Chapter Text
In his past lives, Jisung had been everything. It’s not like he remembers, anyway—because no one can remember their past lives. He just knows. He knows it. There’s always been that subtle voice in his head, telling him whether he’d already lived this or not. That’s probably why he never did something twice, always experiencing something new. Doctor, engineer, teacher, athlete, painter, sculptor, director, chef… He could name them all, there was barely anything left for him to try. Yet, there was always this lingering feeling inside of his chest, that whatever he did in life, there would always be something missing. And perhaps, as Jisung always pondered at night during his—not often but not rare either—insomnias, he would keep living again and again, until he found what was missing.
At first, and probably as anyone would have thought, Jisung believed that the missing thing, was something he hadn’t done. He thought hard, until it clicked in his mind. When his mom fell badly sick, he realized that this might’ve been it; not saving his mom. But with all his might, studying hard from a young age and becoming a doctor, he never was able to save his mom and always needed to say goodbye the day of his 26th birthday.
Maybe, the thing he needed to do, was saving his childhood friend? Fate liked to play with people’s lives, as movies taught him so well over time. That was a tragic fate, that of his childhood friend’s. Not even twelve years old and in every single life Jisung had lived, he would always be the one seeing his best friend getting hit by a car in front of their school. Traumatic enough that his parents decided to move out to a whole other country for almost ten years. Jisung tragically found out that, actually, fate was just a jerk erasing people from his life and that saving them wasn’t his missing thing. Because Jisung couldn’t save him any other way but by pushing him hard enough to the other side of the road, and always being the one hit by the car, dying on the spot by the force of the impact.
There was this one time, when Jisung realized that maybe it wasn’t that someone was missing in his life, someone that he couldn’t save, but the opposite. Maybe it was something, someone, that was in his life when it shouldn’t have been. So, there was this one life that Jisung regretted a bit, that brought him shame and shivers every time he thought back to it. He was desperate, at that time, and he realized that there were too many fake people in his life. He was constantly angry, annoyed, pissed, he was angry against the world and fate itself, he wanted to shout at everyone and every second of his life. Maybe he was just going nuts because of how many times he had been birthed, but Jisung just couldn’t hold all of his anger inside. Twelve years old, he was the one pushing his best friend on the road. Fourteen, he locked his teacher in a closet for three days—the poor woman was heavily dehydrated and needed medical help. Sixteen, he hotwired his dad’s car and drove to the east coast, stole cup ramens in a 7/11 and slept in an abandoned apartment in a seldomly chosen building. Jisung decided to live onto his impulses, this time. To be free and above all, careless and selfish. His happiness, his other half, his thirty-third life! He was skilled enough over time to escape police officers and other law forces, to hide quite skillfully. It might have been the first life he wasn’t there when his mom died, at the funerals, that he wasn’t there to see his family shattering into pieces as their glue fell apart. Nor had he graduated any school; he was just Han Jisung, almost too famous killer for his own good. He just didn’t care anymore; if someone was too loud, he killed them. If someone wasn’t useful to him, he’d kill them one way or another.
Death was nothing important to him. It wasn’t scary, it wasn’t anything grand. Death was just another part of life, and he didn’t care whether he led someone to it, or if it came for him; because Jisung died countless of times, it just still hurt his feelings every time. It wasn’t dying that hurt him… it was to open his eyes in that empty, white and spotless space, before he could get birthed again, and that, every single damn time. Every memory filling his head, every image passing before his eyes, and always that lingering feeling, that stinging in his heart that something was missing, a piece of his soul. Jisung was incomplete, unaware of his other half and full form. He wasn’t unhappy, nor was he always sad. There was nothing physically wrong with him either. He just couldn’t point out what was missing, what would ease the pain in his heart whenever he lied down on his bed and stared at his ceiling, when the moonlight lit up his room just enough for him to feel in that spotless room again, immortally omniscient but powerlessly ignorant.
He just couldn’t predict what was supposed to happen next, except the few grand lines of his life: his childhood friend’s death, the new country, graduating, struggling to find a job, finally finding one, his mom’s death, his dad’s fall into despair, his own death… There were a few changes here and there, but nothing much changed in all of his lives—except for that one, shameful one, that he never repeated again. What was even supposed to be missing in his life? He had a brother, two parents that loved each other enough to get destroyed once separated by hateful fate, he had great friends—five in one life, ten in another…—he even had a few pets in some of his previous lives, so what on earth was he missing? Once again standing in front of a white wall for the nth time, contemplating his latest life, Jisung pondered the thought. He took a piece of paper, that somehow was in his pocket along with a pen—had it always been there, or could he materialize anything he wanted? Whatever. He listed everything his previous lives had, everything he thought it could’ve lacked, crossed those that didn’t change anything to his fate, a bitter taste in his mouth when he had to cross “saving mom” as well as “saving Jun”. It wasn’t a pet, it wasn’t saving a life, nor taking one, it wasn’t even accomplishing something grand in his life; as much as he liked to brag about his accomplishment, Jisung never said anything about how he discovered a cure for a rare disease, when he was a doctor, not how he found a way to make the Pisa Tower straight again, or simply how he didn’t care about death because he knew he would see light again. It wasn’t humbleness, nor was it fame, maybe it was something small? A detail that no one would see. Jisung tried everything. He got tattoos, piercings, even scars… He could only chuckle as he recalled that one disaster of a life where he had every single one of his bone broken at least once over his alive period. Changing his name, his appearance, Jisung tried everything he could when he finally decided to give up. He just gave up and tore the paper apart.
“I can’t find whatever you want me to have, so just give it to me or let me die in peace,” he mumbled to himself, ready to take his first intake of air when his mom would birth him for the nth time.
Bright light blinding him for a short instant, rough cries escaping his mouth while gloved hands carried him around the room; Jisung was getting used and bored of this birthing process. Only a few more minutes until he would have his dad’s face above his, and all memories of his past lives would get erased, a new life clouding his eyes and enabling him to be another Jisung, for the years ahead of him.
His dad smiled at him, caressing his soft baby cheek, before going next to his wife, pressing the side of his head against hers, the both of them whispering at the same time; “Welcome to this world, Jisung.”