Chapter Text
This time, it was a cold winter evening.
The man found himself standing in a dimly lit room, his impassive gaze directed towards the window. Outside, the streetlights were out, with no light coming out of the neighboring buildings as well. His room window seemed to be the only source of light in the area, illuminating the desolate space.
The window was slightly open, yet he wasn’t able to pick up any audible sounds beyond it. Gone were the usual chattering of the passersby, the screeches and rumbles of vehicles, the merciless howling of the wind. The neighborhood was eerily quiet, as if suspended in time. Though perhaps, it wasn’t too far from reality.
Today was New Year’s Day. Despite the surrounding lack of festivities, the man was pretty sure of that fact.
Three years must have passed since he first came into this world. For him, it felt so much longer. The timeline of these spaces didn’t seem to be the linear type from his original world. But sometimes, he managed to catch a glimpse of familiar things and feelings to infer his current point. Hearing the echoes of the abandoned world, tracing the footprints of his forgotten self. For three years, he’s been chasing the slippery shadows of his past.
It should’ve lost any point by now. He had wanted to give up, he had given up so many times already. But he wasn’t allowed to, not then and certainly not now. His life and death were beyond his control.
His hands felt unusually warm. Looking down at them, he realized he was holding a cup, filled with hot clear liquid. It looked like tea. It probably wasn’t. It was too soon to drink it, anyway.
Turning his eyes back to the window, he’s met with a sudden flurry of snowflakes in the air. It started to snow.
There was something deeply nostalgic about the sight. Maybe, this snowfall once held a special meaning in his heart. Most likely, it’s just been a while since he last got such a clear view of it.
With each second, the snowfall was getting heavier. Akin to a colorless shroud, it was enveloping everything in its grasp, steady and unrelenting. He felt an impulsive urge to go outside. He thought of lowering himself onto the cold, snow-covered ground. Sharp grains of snow would fall onto his face, making it harder to breathe by the minute. And then, he would disappear into nothingness. Even if it’s just a temporary reprieve.
Buried between the lines of this pitiful story, covered by the snow-white blanks of the pages. Not worth ever reading about it.
Caught in his own rotten thoughts, the man didn’t immediately notice the subtle change in the view in front of him.
“■■■■ ■■■ ■■■.” “Y■■■re no■ ■■■.”
Now, it wasn’t just the snow. Syllables started to form in the air, glistening behind the window glass.
“Yo■’re not ■■m.” “You’re not ■im.” “You’re not him.” “You’re not him.” “You’re not him.”
Ruthless, cold words were now falling from the sky. His heartbeat quickened.
“Who the hell are you?”
He couldn’t take his eyes away from them, couldn’t stop himself from reading. Dreadful whispers followed the sight, chanting the words into his ears. Until they paralyzed his brain, struck his heart, tore at his very soul.
Hitting the window surface, the words weren’t melting, not like the snow particles accompanying them. He put one of his fingers onto the forming sentence, tracing the syllables. Fighting against the urge to disappear right then and there, he persevered, until—
“Look at what he did to his brother.”
Slipping from his fingers, the teacup shattered on the floor with a loud crack. Hot liquid splattered onto his feet, yet the expected sharp sting of pain never came. Maybe, he was simply too out of it to register it, or maybe, he’d lost the ability to feel pain a long time ago.
“Hyung? Are you okay?”
The whispering came to a stop. It was a person’s voice. A familiar voice. He doesn’t turn around to face him, doesn’t dare to.
“I heard a loud noise coming from your room… Ah, did you drop the teacup? It’s okay, I’ll clean it up for you,” that person says, making his way into the room.
The man’s heart squeezes painfully in his chest at the care in the other’s voice. The gentle touch of hands on his shoulders startles him, making him painfully aware of his own body again. Now, he feels a dull ache from his legs and the splitting headache assaulting his frontal lobe. As the grip on his shoulders tightens, he realizes he’s trembling from the sudden onslaught of sensation.
After a few seconds of getting used to the feeling, he takes a deep breath. And, finally summoning the courage to turn around, the man is met with a beautiful face framed by the short blonde hair. Pink lips slightly pursed, narrow eyes looking at him with worry. A truly stunning phenomenon.
“Let’s move you away from this mess, okay?” the person says, tugging the man along while making sure he’s not stepping on any shards. “Was the tea hot? Did you hurt yourself?”
“No, it’s all right,” is the first thing he says to the person this time, his voice betraying none of the turmoil he’s feeling inside.
When they get away from the window, the person carefully sits him onto the bed. For a moment, he just looks at him. It’s hard for the man to recognize the exact emotion in the intense gaze, but just for a second, he might have spotted a hint of sadness and desperation in those narrow eyes. It’s puzzling. Why would he feel upset for the man’s sake? He averts his eyes, unable to keep the eye contact with this confusing being for too long.
For the first time, he takes in the surrounding interior. Sickly yellow wallpaper adorned the walls, turning a nasty brown color from dampness in some spots. A few photographs were hung on the wall, blurry and faded with time, no longer possible to identify the image. The floor was covered with a garish carpet, shabby and frayed at the edges. A few empty alcohol bottles were scattered around. Aside from the bed and the bedside table, there was no other furniture. A single bed lamp lit the room. Beside it lay a kitchen knife.
It could’ve been a normal, old bedroom. But these spaces weren’t normal, they never could be. Small details like this — out of place items, written notes that didn't really make sense — betrayed their malicious nature. Almost, but not quite there. It was a good imitation of places he might’ve been familiar with, in his original world.
A sudden movement beside him disrupts his musings. The person now sits next to him on the bed.
“■■■ ■■■■■,” he says out of the blue. The words sound like static to the man’s ears. It’s not the first time this phenomenon occurred. “You need to wake up.”
“What do you m—”
His breath hitches, the incomplete question hung in the air, interrupted by the warm hands enveloping him in a hug. The person’s grip was firm around him, as if afraid the man could vanish from his grasp at any moment.
Really, wasn’t it the other way around, though?
Then, as the grip lightly slackens, he feels a warm breath against his ear.
“Please, wake up soon,” the words are followed with a soft kiss on his cheek.
He doesn’t get a chance to look at his face nor ask any questions, as his mind slips into the darkness once again, changing the scene.
The man had no name, no past and no future. His present was a precarious thing.
The first space, he remembers, was a hospital. That day, he woke up in a patient’s room, feeling nothing out of the ordinary. He wasn’t linked to any medical equipment, and found no casts or bandages wrapped around his body. He simply lay there, on the hospital bed, resting.
It was quiet. It was a single patient’s room with no medical staff currently present. After a few minutes, he stood up from the bed. Dressed in a simple pajamas, he put on a pair of slippers conveniently placed next to the bed. He approached the window first, opening the blinds. Immediately, the bright sunlight filled the entire room. Squinting his eyes, the man tried to make sense of the scene in front of him. He was quite high up. In fact, all he could see was the clear sky, while the ground was completely covered with some kind of white fog. It almost looked like the whole building was floating on a cloud.
While the scene looked a bit unusual, it wasn’t enough to alarm him. After all, he had more immediate things to worry about. He held no memories prior to that moment, no knowledge of the events leading him to that point. But for some reason, there was a single persistent thought in his head.
Someone’s been waiting for me, his mind was telling him. I must hurry and meet them.
Rather than calling the staff, he decided it’d be more efficient to go out himself and look for whoever he was supposed to meet.
Once he exited the room and stood in the hospital corridor, shivers ran down his spine. It was cold. Everything about this place felt cold, sterile, lifeless. Even the plants — which were supposed to create a more natural environment, reducing the stress and anxiety levels of the patients — were all artificial. The smell of disinfectant hung in the air, while the only thing he could hear was the buzzing sound of the fluorescent lights and his own footsteps, echoing off the walls.
Something about this place feels extremely off, the man thought, yet he could only continue to walk forward. He made it to a turn. Then another. And another. He’s lost count of how many turns he had taken and how many doors he had passed. Nothing changed, and there was no ending to this corridor. For a moment, he thought he'd been walking in circles, but that couldn’t be true as well. When he first walked out of his room, he took a glance at its number, reading 49. Not once had he encountered the room with the same number. None of them had any labels at all, for that matter.
He had tried opening various blank doors, but they wouldn’t budge. Pressing his ear, he couldn’t hear any sounds coming from those rooms either. No machine beeping, no patients’ crying. No hushed conversation between the staff, no shuffling of the nurses’ shoes. And no matter how far he went, he still hadn’t seen a single person.
The usually bustling place was completely and utterly empty.
And normally, you would expect to see signs with directions to different wards all around the hospital. Or at least, the occasional emergency evacuation map would be slapped onto the wall. Of course, he hadn’t found any of them. Only strange posters decorated the walls. The kind you would see in a hospital, some of them educational…
<5-MINUTE ANGEL WING CARE ROUTINE>
<HEO JUN’S 8 CAUSES OF SPIRIT DETERIORATION>
And some of them advertising…
<SAVE LIVES, DONATE STORIES>
<YOUR HEALTH IS IMPORTANT TO US. OUR STAFF IS TRAINED FOR ANY SCENARIO EMERGENCY>
None of them made any sense to the man. This building seemed more like a mystery maze than an actual public facility.
After what felt like hours of walking down the single corridor, he finally caught sight of something different at the end of it. There were no more turns, no other paths he could take. There was an elevator. With this, he could quickly get to the first floor. The exit must be located there.
Approaching the elevator, he pressed the call button. As he watched the little display of floor numbers gradually rising from “1”, he felt a growing sense of uneasiness.
The moment that number reached “49”, the elevator doors opened.
He’s never heard of such a high-rise hospital in South Korea before. Hell, if he wasn’t in his home country right now, he still doubted there could be such buildings.
Albeit hesitantly, he steps into the elevator car. The doors closed immediately behind him. When he looked at the control panel, his uneasiness turned into dread. Because, there were no buttons for the lower floors. Starting at 49, they ended at 100. Surely, that must’ve been some kind of mistake or a prank. He tried pressing the button for the lowest, 49th floor. The elevator didn’t start moving, simply opening its doors to the sickeningly familiar corridor outside. The man contemplated getting out right then and there. But he couldn’t give up all the progress he’s already made, nothing new would await him in that place. He could only move forward, even if it led him to hell.
He pressed the 100th floor button. The cabin started to move.
The ride was uncharacteristically long. Sure, ascending 51 floors wouldn't be the fastest process, but after what felt like 5 minutes, he started to count the passing seconds.
One, two, three…
He crossed his arms, nervously tapping his fingers.
Two hundred and forty-one, two hundred and forty-two…
Leaning against the cab wall, he stared at the floor indicator inside the elevator. It was blank.
Eight hundred and twenty-three, eight hundred and twenty-four…
At the count of “one thousand eight hundred and ninety-four” the elevator finally came to a stop. Getting onto his feet — the man deemed it not worth standing up anymore after he got to one thousand — he stepped out the open doors.
The sight that greeted him made him freeze in place for a moment. Of course, it was the same desolate corridor, now filled with slightly different details, but the strange thing was in the windows. It was clearly noon before he got onto the elevator, bright sunlight illuminating the space along with the harsh artificial lighting. Now, the outside was pitch dark. The seconds he’d counted should’ve amounted to around half an hour, so why does it look like several hours have passed?
Well, there’s no point in worrying too much about it. After all, this wasn’t even the strangest thing he’s encountered in this place. Walking through the new corridor, he noted all the new features that weren’t present on the 49th floor. For once, the doors here were all open. This floor must be the administrative department, he concluded, as the rooms were filled with office workstations. Unfortunately, he still hasn't discovered anything that could provide a clue on his current predicament.
That is, until he reached the largest office, which probably belonged to the CEO. As expected, the room was empty like any other. The desk was filled with stacks of papers. He scanned through the various business and economic reports that didn’t prove to be useful. Then, a certain medical report caught his eye.
Patient Information:
Name: ■■■ ■■■■■
Date of Birth: ■■■■/02/15
Patient ID: ■61■928
Date of Report: 2023/02/15
Referring Physician: Dr. Lee Seolhwa, MD
Speciality: ■■■■■■■■■■■■
Unfortunately, he couldn’t make out the full contents of the following paragraphs, as the words were mostly crossed out. There were only snippets of phrases like “comatose”, “full memory recovery” and “three years”. This was the only medical report found on the CEO’s desk, so it must’ve been important. And oddly enough, the doctor’s name on the paper seemed somehow familiar to the man. He carefully stored the new information in his memory.
The man finished perusing the documents, unable to gather any more valuable data. No details about this place, nothing that could pinpoint his location and direct him to the exit. He tried his luck by starting the computer, but the device wouldn’t turn on.
Once again, he found himself standing by a huge window. The scenery outside was completely black. Not a single star in sight, only the all-encompassing void. As if nothing else ever existed beyond these walls. In that instant, he felt like crumbling under the immense pressure of that thought. Turning away from the window, he made his way to the small leather sofa in the middle of the office. He lay down.
The exhaustion of walking around the dismal place the whole… day? finally caught up with him. He didn’t really know how much time had passed, not really. There were no clocks to confirm or deny his assumptions. Having no more energy to follow that line of thought, the man closed his eyes. He blacked out immediately.
Since then, he kept exploring the empty hospital by descending one floor each day. Approximately, anyway. The elevator seemed to be moving not only through space, but through time itself, because whenever he used it he found himself in a completely different time of the day. As he got closer to the initial 49th floor he felt the last bits of hope slipping away. He found nothing.
Maybe, he was already dead. That’s why he couldn’t remember his life from before. Maybe, he was stuck in a limbo or a purgatory. That would’ve certainly explained the unnatural state of this place.
With a solemn expression, he stepped out of the elevator on the 49th floor. The walk to the 49th room was surprisingly quick, with no maze of the corridors to roam through this time. Opening the door, he was greeted by the familiar scene. Taking a deep breath, he approached the window.
Just like the first time, it was sunny. But something about it felt warmer. It was already spring.
Grabbing onto the handle, he attempted to unlatch the window. It opened with ease. An ironic smirk crept onto his face. So, this was the way out all along. He climbed onto the windowsill, casually sliding his legs out. Breathing in the fresh air, the man felt oddly relieved. The action seemed familiar. Maybe, sometime in another life, he’d done something like this before. And now, the circle was finally closed.
Yet, contrary to his expectations — and any logical reasoning for that matter — the man didn’t die.
Be it for better or for worse, he didn’t remember hitting the ground, if there had been any at all. The harsh pull of gravity was absent, he felt weightless, the air kindly embracing his body. He didn’t remember the sensation of his bones crushing against the hard surface, broken beyond repair. Perhaps, that memory was for him of the other timeline to keep.
The next time he woke up, his reality had been reset. Now it was an empty classroom. A familiar setting, yet so uncanny in its familiarity. Various small writings and drawings littered the blackboard, the most noticeable one was: <HAPPY CHILDREN’S DAY, CLASS 2-B>. The man inspected his surroundings, making note of a few things lying on one of the student’s desks. Then, he left the classroom.
He didn’t spend too much time strolling through the empty school corridors. He didn’t care enough to do that. The windows didn’t open this time. So, he wouldn’t be able to leave the same way he had come here. Well, it’s not like he could really die falling from the 3rd floor of the building, is it?
Feeling a bit resigned, he goes back to the classroom 2-B.
Walking up to a certain desk, he takes a better look at the items left there. The first one was a small notebook. Flipping through pages, he figures out it’s a personal diary, as each entry followed a certain structure: date, the owner’s mood, and a longer text describing the events of the day. Unfortunately, only some letters of the owner’s name could be made out.
<N■ B■■I>
In a similar manner to the medical report in the hospital, most contents of the diary were crossed out. As for the parts of phrases he managed to decipher, they weren’t of any interest to him. Except for one sentence.
Today, I had an argument with Lee Jihye.
First, Lee Seolhwa. Now, Lee Jihye. For now, these names seemed to be the most important bits of information he had gathered. Maybe, they were the names of people he once knew. Their syllables seemed so familiar, feeling natural on his tongue. Settling into his brain, as if they had belonged there for a long time already.
The second one was a box cutter. An item so simple and straightforward in its usage. A bitter laugh escaped his lips. Now, he certainly knew what he was supposed to do.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t blanked out when he died that time. And all the times after.
Each cut, each stab, each last breath of air that he struggled to take, each sip of poison corroding his organs, each burn on his skin, melting away the flesh. He felt and remembered them all. But to him, it no longer mattered. Physical pain wasn’t the first thing on his mind when it came to passing these spaces. Killing himself to escape got old very quickly, making him numb to the whole act.
He moved through the empty spaces without thought, without purpose. Being completely alone for so long, he was rapidly losing the already scarce remnants of his former self. He’s been to many places by now. Places reminiscent of those from his previous life, his original world that he didn't remember.
A hospital, devoid of life it was supposed to preserve.
A school, forever stuck in a holiday.
A company office, no longer breathing the despair of its employees working to the bone.
A bar, with various poisonous liquids displayed on the shelves.
A subway station, eternally waiting for the next train to arrive.
A library, storing the books filled with fake memories.
An animal sanctuary, left with no traces of its previous inhabitants.
A military base, abandoned in its unnaturally peaceful state.
An insectarium, beautiful yet artificial.
A history museum, lost to the time just like its exhibits.
An esports arena, with a screaming <GAME OVER> on displays.
A bookstore, full of books written in otherworldly languages.
Eventually, his memory became foggy as he traversed area after area. His attitude grew more and more lackadaisical. He could no longer recall the exact number nor the kind of places he’s been to. But, he kept putting effort into memorizing each new name he encountered.
Lee Seolhwa, Lee Jihye, Yoo Mia, Lee Gilyoung, Shin Yooseung, Yoo Sangah, Han Myungoh, Gong Pildu, Kim Namwoon, Jang Hayoung, Lee Hyunsung, Jung Heewon, Han Sooyoung, Yoo Joonghyuk.
He collected those names like mementos, like they were the sole reason for his existence. It was the only thing that kept him going.
That is, until the movie theater.
The scene was nothing unusual. The lights weren’t on, as if in the middle of screening. The screen was blank, only the harsh white light illuminating the rows of empty seats. Climbing the stairs, he decided to check each row from the very top. There, on one of the seats in the middle lay an inconspicuous book. He took it into his hands, reading the title.
<THE ORIGIN OF MEMORY>
Author: Lee Hakhyun
From that moment forward, came the aberration.