Chapter 268.2 |
“……”
Like before, Go Yeongeun-ssi didn’t answer for a while.
Then she suddenly started speaking.
“Do you remember? When I said I dropped out of med school.”
“……”
“It was kind of a stretch from the start. I lived in the countryside, and my family wasn’t well off. Tuition, living expenses, and after failing to get into the dorms, paying rent… it was all a burden.”
Her voice sounded disorganized, yet calm.
“Even with student loans, juggling part time work had its limits. Once you get started with major subjects, it’s basically impossible…”
“……”
……
“But then, of all times, that’s when it happened. When my relationship with my parents completely broke down.”
Ah.
“We fought, and we completely lost contact.”
She slightly hunched her shoulders.
“From then on, all support was cut off, and I guess I kind of lost my sense of purpose too. So I naturally changed majors. I was a bit… burned out.”
I listened silently.
“It’s nothing special, right? But…”
Her voice grew even smaller.
“It’s funny, but that’s why.”
“…Why what?”
“Why I joined the company.”
“……”
“I didn’t know how to reconnect with my family.”
That wasn’t just about wanting to track down relatives through something like a private investigator.
“I want to be on good terms again, but… I keep getting blocked right from the start.”
“……”
“If it grants any wish at all, I thought maybe I could wish for something like that too.”
And I know.
Go Yeongeun-ssi knows how to use a Wish Ticket ‘properly’.
She figured out a way to fulfill Jang Heowoon-ssi’s wish by proxy, so the same would apply to her own.
“When you handed the Wish Tickets to me… I thought about it.”
Her voice sinks.
“I didn’t want to go to another world where my wish was already fulfilled. I didn’t want to wake up and find that I never went to med school, or that I became a doctor and was living with my family. So…”
So.
“I made this kind of wish.”
“Give me a supernatural ability to gather information about my family.”
…!!
“If I could get in touch with them through that, I thought I could understand the situation and try to reconcile.”
A wish asking for a specific ability for herself.
‘It’s not excessive.’
Go Yeongeun-ssi calculated a wish that applied only to her personally, to a frighteningly precise degree.
‘Under normal circumstances, this should’ve worked. No matter what.’
But.
“When I made the wish and opened my eyes…”
……
“I woke up here.”
In this bizarre subway station.
Beneath Sekwang Special Metropolitan City.
“And the moment I woke up, I realized something. I felt a kind of… doubt.”
“Where did I live again?”
“Isn’t that strange? Who even introduces themselves as being from the countryside without naming the region. You usually know exactly where you’re from. But I’d never even had that question. And with my family too…”
She gulps.
“I couldn’t remember why we stopped contacting each other.”
A chill runs through me.
“It’s just this vague feeling of ‘we fell out irreparably and cut off contact’. And this formless resignation and aversion, like I’ll never be able to contact them again…”
At that moment, I understood.
“What do you think this is?”
Go Yeongeun-ssi was originally from Sekwang City.
When the annihilation-sanctioned supernatural disaster occurred and the area was sealed, while living on her own in Seoul, she alone was left stranded in reality.
And the Wish Ticket created an environment where her wish, ‘the ability to hear news of her family’, could manifest.
By pushing her inside the sealed zone.
And.
“I gained a strange ability to perceive rumors circulating in the area.”
And her family members were all…
“But then, but then I’ve never heard any news about my family.”
……
“Maybe that’s only natural. This is inside a ghost story, right? In a place like this, how would I even find news about my family. T-That’s how it is, right…?”
“……”
“I thought the Wish Ticket didn’t work. Or that Director Ho scammed me. That has to be it, right?”
Even if I couldn’t truly agree, I wanted to say yes.
I tried to.
“…Mr. Roe Deer?”
But no words came out.
“Mr. Roe Deer!”
I slumped against the fire hose cabinet wall.
There’s no strength in my limbs. Like something’s gone wrong with my nervous system…
‘Is this the end.’
It’s ending now.
Then…
The train is approaching.
“Can you hear it?”
I think Go Yeongeun-ssi is grabbing my shoulder.
She’s shaking.
“The train! The train’s coming in. That’s the one we need to take. This one, this one is my shelter. We just need to get there, please…”
It’s getting harder and harder to respond.
Passengers are requested to board safely and observe proper etiquette.
Light pours in. It seems the fire hose cabinet has been opened.
I feel Go Yeongeun-ssi trying to drag me out.
“That train. G1572. If we just get on that one, just that one…”
Outside the cabinet, it seems like she’s trying to carry me again.
But I did everything I could to stop her.
“…Mr. Roe Deer?”
There’s no strength in my hand, so it barely means anything. I only manage to rest my hand weakly on her arm.
I try to speak with my lips.
‘Don’t worry.’
“What…”
‘I’ll be back again.’
At the end, even my mouth doesn’t move anymore.
“Mr. Roe Deer, Mr. Roe—”
Along with the thunderous roar of the arriving train.
I died.
* * *I opened my eyes.
“You’re awake, Roe Deer-nim!”
Ho Yoowon’s voice.
“Everyone was about ready to kill me because you wouldn’t wake up. It was terrifying. How am I supposed to know Roe Deer-nim’s personal circumstances…”
Plague-stricken eyes looking down at me.
“But I am curious.”
Her lips curve into a smile.
“You rescued the person you came to rescue, but don’t you still have lingering attachments to Sekwang Special Metropolitan City?”
……
“Have you found a reason to go back in?”
Fuck.
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