Chapter 36 - Father and Son I

1.

Today, let me tell you about a father and son.

Not a rich man, mind you. The Korean word can mean either, but this story is about a father and his son, not some wealthy bourgeois.

To talk about these two people, much as I personally hate to do it, I have no choice but to go back to my fourth run first.

Back then, I was a walking collection of embarrassing memories. You might call it the edgy adolescent phase of my long life as a regressor.

Even now, after living so many years that counting my age has become meaningless, remembering my first through fifth runs automatically sets me off.

Fortunately—or unfortunately—I acquired [Perfect Recall] in my fifth run. As I mentioned once before, anything earlier than that remained in my mind as faint as a dream.

Everything I am about to describe from that past is therefore nothing more than reconstruction or invention.

["Please save me..."]

["It hurts. It hurts so much..."]

In those memories, faint as shadows, the first thing I remember is always people's groans.

Whether it was "Ghk!" or "Ghk" or "Ghk...", the decibel levels varied, but they all had one thing in common: the quieter the sound, the less life they had left.

Each time, I would walk over, my bell jingling, then stop and ask them a question.

["Would you like to escape hell?"]

["Pardon...?"]

["Would you like to be at peace forever?"]

You may wonder why I was suddenly spouting lines like some cult evangelist, but yes, I really did say that.

I think a brief defense is in order.

First, I rarely spoke politely at this point in my life. Strictly speaking, I should write those lines as 'Want out of your misery?' and 'Want peace forever?' instead.

But if I wrote them that way, my fingers would curl so hard with embarrassment that they would generate a black hole all on their own. Please forgive me.

My memories of the fourth run were vague and fuzzy to begin with. Surely this much historical distortion is acceptable? Distorting history is better than distorting my fingers.

Second, I never had any intention of spreading some fraudulent faith.

In fact, questions like those were connected to the fundamental reason I came to be known as the Undertaker.

["What the fuck are you talking about? Get lost!"]

["Isn't he the Undertaker? You know, that..."]

["Ptooey! Ugh, talk about bad luck!"]

Most people still found life bearable. Even as they cried out that they were dying, they clung tightly to their will to live. In that case, I would say, "Excuse me," and withdraw.

But there were always people who had abandoned hope.

["Yes... I don't want to hurt anymore..."]

People whose limbs had been torn apart by monsters' teeth. People who were sick. People who had lost their families. People who had realized all humans were beasts and had nothing left for the world but contempt. People who understood that, whatever happened from now on, the peace of the past would never return. Or all of the above.

These people answered yes to my question.

Then I would ask them another.

["I am known as the Undertaker."]

["Yes. I know..."]

["That will make this easier to explain. I have the ability to put people to sleep in a dream forever."]

["..."]

["If you consent, I can help you dream of nothing but the happiest moment of your life, over and over for eternity."]

Time Seal.

An ability of mine I had not revealed in any of the stories I had told so far.

I was well aware of the storytelling convention that a protagonist's unique ability should be introduced as early as possible. But I had kept silent all this time because most of my uses of [Time Seal] were concentrated in my first through sixth runs.

After that, I really did almost never use [Time Seal].

Above all, I hated my own ability.

That was why I considered this episode part of my embarrassing past.

["All right, put me into the dream right now..."]

["There are some things you need to know before you consent."]

I spoke calmly.

["Once my ability puts you into a dream, everyone else loses all their memories of you."]

["What?"]

["No one will remember you. Not your family, not your friends, not even the people who have passed you by. While you are dreaming, no one in this world except me will be able to recall anything about you."]

["..."]

["In exchange for experiencing that happy moment, you will be completely forgotten by everyone. What do you think? Do you still want to live in a dream?"]

I did not go out of my way to explain it to people, but this forgetting was more powerful than one might expect.

Even if I regressed and began a new life, [Time Seal] would not break.

You could say they became exceptions to regression. I did not know how it worked, but a sealed person remained sealed forever—in other words, forgotten by the world.

They became someone who had never existed in the first place.

["That's just too..."]

Again, most people faltered at this point.

However much they suffered, even enough to want to die, there was something unsettling and ominous about an outcome that was tantamount to erasing their very existence. They would choose suicide instead.

["Oh, it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter."]

But there were always people who had abandoned hope.

["Knowing I'll disappear from the world altogether actually puts my mind at ease. What business have I got left in this fucking idiotic world? Please, just erase me from it."]

The father in today's father-and-son story was one such person.

Kim Jucheol, a former professional soccer player.

2

A has-been.

That was the word Kim Jucheol used to describe himself.

["I was a first-division starter once. A left back, at that. A left back! I could name my price, you know?"]

He drew the oxygen he needed to live today not from the air of the present, but solely from the glory of his past.

Few people did not miss their former professions after the world turned out this way, but that tendency was particularly strong in Kim Jucheol.

["Young man. Want to see my fucking awesome highlight reel?"]

So strong, in fact, that he had downloaded his own highlight reel onto his smartphone and carried it around with him.

A talent perfectly suited to this age, in which self-promotion had become indispensable.

In the six-minute edited video, Kim Jucheol did indeed range all over the field. His red uniform fluttered like a flag. As a defender rather than a striker, he had few goals on display, but the crowd's cheers at every one of his plays rang vividly from the phone.

["I even got an offer from Japan. The Dutch actually sent an agent to watch me. Ordinary people might look down on the Dutch league, but it's a seriously big deal, you know?"]

He crossed freely between casual and polite speech, as though dribbling a soccer ball across the boundary.

["Ugh, seriously. I got all sentimental about staying loyal to the club that had raised me. I should've just bolted overseas. That wasn't romance. It was just wasting my life."]

Kim Jucheol showed off his highlight reel to other people so often that his smartphone soon ran out of power.

Unlike the others, he did not try to contact the outside world with it. To him, the phone's sole reason for existing was to store his highlight reel.

["You see, fullbacks are so important in modern soccer that..."]

["Hey, mister! Stop talking and pick up the pace!"]

["Oh dear, the youngsters are yelling at me again. They're just like my boy."]

Kim Jucheol rose with an easygoing smile.

["Heave-ho. Make way. The has-been's coming through."]

Despite his grand announcement, his body struggled to move forward.

Kim Jucheol's left leg dragged in a constant limp.

A world overrun by monsters was anything but friendly to humanity. For a cripple, that went without saying.

When even being faster than everyone else barely guaranteed survival, Kim Jucheol was always given the cold shoulder.

The fact that he had once been a well-known soccer player in Korea meant nothing. Unless a player was on the national World Cup team, ordinary people rarely even heard their name.

["Being a former athlete doesn't mean jack shit, huh."]

Kim Jucheol chuckled.

Perhaps his incessant self-promotion was an attempt to raise his worth, however slightly.

But the survivors' response was cold. They might have made allowances for someone elderly or frail, but no survivor went out of their way to accommodate a middle-aged man who looked perfectly healthy and fairly muscular. Rations. Night watch. Kim Jucheol had a hard time in every respect.

["Well, that's how the world works."]

Kim Jucheol did not particularly resent it, either. Not because he was exceptionally generous-hearted, but because he seemed accustomed to people treating him that way.

["I have a son too. He must be about your age, young man. Or not? A little younger?"]

["It sounds as though you and your son aren't on very good terms."]

["Oh, don't get me started. He ran away with his mother ten years ago already."]

Kim Jucheol grinned.

["We used to get along. Everything went wrong after some son of a bitch wrecked my left leg on the field. It's the damnedest thing, but it turned out my knee joint was linked to the harmony of my family."]

["..."]

["Well, I'm the bastard. I'm the bastard here. But try to understand, young man. A player who'd even had talks about going overseas suddenly had to retire, and I was twenty-six or so at the time. Huh? A twenty-six-year-old kid suddenly found his whole life limping along. How could I stay sane? Fuck, my left foot was my livelihood. It was everything I owned."]

Kim Jucheol's voice flowed softly.

He was one of the first people summoned to the waiting hall of Busan Station along with me. Space had warped, turning the station into a labyrinth. Leaning against a bookcase in one of its bookstores, Kim Jucheol rambled on.

["I was in the hospital for rehab when the bastard who'd crippled me came to visit, can you believe it? Man, that was when I first learned what a great weapon a crutch could be. I beat him to a pulp. But his parents had some connections at the football association. They glossed over it at the time, but later on, I found there was no place left for me. That's the problem with South Korea. Look closely, and it's the bastards who hurt people that keep getting ahead in the end, isn't it?"]

["..."]

["The bastard wasn't even any good at soccer."]

Kim Jucheol seemed candid about everything, but there were things he was reluctant to discuss. How he had spent his days drinking and gambling after leaving the rehabilitation hospital, for instance.

How he had practically settled down in Macau or Gangwon Province. How his wife had been left to raise their still very young son alone. How she had died two years earlier. How, right up until he was summoned to the waiting hall of Busan Station, he had been loitering around a convenience store near a casino in Gangwon Province. How, thanks to having bought two packs of cigarettes just then, he still had plenty of butts stashed in his socks and elsewhere.

I was with him from my first run through my fourth. That was how I learned so much about Kim Jucheol's personal history.

["Ah, why's the world so heartless..."]

From my first run through my fourth, Kim Jucheol never once managed to survive intact.

I did not remember exactly how he died.

But to recount what I do remember, in my first run, Kim Jucheol fell while running down one of the long corridors of the labyrinth that had become Busan Station. A monster ate him, chewing through him bit by bit from his toes upward.

In the second run, I died first, but he probably wasn't in good shape. In the third, he must have died of blood loss. I think he blocked a glass door with his body so the others could escape, and a monster tore off his arm.

And finally, the fourth run.

["Well, damn. Life sure is fucked..."]

Kim Jucheol managed to escape Busan Station with me. But not long afterward, a monster resembling a hunting dog bit off and swallowed his entire left leg.

He passed out on the spot, but thanks to my immediate efforts to stop the bleeding and treat him, he somehow regained consciousness. As soon as he came to, he muttered between labored breaths.

["Dragged that crippled leg around my whole life. Now that it's gone, I almost feel relieved. What a relief."]

["..."]

["Young man. There's a soccer stadium near here, you know? Sorry to ask, but could we stop by for a moment?"]

I carried Kim Jucheol on my back to what would probably be the final stop of this life.

A person missing one leg weighed very little. On my back, Kim Jucheol drifted in and out of consciousness.

["Ah..."]

I carefully lowered Kim Jucheol into a seat in the stands.

The stadium was half-destroyed, perhaps by a monster that had already rampaged through it. Fragments of the building lay scattered haphazardly across the field and the stands.

["Huh, why does it look so big out there? It used to be smaller. It used to be smaller."]

For a while, Kim Jucheol kept murmuring, "So big. So big."

["Mr. Undertaker."]

He spoke with a pale face. It was the first and last time he addressed me with that respectful title, though I was much younger than him.

["Thank you. Thank you so much. But that's enough now. I have no regrets left..."]

I understood exactly what the man before me was trying to say.

I took the silver bell out of my pocket and fastened it to my wrist. It was my own little ritual.

["Are you sure? As you know, if I use my ability on you, everyone will forget you."]

["Forget me? Oh, it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Knowing I'll disappear from the world altogether actually puts my mind at ease. What business have I got left in this fucking idiotic world? Please, just erase me from it."]

Kim Jucheol smiled faintly.

["I'm tired now."]

["..."]

["Oh, right. Once I enter that dream or whatever it is, will I know that I'm dreaming? I mean..."]

["You won't."]

I shook my head.

["You will simply repeat a happy day forever, without even realizing that it is repeating."]

["That's a relief, then. If I kept remembering, huh? Wouldn't that be suffering too? Even the happiest moment would get tiresome if it kept repeating... That's a relief. Well, do I just close my eyes?"]

["Yes."]

["Thank you, sir. Truly."]

In many ways, Kim Jucheol was an ordinary man.

Among all the people whose funerals I had conducted, there was no particular reason to remember him.

Nevertheless, I remembered Kim Jucheol for a long time. It was because of the final words he left behind.

["Kim Sieun. It's Kim Sieun. My son... Born November eleventh. My son's name is Sieun."]

Usually, people departing into a dream asked me to remember them. But Kim Jucheol murmured his son's name to the very end.

["My boy."]

JINGLE.

With the sound of the bell, I activated my ability.

And so Kim Jucheol departed from my timeline.

It would be many, many years before I met the heir to that man's final words.