[Where did you go, my son?]
After that notification window popped up, the laptop eventually shut down without me even being able to touch it, and no matter how many times I pressed the button, it wouldn’t turn on. All I could see was the words ‘
System Error
’ and a black screen.
It happened so quickly that for a moment I thought I was hallucinating.
I immediately closed the door and returned to the laptop, recalling one by one the things I had seen in the game, and I roughly wiped my face.
Then I muttered in a low voice, “…I thought she was dead. How could a dead person do this?”
‘Is it a program error? Or just a prank?’
I hadn’t connected to the internet, nor had I done any updates, so it didn’t make sense that something like this would happen suddenly at this exact moment.
The timing was too perfect to believe that it had been pre-programmed to cut off access unless I performed a specific action. I hadn’t even moved the mouse cursor yet. It was hard to imagine such a complex function being implemented in a simple educational game.
It was written as if someone who had already passed away was aware of her son’s absence.
It was too much to be considered a joke.
The notification that had the phrase “
my son
” written on it felt as though Han Seungbeom’s mother was speaking to
me
as if she were still alive, pointing out that I, who had taken on Han Seungbeom’s body, was not her actual son.
‘How on earth did you know that I wasn’t Han Seungbeom?’
When I asked myself this question, I naturally remembered Han Seungbeom’s aunt.
Just like that notification, Han Seungbeom’s aunt was more focused on ‘
Han Seungbeom
‘ than on me, and I remembered her accepting these strange events as if they were perfectly natural. Her reaction was clearly different from that of Jay and Choi Jeokhyeon, who had tried to confirm my existence as soon as they noticed the strangeness.
She didn’t doubt it, nor did she panic.
It was as if she had known all along.
“…….”
As soon as I thought of Han Seungbeom’s aunt, a sudden chill ran down my spine, and the events I had experienced since opening my eyes in Han Seungbeom’s body began to flash through my mind.
“You’re not Seungbeom.”
Han Seungbeom’s aunt, who had noticed this unrealistic possession from the beginning.
[We weren’t that close, so I don’t remember much.]
[With a face like the Captain’s, honestly, there would’ve been kids coming to the front of his classroom just to see his face, or people asking for his name on SNS. But there’s not a single story like that.]
The posts made by Han Seungbeom’s classmate and the fans’ reactions to them.
“They groaned as if they had a headache, then suddenly asked, with a completely calm expression, ‘What’s the problem?‘. Even though they had just said it was strange, they acted like they had no memory of it at all.”
The strange behavior of the morticians that Choi Jeokhyeon told me about.
And this game that almost felt like it was alive.
Unrealistic things had been happening, things that were totally beyond my common sense.
All of this revolved around Han Seungbeom and me, but I had no involvement in it. So, the only logical conclusion was that these events were linked to Han Seungbeom.
When I thought of coming up with a hypothesis that would make sense of all these anomalies, even if it meant abandoning all realism, the first thing that popped into my head was this.
‘What if Han Seungbeom’s aunt had learned about possession from Han Seungbeom himself, and Han Seungbeom had the ability to prove and carry out such an act?’
And this kind of supernatural ability was not entirely foreign to me.
I had a strange ability myself. The ability to eavesdrop on other people’s voices.
And that ability matched up very closely with one of the gift lists in the game made by Han Seungbeom’s mother.
[I Can Hear Your Voice: COST 1
]
“…No way.”
If Han Seungbeom truly possessed abilities that defied common sense, and if the medium for those abilities was the game his mother created, then I could somewhat understand the events that had been happening to me.
If this prediction was correct, it would mean that as the being inhabiting Han Seungbeom’s body, I had been able to use that game’s fragment.
“Status window.”
I started to think that the thing I had shouted out as a joke might actually exist.
Except it wasn’t for me, it was for Han Seungbeom.
[Freedom Cat: COST 100]
Among the gifts, there were some whose abilities I couldn’t figure out at all. But among the others, there were some like the “
I Can Hear Your Voice
” gift, where I could roughly guess their purpose, so I didn’t think my hypothesis was just wild speculation.
[Eraser in My Head: COST 10]
Look. It was as clear as day that it was the power to erase memories.
Once I considered the possibility that the gifts in the gift shop possessed supernatural abilities linked to their names, Choi Jeokhyeon’s experiences and the reactions of Han Seungbeom’s classmates started to make sense.
‘There’s no way a guy like Han Seungbeom wouldn’t leave an impression. Everyone’s memories were erased, just like the morticians Choi Jeokhyeon met.’
As I thought about it, I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach and a question came to mind.
‘The frequent headaches I felt must mean that the ability was used on me as well.’
Looking back at the fact that everyone shared such flawed perceptions like ‘
Han Seungbeom was quiet, so he had no presence
‘ and ‘
It’s too light, but still, the body is there
‘, when the ability was used, the erased memories didn’t simply exist as blank spaces. Somehow some nonsensical reason was made up, and people believed it without question, as if they had been brainwashed.
Under these circumstances, it would be impossible to deduce what part of my memory was missing.
The thought that there might be distortions even in the memories and perceptions I currently have sent a chill down my spine. At the same time, I began to wonder why Choi Jeokhyeon and I were the only ones who could grasp the clues about this ability.
‘.…Han Seungbeom’s classmates and the morticians are living their usual lives without any awareness, so why can Choi Jeokhyeon and I sense something strange?’
Choi Jeokhyeon was especially strange.
Since I was the one who entered Han Seungbeom’s body, I could be considered an exception, but wasn’t Choi Jeokhyeon an ordinary person? Although his family background and personality were unusual, before my dead body disappeared, he was a person who had no interest in superpowers or anything like that.
He seemed completely uninterested in matters concerning himself, but I was different. I was really curious about why, of all people, and how Choi Jeokhyeon could retain his memory after witnessing the supernatural ability, when nobody else noticed anything odd.
‘Choi Jeokhyeon just saw Han Seungbeom as the empty vessel I was occupying, and he didn’t care about him at all. He only learned about Han Seungbeom’s existence after the program started. Since Han Seungbeom was already gone by then, there couldn’t have been any connection between them.’
In conclusion, if there was a reason why Choi Jeokhyeon was getting dragged into this unrealistic situation, it must have something to do with me. But no matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t figure out what it was.
I wanted to grab Choi Jeokhyeon by the collar and demand that he say something about it. But it seemed like he truly didn’t know why only he remembered that scene, and since that person was the type who would come to me and keep chattering nonstop without me even asking, it probably wouldn’t have much meaning anyway.
“…….”
Imagining Choi Jeokhyeon grinning and saying, “
Haha, I have no idea either
” made irritation surge within me. What’s so funny that he’s laughing?
“Ah, stress.”
I immediately erased Choi Jeokhyeon’s smiling face from my mind and returned to thinking about Han Seungbeom.
‘If Han Seungbeom really did have special abilities as I suspected, then this possession was of his own volition.’
[You are Me, I am You : COST 10,000]
If that assumption was correct, I felt that the gift at the very end of the Gift Shop, the one requiring the highest cost, was likely the means for possession. It was the most plausible explanation I could think of.
‘Han Seungbeom … what on earth were you thinking when you handed your body over to me?’
I already knew enough to understand that he had lived a life so miserable that he no longer wanted to go on.
But I couldn’t understand why he would give his body to me out of so many people.
If it were me, even if I had the ability to do so, I would not have handed over my body to someone I had no connection to.
I had never even heard the name “
Han Seungbeom
” before possessing this body. Even the members of Prism, who were closest to me, and Choi Jeokhyeon didn’t know Han Seungbeom, so there couldn’t have been any personal connection.
If I were to assume that he had such a deep affection for me that he would unilaterally want to give me his body, the only thing I could think of was that Han Seungbeom might be my hardcore fan of mine. According to Han Jaewoon’s father, Han Seungbeom wanted to become a singer when he was younger.
‘I’ve never seen a fan with this kind of face at a concert or fansign.’
I have met countless fans, but since I always made an effort to remember their faces as much as possible, I could usually recall people who stood out, like Han Seungbeom, with almost 100% accuracy. This means that if I had seen Han Seungbeom before, I would definitely remember him clearly.
In this case, there were three possibilities.
First, Han Seungbeom was a fan of mine, but he had erased all memory of him from my brain.
Second, the was just a casual fan who cheered me on from beyond the screen.
Third, he was never a fan to begin with, and we had a personal connection, but he erased that memory.
The first one made me wonder what he could possibly gain by going that far, and the second seemed too trivial to be a reason for handing over his body. That left the third as the most plausible, but that hypothesis was the most mysterious of all.
“Haaa…..”
I glanced down at the laptop, which still displayed a black screen. It remained silent, offering no further clues. After thinking about it for a while, I tucked the laptop into my luggage.
“Just in case, I should take it with me.”
I couldn’t realistically expect to use the same abilities as Han Seungbeom right now. As the notification said, I was not the
authorized user
.
And since this laptop was still not turned on, there was no information I could get. But then again, I didn’t know when that would change.
It was also very clear that this laptop was the one item among Han Seungbeom’s belongings that Han Jaewoon family should never dirty. For now, I should keep the laptop safe and wait for further clues about Han Seungbeom.
That was my conclusion for now.
With that resolve, I grabbed the suitcase and walked to the front door. Then, I bowed slightly to Han Jaewoon’s father, who was looking quite bewildered.
“Please stay healthy.”
In this world where family history is scary, wouldn’t it be better to be healthy? Please stay healthy, don’t cause any trouble, and don’t show up in front of me.
Beep!
As I escaped from that hellish Han Jaewoon family’s house, a notification sound rang on my phone.
I unlocked my phone and saw several messages on the screen.
[Do Yuda: When are you coming? We’re all already here, but only you’re missing, hyung. We need to order jajangmyeon
1
, so hurry up. I’m so hungry I might eat anything in sight.]
[Do Yuda: I’m hungry]
[Nagi Zen: Pig emergence. Pig emergence. A cornered human is eaten. Urgent.]
I let out a chuckle as I read them, and hurriedly hailed a taxi.
From now on, my house was the dormitory where the members of Pantheion lived.
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Translator’s Corner:
Jajangmyeon or jjajangmyeon (짜장면)
is a Korean Chinese noodle dish topped with a thick sauce made of
chunjang
(sweet bean sauce), diced pork, and vegetables. ↩︎
oh it makes me want noodle … let’s eat noodle for tonight
anyway I’ll wait for the votes for CJH name until day after tomorrow, if you still havent voted between Jeokhyun and Jeokhyeon, go back to the translator corner in chapter 122