ABFR 19

Chapter 19

Whether I screamed or not, Dr. Jeong Sihoon remained as calm and cold as always.

“I understand that when the day you sent out the settings that had only existed in Kim Ajin’s head happened to coincide with something similar actually happening, you couldn’t help but think badly of it. But if you take it that way, doesn’t it mean that no one in the world should even be allowed to think carelessly? If you’re going to say something like that, write it first before you do.”

“Ugh……”

“And even if, just as you say, two more ability users appear, and those two are ‘Yellow’ and ‘Green,’ and both of them are children……. Even if we assume that one of Kim Ajin’s predictions really does come true.”

“In that case, I would have some responsibility of my own……”

“Even so, it’s still something you haven’t written yet.”

“Argh.”

The truth hurt too much.

Whether I buried my face in the table in agony or not, Dr. Jeong’s calm and quiet voice continued.

“As you said, in that case, there might be some responsibility on Kim Ajin’s part. After all, you would be the only one with the right—or perhaps the responsibility—to write what comes next.”

I awkwardly raised my head and met Dr. Jeong’s eyes as he stared down at me. His face still looked cold, but the corners of his lips lifted slightly as he asked,

“It’s still something you haven’t written yet. Making it a happy ending shouldn’t be difficult, right?”

Mi.

Is he crazy? How can he say something like that so casually?

“……Doctor, throwing out words like that so casually really makes you look like a hero.”

He was practically dazzling. Since I had buried my head in the table, when I looked up at him, the fluorescent light behind his head made it look as though he even had a halo.

But the man himself simply continued eating without looking particularly impressed by my words. His lunchbox was already quickly emptying.

“Well, like I said this morning, White seems to have a heroic personality. So I tried to speak accordingly. You looked like you were digging yourself into a hole again.”

“So you were deliberately acting like ‘White’? You said yourself that if you ever awakened some kind of superpower, you’d buy a villa in the Maldives and live there. Looking at you now, you don’t seem all that different from the heroic White.”

“I haven’t given up on that dream yet. If the sun rises tomorrow and I’m given some unreasonable demand, I’ll make a quick fortune and leave immediately.”

“You haven’t given up?”

I silently stared at him before lowering my eyes again. Then I somehow managed to return my head to its proper position after burying it in the table and straightened my back. Only then did I pick up my chopsticks again.

“……A happy ending. Actually, I’m the type who gets pushed around by the story or characters, so I can’t exactly drag the plot or ending wherever I want.”

“Is that supposed to be an answer? In a situation like this, you’re supposed to say yes without hesitation.”

“Fine, I understand. I’ll absolutely make it a happy ending. ……No, but even if I make it a happy ending, there’s no guarantee reality will have a happy ending too.”

“You believe that the uncomfortable settings you created affected reality, so why can’t you believe that the happy ending you create will affect reality as well?”

“Well, it’s not really that I come up with it and write it. It’s more like I’m writing down something that has already happened……”

I stopped speaking and tightly closed my mouth.

But Dr. Jeong easily ignored my hesitation and calmly asked another question.

“Then that sounds more like a revelation or prophecy than a curse.”

“You believe me?”

“Do I look like I believe you?”

“No. I know. You’re just going along with some mentally unstable woman in her twenties and encouraging her……”

I answered awkwardly before stopping myself. I rolled my eyes around for a moment, rubbed the back of my neck, and sighed. Then I went back to eating.

“If Yellow and Green don’t appear, and things continue completely differently from my settings, I’ll be relieved.”

“Right, right. Let’s hope for that, at least.”

But the moment those words left his mouth, someone suddenly threw open the break room door with a loud crash.

The person who rushed in was a middle-aged man with a somewhat chilling appearance.

Though he seemed closer to an elderly man than middle-aged.

As I stared blankly at the unfamiliar man and felt some strange sense of déjà vu, he suddenly grabbed Dr. Jeong Sihoon by the shoulder.

“We got an emergency call! A patient is being transported here from Songpa, and you absolutely have to handle this patient. Are you ready to use your ability right away? You’ve eaten and gotten at least a little rest, so you can do it, right?”

“……Is this a patient who has been declared beyond resuscitation? They’re being transported all the way from Songpa. Can they survive that long?”

“Apparently, an ability user who can move quickly is transporting them, so that won’t be a problem. And they haven’t been declared beyond resuscitation. However……”

He quietly muttered, his expression twisting as if he had swallowed something bitter.

“It’s the very ability user who caused the accident in Songpa. Just in case, we decided it would be best if only those who have awakened those superpower-like abilities handle the response.”

“Ah……”

Dr. Jeong put down his chopsticks, picked up his gown again, and put it on as he nodded with a complicated expression.

“I can finish the rest later, right? They haven’t arrived yet, have they? Did you receive any information about the general nature of the injuries?”

“I’ll explain on the way. For now…… be careful, too. He’s the one who partially destroyed three buildings and completely erased several others.”

“I wish it were a disaster that could be avoided just by being careful……”

He muttered before glancing down at me.

“Ajin, go home once it gets light and the streets become safe. I might be too busy to say goodbye, so don’t worry about that. But I’m concerned, so leave me a text message.”

“Okayyy.”

I answered blankly.

Then it suddenly occurred to me that the other ‘ability user’ transporting the ability user from Songpa might possibly be Railey.

So I hurriedly added,

“My boyfriend said he was coming to pick me up. I don’t know when he’ll arrive, though. Anyway, if I meet up with him and go home early, I’ll leave you a message about that too.”

“Ah.”

Dr. Jeong slowly nodded.

“That’s a relief. Good. Then let’s go, hyung.”

“……Uh, yeah.”

Oh, so he was his older brother.

No wonder his face looked familiar.

While I awkwardly stood up to see the two of them off, the man called hyung—in other words, the person who was apparently the current director of this hospital—stepped over the threshold and left the break room after giving me an awkward nod.

Then, in an ordinary voice, he asked as though confirming something,

“You can handle pediatric patients to some extent too, right?”

“……Handle pediatric patients?”

“Yeah. Apparently, the patient coming in now is a five-year-old child……”

“……”

As the explanation continued calmly, Dr. Jeong suddenly stopped walking.

My own movement, which had awkwardly followed them as I stood up to see them off, froze as well.

The hospital director, who had already left the break room, seemed to realize the situation only afterward and quickly turned around to look at us.

“Why are you standing there like that? Even if your old skills have gotten rusty, you must still have dealt with pediatric patients from time to time at this hospital, right?”

“……No. I just realized that it’s a young ability user.”

“Probably. That’s likely why the accident happened. They couldn’t handle the sudden awakening of their ability. Let’s go.”

“Yes.”

After exchanging those words, Dr. Jeong quickly regained his composure and followed the hospital director out of the break room.

Through the gap in the closing door, he glanced back at me one last time.

As always, his voice was calm and ordinary. There was not even a trace of anger or indignation in it. He simply spoke quietly, as if gently admonishing me.

“We’ll talk again later.”

I could barely get my voice out, so I hurriedly nodded.

Then the door slammed shut.

I stood there staring at the door for a long time before picking up the phone I had thrown down earlier and checking it.

There was still no particular message from Railey.

Since he was already on his way to Seran University Hospital, perhaps he hadn’t felt the need to tell me that he was safe.

As far as I knew, Railey was the only ability user who had gone to Songpa, so the person rapidly bringing that child here was probably Railey as well.

He had said, ‘I checked. There’s no problem.’

From Railey’s perspective, the fact that the ability user who caused the accident was a child, that the child was injured, that he knew a healing ability user had appeared, and that he was confident he could quickly transport a child to Seran University Hospital might not have seemed like much of a problem.

But I was suddenly overcome by a horrible feeling.

My next work, tentatively titled The Skyscraper Where the Rainbow Descended.

Just as Dr. Jeong had said, it was still a setting I had ‘never even written,’ but I had already worked out the basic settings for the heroes.

White was the only character whose settings had continued to trouble me until the very end. The settings for the other characters had already been completed in considerable detail.

Yellow was a seven-year-old girl. At the moment she awakened her ability, she caused casualties as her power manifested. Afterward, her parents forcibly handed her over to the government.

At the time, she was also critically injured. But after waking from her critical condition, she would be unable to properly understand her circumstances and would have to live without her parents, serving as a weapon of the state.

Green was a fourteen-year-old boy.

His mother died while giving birth to his younger sister, and his younger sister was stillborn at the same time. After that, he grew up under his single father, suffering from domestic violence and abuse.

Eventually, on the day the second Gate opened, he would kill his father with his own hands before voluntarily surrendering to the government……

“……”

Regardless of anything else, these two settings were things I had put into a work of fiction because they were things that should never happen in reality.

I had desperately hoped that it wasn’t true, but considering what I had just been told about the child being transported to the hospital, I could no longer deny that the reality I had wanted to reject was beginning to come true.

Kim Ajin, dieee.

I covered my face with both hands and collapsed into the chair, kicking my feet into the air about three times before finally calming down.

Before I got carried away with pointless self-loathing, shouldn’t I think about something more productive?

I really wanted to beat myself up like hell, but if I were to take responsibility for my damn settings in any way, that method had to begin with a clear understanding and analysis of those settings.

Even more so if I assumed that my settings were actually connected to everything happening right now.

That meant I needed to be calm and composed above all else.

After making a scene once and forcibly calming myself down, I straightened my body and corrected my posture.

Whether I blamed myself now or later, the fact that Kim Ajin’s settings were absolute garbage wouldn’t change.

So I could always waste time doing that later!

For now, focus!

So let’s think realistically.

Was there anything I could have done about that girl?

To be honest, no.

Every ability user awakened their ability at the same time the Gate manifested.

The child’s loss of control when awakening her ability, and the accident that followed, were things I could not have prevented when I had only learned about the situation after the Gate opened in Sinchon.

So digging myself into a hole over that issue right now would accomplish nothing. It was nothing more than pointless, self-destructive thinking with absolutely no productivity.

But there was at least something I could still handle.

It was terrifying that I was going to have to do this one more time after returning from that damn otherworld.

But if this reality really had occurred while being connected to my settings to some degree, then shouldn’t I assume that I possessed at least some informational advantage because of those very settings?

I wanted to hope that things would not become as disastrous as they were in my original settings because Railey had intervened along the way.

His own injuries were not as severe as the critical condition described in my settings, either, so that must have been why the hospital director said that the patient was ‘not beyond resuscitation.’

Then, at the very least, what could I do to prevent that child from experiencing the trauma of being abandoned by her parents later on—even if she was too young to fully understand what was happening?

And there was another problem that had to be solved immediately.

Was ‘that’ just my delusion?

Was ‘this’ really reality?

Either way, it didn’t matter.

As long as there was even the slightest possibility, I had to take responsibility for creating those settings and that story, even if all I had done was receive some kind of revelation and write it down.

Before anything else, I had to find the child who would become Green.

At least before he made an irreversible choice.