Melancholy
Chapter 29: Melancholy
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I sat at the edge of the rooftop bar, the wind trying and failing to push the smell of alcohol and perfume away.
The drink wasn’t good.
The view made up for it.
The past few days have been peaceful.
“Too quiet,” I said to nobody.
It felt weird.
No chains.
No basements.
No shadow hands grabbing my ankles.
Just… this.
I took a sip.
It burned less than some poisons I’d used as training drinks, more than the thin swill they’d called beer in other worlds.
“To days like this,” I murmured. “However long you last.”
Below, tiny figures moved along the streets. Couples. Office workers. Students. The kind of people who thought monsters existed only on news clips and in late‑night horror games.
My thoughts curled around two particular women before I could stop them.
Eun‑ha.
Yeonhwa.
Part of this body flinched at their names.
Han Si‑woo’s nerves tensed, like he expected a door to slam open somewhere, expected a hand to close around his wrist and drag him back underground.
He didn’t believe me.
I didn’t believe him either.
But if it had been anyone else, I would have called it confirmed. Anyone else, I’d sign the death certificate and move on.
But this wasn’t anyone.
This was Cha Eun‑ha, who threw away her life expectancy like small change to find me.
This was Yeonhwa, who carved her shadow into my heel like a collar.
And this refused to believe they were gone.
Bodies die.
Obsession doesn’t.
“It’d be just like them,” I muttered, “To crawl back out of hell.”
The sky above Seoul rippled.
Space warped.
Someone screamed.
“Ah,” I said. “There it is.”
A Gate bloomed in the air in front of the next tower over.
Not on the ground.
Not in some abandoned lot.
Just… hanging there, twenty floors up, where you’d normally only put logos and helicopter pads.
Glass cracked in a spiderweb around the rupture. Purple light leaked through. A tide of something black and many‑limbed pressed against the thin membrane between that side and this one.
Around me, chairs scraped.
“Gate! A Gate? Here?!”
“Shit, run—”
“Call the Association!”
Drinks hit the floor. Bottles shattered. Heels slipped. People tripped over each other in their hurry to get away from the view.
Somebody bumped my shoulder.
“Sir, we have to go!” the waiter gasped. “It’s dangerous to stay here—”
I flicked my fingers.
A translucent shimmer snapped into place around my chair. A quiet, neat little barrier. Si‑woo’s body knew how to shape mana. The circuits had always been there; I’d just… figured out where the switches were.
The waiter’s hand skidded off the invisible surface.
He stared.
I smiled at him.
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “You go.”
His eyes darted between the growing crack in the sky and my face.
Then he bolted.
Can’t blame him.
Everyone ran.
The rooftop emptied in seconds.
Only the music kept playing, some forgettable electronic beat pulsing out of speakers for an audience that had already abandoned it.
I sat.
Watched.
Compared to other worlds, this was still peaceful.
A glitch.
An inconvenience.
Even if the Gate broke fully and dumped a small horde of something nasty into the top floors, the Association would scramble a team.
Helicopters. Cameras. Clean‑up. Contracts. Compensation. News headlines. Internet arguments.
They’d call it a tragedy.
Not an apocalypse.
This?
This was décor.
Still.
I lifted my hand again.
The shield tightened around me.
Even when I tell myself I’m done, my body moves.
“Can’t stop, can you,” I whispered to nobody in particular.
The Gate pulsed.
Then, before anything could fully crawl through, counter‑magic slammed into it from somewhere out of my line of sight. Runes flared along buildings.
The tear in the air shuddered, screamed, and snapped shut like someone had cut a wound and cauterised it in the same motion.
Glass dust drifted down, glittering in the neon.
Sirens started up below.
I siped what was left of my drink.
“That’s that,” I said.
Lately, Gates had been popping up everywhere I went.
Cafés. Stations. Once in a public toilet, which had been insulting.
Statistically, that was nonsense.
Spiritually, it made perfect sense.
The universe liked to keep certain toys in the same box.
I could feel eyes sometimes.
Not the hot, burning madness of Eun‑ha’s gaze.
Not the cold, soft obsession of Yeonhwa’s.
Something else.
Watching.
Weighing.
Waiting.
If it had been any of Si‑woo’s women, there would already be a knife at my throat and a lecture in my ear.
So I told myself it was my imagination.
We tell ourselves all kinds of lies to get through the day.
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Every since 'that day' I have been able to use some of Si-woo's abilities.
But.
Sleep.
That was the real problem.
Fighting? Fine.
Running? Fine.
Smiling at baristas for exactly 2.8 seconds so nobody’s jealousy triggers? Tedious, but manageable.
Lying in a bed, in a quiet room, with nothing between me and my own head?
Unacceptable.
Before this world, before this body, closing my eyes had been a convenient skip button.
On. Off. New hell. New rules. New task.
Now, when I shut them, something else came in.
Not full scenes.
Not clear dreams.
Fragments.
A tower under a wrong sky.
A woman’s hand around my wrist.
A voice saying, “If you forget, I’ll find you.”
Children laughing in a house that never existed in this timeline.
[♪♪♪]
Always the bells.
It felt like someone had taken my soul, hooked their fingers into it, and pulled.
Stretching.
Testing.
Trying to see how much they could extract before it snapped.
“Wonderful,” I muttered into the penthouse darkness one night. “They’ve started recycling even in the after‑sales department.”
I didn’t know who was digging in there.
The System?
Something else?
Didn’t matter.
The result was the same.
The longer I lay awake, the less I trusted my own thoughts.
Faces blurred. Names blurred. Worlds blurred.
This city… this bed… these hands that weren’t originally mine… they all felt like costumes someone had dumped me in between scenes.
If I let the fragments keep rising, I was going to start confusing this script with the last one.
I didn’t have the luxury of another breakdown.
So I bought syringes.
Illegal.
Black‑market.
The kind designed to knock out S‑rank Awakeners whose mana resisted normal anaesthesia.
One jab to the vein, and everything went away.
No bells.
No voices.
No faces.
Just a hard, chemical flick of the switch.
I’d wake up in the morning with a faint headache and bruises on my arms.
Better than waking with tears on my face and no idea whose death I’d been grieving this time.
I lined them up in the bathroom cabinet.
“Congratulations,” I told my reflection, pulling the collar down to find the vein. “You’re a junkie now.”
The man in the mirror didn’t complain.
We both knew it was still healthier than how I used to cope.
· ─ ·𖥸· ─ ·
The Saintess’s money spent well.
If you ignored the origin, it was just money.
I tried things.
Street food carts and Michelin stars. Coffee that cost more than monthly rent and convenience store ramen. Being the customer instead of the errand boy.
Normal people complained about Mondays and taxes.
I tried to imagine what that felt like.
Human.
Whatever I was now, it had less to do with “man” and more to do with “stubborn cockroach with a grudge”.
When I wasn’t drugging myself into sleep or watching Seoul try to tear itself apart politely, I did… other things.
Human things.
Or what passed for them.
I went outside.
On purpose.
Walked without having an objective marker.
The first time, it felt wrong. Like leaving mid‑fight.
There was no impending doom to run towards. No ally bleeding out. No god to stab.
Just… streets.
People.
Stalls.
I bought food from a cart because a picture looked nice.
The woman behind the grill smiled and chatted and asked if it was my first time trying it.
It tasted… fine.
Better than bark. Worse than poison relief.
I didn’t care about the flavour.
I sat in a park and watched children climb things.
Nobody exploded.
Nobody summoned anything.
Nobody stabbed anybody over loot distribution.
It was… unsettling.
Peace isn’t relaxing when you’ve never had it.
It presses on your ears.
Makes your skin itch.
I bought clothes that weren’t armour or uniforms.
Tried them on.
Looked in the mirror.
They hung wrong.
Like I’d stolen them from a mannequin.
I’ve probably been human longer than anyone on this planet, if I stack all the versions of me end to end.
That doesn’t mean I know how to live as one.
And I don’t consider myself a person.
· ─ ·𖥸· ─ ·
Today, I went to nursery.
The nursery was an accident.
Or maybe not.
Who knows.
I saw the sign on the way back from buying more syringes.
A glasshouse, tucked between cafés and a dentist, full of green I could see even through the steamed‑up windows.
My feet turned before my head decided.
A bell chimed as I pushed the door.
Not those bells.
A normal one.
Cute.
Warm air kissed my face. Soil. Fertiliser. Leaves.
It hit something in me I didn’t know was still sore.
“Welcome,” the clerk said, wiping her hands on her apron. “Looking for anything in particular?”
“Yes,” I said, before my brain caught up.
She waited.
“Blue flowers,” I added. “Small ones. Something that doesn’t die easily.”
She laughed.
“We have a few stubborn ones,” she said. “This way.”
She walked between rows of potted things.
I followed.
Somewhere far behind my ribs, an old image flickered.
A single blue flower pushing through cracked pavement, blooming for an hour before the loop ended and crushed it.
A woman’s voice saying, “Look. It still tries. Even knowing it’s pointless.”
I blinked.
The clerk was holding out a tray.
“Those are popular with couples,” she said. “Symbol of eternal—”
“I’ll take,” I cut in.
“These are hardy,” she said. “They like the sun. You have good light where you live?”
“Too much,” I said.
I bought them.
Carried them home like something fragile.
Set them on the penthouse balcony, where the wind from the city couldn’t quite reach.
My hands knew how to plant.
Not because anyone had taught me.
Because this wasn’t the first time I’d knelt in dirt with something living I was afraid of crushing.
I scooped soil.
Pressed roots.
Arranged petals.
The flowers weren’t the same shade.
Brighter. Less deep.
Pretty, in a cheap way.
“They’re not you,” I murmured, to someone who wasn’t there, “but they’ll have to do.”
The cushions on the balcony chair sighed when I slumped into them.
For a moment, with the city humming below and the flowers nodding at the edge of my vision, it almost felt bliss.
Almost.
· ─ ·𖥸· ─ ·
I tried cooking.
Everyone says that’s grounding.
Human.
Normal.
I stood in the kitchen the Saintess’ money had bought and stared at appliances that probably cost more than a small county.
“How hard can this be?” I asked the empty room.
I had hunted things. Gutted them. Cooked over open flames in a dozen worlds. Survived on less.
This should have been easy.
It wasn’t.
By the time I was done, the smoke alarm was having a panic attack, half the pan had melted, and whatever I’d produced looked like a failed alchemy experiment.
I stared at it.
It stared back.
We both judged each other.
“This is an insult to food,” I decided, and threw it away.
I ended up eating instant noodles.
I sat on the couch with the bowl in my hands, TV on for noise, mind somewhere else.
It was surreal.
I could finally rest.
No one screaming my name.
No one dragging me to a portal.
No System notifications popping up in my eyes.
Just… me, in a too‑big apartment, with bad cooking and blue flowers and a door that stayed closed unless I opened it.
It was nice.
But felt empty.
What do you do when the only thing you’ve ever been good at is surviving other people’s disasters, and there’s no disaster to throw your body into?
“Is this it?” I asked the ceiling. “Is this what you meant?”
I didn’t know who I was asking.
The World.
The System.
The woman who had said “live on” with her hands on my face.
The ocean under my skin.
Nobody answered.
· ─ ·𖥸· ─ ·
[♪♪♪]
The doorbell rang while I was trying to decide if adding eggs to instant noodles counted as “cooking”.
I froze.
The water in the pot bubbled.
Steam fogged the exhaust hood.
The bell rang again. Patient. Polite.
I put the chopsticks down.
Walked to the door.
Old habits flared.
I didn’t reach for a weapon.
I checked the display
The camera flickered on.
The corridor outside was empty for a half‑second.
Then she stepped into frame.
White robes.
No, not robes.
Not this time.
Simple clothes. Too simple for someone like her. Hair loose around her shoulders. No staff. No choir. No sparkling divine light bleeding out from under her skin.
Just a woman.
Too still.
Too clean.
Too tired.
Her eyes lifted to the camera.
Even through the grain of the monitor, they looked like they had been rubbed raw.
“Can I see you?” the Saintess asked.
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