Chapter 794 |
Han Yujin grew smaller in the distance.
Han Yuhyun simply sat there and watched him go. In his black eyes, that small back was reflected clearly as it forced itself to take one step, then another, before finally breaking into a run.
He was not afraid. He was not sad. He did not feel even the smallest trace of regret. He had never possessed such feelings in the first place, and besides, Han Yujin leaving was only natural.
The TV had been left on in front of the child who remained alone.
Through it, Han Yuhyun had picked up fragments of how human society worked. Han Yujin was still young. He needed guardians. Parents. Yet those guardians had been putting more and more distance between themselves and the child. Han Yuhyun found Han Yujin’s anxiety and conflict strange. For a young, weak individual, choosing the parents in order to survive was the obvious and correct choice.
So Han Yuhyun had expected this to happen.
It had simply happened later than he had anticipated.
Under the darkening sky, Han Yuhyun sat without expression. Calmly, he organized his situation based on what he had seen and heard.
‘They’re going to abandon Yuhyun.’
Han Yuhyun had been able to stay inside their home largely because of Han Yujin. Their child had been caring for and sheltering that unknown, ominous thing in their place. But if Han Yujin turned away, they no longer had any reason to keep Han Yuhyun close.
Han Yujin, an innocent and ordinary child, had accepted Han Yuhyun as his little brother. Watching that had left their parents feeling some faint guilt, not only toward Han Yujin, but toward Han Yuhyun as well.
Maybe the problem was with them, and that was why they could not accept this child. Yujin cherished him so much, so why did they feel only revulsion?
Because of thoughts like that, they had pretended not to notice. They had tried hard to look away. They had not laid hands on him directly.
But if even Han Yujin rejected Han Yuhyun, their guilt would disappear completely. They would be able to conclude that that thing was simply a monster.
‘They might kill me.’
To protect Han Yujin, who had finally become their good child again.
There was no way they would leave a monster in the same space as the precious child they had barely gotten back. These were parents who had already shown the irrational behavior of pushing away even an ordinary child. Lately, they had grown more hysterical as well.
Han Yuhyun thought calmly.
He needed a place to sleep and food to eat. Fortunately, the society he belonged to had places that protected young individuals without guardians.
Finding the house where Han Yujin lived would not be difficult. He had memorized the address and phone number. But provoking the parents would be dangerous for the current Han Yuhyun. So he would remain seated here. This place was not far from home, so even because of other people watching, the parents would search for him at least once. Once they realized Han Yuhyun could not find his own way back, they would most likely be relieved and try to abandon him somewhere far away.
That would be enough.
Han Yuhyun’s parents had reacted more sensitively because the thing they feared and shunned was their own child. By contrast, people who encountered him only briefly did not avoid Han Yuhyun much. Some even looked only at his appearance and called him cute. So if the staff at an orphanage or childcare facility were working out of obligation, even if they felt repulsed, it would probably end at neglect.
Han Yuhyun did not want much.
All he needed was to be provided with the supplies necessary for survival. He already had a vague premonition that once he grew safely, he would no longer need to become involved with humans.
He would burn alone, devour everything he touched, and gutter out alone.
That was how it would be.
Until Han Yujin called for him again.
“Yuhyun!”
Han Yujin ran.
Leaving his little brother behind had been hard. But once he had taken one step, then two, then three, and finally started running, it was not hard anymore.
If anything, his body felt light.
Both of his hands were free. Both of his feet could kick hard off the ground. He did not have to match his pace to his little brother’s. He did not have to hold a small hand tightly so they would not be separated.
He was free.
Then, all at once, he looked back.
The sky, which had been flushed with sunset, had turned dark before he realized it. The road stretching behind him was black and distant. The awkward darkness just before the streetlights came on had settled over everything like fog.
“…Yuhyun.”
The name slipped out without his meaning to say it. He could no longer see the bench where his little brother had been sitting. It was all black. Sky and ground alike. Fear hit him hard.
“…Hk.”
Han Yujin took a few steps backward. His shadow stretched long before him, thin as a line.
If he went back from here, there would be no turning back again.
He was still young. Because he was young, he felt it all the more clearly. To a child who had no other choice but home, no other choice but his parents, he understood what crossing that line would mean.
[It’s scary.]
Han Yujin’s thoughts leaked out. The twenty-six-year-old Han Yuhyun unconsciously took a step forward.
[…I’m scared.]
All of this was.
Han Yujin sniffled quietly.
Even so, he turned around.
Tak.
The streetlights came on. The glittering lights spread all at once along the road. They filled his wet eyes.
Han Yujin ran again.
This time, it did not feel light. He stumbled several times and nearly fell. Still, he ran. Far ahead, the bench came into view. The streetlight beside it had also turned on. Beneath the long, bright-yellow pool of light, his little brother sat waiting.
Those eyes, emotionless as a doll’s, found his older brother.
They widened slightly.
“Yuhyun!”
Han Yujin did not hesitate anymore.
He threw his arms around his little brother.
“I’m sorry, Yuhyun!”
For a while, Han Yuhyun said nothing.
He could not understand.
His brother was strange.
Truly strange.
“…Why?”
“Because Hyung left you all alone, because I left you here, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”
Han Yuhyun stared blankly at his older brother.
Why.
The first confusion of his life crashed over him. He felt dizzy. The breath warmed by crying felt hot against him.
“Let’s go… home.”
Han Yujin swallowed his tears and held out his hand. His face was red, but he smiled.
“Come home with Hyung.”
Home.
Han Yuhyun did not take the hand offered to him.
Han Yujin’s home was his parents’ home. It was a place where Han Yuhyun was not supposed to exist. Han Yujin had given up that house. A young individual had given up the nest essential to his survival.
That place was not Han Yuhyun’s home.
And now, it was no longer Han Yujin’s home either.
“Hyung… are you Yuhyun’s home?”
Han Yujin blinked, not understanding his words right away. At the movement, round tears rolled down his face.
“…Yeah. Hyung will be Yuhyun’s home.”
I don’t know.
I can’t understand this.
Even thinking that, Han Yuhyun took the hand held out to him.
His heart, which should not have been able to beat, pounded.
Han Yujin had given up Han Yujin and embraced Han Yuhyun instead.
Han Yuhyun felt that.
A fire no one could hold had been held in someone’s arms. He stepped into the space that had been carved empty for him, into the small home newly made for him, and was gathered in.
“Hyung…”
The twenty-six-year-old Han Yuhyun spoke, the word almost a lament.
He remembered that sensation from back then.
An emotion he should not have been able to feel had begun wrapping around him.
From that moment on, he had—
His older brother—
A small hand took another small hand.
Han Yuhyun rose from the bench. The two children tried to leave together.
Leaving behind the Han Yujin who had been scraped hollow to make room for Han Yuhyun.
It was only a memory of the past.
Even so, the twenty-six-year-old Han Yuhyun ran out through the fog.
The twenty-one-year-old Han Yuhyun stopped inside it.
He wanted his brother to erase him completely.
He wanted his brother to keep him until the very end.
“Stop, Hyung!”
If Hyung had not come back then.
At Han Yuhyun’s shout, Han Yujin turned his head. His round, widened eyes held the twenty-six-year-old Han Yuhyun.
“Yuhyun…?”
“Don’t hurt yourself anymore because of me.”
Han Yujin stared at Han Yuhyun for a moment. Then he gave a small, “Ah,” and smiled.
“This is… Right. It was then.”
He looked down at the young Han Yuhyun whose hand he was holding tightly.
“Our childhood.”
“…Hyung.”
“You were so cute back then, Yuhyun. After that day, you started showing emotion little by little too. Our parents softened a little because of it. Do you remember?”
It had only ever been toward Han Yujin, but Han Yuhyun had smiled and cried. At a glance, he almost seemed like an ordinary child. The inhuman strangeness he had been born with still remained, but even so, their parents stopped hurtling toward the extreme. They still wanted to pretend Han Yuhyun did not exist, but they accepted their situation and gave up in a comparatively gentle way.
“I don’t think it was bad. When I was little, I used to force myself to say it was okay, that our parents got along well, and just brush it off. But now I mean it.”
Perhaps because this was an old memory, or perhaps because his little brother was beside him, Han Yujin, still in the form of a child, kept speaking.
“I’ve been through a few things myself, you know. Looking back, I think that was the only way all four of us could survive.”
No one could ever call it an ideal family.
But the brothers’ parents were ordinary, weak people. They could not accept Han Yuhyun. If they had forced themselves to embrace him, things might have become even worse.
But they could not abandon Han Yuhyun either.
If Han Yuhyun had gone away, they might have been fine for a little while. But Han Yujin would never have forgotten that he abandoned his little brother, and their parents, too, would have been left with an unavoidable sense of guilt. The cracks would never have been mended, and Han Yuhyun, abandoned, would have disappeared alone.
“You were only born, Yuhyun. That’s all. And to me, you were just my cute little brother. It’s one of those things where it’s hard to say who was wrong and who was right. Honestly, the world has more things like that than anything else.”
So it’s okay.
The small hand reached out to the twenty-six-year-old Han Yuhyun too.
“Let’s go home, my little brother.”
“…But.”
Han Yuhyun could not bring himself to take that hand.
The fog surged in. The young Han Yujin and Han Yuhyun vanished before his eyes.
“I… to you, Hyung…”
“Get lost! Han Yuhyun!”
A sharp scream rang out.
Han Yujin shouted at Han Yuhyun. The twenty-six-year-old Han Yuhyun staggered. A memory he did not have flowed out before him.
“I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing.”
It was Seok Gimyeong.
By this point, he had somewhat noticed that Han Yuhyun was, in fact, trying to protect Han Yujin. He did not know the depth of that obsession, but unlike before, he had begun to pay protective attention to Han Yujin as well.
“Guild Leader Sesung is already practically overseas. Naturally, Han Yujin will end up leaving Korea as well. That will be safer for both of them. Haeyeon and Sesung’s overseas branch have no exchanges with each other anyway.”
In Korea, Kang Soyeong had also taken over as acting representative, so Han Yujin’s relationship with Seong Hyunjae had effectively been severed. If an overseas guild leader with no official or personal connection to Haeyeon took charge of Han Yujin, there would be less trouble. People in Korea might talk for a little while, and then Han Yujin would be forgotten.
‘What is this…’
In confusion, the twenty-six-year-old Han Yuhyun looked at his past self.
The memories that had disappeared were beginning to return to him as Han Yujin remembered them again.
That was right.
‘Hyung was…’
He had been involved with Guild Leader Sesung.
Seong Hyunjae had been so busy establishing his position overseas that even Han Yuhyun, the guild leader of Haeyeon, had no reason to run into him. Yet for some reason, he had suddenly begun showing interest in Han Yujin. At first, Han Yuhyun had not worried too much, because at least Chief Song Taewon had been with him. Seong Hyunjae’s interest often did not last long. Han Yuhyun had assumed that before much time passed, Guild Leader Sesung would leave Korea, either alone or with Song Taewon.
But even after Seong Hyunjae’s identity was exposed to Han Yujin, he continued approaching him.
“Hyung will not belong to any major guild.”
The Han Yuhyun in the memory answered coldly.
Even Seok Gimyeong could not be allowed to know that Han Yuhyun cherished Han Yujin beyond all else. There might also be someone in Haeyeon who had connections to beings beyond the world.
“It would also be fine for him to leave the country without an affiliation. If it’s a place where the Sesung Guild headquarters has been established, his safety will be guaranteed. In any case, Han Yujin will be more comfortable there than he is in Korea—”
“Hyung’s comfort is not important. He has to stay somewhere within my reach.”
Han Yuhyun cut him off.
At the sharp pressure that unconsciously leaked out, Seok Gimyeong flinched, his expression stiffening.
Their figures blurred.
Han Yuhyun was standing on a dark staircase. He climbed it without a single footstep, and the place felt both unfamiliar and familiar.
‘…Hyung’s place?’
The door was locked tightly.
But Han Yuhyun had the key, and he knew the passcode. Quietly, the door opened.
Han Yujin was sprawled in the narrow living room. The smell of alcohol hung in the air. Han Yuhyun looked down at Han Yujin.
Letting him go was the right thing to do.
He had to let him go.
But if he did, then—
The twenty-six-year-old Han Yuhyun clenched his fist.
Even then, in the end, he had been unable to let go.
Unable to let go, he had come all the way here.
“Han Yuhyun. Are you dead?”
Han Yujin’s voice drifted through the fog.
Rain was falling. Rainwater beat against the window, and Han Yujin opened his eyes.
It was the bedroom of his home at the Dodam Breeding Facility. With harsh, ragged breaths, he stared blankly down at his own hands.
“…Yuhyun.”
Both of his hands were trembling.
He had held him in those hands.
The sound of rain came through. Faintly, not completely blocked by the sturdy walls. Han Yujin curled in on himself. His insides burned. His throat burned. It was a heat that would not cool, a thirst that would not ease, even if he ran like a madman through the rain.
He could not even cry.
Everything he had forced down scraped through him like blades.
[My little brother]
[I have to go get him]
[Because of me]
[Why back then]
[Yuhyun]
[Han Yuhyun]
The sobs that never came out, the lament trapped inside him, leaked free.
The twenty-six-year-old Han Yuhyun gasped for breath he did not have.
Was it this one day?
No. It could not have been.
Among all the days Han Yujin had spent gnawing away at his own body to reach this point, how many nights had he spent like that?
“Stop!”
Han Yujin lifted his head.
Focus returned to his dazed eyes. He saw the twenty-six-year-old Han Yuhyun and smiled.
“…Hyung.”
“I found you.”
“…Not like this. Not like this!”
“Right. But Yuhyun.”
Han Yujin rose from the bed.
His pajamas changed. Behind him, a dragon’s roar rang out. The head of the enormous dragon, Diarma, was cut away. And there, in the center of it all, stood Han Yujin.
Han Yujin stood beneath a tree where snow was falling.
Two Han Yujins stood before the Lautitars.
Before the king of snakes stood Han Yujin, holding a white spear.
It had not been easy.
There had been many painful things.
“I was happy.”
Han Yujin gave a small shrug.
“Even after leaving you like that. I still had fun sometimes. I smiled, just like in the scenes I showed you.”
The memories within the fog changed.
It was a garden drenched in gentle sunlight. Han Yujin and Han Yuhyun were sitting together. In the sky above, Park Yerim chased after Blue, who was circling round and round.
“Chirp, no! Stop eating!”
“Hyung needs to eat. How could you forget lunch?”
“That’s right, Mister. I told you to call us when you’re busy, didn’t I? Playing with Blue counts as flight practice too, so it’s perfect~.”
Han Yuhyun spread the lunch boxes he had brought across the table. He urged Han Yujin to hurry and eat. Peace also went kyang and tapped Han Yujin with his front paws.
“The memories from before happened because of you, too. But these memories now happened because of you as well.”
Han Yujin gave him an awkward smile.
But it was unmistakably bright.
“This was the chance you gave me, Yuhyun. The time you gave me.”
Han Yujin was happy.
–TL Notes–
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