Chapter 140
Angel vaguely realizes that this is a dream.
He was standing by the side of the road. It was dawn, before the sun had risen, in a world filled with a deep blue light, and he was there alone.
He couldn’t remember how long he had been standing there. Soon, thoughts of his younger sibling crossed his mind.
Where are they? Angel began searching for his sibling.
Since birth, they had always been each other’s only one. And that fact never changed, so the empty space beside him felt lonely.
Screech!
At that moment, the sound of tires screeching was heard. Angel turned his head toward the sound.
On the road, two cars were facing each other.
His sibling was in the car on the right, and on the left were a man and a woman, presumably a couple.
Angel took a step forward and moved down to the road. The two cars were still far from him.
Through the car windows, he saw his sibling crying. Angel stopped in shock.
Then the car with his sibling started moving.
His body was still in place, but his mind was pulled up to reality then.
He remembered.
His sibling was going to kill Baek Ha-won’s biological father, Baek Hyun-woo, right here.
Crash!
The next moment, the cars collided.
His sibling’s car crashed into Baek Hyun-woo’s car, which rolled down the hill.
It was too late.
Again, it was too late.
Always. Always.
Not once, even in his dreams, had he been on time.
The moment he realized that, he was jolted awake from the dream.
‘Gasp… Gasp. Hah…’
Since he learned the truth about his sibling’s death, he had been plagued by nightmares every day.
His sibling, crying, whispering for him not to forget his sins, appeared in his dreams every night.
But Angel couldn’t bring himself to call this a nightmare.
How could a dream where he could meet his dead sibling be called a nightmare?
Even if his sibling was choking him while crying, he would still be willing to welcome that ‘dream.’
Every early morning, he just wished for it.
The repeating winds were like a self-imposed hypnosis.
He desperately wished he could just jump between them.
That burning desire grew stronger with each repeat of the scene in his dreams.
After waking up from the dream, he spent the rest of the morning replaying the same thoughts in his head.
The thoughts of jumping between his sibling’s and Baek Hyun-woo’s cars before the collision. Imagining that his sibling alone was the one who killed in this dream-like story.
‘Ugh…’
Angel hunched over, trying to suppress the nausea rising in his throat.
The guilt and regret that had bound him for his whole life wouldn’t just vanish with a few rays of sunlight.
While in the sunlight, he would briefly forget, but as soon as darkness seeped in, it quickly engulfed him.
It grew heavier. One morning, he feared he wouldn’t wake up.
In the darkness before the sun rose, trembling from the unshakable cold, Angel spoke to his dead sibling.
‘It should’ve been my death that stopped your car.’
Repeatedly, he muttered the same words toward an unreachable place and wished again.
‘If it had been me dying by your hand…’
‘Then, I could have saved you. There would be nothing more to wish for.’
A person cannot be reborn. So, the idea of becoming a new person might be nonsense.
Nevertheless, Angel wanted to change.
He wanted to shed his pitiful, worn-out self, a version of him that had stayed the same for his entire life.
Even as he dreamed the same dream every night, the desire for a new life never disappeared.
It was an unstable time when everything could collapse without warning.
Even while walking through what seemed
like an endless darkness, Angel didn’t sit down. He wanted to believe there would be light at the end of it.
‘…Ivy?’
And at the end of that darkness, he met a child who resembled his sibling.
The name was unforgettable because it reminded him of his sibling.
The place where he accidentally met the child was an alley that lay dormant during the day and lit up with red lights at night.
He knew better than anyone what kind of world it was for a child alone, and he couldn’t possibly leave the child behind.
Because the child resembled his sibling.
He thought that was all.
He had never considered the end.
Unfamiliar things, which he had long forgotten existed, stormed into him, leaving him with no time for other thoughts.
A small hand holding onto him tightly. Clear, untainted eyes. A bright smile. The warm life wrapped in his arms.
“I think… I think I only have you left, oppa.”
The things that cling to him, blindly trusting him.
It was the most peaceful storm in the world.
And then, as the days passed, Angel realized that he had changed in how he treated the child.
He thought it was just because he couldn’t turn away.
But at some point, he began to feel his heart race again. Now, he truly felt alive.
“Oppa, you’re not going to leave me, right?”
The desire to protect.
That was what was breathing new life into him.
It was the new life he had longed for.
This time, he felt like it might be different.
***
Angel, who had coughed up bright red blood, collapsed forward.
The child’s small body, except for the head, was completely hidden in the shadow of Angel’s figure.
As Angel leaned against the child’s shoulder, he remained motionless for a long time.
I couldn’t say a word. My pulse was racing, but the blood flowing through my body had frozen cold.
“…Oppa?”
The child spoke, her voice dry, trembling more clearly with each word.
“Oppa. Oppa.”
There was no warm reply this time, the kind that had never made the child wait before.
The child’s blue eyes trembled, unable to focus. The blood-spattered white cheek was as pale as a corpse.
The child, breathing shallowly with her face stiffened, pulled her arm out from between Angel’s body and her own.
With that, Angel’s body slipped off her small shoulders, unable to support him.
Helplessly, like a doll, he fell to the ground with a soft thud.
Only then, for the first time, I could see Angel’s face from where I stood, no longer just his back.
His eyes were closed, as if he had fallen into a deep sleep.
I still couldn’t move. It felt different from when I had seen someone shot before.
The sensations that made up who I was disappeared without a trace, like a sandcastle swept away by the waves, leaving only the primal fear of death.
The child reached her hand out toward Angel, but it stopped mid-air, unable to touch him.
“Oppa. No, I… I…”
Tears dripped from the child’s large eyes. Her gaze was fixed on Angel’s blood-soaked chest.
At that moment, Angel’s eyelids, which had been closed, slowly lifted.
Life quickly drained from his eyes, turning his emerald gaze hazy as it moved toward the child.
“…Ivy.”
His voice, barely a whisper, escaped in a sigh.
The chest, bleeding relentlessly, rose and fell sharply.
Angel clenched his teeth, seemingly trying to suppress a groan of pain, his face contorted.
Holding onto the remnants of his fading consciousness, he reached out with trembling hands to find Ivy’s hand and grasp it.
“It’s not your fault.”
Angel spoke in a voice so faint it seemed to be on the verge of breaking.
“It’s okay…”
The curve of his lips, which had been trying to form a smile, crumbled with a groan of pain.
But it wasn’t hard to recognize that it was the last smile, one that poured out everything he had left.
No. No. I denied this situation like a mad person.
The pounding of my heart rang through my head like an explosion.
I began to wonder if I was hallucinating, so I blinked my eyes.
But no matter how much I blinked, it didn’t disappear. The world around me was still drenched in blood.
I took a step forward, losing my sanity.
“Doshiyu…”
At that moment, a woman whispered something long into Doshiyu’s ear, who was standing by the warehouse door.
Upon hearing her words, for the first time, the smile disappeared from Doshiyu’s face.
He scanned the inside of the warehouse with his eyes. His dark, blood-red gaze showed signs of weariness and deep irritation.
“Just bring the child.”
Doshiyu briefly pointed at Ivy, who was crying while holding onto Angel, and then turned to walk away.
The man who had been standing behind the woman roughly pulled Ivy away from Angel.
“Oppa!! No! Let go!”
The child’s screams pierced my ears like a breaking glass.
I covered one ear and lowered my head. The increasing volume of the cry gnawed at my brain. I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again.
“Stop.”
I barely managed to speak through my spinning thoughts.
Although I was still looking down, I could feel a gaze directed at me.
“…You.”
Ivy’s crying had stopped by now. I scratched my palm with my fingertips and squeezed out my tangled breath.
The months of time and memories, which meant everything to me, poured down over my head.
There was no way to stop it. Those memories felt as real as the present.
“You’re… now…”
“I told you. It’s going to be fun.”
I held my breath and raised my head. The tears that had been welling up fell in a stream.
“Oh, don’t cry too much because it hurts. I didn’t know Angel would die either.”
My tear-streaked vision couldn’t focus. …Is he smiling?
“Why? Did you want him to die?”
The laughter mixed in with the words was too blatant to be mistaken for anything else.
The direct, crimson gaze felt sharp and vivid.
“Is it okay to kill me now?”
Regret. Self-loathing. Helplessness. Cynicism. Futile assumptions.
The things that had been pressing down on my chest suddenly erupted into uncontrollable anger. I couldn’t breathe.
“Are you going to make Angel’s sacrifice pointless?”
The tears, which had been there moments before, were now dried up in the relentless wind.
In the painful vision, Doshiyu’s smiling face appeared. The bomb still attached to the inside of his jacket was unchanged.
I felt my heartbeat return to its normal rhythm. The storm of anger quickly subsided.
“…Yeah.”
My cracked voice was hoarse, but it didn’t tremble. I spoke slowly, exhaling a long breath.
“That’s right.”
The emotions that had been raging disappeared, leaving nothing but a cold emptiness in my mind.
Now, what remained wasn’t reason.
“Right now… I can’t kill you.”
I was simply empty inside.
After everything had burned away into red, there was nothing left. Not even black ash.
Doshiyu was right.
It was Ivy who pulled the trigger, but in the end, it was all Doshiyu’s fault.
Even so, with both Doshiyu and Angel standing before me, I still couldn’t bring myself to bury a bullet in his heart the way Doshiyu had done to Angel.
But instead of collapsing, I walked toward Doshiyu.
That was when something brushed against my foot.
Looking down, I saw a gun. It seemed to be the one Ivy had been holding.
I couldn’t help but let out a soft laugh.
“…Killing can wait.”
I smiled a wind-like laugh as I picked up the gun.
The cold sensation in my hand strangely felt familiar.
I took a brief breath, then looked up.
Our eyes met. The distance between us was close. Over his lowered gaze, a red madness began to rise again.
I tightened my grip on the gun and tilted my lips upward.
“In exchange, I’ll make you enjoy it too.”
In the next moment, everything followed without hesitation, like water flowing smoothly.
I extended my hand that wasn’t holding the gun and pulled Doshiyu’s right hand forcefully toward me.
“So try to endure this much.”
Click. The barrel of the loaded gun pressed into the palm of his hand, stained with dried blood.
“If it hurts, think of the boss.”
I twisted my lips into a sneer and pulled the trigger.
