Chapter 233.2 |
Jang Heowoon grew up in a facility of the Church of the Luminous Unknown.
And he joined Daydream Inc. in order to save the fellow sect members he grew up with… the orphans of the facility whom he called ‘family’, who had become subjects of those same rituals.
‘……’
By this point, it became clear how Lee Heowoon of the Cheerful Research Institute was connected.
‘Heowoon was the target of the ritual.’
Under the circumstance that the ‘Lover of Paradise’ is a real, existing person, an attempt may be made to usurp the narrative of that individual through the ritual process of imitating that person.
Thus, it is an act of following the doctrine of the Church of the Luminous Unknown, which seeks to become a meaningful existence in this world.
‘Is it that they raised someone in order to imitate Lee Heowoon of the Cheerful Research Institute, to steal that researcher’s role?’
Stories not written in the <Dark Exploration Records>, details I did not know, reached me through the words of those around me.
[Ah, to imitate every twist of someone’s life, to fashion a role that would produce a story resembling theirs…]
[As if inheriting the spirit of industrial capitalism, they treat stories like machine parts, carving and processing them.]
[As though running them through the same process could yield identical products!]
And one of those products now stood before us.
A replica fashioned after ‘Lee Heowoon’.
Kim Heowoon lowered his head.
“Pardon, um. Actually, it was a lie when I said I only came here to introduce myself, sir.”
……
“I came to make an earnest plea of you, Mr. Employee.”
He spoke with extreme politeness.
An absurd request.
“Just as you took in Jang Heowoon, could you take all of us in as well?”
…!!
“We can tell. Because we are the same ‘Heowoon’. …Isn’t Jang Heowoon happy now under your care, Mr. Employee?”
My head began to ache.
Reason for the request
“…There is nowhere else we can return to.”
His voice lowered.
“The facility we were in burned down, and as for the other Paradise of Love shelters… we cannot go there. ……We cannot live as we did before.”
There was no need to ask why.
‘The fire.’
That fire had also been part of the ritual imitating the narrative of the Cheerful Research Institute researcher….
And from that fire, surviving with the story of ‘having lived through a great fire at one’s facility’, Jang Heowoon was the finished product.
But this one… was among those culled and used as material in the process.
“Please, I implore you, grant us the same name[1] that Jang Heowoon received.”
……
“Then, we too can exist as the same person. Because that is how we were raised!”
His voice grew desperate.
“…Even the fact that Jang Heowoon entered first feels meaningful, doesn’t it? As if, being the eldest, the firstborn, he received the surname ‘Jang’. Then we could continue…”
I raised my hand.
Kim Heowoon hastily bowed his head, adopting a posture as if expecting my hand to reach him… but.
From my hand, smoke rose.
Rejected
“…Pardon?”
Alternative choices
► Depart from Lee Heowoon’s life
► Live your own life
“Pardon? But… I…”
A faint chuckle slipped from Ho Yoowon beside the elevator, as though he’d just heard the most absurd of proposals.
And then.
“I’ve already received the Mimicry Sect’s authority, that’s why, well, what I did to enter this place… If it continues like this, I won’t be able to escape—”
“You became unhappy, didn’t you?”
Slash.
Kim Heowoon was cut in two.
Before my eyes, his bisected body tilted, the upper half toppling to the floor with a wet splatter.
Blood spread.
Blood soaked the tips of my feet.
And thus, for the first time, I was able to see Kim Heowoon’s face.
Because in dying, he was no longer human.
The dead face of a man in his twenties, bearing a somewhat dark and gentle impression, one quite resembling Jang Heowoon-ssi, was frozen, stained with expectation and despair….
“Now you’ll be happy forever. Congratulations.”
And then I realized.
Wish Tickets are personally omnipotent.
That is why, in the process of Jang Heowoon-ssi’s wish being fulfilled, instead of Go Yeongeun-ssi or Jang Heowoon-ssi themselves being transferred to another world, the fact that as many as seven people had simply come back alive made it clear.
This wish had been judged as one incapable of greatly affecting the world in the first place.
Because.
—They would soon die again.
“Hello?”
I lifted my head.
Drenched in Kim Heowoon’s blood, the one smiling so serenely was a delicate-looking adolescent girl.
This kid was even wearing a ragged, old-fashioned school uniform.
But with the emergency broadcast of the company beginning to blare, her true identity began to dawn on me…
[Evacuation alert. High-risk intruder containment failed. Evacuation alert. High-risk intruder containment failed. Evacuation alert. High-risk intruder containment failed…]
…So I thought.
‘Kim Heowoon said he entered by imitation.’
That he had received the Mimicry Sect’s authority.
But that wasn’t something one could obtain unless raised in the ritual facilities of the Church of the Luminous Unknown’s outer cults disguised as new religions….
Which meant only one thing.
He’d had help from someone.
“Uwaah, you look kind of cool.”
One who had likely swallowed dozens of fragments of the Sacred Law scriptures, someone who had fanatically and willingly become closer to a ghost story than a human.
A follower of Ireum-nim.
“Do you, by any chance, know Ireum-nim?”
A high-ranking member of the Church of the Luminous Unknown stood before me.
And from her words and actions, I could infer… a denomination of the church.
Not the Mimicry Sect. This was…
Happy Ending Sect
A sect within the Church of the Luminous Unknown that pursues the most altruistic values. To those whom Ireum-nim does not look upon, to those who have no chance of surviving the end, to those considered without meaning in this world, the sect strives to bring the gift of a true happy ending.
And the path is simple. Death.
For the dead can never again fall into unhappiness.
“Even if you don’t know, that’s alright. Hm, fox and dragon, both so cool… let’s go together.”
The elevator we rode in…
…twisted.
“Let us all serve Ireum-nim together.”
Note/s:
[1] Don’t forget, Name = Ireum ↵
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