By Zephyria 
“The flow of time in that passage was entangled. I had only stayed in the Aberrant Realm for a few hours, but when I returned to reality, two months had passed.”
“…….”
“Yeo-jin and I had been listed as missing.”
To avoid being detected by the Smiling Man, Jeil Heon remained in a missing status, and with Gong Ran-sa’s help, he managed to get in touch with Lee Yeo-jin.
〈Sunbae, you’re safe.〉
When they met after two months, she was unchanged. Yes, unchanged. Despite dealing with a maddened Aberration, there were no signs of injury. Jeil Heon realized that her Corruption Level had already passed the Critical Point.
After careful consideration, the two decided to use a Tool. Lee Yeo-jin had prophesied that the Ten Thousand Waves Flute would be the son she would give birth to within three years. Therefore, they decided to deceive Nam Jiha’s age by utilizing the fact that time does not flow in the Aberrant Realm and is twisted within the passages of the Dividing Mist. They planned to cloud the eyes of fate and find a way to resolve this destiny.
〈Yeo-jin, then you should hide with Jiha.〉
〈You’re much stronger than I am, Sunbae. We don’t know what kind of Aberrations we’ll encounter in the Aberrant Realm, so it’s only right that you, with your strength and True Eye, take Jiha. I’ll look for a way from the outside.〉
Because Lee Yeo-jin’s will was resolute, Jeil Heon could no longer dissuade her. However, reflecting on it later, Lee Yeo-jin had been prepared for death at that time. Knowing she could not stop the Smiling Man as a human, she intended to burn herself out to buy as much time as possible by becoming an Aberration.
〈Mommy…….〉
The child, not understanding the meaning of the adults’ conversation but intimidated by the serious atmosphere, instinctively sensed the parting. As the child sobbed and refused to let go, Lee Yeo-jin gave him one last tight hug, rubbing her cheek against his.
〈Jiha, you must listen to the mister. Mommy will definitely protect you.〉
That was the last time Lee Yeo-jin and Nam Jiha saw each other.
Jeil Heon forcibly held the wailing Nam Jiha and entered the Aberrant Realm using the Tool. Thus, he traversed from one Aberrant Realm to another, passing through the white passage that Yoo Jiha had seen in his dreams.
The Smiling Man never imagined that a human like Jeil Heon would use the passages of the Dividing Mist. Thanks to that, they were able to hide safely for five years in real-time, but the Smiling Man eventually succeeded in devouring Lee Yeo-jin, the Aberrant Mother.
Jeil Heon had to choose his words carefully several times to hide the fact that Lee Yeo-jin had become an Aberration and to express her death euphemistically.
“It seems Yeo-jin found out at the end that I had used the Tool. That’s how the Smiling Man found me.”
But this time, Jeil Heon had prepared. Mae-gu, who had been displeased with the Ten Thousand Waves Flute, willingly cooperated after learning that Nam Jiha was the next Sealed One.
The Smiling Man was deceived by a disguised corpse, and while Jeil Heon dealt with him, Mae-gu took Nam Jiha and escaped the Aberrant Realm.
“You said you were discovered at the market, right? That’s because Mae-gu went out into reality through the Jeonmae Five-Day Market.”
No matter how resistant one’s constitution was to contamination, an anomaly like Mae-gu could not raise a child. Mae-gu ended his role by safely guiding Nam Jiha into the human world.
Though he continued speaking with forced calmness, Jeil Heon’s fingers were laced so tightly they turned white. Regardless of the reason, the fact remained that he had let Nam Jiha go back then. How cruel must the fate of a child dropped alone into the world be? To Jeil Heon, the kind adoptive parents the child met were also a miracle.
The story had ended. It didn’t matter that the Smiling Man had contaminated the Blind Eater solely for the purpose of fusing with Jeil Heon to inflict despair, nor did it matter that he had eventually been captured to keep the Smiling Man’s attention for as long as possible.
Jeil Heon remained silent as if waiting for a verdict, and Gong Ran-sa only sighed without speaking. In the desolate silence that descended, only Yoo Jiha’s expressionless face remained, pale and cast downward.
He had no memory at all of the time before being found at the market. His suddenly awakened consciousness had already been consumed by terror, and the child had burst into tears without even being able to make a sound. The only action the child could take was to instinctively follow a woman passing by.
Looking back now, it was only natural that his first memory began with terror. Not only had he been separated from his mother, but he had also seen his father trying to kill him. To a child, the world is their parents. Since that world had collapsed, there was no way terror wouldn’t strip away his memories.
Gradually, the night deepened. Without even realizing that the late evening air was flowing coldly, Yoo Jiha curled up alone on the wooden veranda, sinking into his own inner self.
The mother and father, who had felt so foreign, suddenly surged close. Things he had considered distant stories, like being a Sealed One, rushed in all at once and swallowed him like a wave. There, he was a piece of driftwood, unable to cast an anchor, merely swept away aimlessly.
He didn’t know what to do, or what the right thing to do was.
‘Was it… really my father?’
Unconsciously, he touched his neck. The image of the Smiling Man, raising his voice in joy while strangling him, flickered through his mind. The serial killer who, drenched in madness, killed his own mother, his wife, and other people—that man was his father.
The blood of a murderer flowed in this body as well.
Suddenly, a surge of nausea rose. As Yoo Jiha collapsed on the edge of the veranda and dry-heaved, he belatedly realized there was a hand rubbing his back. When had the shawl been draped over his shoulders?
The hand rubbing his back paused in mid-air as Yoo Jiha sat up, then quietly withdrew. Even as Yoo Jiha gripped the shawl tightly and curled up again, the man remained by his side in silence. He wasn’t sitting close and pressed against him as usual, but the warmth felt so vivid, as if it were within reach, that it only made him more melancholy.
Though he couldn’t remember, that warmth must have been familiar to his younger self.
“……Why did he kill people?”
It wasn’t a question asked in hopes of an answer. Once the voice escaped, it poured out the agony that confused his heart.
“Even if the targets were criminals, you can’t just kill people as you please. On top of that, he killed his mother and wife just because they tried to stop him. How… how could a person do that? Is he even human?”
Information he had read while researching the Smiling Man in the past pierced into his mind. People who had died in a short span of less than a year. The smile marks drawn as if to flaunt the crimes.
That person was Nam Hyeon-woo. That person was the father who sired him. Half of the human body that constituted Yoo Jiha originated from him.
Every time he looked back, a horrific feeling rose, as if his insides were twisting. He covered his mouth, but it felt as if bile was filling his throat. The time he had lived without knowing what half of his body was felt wretched.
Now, he could never return to those days of ignorance.
“……I should have kept it hidden until the end, but I couldn’t.”
At Jeil Heon’s murmur, which was close to talking to himself, Yoo Jiha turned his head with a low gasp. There was a face there, spread with an agony no less than his own.
“It’s all my fault.”
As if declaring he would accept all the resentment and anger since he had no right to offer comfort, he offered no excuses. ……How had this man endured the truth alone? Without showing a single hint of it to him, how? Even while suffering as much as he did for the seventeen lost years, how?
The sound of the flute that only he could hear was said to mean that the Ten Thousand Waves Flute was searching for the Sealed One. If the Prince, the previous Divine Artifact, had not died earlier than expected—preventing the Ten Thousand Waves Flute from becoming like a monkey’s paw wish—he probably would not have said a word until everything was finished.
Wrapped in the comfort of ignorance he had created, he would never have known what this man had sacrificed for him. For his entire life.
Yoo Jiha shed tears, enveloped in the agony born of knowledge.
“Jiha, you probably hate it when I speak to you after deceiving you, but will you listen to just this one thing?”
As if embracing the young man who only bit his lip in silence, the man’s truth—which he had protected him with for a lifetime yet had to swallow and keep hidden until now—flowed out softly.
“Yeo-jin truly loved you.”