By Zephyria 
The child had no memories from before the age of five. The doctor suggested that the shock might have caused temporary amnesia and that the memories would return as he slowly recovered, but the child never remembered.
Meeting the child became a turning point that shook and changed his life. Kim Si-baek was stripped of his national athlete status and banned from competing in tournaments due to disciplinary action from the association. His head coach and coach tried everything to help, but the decision was not overturned. The benefactors, who had been intoxicated by the vicarious satisfaction of discovering and sponsoring a genius, were furiously angry.
The world of the nineteen-year-old boy, which had once showered his talent with lavish praise, became filled with condemnation, and his achievements tumbled into a mire. Nevertheless, Kim Si-baek did not regret it.
Because the black eyes that had looked up at him, sitting still beneath the small window of the semi-basement room, overlapped with the gaze his younger brother once directed toward him. To turn away from this child would be the same as abandoning his brother. Even if Kim Si-baek had known the consequences of his choice, he would have saved the child.
The child could only recall that his original name consisted of a single character. It didn’t take long for him to decide to give the child his brother’s name. The child, who became a projection of his brother, received the same name. My brother. My brother, whom I must not lose this time.
As Tae Cheol-hun’s investigation continued, Kim Si-baek was cleared of the false accusations, but it didn’t cause much of a stir. The media, which had reported the “atrocity of a national athlete” in bold headlines, adding criticisms about his immature age and orphan status, merely announced the corrected facts in a very dry tone.
The disciplinary action was lifted, and Kim Si-baek was granted the qualification to represent the nation once again, but he let the sabre slip from his hand and walked away. It wasn’t that he had grown to hate fencing. He still loved it, and even if he couldn’t have become a national athlete, he would have remained a fencer.
However, he had grown weary of the criticism he had received, and he felt that hoping his brother would find him through his fame was too passive. Besides, his brother was unusual, so he might not watch TV at all. In that case, he would have to find his brother himself. Kim Si-baek decided to become a police officer, someone who could find people.
He was lucky. Fencing was experimentally included in the martial arts special recruitment for the following year, which was to be implemented for the first time in several years. He took care of the child while graduating from high school and preparing for the exam.
It was an inevitable result that the child, who was terrified of adult men and became extremely anxious when separated from Kim Si-baek, entered a cathedral orphanage. He combed the child’s hair, washed him clean, and fed him plenty of his favorite foods, like tonkatsu. He gave him piggyback rides and played at the playground. He shared with the child the games he had played with his brother, and everything he hadn’t been able to do.
Though there were occasionally students at school who whispered while looking at him, he graduated without any major issues. He studied for the academic achievement test in his own way, but his score was worse than if he had just guessed a single number for every answer. On the other hand, he successfully passed the special recruitment and became a patrol officer wearing a light blue uniform.
“Wow, so you’re that Kim Si-baek? I cheered for you so much during the Olympics.”
Detective Park, who visited the precinct for work shortly after he was appointed, recognized him. The affable Detective Park, after getting acquainted, secretly performed a background check after hearing that he was looking for his brother.
No death certificate for a Kim Si-woon born in the same year as his brother was found. Kim Si-baek, who couldn’t quite shake the lingering anxiety, finally felt a sense of relief. Next, he searched for the name he had never forgotten for over a decade. Kim Yeong-sik.
Detective Park, who performed the search, wore a look of dismay.
“He’s dead?”
“What? When?”
Startled, Kim Si-baek looked at the monitor. His distant uncle, Kim Yeong-sik, had died twenty-three years ago. …Before his brother was even born. He felt a chill settle in his chest. Detective Park tried to comfort him, saying that since he had heard the name when he was very young, he might have misremembered someone else with a similar name, but the words didn’t truly reach his ears.
He scoured orphanages across the country and searched for his deceased father’s relatives. There were no results. Just in case, he searched for his mother, but she had been processed as deceased due to a missing person’s report filed by his father.
In the meantime, time flowed steadily. Kim Si-baek, who earned a special promotion for arresting a fraudster, was assigned to the violent crimes unit.
The child, who barely spoke to anyone but him, eventually entered elementary school. Though he was still taciturn and blunt, Kim Si-baek was proud that he had opened his heart enough to communicate with others. Watching the child grow was the only solace he found amidst the breathless time he spent racing to find his brother.
“Hyung, how old is your brother?”
“If he’s attending school properly, he’d be in high school. He’s older than you.”
“Your brother is a hyung to me?”
“Yeah, he’s a hyung.”
“I hope you meet your brother soon.”
He smiled faintly and stroked the child’s small head as the boy, who had received his brother’s name, chattered away. How cruel the flow of time was, that the once tiny child was now older than his brother had been when they parted.
However, the whereabouts of his brother remained elusive. Though he didn’t show it, he could feel the hope he held in his heart gradually wearing away. Whenever that happened, Kim Si-baek would douse himself in cold water and exercise violently to empty his mind. He didn’t want to think about anything. He didn’t want to think that he had lost his brother forever, or that it was okay to give up because he had tried so hard.
It would have been better to give up then.
Kim Si-baek was finally able to confirm his brother’s name. The bust of a large-scale human trafficking and organ smuggling ring that had shaken Korea. He had participated in the arrest operation as a violent crimes detective. An old secret ledger kept for blackmail purposes. Young children. A wealthy man clinging to superstitions about treating leprosy. Someone who needed children who could be used without leaving a trace. Parents trying to cure their children’s illnesses…
Young children. Young children.
Kim Si-woon. Date of purchase. Price paid to biological father. Amount to be extracted beyond this.
✽ ✽ ✽
Hyung.
The small body of his brother, calling out with a radiant smile, is torn to shreds and collapses. Kim Si-baek does not know his brother’s end. The fragments of the small body shattering into pieces are merely the worst imaginations conjured by his consciousness.
Perhaps his brother had been lucky, things had worked out, and he had been adopted overseas, or perhaps he had successfully escaped and was doing well with good adoptive parents… Damn it. Damn it. The miserable self-consolation he had chewed over and discarded countless times in the past now tore through his brain.
Kim Si-baek knows that this is a nightmare stemming from his guilt and fear. His brother is dead. Even if he had somehow survived in a place he couldn’t see, there was no way his brother, who would now be in his 40s, would appear as a young child.
Reason judges this. But the brother who lost his sibling let out a faint groan.
“Si-woon.”
The blood-stained brother wears a clear smile. It was a smile he had never seen on his brother during his lifetime.
[Death and Beauty shout to you to wake up.]
The divine utterance, transmitted directly to his mind and outputted in his vision, could not be read properly. He could not clearly hear the voice of the baby crow shrieking.
Kim Si-woon. Date of purchase. Price paid to biological father. Amount to be extracted beyond this.
The old ledger, stained with blood and engraved in the depths of his memory, flips open. The despair and fear of that day, which he could never forget even after so many years, were resurrected.
“…I won’t. I’m sorry, Si-woon.”
He should have pestered his mother and handed over his brother. He shouldn’t have been caught in Haenam. He should have run away to the orphanage. Instead of waiting for tonkatsu, he should have left school early and gone straight home. Even if he had been beaten to death by his father, he should have known for sure where his brother had gone.
His brother’s slow and clumsy world consisted only of him, yet he had failed. Under the naive judgment that his brother would find him if he became a successful athlete, he had wasted precious time.
“Hyung was wrong…”
The world was crushed. Neither the confused screams, nor the thunderous roar of something breaking and shattering, nor the ear-splitting alarm, nor the people fleeing past him, nor the building debris falling right in front of him—nothing could reach him. The nightmare of the day he checked the ledger repeated itself.
A terrible sense of sin and miserable fear gripped his throat. How had he tried to die? As a detective, Kim Si-baek had witnessed many corpses. Slitting wrists takes too long. Stabbing the heart through the ribs is difficult. He had tried to cut his carotid artery. The unmaintained kitchen knives and paring knives were too dull. He had hung himself. He decided to do that.
His neck was strangled. His breath was choked. His staggering legs collapsed. Fingernails scratched at his neck. The rope he had used to hang himself that day wound around him again. His brother smiled and took a step closer. One step. One step. One step. The black dagger in his hand gleamed.
He, who should have died that day.
He, who failed to die that day.
“Hyung!”
The moment a child’s desperate scream, just like that day, sliced through his consciousness, his blurred vision cleared.
Not an illusion, but the pungent smell of real blood wafted through the air.