By Zephyria 
He pressed his ear close to listen to a sound he had never heard before. A high-pitched, irregular creaking and screeching sound, like metal grinding against metal. Tae-un closed his eyes to concentrate. Between the screeches, there were muffled sounds of something heavy being dragged across the floor and small thuds, as if something were being kicked.
‘It must be a thief…’
The immature thoughts of a child immediately translated the noises coming from the empty house into the work of a burglar. Kim Si-baek used to joke, asking what there was in their house worth stealing, but that wasn’t the case.
Deep inside a desk drawer lay a bronze medal from the Asian Games. It was the only thing Kim Si-baek couldn’t bring himself to throw away when he left everything else from his days as a fencer at the orphanage, asking them to dispose of it for him. It was the final remnant of glory for a man who should have flown higher, but whose fall was caused by Tae-un.
It must not be lost. He couldn’t let some thief steal it. Blood surged rapidly through the child’s small heart.
Calling adults or dialing 112 would take too long. In that gap, the thief might steal the medal and flee. He had to protect it. Kim Si-baek’s final glory.
Tae-un took a compass out of his pencil case. Even an adult would be hurt if pricked by the needle of a compass; it would at least buy him some time. He didn’t care if the thief beat him. If he screamed from the pain, it would create a commotion.
He considered climbing in through the kitchen window, but just in case, he turned the doorknob; the hinges creaked as the door opened slightly. It seemed the thief had picked the lock. Clutching the compass tightly in one hand, Tae-un rushed toward the source of the sound.
And then he saw it.
A necktie tied to the bars of the security window, and someone hanging from it.
Hanging.
Screeech. The bars twisted with an ominous sound.
An ordinary child who had lived an ordinary life would not immediately think to cut a necktie with a knife upon discovering someone who had hanged themselves. The same would be true for a child whose parents were murdered before their eyes, who had been kidnapped, confined, and abused by the killer.
But Tae-un thought of it.
His memories before meeting Kim Si-baek in the semi-basement room were murky. Memories that were too mixed and entangled repeated infinitely, crushing his small brain into a pulp.
In those memories, Tae-un died stabbed next to his parents’ bodies; he died beaten to death by Tae Cheol-hun in the semi-basement; he starved to death. He died in a fire in the semi-basement; he died crushed in an earthquake; he froze to death in the dead of winter. He died in a train derailment while being dragged from Gyeongsan to Seoul; he died hit by a car while fleeing; he died suffocated by vomit inside a locked suitcase.
Five years old. Tae-un could never make it past the age of five.
「Child, what is your true heart’s desire?」
「Your fate to meet death does not change, no matter how many times it is repeated. Let us try once more.」
Along with the sound of something layered upon itself, the moment he opened his eyes after death, his father and mother would be killed by Tae Cheol-hun before him again. Tae-un couldn’t tell if this was a dream or reality. The only certainty was that no matter what he did, he died.
Tae-un bit the foot of Tae Cheol-hun as he was being beaten. He stabbed him with scissors. He stole a knife. The child learned violence. He understood violence. He knew the use of a blade.
Tae-un thought.
Because he finally reached the age of six after meeting Kim Si-baek, he locked the repeated deaths away under the name of nightmares. Beside Kim Si-baek, he rummaged through the fragments of nightmares he had never once looked back upon. From there, the child immediately recalled a way to cut the necktie.
Without even realizing that the dull blade of the kitchen knife had cut his own hand, causing red blood to splatter down, he did it. Desperately. Crying sorrowfully.
〈Hyung, please don’t be sick… I hate it when you’re hurting… If you leave me like Mom and Dad did, I’ll kill myself too…〉
The child only wished that he could die with him. Not a repeating death, but a single death. Together with him.
However, the repeating deaths began again in the year Tae-un turned fourteen. Until he met Kim Si-baek again, it continued. Over and over. Infinitely.
Having reunited with Kim Si-baek and reached the age of thirty-six, Tae-un looked down at his bare hands, gloves removed. A pitch-black left hand consumed by magical energy and an ordinary right hand. Both were covered in scars, large and small.
The scars differed slightly, but the first scar was the same. Only that scar, sustained while cutting the necktie Kim Si-baek had used to hang himself. Though it had faded with time and new scars had been etched over it, Tae-un’s eyes could still see the first scar. Even now, he vividly remembered everything about that day.
The temperature and humidity of that day, the brightness of the sunlight, the sound of the bars twisting, Kim Si-baek’s ragged, tearing breaths as he vomited violently, the heat of the tears falling on him, the desperation of the longing burning within him.
Now, he cannot die with Kim Si-baek. He knows he absolutely cannot.
「To think that something which could not be erased because it was not perceived is now presented as a new choice; an unobservable future is truly intriguing.」
Ignoring the voice of chaos echoing in his mind, Tae-un recalled the conversation he had with Kim Si-baek.
〈If Si-woon hyung were alive, he would have been someone far more precious to you than someone like me, who ruined your future, right?〉
Kim Si-baek, who had a blank expression, soon gave a hollow laugh.
〈Do I have to choose one of you as more precious? Both you and Si-woon are my precious younger brothers, so I want both of you.〉
It was an answer typical of Kim Si-baek. A person who was consistently upright and honest.
He had said something else.
〈What would you think if I didn’t go back and stayed here?〉
His existence was being engraved deeper within the other man. Tae-un would engrave himself even more vividly. So that he could never forget him.
And as much as the man cherished him, he needed a larger, heavier shackle.
「What will you do? Our child, make your choice. Will you inform the young god’s apostle? Or will you deceive them? We affirm you, so anything is fine.」
“Shut up, you voyeuristic pervert bastards.”
Tae-un chewed on a curse and pressed the enter key on the keyboard. The email was sent instantly. Layered sounds of laughter—giggles, cackles, ha-has, and soft chuckles—poured out noisily.
Cloud checked the email after finishing the dissection of a new species of magical beast and returning to the lab. He stared at the monitor for a long time, unable to even think about organizing the dissection results.
The content of the email was short. That while his biological mother had passed away, his half-siblings were alive in Korea. And attached as a file were brief personal details of the half-siblings.
It wasn’t a virus or spam. He tried to reply, asking who they were and what their intention was, but the sender’s email was already a deleted account.
‘…Are they not trying to demand money?’
Was someone trying to pull a trick by creating fake siblings? Such suspicions arose, but he wasn’t worth that much. The same went for his family. Although his sister was a famous hunter, she didn’t hold a high-ranking government position or participate in any secret, massive projects.
The most they could demand would be the confidential research of the laboratory. While he carefully pondered which of the secrets he had access to might be valuable, he picked up the phone.
Having requested a trace of the sender through his connections, Cloud couldn’t sleep that night. He received the results the following evening. The routed IP had passed through several countries, and the trace became impossible after the fifth one, Albania.
Cloud brought the email and the half-siblings’ personal details back up on the monitor and sank into thought.
Should he trust the email and go meet his siblings?
Whether they were truly his siblings could be confirmed with a DNA test. To ensure he wasn’t being deceived, he could personally collect the siblings’ DNA and request a test from a reliable institution.
In truth, if he only looked at the ‘half-siblings,’ there was no need to worry this much.
Cloud had no memories of his biological mother, whom he had been separated from at a very young age. Since there were no memories, there were no emotions. He didn’t resent the mother who had abandoned him and his brother to flee, nor did he miss her. Even if some woman came to him right now, weeping and pleading, “I am your mother,” he would pass by without a reaction.
The only reason he even recognized the fact that a mother had existed in his childhood was thanks to his brother.
〈Mom was really good at making and frying tonkatsu. It was much tastier than this.〉
His brother, whose face was a blur, had smiled like that while cutting and feeding him tonkatsu. Perhaps because of that memory. Although he no longer remembered what the tonkatsu he ate back then tasted like, Cloud still bought frozen tonkatsu from a Korean mart rather than cutlets. He didn’t find it particularly delicious, but it helped him not forget his brother.
Since he had no interest in his mother, the same applied to the half-siblings she had birthed. Whether they were dead or alive, or whatever they had done, they were beings irrelevant to him on the other side of the planet.
Reason clearly derived the logic. Nevertheless, Cloud could not easily take his eyes off the monitor.
There was only one reason.