Chapter 163 |
While Lee Jaehun was successfully challenging his preconceived notions, Ha Sungyoon was walking towards the statue, preparing himself mentally to share his story with Jung Inho. It took him a considerable amount of time before he broached the main subject.
After a long silence, Ha Sungyoon finally began.
“…I may have mentioned this before. My friend told me about this world.”
“Yes, I remember. You mentioned it just now.”
“Through a certain incident, I realized that what I desired was within the otherworld.”
Ha Sungyoon touched his earlobe again, and Jung Inho thought it looked like a button he pressed to urge or encourage himself.
“It’s difficult to explain exactly what that incident was.”
Jung Inho thought that was understandable. Ha Sungyoon always hovered around their group without seeming to, so it was surprising and fascinating to Jung Inho, who knew the previous timeline, that he was finally opening up.
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“So, to get to the point, I needed to come to the otherworld. I asked my friend for advice on what to do.”
“Did your friend tell you how to enter the otherworld?”
“Surprisingly, yes. He knew how to enter. He had entered the otherworld in the same way I did.”
“… …”
“All I had to do was understand.”
The explanation wasn’t convincing. Jung Inho looked at him, and the usual smile was gone from his composed face. Jung Inho thought the strange weariness shadowing his face was somewhat similar to Manager Lee Jaehun’s.
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“…You thought it was nonsense, didn’t you?”
“Do you want me to offer you false modesty?”
“Good heavens, no. I can’t stand the feigned humility and hypocrisy from a shady friend who knows everything. I’ve seen enough of that at the hospital.”
Ha Sungyoon, muttering uncharacteristically foolish words, continued,
“Understanding the otherworld is different from learning a mathematical formula or counting fruits. If anything, it’s closer to empathizing with someone’s emotions.”
“Then with whom did you empathize, Doctor?”
“With my friend, and perhaps, with the otherworld itself.”
“…Aha.”
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“That’s what I think.”
Ha Sungyoon’s eyes reddened again. It was as if he had briefly dipped his eyes in beautiful jewels or a terrible curse, a strange sight that Jung Inho couldn’t quite describe.
His gaze was fixed on empty space.
“Otherwise, there’s no way someone who hasn’t been to the otherworld could face ‘them’.”
“What do you mean by ‘them’?”
“Monsters.”
“… …”
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“Green algae, crows, dogs, and things you commonly see in everyday life, like vines and flowers…”
Muttering like a madman, he finally blurted out,
“And people.”
“…Are those monsters too?”
“They looked like mannequins.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, their appearance was very similar to mannequins… Nothing special.”
Ha Sungyoon, touching his throat with one hand and tracing the path to the statue with his eyes, spoke in a hazy tone.
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“It’s an absurd and horrifying story, Jung Inho, but even after we leave the other world, we’ll eventually have to face monsters. We have to struggle to survive against them.”
“…It’s a horrifying story indeed.”
“I talked with my friend every day. As I tried to understand and step in, that’s what happened. I’ve put in a lot of effort to survive the monsters that suddenly appear in reality. Thanks to that, I think I was able to adapt relatively easily when I actually fell into this place…”
“… …”
“But until that happened, I couldn’t perform surgery on even a single patient.”
Jung Inho nodded unconsciously.
‘Because he would have killed even the patients he could save.’
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He didn’t know how or in what form Ha Sungyoon had seen monsters outside of the otherworld, but one thing was certain: these monsters alone could drive a person insane. There was no way he could enter an operating room, which demanded utmost precision, while seeing and feeling such things.
Glancing at Jung Inho, who was nodding, Ha Sungyoon continued.
“In the end, I moved to a position where there wouldn’t be any major problems. For the time being, I’ve stepped away from major surgeries and focused on seeing patients and providing simple treatments.”
“Are doctors usually allowed to change positions so easily?”
“Haha, it was an abuse of power. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I used the director’s influence.”
His voice cracked slightly.
“He has a connection with my parents.”
“… …”
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Jung Inho wondered if the ‘purpose’ Ha Sungyoon couldn’t talk about was related to his parents. Even if he didn’t ask, the question lingered.
“Also, my reputation isn’t that bad… and I was qualified. I didn’t want to lose my dexterity, so I couldn’t bring myself to leave the hospital completely. In a way, I’m disqualified as a doctor.”
“A flawed doctor stubbornly remaining at the hospital… Indeed.”
“But I was confident.”
“… …”
Jung Inho fell silent at the obsession in his voice.
“I’m meaningless if I’m not a doctor, Mr. Jung Inho.”
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“…Is that so?”
He could understand. Perhaps Jung Inho, too, was meaningless if he wasn’t a ‘good person’.
“…Well, the bottom line is… I’m here in the otherworld. I have a notebook where I wrote down the stories my friend told me. How about it? Would you like to see it?”
“Ah, I’d like to take a closer look later. It sounds like a game strategy guide, so it might be helpful…”
“That’s also true.”
Ha Sungyoon let out an empty laugh.
“There are things I want to know here, and I wasn’t sure I could find them just by being thrown into this place. What difference would a strategy guide or a small scalpel make? In fact, if it weren’t for the Manager, I would have already dⁱㅌd at the flower shop.”
“… …”
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“So I asked my friend if there was anything unrealistic that could help me achieve what I wanted.”
“And?”
“There was.”
He murmured.
“There was such an unbelievable thing…”
His voice was filled with palpable skepticism.
Was this the voice of a born scientist witnessing a divine miracle? It seemed like a reaction of, ‘What have I been doing all this time?’ Or perhaps, ‘What kind of crazy world have I stepped into?’ He seemed to realize that entering the otherworld was a crazy thing to do.
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“Are you familiar with the forbidden fruit, Mr. Jung Inho?”
“…I know it grants knowledge of good and evil, and that eating it leads to sin.”
“You know the key points.”
He gave a short laugh and added,
“God says, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil…’”
“… …”
“‘For when you eat from it you will certainly dⁱㅌ.’”
“You memorized that too?”
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Jung Inho looked at Ha Sungyoon with a strange expression, and he, with his usual smile restored, looked back. Jung Inho suddenly felt a sense of unease at the amusement in his eyes.
“I was raised Catholic. A religious household.”
“Aha, I see.”
“Good and evil existed even before the forbidden fruit. Sin also existed. So, the sin that humans committed after eating the forbidden fruit was not simply…”
Ha Sungyoon looked up.
“…but rather, it means that they judged good and evil on their own, apart from His wisdom, and their relationship with the most righteous foundation was broken.”
“Can you summarize?”
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“I thought it was quite a profound story, wasn’t it?”
“I’m not religious.”
“I figured as much.”
Ha Sungyoon lowered his gaze from the pure white sky and the leaves that obscured it. Jung Inho also looked up at his gesture but found nothing, only feeling a sense of unease before turning away.
Meanwhile, the doctor continued.
“Receiving the ‘forbidden fruit’ leads to sin. The sin of arbitrarily breaking the rules of this world, defining good and evil by one’s own standards, and disrupting the fundamental order. Such a sin manifests in some way through the actions of the one who receives the fruit…”
His expression was troubled.
“Perhaps the murder I committed falls under the same context. I must have judged him to be evil and committed the sin of murder, something a human shouldn’t do.”
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“Then what changes?”
“You can never go back. That’s what I was told.”
“… …”
“So, while you might gain the ability to know what you desire… you won’t even know whether it’s true or false.”
“…Do you lose your judgment?”
“If I had to compare it to something, it might be similar to schizophrenia.”
Ha Sungyoon’s face remained impassive despite uttering such chilling words.
“To summarize, upon receiving the forbidden fruit, one inherits one of the five senses in some form. Regardless of what it is, the recipient cannot control the ability, and it constantly reveals what they ‘desire.’”
“… …”
“Did I say I changed my eyes? Then I constantly have to perceive two, or even more, fields of vision simultaneously. But I can’t fully trust this world either, so I’ll constantly doubt and worry. Within that crumbling judgment, you lose the ability to distinguish between truth and falsehood.”
“…Then what if you don’t commit a sin? If you don’t kill Song Inmyeong, or anyone else, wouldn’t it be possible to prevent your judgment from deteriorating to the level of schizophrenia?”
“It seems you misunderstood. Simply eating the forbidden fruit is enough to commit a sin. The phrase ‘that sin manifests in some way’ means… that sin begets another sin.”
“… …”
“Of course, if you do nothing after committing the sin of ‘eating the forbidden fruit’, your mind might not deteriorate further, but well… humans inevitably commit sins without even realizing it while they’re alive. Especially in this other world, it’s impossible to distinguish what constitutes a sin. Eventually, you’ll go insane and commit another sin. It’s unavoidable.”
“…Then isn’t it counterproductive?”
“No.”
His voice was firm.
Ha Sungyoon’s crimson gaze, just like the ‘Ha Sungyoon’ of the previous timeline, fixated on Jung Inho. The gentle smile didn’t waver.
“If I just abandon myself, as I said, I gain the qualification and power to disrupt the world’s fundamental order, something no one else can touch.”
“…How important is that?”
“At least I’ll be able to obtain what I desire.”
“… …”
“If possible…”
He muttered,
“I want to stop this world.”
“…This place?”
“The name ‘forbidden fruit’ comes from the history of this world. I heard it from my friend, who heard it from another survivor who is now deceased. The otherworld has been constantly changing along with reality, hasn’t it? Filled with utterly unreal beings and concepts…”
“What’s the conclusion?”
“Do you think there’s a God in this place?”
“… …”
“If there is a God,”
His voice was filled with hatred.
“Why did He have to kill my people?”
Jung Inho instinctively realized that the ‘my people’ Ha Sungyoon mentioned was his unspoken purpose. It was a hunch based purely on intuition, without any concrete evidence.
Of course, even Jung Inho didn’t know what that purpose was, but still…
‘I have more to tell the Manager.’
That was his only thought.
He didn’t want to waste any more energy empathizing with others.
“…If I receive the forbidden fruit and start to go crazy, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to deal with it yourselves.”
“You’re becoming more brazen by the day.”
“How could I ever be more brazen than my dear patient? Oh dear, to act so contrary with a perfectly healthy doctor right in front of you…”
“I have nothing to say to that.”
“It won’t be a big deal. Whether I do this or not, as long as I can’t live as a doctor, I’ll eventually go crazy. If that’s going to happen anyway, I might as well gain something in the process.”
They arrived at the pure white space, so white that Jung Inho frowned.
“…I’m confident that I’ll be of help to you all.”
Ha Sungyoon had already reached the statue.
Jung Inho knew Ha Sungyoon wouldn’t stop even if he intervened. Even if he could, he didn’t have the energy left. He was also partly persuaded by Ha Sungyoon’s words. If he was going to go crazy anyway, wouldn’t it be better to gain something first?
Gazing at the gleaming statue, Ha Sungyoon spoke without turning around.
“…Did you know?”
“Know what?”
“This statue is just a shell. The real body is in the small lake. That monster hates humans so much that it can’t even bear to look at them…”
“… …”
“So it’s said that it fled into the water.”
Jung Inho felt a sense of incongruity.
Ha Sungyoon seemed like he didn’t even know what he was saying.
“Isn’t that interesting?”
Jung Inho couldn’t understand what he meant.