Novelist Running Through Time

Novelist Running Through Time

TL: KSD

The memories of that day are not vivid.

I want to interpret that as a sign of how much I was engulfed in confusion and pain.

Because it's too miserable to admit that I unconsciously tried to forget such a horrible memory for the sake of self-protection.

But this isn't a horrible memory, nor is it one I can forget.

It's something I must bear forever,

It's karma-

'This isn't… us breaking up.'

'…'

'You're abandoning me.'

EP 11 – Evening Bell

"Huhk…!"

Like someone jolted awake from a nightmare, I kicked off the blanket. My whole body was drenched in cold sweat. It was freezing.

I tried to calm my heart, which was pounding as if it would explode, with deep, rough breaths, barely managing to anchor my existence in reality.

"Heuh… Heuheuu…"

Lately, it was always like this.

My sleep was haunted.

But the scariest thing about this nightmare is that it's not a 'dream', it's a 'memory'.

And you can't escape from memories. I'm having nightmares even when I'm awake.

Like someone escaping from memories, I would fall asleep, and like someone waking from a nightmare, I would awaken.

But I could never escape.

"Haa…"

I barely collected my senses and composed both body and mind. I got by with a boiled egg and coffee for breakfast and opened the window. The sky was teal.

That teal aurora that cuts across the border between bright yellow morning and navy blue dawn was my favorite color of the sky.

But even that beauty couldn't soothe my heart. Because my insides were filled with things too pitch black for that teal to seep into.

That darkness wasn't some acute affliction that emerged overnight; it was darkness that had steadily piled up in the deepest parts of my heart for over ten years.

Gu Yu-na merely drew out that darkness.

In the end, it was all just the darkness within my own heart.

* * *

If asked to specify what that darkness was, I could only answer that it was the commonplace darkness every human inevitably carries.

Of course, due to my unfortunate fate, I had more darkness than most. Wasn't mine a life abandoned by my parents and scorned by my peers?

But that was something decided before I was even born.

I can say with certainty, it wasn't my fault.

That's a sorrow I could release by writing it into a novel or something like that.

But Gu Yu-na's case was different.

Gu Yu-na was my only friend, my companion, and perhaps someone who could have become family.

To abandon such a benefactor for something as trivial as money or social status was purely my own sin.

'This isn't… us breaking up.'

Yes, it wasn't breaking up.

'You're abandoning me.'

I was the one who abandoned Gu Yu-na.

Since then, I've never spoken to Gu Yu-na again. I was thrown beyond the flow of time, unforgiven.

And yet Gu Yu-na, the one I had abandoned, now approaches me with an untainted, pure expression and says she wants to date again.

'Do you want to go out with me?'

The moment I saw that crimson blush, flushed with the fever of love…

I wanted to die.

I really wanted to go somewhere where no one else was and disappear without anyone in the world knowing.

That's what Gu Yu-na's affection, which had returned to me, felt like.

I felt like a criminal seducing a innocent girl who knew nothing.

Are you kidding me?

After doing such a terrible thing to this girl, to Gu Yu-na as a person.

And because I regretted it, because I missed that affection, I lingered around pretending to be a mentor,

And now, in the end, trying to receive her love again?

"Haa…"

No.

This is something that must never happen.

For me to be with Gu Yu-na again would be like a murderer marrying their victim.

It's like a hideous adult wearing the skin of a boy touching a girl who hasn't even shed her childish innocence.

I've never resented the one who threw me into this river of time more than now.

To be thrown into the past, never to be forgiven by Gu Yu-na again and…

"Ah."

This stupid bastard only then realized the root of all evil.

Who was it that made it so I could never be forgiven for the sin I committed against Gu Yu-na?

Who was it that threw me beyond the bounds of time?

No.

It was me who killed the person named Moon In-seop.

In the end, everything was my fault.

Not being forgiven by Gu Yu-na, and approaching her without being forgiven…

All of it was me.

It was around that time that I decided to return to the place where I had died.

* * *

Youth rental housing is like a detention center where poor young people are packed in. Convincing one of those impoverished youths with money wasn't hard.

Because I had no money, no social status, simply born without anything like that, I had torn apart the heart of the person I loved the most…

And yet, didn't this cruel trick of time grant me undeserved wealth and fame?

This kind of affluence came to me far too late, a burden rather than a blessing.

But to someone living in youth rental housing, it arrived like a treasure at a most desperate time.

– I can't offer you a lot…

– No, no! It's more than enough! Thank you!

– Then may I use the house?

– Please, use it! Feel free to!

With the generous understanding of the tenant, or rather the subtenant of the leased room, I was finally able to return to the house I once lived in, or the house I would come to live in.

The place where everything ended, and everything began.

The last house I lived in.

I had returned there.

Before my mind could think, my hand moved first. It wasn't my brain but my hand that remembered where the light switch was.

Click, when I turned on the light, it flickered once or twice before illuminating the dreary house. I looked around with deep emotion.

Thanks to the tenant faithfully following my request to clear out all belongings, the familiar youth rental housing was now completely empty.

And so, it became nearly identical to the place I had once lived in.

"Ah…!"

I finally felt as if I had escaped from the boy's body.

It felt like I had returned to the literature student who once lived locked in that room, before being thrown to the other side of time.

I had escaped the curse of time.

My muddled mind, the pain that stabbed at my heart, both seemed a little lighter.

As if nothing had ever happened no suicide, no Gu Yu-na, no regression,

I quietly crawled into the corner of the room and curled up to sleep.

"Just a moment, just resting for a bit…"

Like that, I made excuses to myself and took a brief rest.

Unaware that "a bit" would turn into six months.

* * *

"So basically, Moon In fell into demonic deviation because of Gu Yu-na's <Punishment by Confession>, right?"

Min Hyo-chan, whose pink hair dye was starting to fade and now looked odd, summarized the situation in his own way.

But people looked at Min Hyo-chan as if they were looking at someone whose mind, not hair, was strange.

Kim Byul clicked her tongue, Gu Yu-na gave a stern look, and Min Hyo-min, who had the most right to treat Min Hyo-chan however she pleased, displayed disgust and contempt freely on her face.

Surrounded by stares, Min Hyo-chan flustered and looked around.

"What! Why! What!"

Gu Yu-na's number one disciple, Min Hyo-min, stepped forward to punish the wicked one who had defiled the honor of her sect and master.

"If you don't know, then just shut up!"

Smack-!

With an S-class idol Benivis Min Hyo-min's slap to the back, the C-class flop idol Rapid Boys' Min Hyo-chan sank. This was the strict discipline of Baekhak Entertainment.

Now that the fool who spoke nonsense without knowing his place had been punished, the meeting returned to square one.

The second president of the Popular Culture and Arts Research Club, Kim Byul, declared.

"Guys. This is not the time for this. Right now…"

Popular Culture and Arts Research Club.

The 1st Emergency Response Committee.

The first agenda item…

"We have to drag Moon In out of his house."

Was <Getting the Delinquent Student to Attend School>.

But like attracts like, as the saying goes. Min Hyo-chan, with his pink-dyed hair and earrings that made him look like a delinquent student, defended another delinquent student.

"I mean, like… isn't it okay if he doesn't come to school?"

Min Hyo-min replied instantly.

"What!"

"Ah, don't hit me, just listen for a second!"

Min Hyo-chan pushed Min Hyo-min's face away as he continued speaking.

"Honestly, does Moon In even have a reason to go to school? Compulsory education's already over, there's nothing to learn at Baekhak Arts High anyway… I think it'd be fine to just support him if he wants to stay home and write."

He pointed at his younger sister, who was glaring at him with a sulky face.

"Didn't the company also pressure Min Hyo-min not to go to high school and just drop out? For minor celebrities, it's enough to attend up to middle school. There's no need to make such a big deal about it…"

Kim Byul's icy voice cut off Min Hyo-chan's words.

"Are you really trying to lecture me on the physiological needs of 'underage celebrities' right now?"

"Yes, ma'am. I'll shut up now…"

Shriveling under Kim Byul's sharp glare, Min Hyo-chan instantly deflated.

Kim Byul, reflecting on her own overly harsh tone, softened a little and explained the situation in a more measured voice.

"If Moon In were just staying home to write, I wouldn't have called you all here like this. But it seems like things are worse than we thought."

"How bad are we talking?"

Kim Byul hesitated for a moment, then confessed.

"Moon In-seop has practically become a shut-in."

"…!!!"

Only then did Min Hyo-chan grasp the gravity of the situation, his expression stiffened, and even Gu Yu-na's brow twitched.

But among them, the coldest and most rational, Min Hyo-min, only gave a customary worried expression as she pointed out the facts.

"Oh no… that's concerning. But what can we really do to help? Mental health issues aren't something you can interfere with…"

In Min Hyo-min's view, in situations like this, it was best to leave the person alone. This was a professional opinion born from experience dealing with mentally broken fellow idols, getting involved always led to failure.

But Kim Byul, with even more experience, had seen firsthand how far mental struggles could drag a celebrity down, and had felt it herself.

"If you're struggling mentally, you should go to a hospital. Staying holed up at home doesn't help anything. That's just escapism."

"Ah…!"

Kim Byul hadn't gathered the club members to create a rolling paper of encouragement and fold a thousand paper cranes as a gift for the depressed Moon In.

As the second president of the Popular Culture and Arts Research Club, her purpose was far more direct and clear.

"Drag Moon In out of his house and throw him into the Baekhak Entertainment's psychiatric counseling room."

"…!!!"

"If persuasion doesn't work, we'll use force!"

No room for questions or answers!

Under that powerful leadership, the club members found themselves nodding instinctively. Even Min Hyo-chan, who thought this was a bit overboard, bowed under the pressure and nodded. Perhaps because she once filmed a gun action scene on horseback in Manchuria, once she started going all out, she was like Genghis Khan himself.

Even Gu Yu-na, with her nomadic cruelty and barbarism, joined in.

"We already know the address… As long as we drag him outside, it should be fine."

"Right? Right?"

"Yes. And I don't think subduing him will be all that hard…"

Min Hyo-chan looked seriously at his deranged friends planning an actual kidnapping and wondered how on earth he ended up in this group, reflecting on his life choices.

But Min Hyo-chan was, after all, a hot-blooded high schooler.

It was the perfect age to be tempted by rebellion and crime.

"…This punk thinks he can skip school? Let's show him some discipline."

"That's right! That's right!"

Min Hyo-min, who was looking for some excitement to break the monotony of the entertainment world, also grinned brightly as she agreed to this outrageous kidnapping plot.

If Baek Seung-won, the CEO who truly cared about the moral education of idols, had seen this, he would have wept blood.

At that moment, what interrupted the madness of the Popular Culture and Arts Research Club trying to kidnap its first president was a clear, polite knocking sound.

Knock knock knock.

Apparently, they did understand kidnapping was a crime, because these budding delinquents all jumped and stared at the sliding door of the classroom.

Too stunned to answer, the visitor hesitantly opened the door and greeted them with an awkward voice.

"Is anyone there…?"

"Who are you?"

"Ah, hello, I'm hoping to join the club…"

The polite, friendly-looking boy who entered with a shy smile was none other than the top brain produced by New Light Spring Orphanage,

Moon Ji-seop.

"Is this… the club that In-seop's in?"

*****