situation where one of us had to stay behind and be sacrificed. It was a choice between two, me or you.
"I'm all right."
So...... if only one of us can live, then of course it should be you.
"Ya-hwi!"
"I will settle your birthday present with the favor of saving your life."
Because you are a better human being than I am. Because you are a person more worth living.
"Live, Captain."
I will go on ahead.
.
.
.
"Aaagh......!"
I closed the comic book and hugged it to my chest.
It was not a scene I was seeing for the first or second time, and yet tears blurred my sight all over again. My heart, which was in bad shape to begin with, felt like it caught and lurched.
"This insane author! How can anyone leave a character like this as nothing more than a minor supporting role? How can you only use him as a dead character who shows up in flashbacks......!"
And besides. Was there any need to give a dead character a past this wistful? When 〈Seong-gwon〉, the character tied to him, is not even the protagonist but merely the protagonist's role model?
No, no. What was really the problem was me myself, pouring this much of my heart into a character who did not even carry that much weight.
"Why did he have to have the same name......."
〈Ya-hwi〉, a supporting character who appears in barely two volumes of a comic that runs forty-three volumes in total.
At first I took an interest because we shared a name, and somehow he ended up settling in as my most beloved character. It was a truly grievous thing.
"Hnngh."
I lay down on the hospital bed still hugging the comic. Tears slid out of both eyes and crossed my temples. It had already happened more times than I could count.
Just looking at the volumes Ya-hwi appears in made the tears run and run like this. And that was despite the fact that, from the very moment he was first mentioned, the information that he was dead had been handed to me.
I had known from the start that he was a dead character, yet every time I saw that flashback my chest ached.
"Ah, seriously...... if Ya-hwi had lived here, more than half the events of the main story would have been erased......."
But what could I do? I had already given him my heart.
Ya-hwi had lived a life deserving of moral condemnation, and yet he had never once had the chance to make a proper choice, and I found that pitiful.
The way he agonized over having killed people, and lacked the courage to choose death even so, and went on living, was pitiful too.
He had felt the desire to stand at someone's side for the first time, but the crimes he had committed stood in the way of it. They were not even crimes he had wanted to commit, and yet they could not be taken back, and even the sight of him sobbing over that was wretched.
He was my aching finger.
Chat│The government's incompetence really is legendary
They only let him carry low-grade Phantasms in case he rebelled
And then he can't remove something he could have removed, and he dies? Oh, that's not my problem~
For people who keep saying they have no manpower, their judgment is pretty poor
└ It is kind of stupid lol when you watch him carving up high-ranking Otherworld Creatures with low-grade Phantasms, the right answer is obvious
└ They were scared of fragging, that's what it comes down to
My chest felt too tight, so I turned on my smartphone. The last site I had visited filled the screen. It was a site where people chattered about the comic I had been reading until a moment ago, 《Codename: Baby》.
And among all of it, the post I had been looking at was one where people talked about Ya-hwi.
Chat│I've been thinking about it
I understand why they did it
It's not like it was anything small, he killed over thirty people and became a death row convict
If they handed him a high-ranking Phantasm and he turned on them, the damage would spread
I think the judgment the government made was correct in itself
But understanding it and finding it a shame are separate things, and it is a shame
└ Understanding it but still finding it a shame, completely agreed. It's more of a shame because if he just hadn't been caught trying to enlist, he'd have escaped into the academy and lived well
└ In the end the orphanage is the root of all evil... they blocked his enlistment because they were scared of being caught allied with the mob, that's just...lol
Chat│If Ya-hwi had gone to the military academy
He'd have flown higher than Seong-gwon, right?
└ Probably, right? Ya-hwi is the only person Seong-gwon acknowledged in the whole work
└ That scene where she flatly told the protagonist 'you are not his equal' really was funny lolol
A few more posts along the same lines as my own feelings followed.
Reading them tore my chest raw all over again.
Because I knew that the character Ya-hwi was not a born villain but a gray figure who could have become anything, because I already knew he was a person who would have lived justly given even one chance to escape that environment, there was nothing I could do about it.
Ya-hwi truly was a person who would not have died like that if only his starting point had been different.
"If he'd just taken the exam, just the exam......."
If only the orphanage had not interfered. No, if only they had never found out to the very end that he was aiming to enlist. And if he had finished all the way through the third exam normally, gone straight into the military academy, and made the talent he never knew he had bloom.
Then everything after that would not have flowed the way it did. He would have shone with overwhelming talent and won everyone's praise, and he could have stood proudly at the side of Seong-gwon, whom he followed so devotedly.
"If he'd just gotten to the last exam without being caught, his life after that would have been different......!"
I thrashed my arms and legs. I stopped, panting, when my heart clenched tight, but that is what I did all the same.
Once my heart had settled, I looked at the cover of the comic.
Drawn on the cover was a female character with cherry-red hair. It was Seong-gwon. She was the one Ya-hwi had looked up to, and also the character who saved Ya-hwi and was saved by him.
"......He really should have lived."
It was not that I disliked Seong-gwon. If anything, I liked Seong-gwon as much as I liked Ya-hwi.
Of course I did. When Ya-hwi made a joke of the fact that he had never once been to an amusement park, Seong-gwon was the only person who did not simply let it pass. She was also the character who secured a single night's leave, even accepting the disadvantage it would bring her, and went to the amusement park with him.
How could I dislike a person like that? Seong-gwon was someone worthy of Ya-hwi's respect, and someone I wanted to see live to the very end.
The problem is that it keeps making me imagine how much better it would have been if Ya-hwi had been beside her.
Knock, knock.
Just then someone knocked on the door of the hospital room I was in.
I hurriedly straightened my ruined blanket and my face. If they knew I had gotten worked up over a comic, they would nag me again for certain.
"Come in...... Brother!"
Fortunately the visitor was not a nurse or a doctor. It was the brother who was staying in the same ward as me.
Swish.
The brother came into the room waving his hand lightly from side to side, as he always did. Scrape. The chair for guests was dragged over to the side of the bed.
〔Were you reading that comic again?〕
Seated in the chair, the brother spoke to me through his notepad. The brother, whose injured throat had not come back for several years now, liked to use notepad conversation for my sake, since I still had not gotten used to sign language.
"Yeah. It's fun."
〔I'm glad it's fun.〕
The one who told me the comic 《Codename: Baby》 existed was the brother. So instead of scolding me for being sunk into the comic, he stroked my head.
〔What is it that you like so much about it?〕
"Mmmmm. All of it, generally? The action is cool, the art style is so good. And I like how it twists elements that are practically the clichés of the hunter genre into something Korean."
〔The world-building is original, that's true.〕
The backbone of the hunter genre lies in superhumans appearing against a modern backdrop. And plenty of works do not simply have superhumans, they use the 'gate' element to bring monsters in.
"Right. And the concepts aren't so unfamiliar that it's alienating either, so I think that's really good."
《Codename: Baby》 was a textbook hunter story too.
The existence of gates connected to the other world, that is, the 〈Dimensional Gate〉.
The appearance of the monsters that cross over from the other world beyond the Dimensional Gates, the 〈Otherworld Creatures〉.
The appearance of the 〈Phantasms〉, which fill the role of superpowers, and the 〈Phantasm Masters〉, the superhumans who handle those Phantasms.
The 〈Hwadam Army〉, which took over exactly the part hunters play in most works, that is, the mission of exterminating Otherworld Creatures and eliminating Dimensional Gates.
Only the terminology was new. Most of the elements that appear in hunter stories were carried over as they were.
"I especially like how unique the settings for the Rear World and the Phantasms are. There's something mysterious about them."
Does that mean it has no original settings at all? Not exactly.
The 'Phantasms' that fill the role of superpowers in 《Codename: Baby》 were beings something like elementals, fairies, or apparitions.
And as is the case with most elementals, fairies, and apparitions, they could only be seen by entering a special space. Meaning that a separate other-dimensional zone, like an elemental realm or a fairy realm, exists.
In 《Codename: Baby》, that space was called the 〈Rear World〉. It was a concept that existed separately from the Dimensional Gates and the other world.
"Contracting with Phantasms in the Rear World, and protecting the Earth by fighting Otherworld Creatures together with the Phantasms you've contracted...... yeah. I love it after all. It's so sad that my favorite character of all had to be a dead man......."
The story itself was of the unremarkable, solid sort.
The protagonist 〈Baek San〉 and his partner Phantasm defeat Otherworld Creatures and dig into the existence of a hidden villain. It was a thoroughly orthodox boys' comic progression.
But why is a cliché a cliché? It is a cliché because it keeps working forever as long as it stays faithful to the basics.
〔Do you like Ya-hwi that much?〕
"Yeah. Maybe it's because we have the same name, but I feel strangely attached to him."
〔Do you want him to live no matter what?〕
"Mm-hm. Actually, 'no matter what' might be going too far...... no. Still, I think it'd be good if he lived."
I looked around the hospital room.
"......I'm about to die myself, and it's kind of sad that a character with the same name as mine is dead."
If Ya-hwi had not been a dead man, could I have taken away a little hope too?
If Ya-hwi, trapped in his past as a criminal the way I am trapped in this hospital room, had at least been allowed to keep living...... and had someday seized a better future.
Would I not have been able to share in some of that courage?
"......Sorry! I shouldn't say things like this."
〔No. It's fine.〕
Ah. So that must be why Ya-hwi kept weighing on my mind. Part of my own figure was projected onto Ya-hwi's situation...... that must be why my eyes kept going to him.
〔You know. Do you think you could do well, if it were Ya-hwi?〕
"Huh?"
〔If you became that 'Ya-hwi.' Do you think you could live in a better way than that?〕
"Uh...... who knows? Well, I do know how the whole thing goes. If it were a situation where I didn't know the plot, that'd be another matter."
〔So you're saying that now, knowing the plot, you're confident you could at least live better than that?〕
"Does that...... work out to that, then?"
But holding the information, it would be hard to live worse than that. I shrugged.
"Well, I'd live well, probably?"
The moment I answered that way, the brother's lips curved up faintly. A smile that looked satisfied and looked apologetic at once...... a truly ambiguous smile.
〔Then let's try it once.〕
"Brother?"
〔And the time is up, as it happens.〕
"Huh? What time?"
The brother did not answer my words. Instead he looked down at me with golden eyes and stroked the crown of my head with a big, thick hand.
〔Ya-hwi.〕
Letters written in advance were held out to me, and drowsiness came over me all at once.
〔Ya-hwi.〕
No. This was not sleep.
〔Ya-hwi.〕
My heart began to tighten without any pain.
"Wait, something's......."
I tried to press the call button, but my body collapsed faster. And even in that moment, the brother did not press the button in my place.
It was strange.
"Why......."
......Also, had that brother's eyes always been golden?
〔Remember. There is no second time. You have to pull it off.〕
Along with the sense of wrongness, my eyes closed completely.
.
.
.
『Soul transplant successful. Memory transfer...... failed, naturally. Rerouting through the flesh.』
『If I carve a few decades' worth of experience into the body, at least he will not die pointlessly.』
『Humans really never do settle obediently for their fate. Though that is what makes them charming.』
『In any case, do well. I wish you fortune in war.』