By Zephyria 
While crying on the floor, I hunched my back as much as possible. The cold body I had held in my arms was nowhere to be found. I couldn’t feel the pain in my hot eyes, and the sound of the startled dog barking, panting, had disappeared. A notebook with the last page wide open was lying on the floor, just like me.
The countless crossed-out lines were red. The diary, filled with numerous sentences and confessions, crumpled, torn, and crossed out, was just red.
I adored Hae-ah, I just thought everything he said was cute.
‘Tae-rim-ssi. It hurts….’
Occasionally, on nights when he mumbled vaguely in his sleep, I would touch his forehead. He doesn’t have a fever… He must be having a dream… I would think and leave it at that. I thought about shaking him awake, but I put my hand on his stomach. Pat, pat… while patting him,
‘Hae-ah. It’s okay.’
I soothed his nightmares with those words. …I did. Even though I didn’t deserve to.
“Why….”
When I lifted my tearful face, I saw Hae-ah. Twenty-six years old, Hae-ah, who was beautiful and radiant no matter what he did, was looking at me with the eyes of a thirty-two-year-old. His eyes, watching me groan in sorrow and collapse on the floor, looked surprised.
Before he could open his mouth to say anything,
“Why… why did you marry me again?”
I asked.
“You should have just cut ties. You should have run away…. Knowing what kind of bastard I am, why did you marry me again? How could you say you liked me again?”
Hae-ah gaped at the scream I shouted like a scream. He had a look that didn’t understand at all why I was crying or why I was angry. Kang Hae-ah doesn’t know… that he’s not the only one who went through all those things.
“Why did you marry me? You should have gone far away…, you should have left. You should have gone to Paris, Florence, anywhere else but here, and lived your life….”
You should have abandoned me, you should have left… Saying that, I crawled on my knees to Hae-ah. I hugged his waist, which was standing blankly like a scarecrow, with both arms, and buried my face in his lean stomach. My tears soaked Hae-ah’s clothes wet.
“Tae-rim-ssi, have you ever seen the first snow?”
He asked, touching the back of my head with a gentle hand. It was a voice mixed with fake laughter, as if going through a fun prank, just like me in the past.
“The first snow that falls… melts as soon as it touches the ground. Like rain. But then… there’s a snowflake that doesn’t melt, that sticks to the ground and piles up white…. And because of that snowflake, the next snowflake, and the next snowflake, piles up.”
Soon, his two hands cupped my cheeks. Slowly, he made me lift my head and matched his gaze with mine.
“Tae-rim-ssi was exactly like that to me…. The smiling face I saw on the day we first met, that expectation, that feeling of pleasant excitement…. That remained in my heart and didn’t melt. The next, and the next snowflake, clung to it and kept piling up.”
Hae-ah is crying.
“So I liked you.”
The confession was in the past tense. Everything was in the past tense, the words whispered in pretty words… packaging the old me, not the current me.
“I… I’ve never hated Tae-rim-ssi. I’ve never wanted to break up, I’ve never wanted to grow apart. I was so glad to be married again….”
Tears fell like raindrops on my cheeks.
“Because… we haven’t even had a proper chance to meet each other yet.”
After wiping away the tears that had fallen in drops with the tip of his thumb, Hae-ah smiled. His kind-looking eyes narrowed with a smile. New tears fell in the same spot again.
“But now…, now. I want to be loved by Tae-rim-ssi. I want to be loved… and I want to love, by Tae-rim-ssi who knows who I am. I want to live with Tae-rim-ssi.”
Yes, let’s do that.
“…I want to live.”
Let’s live together….
Instead of answering, I hugged him. Instead of lifting me up, Kang Hae-ah knelt down and sat on the floor with me.
“Thank you… for believing my story.”
Hae-ah whispered that as we soaked each other’s shoulders with tears while embracing. I swallowed my confession before his words, trembling with joy.
I didn’t bother saying things like the past loss wasn’t something only you experienced, that I remembered everything too, that I understood everything now… I let Hae-ah assume as he pleased and interpret as he liked. That was the best thing to do.
Now I knew, he was completely innocent. He loved me to death and would give me anything, so if he knew I was crying over past mistakes, he would cry along with me. Even if he knew that the current me was the me from back then, he would kiss the back of my hand, forgive me with words of comfort, and embrace me with words of love… I didn’t want to be forgiven by such a Hae-ah.
“…I love you, Hae-ah.”
The happiness I felt for the first time welled up inside me. I thought, I’ve finally met you… I had finally met Kang Hae-ah… I had met Kang Hae-ah again.
On the last day of the heat cycle, we cleaned the house. I hugged Do-jin, who had returned home, and took a big lap around the garden, and we brought in new flowerpots for the second-floor veranda, which I always thought was too big and empty.
Kneeling in front of the green leaves, Hae-ah closed his eyes and raised his head. The tip of his nose, feeling the sunlight, was reddish like a ripening fruit.
I watched his white front teeth, which looked like a rabbit’s, between his parted lips. At the same time, I quietly savored the memories that flooded in like the tide, along with the past confessions that would never return. The parts that were faint like a foggy night filled in the blanks in my memory one by one.
When I saw Hae-ah enjoying the sunlight with a clearer smile than ever, I remembered the moment when I hugged the dead Hae-ah and burst into tears. The coolness of his body temperature that had turned cold and the blood vessels that faintly showed like butterfly wings over his peacefully closed eyelids remained so vividly in my mind that I regretted not knowing until now.
I just stood there blankly, but as soon as our eyes met, Hae-ah moved as if he had read my mind. He got up from his spot and ran straight to me, wrapped his arms around my stiff waist, leaned his forehead against my shoulder, and hugged me. At that time, his body was smaller than mine, so even though he was hugging me with all his might, it felt like he was being held by me.
I kissed Hae-ah’s soft crown. I checked that the necklace I had given him was around his dry neck, and I felt his and my hearts beating in the same rhythm as if they were intertwined.
“Tae-rim-ssi.”
I was smiling, soaked in happiness, but
“Don’t cry.”
Hae-ah even comforted me like that.
From the big and important things to the very small and trivial things, I got to know Hae-ah. From the face that couldn’t hide his joy even when we just lay side by side in the master bedroom, to the way he would clasp his hands together as if begging for forgiveness like a guilty person when he was nervous, to the way he would pretend not to see me even when I looked at him with a smile full of excitement….
Now I knew everything. Just as I occasionally saw the thirty-two-year-old Kang Hae-ah like a hallucination, Hae-ah also looked at the thirty-four-year-old Cheon Tae-rim, who was imitating a rock.
“…Hae-ah.”
But I didn’t dislike the extraordinary sadness between him and me. The unhealed wounds and teardrops seemed to give strength to today’s affection.
“I love you….”
I bent down, put my cheek against Hae-ah’s cheek, and said that. Then his thumping heartbeat grew louder and a sweet body scent leaked out. A breathless sigh also flowed into my ear, so I already heard the answer,
“I, I love you too… Tae-rim-ssi.”
Hae-ah struggled even to confess something he already knew to me.
The sky outside the window, which was running out, began to turn navy blue. Before our shadows grew longer, I picked up Hae-ah and headed to the second-floor bedroom. Even though he buried his forehead in my shoulder as if he was embarrassed, Hae-ah didn’t refuse to be put down.
By the time we lay side by side on the bed, Do-jin was nowhere to be seen for some reason. Hae-ah seemed disappointed that he didn’t know why the good dog was avoiding him, but as his Alpha, I knew the reason.
“It’s because your scent is too strong.”
Although it had faded a lot over the past few days, the afterglow of the heat cycle still remained on Hae-ah’s skin.
As I rubbed my nose against his shoulder and lay down next to him, Hae-ah looked embarrassed. We had already shown each other all sorts of beastly appearances, even knotting, but it was amazing and cute how he was still shy when I held him.
“Tae-rim-ssi.”
Hae-ah called me in a voice that had taken quite a bit of courage.
“…Can I lie on top of Tae-rim-ssi?”
Instead of answering the question, I lay straight on my back with my stomach showing. Then, like last night, Hae-ah couldn’t hide his joy and quickly climbed on top of me. He lay down with his stomach touching mine, then leaned his face on my chest and smiled softly.
“Do you like it?”
I asked, and
“Yes….”
Hae-ah’s cheeks were as red as apples.
I must have become a real beast… I was seized with some self-reproach. Hae-ah had drowsy eyes, but I was a beastly bastard whose dick was standing up even while looking at his cute face. Heat rose in my forearms and the muscles in my stomach hardened in an instant.
Hae-ah seemed uncomfortable because of that and tossed and turned. Still, he didn’t run away from me. Lying still on my stomach, he was like a cat that had found a good spot.
The flesh of Hae-ah’s thighs, which touched my hardened penis, was soft.
“……”
He put his face against my chest so that his cheek was pressed against it, and he was silent. I ruffled his soft hair and checked his expression. His forehead was red and he had his clenched fist in front of his mouth, and his face with his eyes lowered aroused my desire.
I wanted him more than ever. Now that I knew who Kang Hae-ah was and who Cheon Tae-rim was, I wanted to hold him, embrace him, and confirm him.
…I wanted to confirm and feel reassured. That my existence didn’t wear him down, and that he, just by breathing and having his heart beat, evaporated my sadness.
I touched Hae-ah as if playing an instrument. I massaged his neck with force, gently stroked his soft forearms, and lightly plucked the bumpy rib contours of his sharply narrowing waist like touching guitar strings. Then the wheezing breath turned into a panting moan.
When I gently wrapped my hands around it, his slender waist almost fit perfectly in my two hands. It’s always like this when I touch Hae-ah. He was slender and flexible, but everything about me was just big, rough, and thick.
“I want to hold you.”
Hae-ah’s shoulders twitched as I whispered quietly.
“I won’t hold you painfully. …I’ll just touch you.”
Carefully, I laid him down next to me on my body. Hae-ah let out a groan just from that. The marks of being licked, sucked, and fucked all over were clearly stained.
I carefully rubbed my lips against his shoulder as he turned his back to me. Still, he didn’t refuse, so I stroked his dry stomach with my palm. As I gently touched the bruised spot and lowered my hand, the tip of his hardened penis touched my thumb.
“…You’re hard.”
I whispered, and
“It’s because Tae-rim-ssi keeps… touching me….”
Hae-ah blamed me.
I grabbed his thing, which was wet at the end, in one hand. When I put a little strength into it and squeezed it tightly, Hae-ah scrunched up his whole body, letting out a surprised sound, ‘hick.’ I couldn’t see his face well because he was rubbing his forehead against the sheet.
I put my stomach against his buttocks and half-rode him. As my upper body covered his back like a roof, Hae-ah’s penis, which was in my hand, twitched slightly. His soft body wasn’t the only sensitive area.
“Heu, euheut….”
A pleasant moan came out as I kissed his ear, which was flushed red. The round earlobe was soft as I licked it as if hitting it with the tip of my tongue. As I sucked it as if I was going to eat it whole, Hae-ah’s shoulders moved noticeably.
“Ah, at, at…! Just… just a moment….”
A relaxed expression was seen for a moment. His powerless eyes and his red cheeks suddenly gave me a sense of sadism.
While holding Hae-ah’s thing in one hand, I licked and sucked his ear. Every time I pretended to chew on the ear cartilage with my upper teeth, leaving marks, his waist, which was under my body, wriggled from side to side.
“Ah! Ah… euheut, euk… It hurts, ah, it hurts….”
Hae-ah struggled to get away from me belatedly, flailing his legs. Feeling like a bad predator, I pressed my lower abdomen tightly against his buttocks.
“Tae-rim-ssi…, let, let go, this….”
He was refusing with his plump lips, but
“…Hick.”
His wet moans and the precum flowing down to my wrist were saying something else.
I kissed his soft ear repeatedly so that the sound of pecking could be heard well. I licked it with my tongue, sucked it, and even blew air into his ear on purpose. Hae-ah’s toes scratched and pushed against the sheet.
“Heu, heuek, euheut….”
Hae-ah’s buttocks, arching his back with his dry stomach sticking out, pressed my penis with his flesh. In an instant, his body, which was soaked in sweat, smelled of lust. His tightly pressed thighs tempted me with their plump shape. After staring blankly for a while, I put my penis, which was erect with blood vessels, into the gap.
“Eung….”
Hae-ah seemed to have realized my intention and closed his thighs, pressing his knees together.
“Yes, like that….”
“Yes, yes….”
The back of his head, which was red to the neck, was nodding, and it couldn’t have looked prettier.
I readjusted Hae-ah’s thing, which was slippery in my hand. A breath full of anticipation rang out softly. As it was, I stroked the end of his erect penis with my thumb,
“Ah, at…, ah!”
The sound of his thumping heart was muffled in my arms.
“Do you like it?”
“Hick…, hick….”
“You’re really sensitive, you.”
“Heuk, euheut, …Yes, yes… eu-eung….”
I pressed down with my weight and moved my palm roughly repeatedly. Hae-ah’s thighs and muscles, which were trembling with his knees tightly closed, repeatedly tightened and loosened my penis.
Unable to withstand the flushed excitement, I pushed my hips against his buttocks a few times. With a splashing sound, Hae-ah’s buttocks and thighs quickly revealed red marks.
“Ah…, at, ah!”
Hae-ah moved as I pushed and pulled. My forehead was veined with the thigh muscles that tightly squeezed my penis, and a sweet body scent spread from Hae-ah’s body.
Soon, he ejaculated in my hand with weak moans and tears. His dry waist trembled and his head was lifted up, then it fell down. I lightly held and shook his thing, which was awkwardly lying down and continuously dripping clear semen, and clear semen continued to flow out little by little.
“Heueu… eung….”
I lightly supported his lower abdomen with my hand, which was soaked with semen, and corrected his collapsed posture. When I hugged him with both arms, raised his upper body, and gave him a pillow, Hae-ah comfortably lay on it. His back, panting and catching his breath, rose and fell.
I thought he was already tired, but he put his thighs together again. He even reached out between his legs and put my penis, which was soaked with precum, back in.
I laughed because of that.
“Shall we continue?”
“……”
“Answer me.”
“…Yes, it feels good…. I like it….”
His fist-sized back of the head moved nodding. His penis seemed like it would break because he was twisting his knees to try to gather the non-existent thigh fat. I kept laughing because it was so absurd.
“Why are you laughing?”
Hae-ah glared at me sideways, and
“You’re acting cute, constantly.”
I slowly lowered my upper body and put my cheek against his ear.
“Tae-rim-ssi….”
“Yeah, Hae-ah.”
“Why… why aren’t you putting it in?”
I hugged him in a rush and was very flustered. Why aren’t I putting it in… My gaze naturally turned to his buttocks at the question. There were marks on his white buttocks from being fucked like a dog for a few days, and his asshole was still a little red and swollen.
“…I’m holding back because I’m worried you’ll be tired.”
I grabbed Hae-ah’s right buttock as it was. I wondered if the flesh had worn out a bit because I had done it too much, but somehow his butt seemed smaller. When I gently grabbed it and spread it to the side, I could see the red and pitiful, yet cute hole.
Hae-ah, who I thought would run away in disgust, unexpectedly didn’t resist. Rather, he firmly supported the pillow under his chest, raised his knees, and lifted his buttocks.
“I…, I don’t do it… that’s more difficult….”
He stuttered, and his skin was flushed, showing that he was embarrassed, but I got heated up by his actions of urging me to insert it.
“Put it in?”
I casually placed my thick penis on his butt crack. The soft back, which was slightly swollen, was visibly twitching. The sound of swallowing saliva rang out, no matter who it was.
“Yes, do it like you do at night….”
Hae-ah whispered, lifting his slender waist.
“Hold me… hold me tighter.”
With the end of his small whisper, there were no more words between us. Like a beggar who had never received affection, I dug into his arms as if craving them, and Hae-ah, trapped in my arms, shed tears and more moans than that.
At the moment when I felt his body like a piece that I had lost sometime, I wondered. Whether Hae-ah was feeling me like that too… Whether only the touching skin was hot as if it was alive, whether he was suffocating from the feeling of being comforted while also relieving his lust, whether he was overwhelmed by the urge to take out his heart and show it because he couldn’t express this feeling in words.
I had many questions, but there was no need to utter any of them. It was because Hae-ah’s feelings were transferred to me through my skin, as if electricity was flowing.
I understood everything about Kang Hae-ah and loved him selfishly. With the facts I had realized put in my own vault, I comforted him but didn’t tell him the course of my memories, my wounds were mine, and his wounds were also mine… I greedily scraped together the memories flowing with blood.
But even to me, who had more memories than ever, there was only one blank space. A fierce question that I couldn’t know as a person, so I was terribly afraid, but I desperately wanted to know even if I shed tears, kept knocking on my Adam’s apple.
“Hae-ah. There’s something I’m curious about.”
When I took out the question from outside my palate, I tried my best to pretend to be nonchalant.
“Yeah…, what is it?”
On the sheet where pheromones were mixed up haphazardly and heated up with body temperature, Hae-ah slowly dug into my side. His voice was hoarse from screaming, but his smile was more comfortable than before and his eyes were shining.
“Do you… I mean. Do you remember all the things from your past… past life?”
I asked, gently touching his earlobe, and
“Yes. I remember.”
Hae-ah’s left cheek naturally leaned against my palm.
“Then, do you remember how you died too…?”
“Yes…. I remember.”
I forcibly pulled up the corners of my mouth. I acted my best, so as not to look like someone who was left sad and painful and obsessed.
And I asked.
“…Did it hurt a lot?”
Then Hae-ah opened his mouth, then closed it. He wouldn’t know. How much pain that short moment when he wet his dry lips gave me. If the answer ‘it hurt’ came out of his mouth, I felt like I wouldn’t be able to breathe anymore.
Suddenly, I began to regret asking the question itself. No, it’s okay, you don’t have to answer… At the moment when I opened my mouth to reverse it like that,
“No…, it didn’t hurt at all.”
Hae-ah saved me.
“I’m embarrassed to bring up this story to Tae-rim-ssi, but… I took a lot of medicine and sleeping pills…. So really, just like sleeping…. So it didn’t hurt at all.”
My relieved breath leaked out thinly through my parted teeth. Hae-ah came to me, who couldn’t easily make any expression, in a crawling posture. He clasped my hand, which was floating in the air, and put it on the sheet, and he carefully overlapped his body on mine.
That gentle and warm touch brought me back to today. I couldn’t have been happier that his heart was thumping in my chest.
Finally, when I smiled, Hae-ah smiled along with me. After sharing a light kiss once, twice, he fiddled with my ear cartilage. Then he started chattering.
“Eueum. But I was a little out of it.”
“…Why?”
“What should I say… um, well…. It’s like God suddenly spoke to me? Haha…, it sounds funny when I say it like this. Anyway, I heard something like auditory hallucinations.”
I was dumbfounded by the unexpected story. Not knowing how to respond, I just stared at Hae-ah’s thoughtful face, while he was serious as he reminisced about the past.
I pressed the tip of my thumb between his furrowed eyebrows to smooth them out. Hae-ah then made an ‘ah’ sound. And as if he had realized something, he said,
“I think they called my name. Calling me ‘Kang Hae-ah’… what was it? They said they could still manipulate it. They were talking among themselves, telling me… to start over.”
“…Manipulate. Start over?”
“Yeah. I can’t let it end like this….”
Then Hae-ah shook his head from side to side. After blurting out a carefree ‘Ah, I don’t know,’ he buried his face in my shoulder like a shy person.
“I don’t know, it’s just… a silly story.”
His breath, as he smiled shyly, touched my neck. Feeling his warm skin, I raised my hand. I habitually touched the back of Hae-ah’s head, ruffled his hair, and then stroked it back into place.
In the brief moment of staring blankly at the ceiling, I forgot how to breathe.
—Manipulation is still possible. What should we do?
When I recalled those voices….
—What else? We have to start over from the beginning.
I wish I hadn’t recognized whose voices they were.
Throughout the ride up to the top floor in the headquarters building’s elevator, my heart felt like it was sinking further and further down. I quietly gazed at the lobby and the offices on each floor visible through the transparent glass walls.
AOM was like another kind of family to me. I memorized the faces and names of every single employee working at my company. I knew everything about them, from their alma mater and main tasks to their personalities. So there’s no way I couldn’t recognize them, the voices of those I employ and use….
The elevator doors opened as it stopped on the top floor. I just stood there, unable to get off. I stood still, gazing at the clean hallway and the seats where the secretaries sat, and at the letters ‘AOM’… engraved in relief on the black sign hanging in front.
Just as the glass doors were about to close again,
“President!”
Si Eun-cheol reached out and pressed the button again. He tapped his left foot, making a sound, and gestured for me to come out. After staring at him, smiling with a composed face, for a few seconds, I slowly walked down the short hallway.
“You look much better after taking a break? I put the reports on your desk, so please check those first. Oh, and you got the message that today’s afternoon meeting was moved to tomorrow morning, right? I put the materials they sent next to the reports, in the blue file.”
As soon as I entered the president’s office, I closed the door. Behind me,
“Uh oh?”
I heard a surprised sound, but I had no time to pay attention to his reaction.
‘No. There’s no way…. It can’t be.’
With trembling steps, I headed straight for the desk. My gaze fell on the reports that Si Eun-cheol had neatly organized, as always.
‘No….Underneath the plausible-sounding title, the company name and the contact person’s name were printed.
‘N…o.But the other spaces were all empty or filled with meaningless characters.
“……”
Instead of pointing out that the documents were wrong, I opened the blue file right next to them. The papers behind a couple of photos of factory rails and parts were also blank.
I just repeated inhaling and exhaling for a few seconds. Soon, I raised my hand and groped my chest. I put my fingers into the inside pocket of my jacket and took out a small key. When I yanked open the cabinet locked in the far corner of the president’s office, a black drawer appeared.
The drawer, which contained the minimum number of documents that had to be stored in physical form rather than as data, contained the contracts that I had struggled to win over the past few months, one section at a time. I used my index finger to flip through the papers one by one, then pulled out the entire drawer. I dumped the documents inside onto the desk as they were.
When I turned over and unfolded each of the scattered documents to check, each one was blank. The data and contracts that I had obtained while attending meetings, discussions, working overtime, and even going on business trips were all blank.
‘How could I not have known?’
Even though I had been coming to work, receiving reports, and attending business meetings until last week, I didn’t know. The act of receiving reports and the meeting itself existed, but there was no specific information exchanged through them in my head.
Only the fact that ‘it was a smoothly good task’ remained as a fictional memory.
‘Why… didn’t I know?’
My legs gave way. Staggering backward, my calves caught on a chair, and I collapsed onto it. The office chair wobbled under my weight and slowly turned to the side.
I turned my upper body to the side, tilting my ankles in their shoes, and looked out the window. I saw groups of two or three office workers passing by, and a man waving his arm on the shoulder of the road to catch a taxi.
Suddenly, I felt breathless. I couldn’t speak, and my mind just kept turning white and then black. It was a knock that called out to me, frozen as if I was having a nightmare or being pinned down by a ghost.
‘Knock knock’… At the polite knock that rang out twice, I raised my head and saw Si Eun-cheol holding a cup of coffee in each hand. With surprised eyes, he looked down at the floor of the president’s office, which looked like a document typhoon had passed through.
“Hey…, President Cheon.”
He came over with hurried steps and put the coffee on the table. One was for me, and the other was a latte he had brought for himself.
“Tae-rim, what’s wrong. I thought you might be out of it after your vacation, so I came to check on you, but what is this? What were you looking for… is something wrong?”
I quietly watched Si Eun-cheol, who was bending over to organize the documents. I could see him sighing through his teeth and swallowing saliva down his throat. When he straightened up, he made an ‘ehyu’ sound and looked at me with concern in his eyes and an unhappy face.
It was too real, too much like the real Si Eun-cheol.
‘‘The real Si Eun-cheol’.’
Even that thought made me feel ridiculous.
‘Even I’m not the real Cheon Tae-rim.’
“…No.”
I smiled.
“No, nothing’s wrong. I’m just tired….”
Then, with a relieved look, Si Eun-cheol put the scattered documents back into the drawer. As he did, he didn’t realize at all that they were empty blanks. Just like me yesterday, he believed that all of this was real.
‘Beta Test….’
When the marriage contract was being discussed, there was an AOM program Beta Test that used the information of Kang Hae-ah and Cheon Tae-rim. The memory of obtaining ‘just a smoothly good result’ existed in my head. But when it came to recalling specific information, I didn’t know a single sentence or a single line of a graph.
It was only natural. In the first place, the test report was not completed, and the act of receiving the results had never happened. …The Beta Test was not over yet.
I existed inside the test.
“No.”
An exclamation like a cough escaped through my teeth.
“No.”
Before reason could judge, my body moved first. When I jumped up, the chair wheels rolled backward with a rattling sound. My knees felt stiff, and a nauseating feeling that felt like I was about to throw up was churning below my Adam’s apple.
I felt impatient, and my palms were sweating. It felt like the world, which had become flimsy in an instant, was rushing into my body, and I didn’t want to be alone in this terrible feeling. I couldn’t stand just sitting there.
Pressing down on my hot breath, I walked out of the president’s office.
“Wait… I have to go home.”
I said that while standing in front of the elevator. Si Eun-cheol approached me with a bewildered face at my sudden words and actions.
“…You don’t have to come with me.”
I habitually said that to the guy who would most likely follow me,
“Who said anything about following you?”
He just reached out and pressed the elevator button next to me, and then stepped back. Thanks to that, I felt a sense of relief from the pressure that had been weighing down on me, even if only for a moment. I wondered why Si Eun-cheol was just letting me go.
“Tae-rim.”
Eun-cheol called out to me as I looked up at the elevator floor numbers, which were getting closer and closer, 6, 7, 8…. Not knowing how to look at his face, I just nodded. The door opened as the guide floor stopped at 13, and
“…No, it’s nothing.”
I was the only one who got on the elevator, which was bright with square fluorescent lights.
“Today’s schedule isn’t urgent, so take your time getting back. Drive carefully, too. And… it was actually hard to calm you down every time you had a fit.”
I was dumbfounded by the words that were conveyed from the hallway, just before the door closed. It was Si Eun-cheol who always came to find me, saying that he was a Dominant so it was okay. I thought it was okay because he volunteered to do it, but it was absurd to hear that ‘it was actually hard.’
“Ah…, really?”
As I said that and looked at his face, the discomfort that had been lingering for months was finally resolved. His face, which had suddenly looked unfamiliar, had changed that day.
‘It was because he got younger, because he went back to six years ago.’
The elevator doors closed as they were.
And then, …I don’t know what state of mind I was in when I drove. Unable to resist the childish feeling that I didn’t want to be alone, I went back home. I wanted to see Hae-ah, and I wanted to hold Hae-ah. If I could just do that, it felt like the boiling head, which was so complicated that it felt like it would overflow at any moment, would cool down.
Unlike when I went to work, the two-story house was quiet. Feeling the daytime scenery unfamiliar, I opened the front door and walked through the hallway.
“Hae-ah.”
But there was no answer. Seeing that there was no dog wagging its tail and no Hwang Ok-hye Ajumma, it seemed that the three of them had gone out together.
I walked to the center of the living room and slumped down on the sofa, my body drained of energy. Only then did the world, which had felt narrow, small, and stuffy, become comfortable. I leaned back on the familiar backrest and emptied my head for a long time, and when I opened my eyes again, I was looking up at the high ceiling.
“Ah….”
Suddenly, realization struck the back of my head. A fact that I hadn’t noticed because I had become so used to it suddenly came to me, and moments of waving a strange hand followed one after another.
I stared blankly at the sofa I was sitting on. It was a sofa that I thought was too big, to the point that I should just call it a bed. Hae-ah spent more time lying horizontally on this sofa than sitting upright on it because the seat was so deep. Now that I looked at it, it was just the right length for my legs.
“……”
I got up from my seat and slowly looked around. Not only was the ceiling particularly high, but the hallway was also wide, and the doors were all 1.5 times larger than usual, so it was a house that I thought ‘should be called a castle instead of a house,’ and ‘was too high and big, so it felt empty.’ The space that had been the target of my sarcasm had become our home, the most comfortable place in the world.
I stood blankly in the center of the living room and smiled. When we first got married, I thought this house symbolized Kang Hae-ah’s extravagance. I couldn’t understand why he had unreasonably wanted such a big house, and why he had even begged his Father to get it.
House, car, gifts…. The attention that Chairman Kang Jun-il had given him had piled up one by one and strangled Kang Hae-ah. It had become the reason why Kang Il-hae harbored vile malice, saying that marriage to a Dominant Alpha was a boast.
‘But this… house.’
This house was not a gift for Kang Hae-ah. It was too big and spacious for a person who was often lonely because they had a spouse who was often away. The stairs were too steep for him to climb up and down, as he often staggered with dizziness due to the high ceiling.
Still, on that day when he was twenty-six years old, Hae-ah wanted this house. The picky young master, who was so meticulous that he chose everything from the furniture and lighting to the height of the shelves, the size of the bathtub, and even the location of the switches, found and decorated this house.
All of that was correct for my height, my build, and my eye level.
My heart immediately warmed. And I reveled in the fact that I had been living in a house that the young and young Hae-ah of twenty-six had gifted me.
“Tae-rim-ssi!”
A shout close to a cheer woke me up. I turned my head to the front door, which I had been blankly looking up at the second floor, and saw Hae-ah smiling with half surprise and half joy.
“What is it, at this hour! Without a word… did you leave something behind? A USB? Documents? What should I find for you?”
His face was bright as he approached, smiling so much that his shoulders were shaking. The light sky-blue short-sleeved shirt had a loose, wide collar, and Do-jin’s leash was sticking out from the pocket of his shorts that came down to his knees. It seemed that he had taken the young dog to dog kindergarten.
I couldn’t resist the urge to hug him tightly as he approached me without hesitation. Hae-ah’s skin, which had been warmed by the summer sun, was warm and soft. Even the sound of his surprised intake of breath and the resonance of his pounding heart were so good that they brought tears to my eyes. Just that alone made me feel a sense of relief, as if I had woken up from a nightmare. The anxiety that had been pressing down on my whole body like a body ache also withdrew its outstretched hand.
I could breathe. It felt refreshing, like oxygen was flowing through my stuffy head.
“Yeah…, I left something behind. I forgot… and left you behind.”
At those words, his shoulders, which were under my chin, shook with laughter.
“What is it, our Tae-rim-ssi. You can even say things like that….”
Hae-ah probably doesn’t know. How amazing his existence is, making me laugh even in this situation….
Taking my time and putting in effort, I examined Hae-ah’s face. I cupped and stroked his cheeks and ears, and observed every detail of his clear eyes, narrow nose, lips thinning as he smiled, the smooth texture of his eyebrows, and even the location of the very small mole on his left cheek. I even counted the number of his eyelashes, in case any of his features were empty like the flawed documents.
But Hae-ah was Hae-ah.
“Tae-rim-ssi.”
With just one whispered call, he heals the shock that had struck me like an accident, and with just one hug, he puts my precarious reason back in its place.
The arms around my waist had the strong strength unique to someone who was excited. The downy hair on his neck, slightly damp with sweat, was fluffy. My heart was pounding in his chest, and the feel of his tousled hair tickled my chin pleasantly.
‘Yeah….’
In fact, I knew. I had just mistaken that sense of déjà vu as a distortion caused by love, but only Kang Hae-ah had been important in my world from the start, and only Kang Hae-ah had been real.
I knew it instinctively from the start. That the other things were… just noise, supporting actors, and props.
“…I love you, Kang Hae-ah.”
Hae-ah’s laughter grew even louder as I confessed quietly. After disguising his shyness with laughter for a long time, he finally took his face off my shoulder and showed me his reddened face. He had just suddenly come home and delivered a confession, but his brown eyes were wet with emotion.
I lowered my head towards him, who was closing his eyes and carefully reaching out. The kiss that came after our noses brushed left and right and then slid softly was sweet.
I felt that the low wall that had existed between him and me had disappeared. I also felt that my body, which had been rejecting the engraving all along, was wavering.
It was finally a truly free moment. Even the slightest sadness was replaced by affection. I was no longer afraid of the engraving. I wanted to give Hae-ah everything I had. Even if I did, there would be no trembling with disappointment or tangling my mind like a skein of yarn. There would be no more days of taking medicine, mixed with anger, resentment, and thirst, and there would be no need to push him away with anger and drive myself away.
I know that the only wound that Hae-ah will inflict on me with an active act in his entire life is ultimately to end his own life. Even that is at my request…
‘I wish you would be a little quieter.’
…To listen to the last thing I said carelessly.
Now he doesn’t have to be quiet. I hope he’s as loud as possible. I hope he messes up my side for the rest of my life and shakes up my boring daily life.
That’s all I need.
If only that were the case, whether this world is real or fake, whether it’s reality or a test, those problems, if only I forget and pretend not to know….
‘No….’
Hot breath escaped with a panting sound.
‘No way.I held my breath at the moment when the engraving, which I had wanted with burning affection, was right in front of me. Hae-ah, perhaps reading my expression of tension as I suppressed myself to avoid inhaling his pheromone, raised his hand and soothed me. I leaned my cheek against his hand, which was always gentle, and smiled.
In my head, I recalled the two conditions for the AOM Beta Test to automatically end.
One, the 100 percent happy ending moment when two AI subjects complete imprinting and knotting with each other.
Two, the moment when one of the two AI subjects dies, making it impossible to continue the test.
“I love you, Tae-rim-ssi.”
Listening to the confession that melted my heart, I pondered the ending of this test.
Returning to the company, the entire afternoon was tedious. Sitting at my desk, all I could do was move mechanically. I imagined yelling, breaking things, and rampaging, but I knew it wouldn’t change anything.
Unstable doubts surged up, my heart pounding as if it would burst, my ribs aching, but my mind was utterly calm. Reason and emotion were operating separately. While emotion aimlessly lamented injustice, anger, and futility, reason, doused in cold water, thought like a machine.
‘Stay calm.’
Yes, I had to stay calm. Calmly, I had to first realize the powerlessness that there was practically nothing I could do right now.
What was clear was that I was trapped inside the Beta Test of the program I developed. I tried to find evidence that it wasn’t true, that I was just momentarily crazy and mistaken, my happy circuit whirring loudly.
But the more I did, the clearer the cold reality became.
Objective facts were sequentially listed in my head.
‘The program I developed.’
Acknowledging that the ‘I’ was not the current me was the first step. I only existed as a replica, a mere imitation, and I was not the real Cheon Tae-rim. I was just an artificial intelligence within the program that believed itself to be Cheon Tae-rim.
As soon as I steeled my heart, I became extremely calm. Surprisingly so, even to myself. I first pondered, ‘Is there a way to get out of the program?’ and concluded that there was no way, nor was there any reason to.
‘Get out to where….’
Whenever the ego of Cheon Tae-rim, the CEO of AOM, raised its head, I had to remind myself that I was not him. I was merely an AI created to resemble him, not even existing outside the program, repeatedly chewing, swallowing, and ruminating on this fact.
Only then were all the vague questions that had passed by resolved. The disappearance of Park Jun-woo, who hadn’t shown up even after reporting to the police and inquiring through lawyers, the personality of Kang Il-hae, which was noticeably different in a way that our program couldn’t catch, and why… the question of why Hae-ah had to think that God had turned back his time… all were resolved.
Mysteries were always better when unsolved. The answers to incomprehensible events often turned out to be disappointingly empty.
Park Jun-woo had never disappeared in the first place, nor had he suffered anything from Han-seong. He, along with the people who were Hae-ah’s friends, had never participated in the AOM Beta Test program, so they existed based on Hae-ah’s data. Therefore, without Hae-ah… I couldn’t meet him separately.
Even trying to recall him now, Park Jun-woo in my memory was just ‘some recessive alpha.’ Nothing more, nothing less. I couldn’t even remember his facial features, whether his voice was high or low, what color his hair was, or how tall he was.
‘To think there would be such an error….’
Habitually tearing off a memo and scribbling ‘AI Error Items,’ I stopped. A hollow laugh escaped.
‘Get a grip, right now… what am I going to do by fixing this.’
I only briefly chewed on the sense of self-disgust.
I scribbled over the letters until the pen’s ink smeared. Then, I wrote down a list. Writing down the names of Hae-ah and me, and those who participated in the AOM Test simulation, it felt like I was writing the introduction to our wedding guest list.
Me, Hae-ah, our parents and Chairman Kang Jun-il, Kang Il-hae, Kang Hae-in… the number of people who participated in the test was not large. This was partly because the device cost ten million won per unit, and each person could only use it once, and partly because not many close friends would agree to have a small device inserted into their temples just for the sake of their friend’s marriage. For me, it was Si Eun-cheol, and for Kang Hae-ah, it was Im Geon.
Si Eun-cheol, Im Geon… after adding these two names, I finally felt like the blocked path had opened.
‘Of course….’
Our program couldn’t have missed Im Geon’s clinging attachment to Hae-ah to the point of being annoying, his position and personality.
‘It’s a mystery why you couldn’t catch that personality in our test.’
Kang Il-hae was the same.
‘You’re showing it very well… right now.’
Pressing my forehead with both hands, my head naturally lowered. I knew that there was no use in blaming myself and doubting now. I knew, but that didn’t erase the feeling of guilt.
In this moment, ignorance was my sin. While developing the program and pushing for its commercialization, I failed to gauge how far the AI in the test could think and function. This alone was not an excuse but a fact.
If I had known that it would feel so terribly alive, that I would love so deeply, be so heartbroken, and tremble with anger… I wouldn’t have even started the test.
‘I….’
I am Cheon Tae-rim. Even in this moment, I was so sure of it. Even if I was just a copied data AI, I was Cheon Tae-rim. Cheon Tae-rim, the son of Prosecutor General Cheon Hee-jung. Cheon Tae-rim, the CEO of AOM. Cheon Tae-rim who became Kang Hae-ah’s husband… that was me.
So I was okay. It was like I had fallen into the trap I had set.
‘Then, what about Hae-ah?’
Sitting at my desk with my head down, I recalled the past. I thought of him on our wedding day, burying his back in the sofa in the waiting room, looking dazed. In his white suit, he blankly held out his arm,
‘Tae-rim-ssi, I… I really didn’t know….’
He muttered with lifeless eyes. At the time, I dismissed that confession as nonsense. I even teased him for being out of it, asking what he didn’t know.
‘…Just, everything.’
Recalling his weak answer, my fist clenched tightly. What I wanted to slap right now was my own face from that day. My hands trembled as I suppressed the anger that had nowhere to go.
Hae-ah was right. As always, he was right this time too. Hae-ah didn’t know anything, our program and he were unrelated. He participated in the test only at my request, without knowing anything, and he didn’t do anything wrong… there was no reason for Hae-ah to have to go through this.
Suddenly, I thought of the worn-out red notebook. Instead of saying ‘Hello, Diary,’ I recalled Hae-ah’s pressed handwriting, searching for someone, a god or someone.
I laughed. There was no god here. There was no absolute being. The one who turned back Hae-ah’s time was,
“Did you call for me, CEO?”
…just our company’s development team employees.
“Come in.”
Leaning back in my chair, I examined the development team leader, Kim Min-soo. I wanted to call the employees below him, the owners of the voices that remained in my mind, but there was a reason I couldn’t.
“Back then… during the AOM Beta Test, Kim Team Leader was the only one who had a cognitive copy made, right?”
I said casually, rubbing my chin with my fingertips. Kim Team Leader seemed to relax, raising and lowering his shoulders at my nonchalant voice.
“Ah, of course. Heeya…, back then, it was still in chip form. After putting that in, my temples were so itchy, I had a hard time not scratching them when I showered.”
It was clear from his rambling that he wasn’t a fiction that the program had created appropriately, like countless blank documents, to deceive me.
I crumpled the memo with a question mark next to the words ‘Development Team Leader’ in my hand. Now that I knew that the time and events surrounding me, and even my existence, were fake, Kim Min-soo was the only one I could get realistic and proper information from.
I tapped my index fingernail against the end of my thumb. The tingling sensation on the calloused skin was vivid. Raising my hand to cover my neck, I could feel my pulse throbbing like running footsteps.
Finding comfort in the familiar sensations, I raised my gaze. Kim Min-soo, standing askew with a bewildered face, was visible.
“…How did you review the results of the test we did back then?”
I asked.
“…Did the development team read through the test process one by one?”
“Ah? No…. We usually can’t do that, the data gets so huge that the disk would explode if we didn’t compress it right away. We shortened the contents as soon as the percentage came out… I think… hmm? I can’t remember well.”
Then, Kim Team Leader tilted his head. Before he could worry too deeply about memories that didn’t actually happen, I cleared my throat.
“Then, are there any cases where you would bother to look through the data before compressing it?”
At my roundabout question, wrinkles formed on Kim Team Leader’s brow. He blinked his tired eyes a couple of times, then scanned my face once, and his own attire once. The brown sweatshirt with cup ramen broth splattered on it was crumpled.
“Um, CEO….”
He rubbed his palms on his thighs and adjusted his posture.
“…Is this some kind of test or something? Should I go change into interview attire?”
“It’s nothing like that.”
A sigh escaped through my teeth.
“I’m just… curious. I’m asking you privately, so answer honestly.”
Then, Kim Team Leader sat down on the sofa. He scratched his chin with his fingertips and pondered for a long time.
“Hmm. Checking the test midway….”
I waited for any meaningful answer to come out. I hoped that there was something I could do inside this damn test for us… no, for Hae-ah.
“Ah, CEO, you know that pigeon programming error meme? The one where the wings are supposed to move and make it fly, but the neck turns around and spins like a propeller. Hehe, I think we’d check it midway in a case like that?”
“……”
I stared at him for a long time with my mouth shut. Just as I was thinking about whether there was any reason not to beat him up since neither he nor I were real, Kim Team Leader seemed to understand my gaze and broke out in a cold sweat.
“To, to explain it in CEO’s style… we check if there’s something wrong with the process even if the result is fine.”
“…I see.”
Just in time, the youngest secretary came in with coffee and documents. As soon as the new report was placed on my desk and the coffee cup in front of Kim Team Leader, I waved my hand and sent him out.
I had to refrain from any further long conversations. Even if he, like me, found out where this was, who he was, the outcome of this test might be damaged.
‘An AI that knows it’s an AI is a bug…, one bug is enough here, and that’s me.’
I briefly watched the back of Kim Team Leader’s head as he left with a sad face, leaving the coffee behind.
‘…Something wrong with the process.’
I looked down at the document, which was just a blank piece of paper, with a serious face. After pretending to read it for a while, I picked up a pen and signed the meaningless paper.
‘Something wrong with the process….’
While handing the document to the youngest secretary, I made a plan. What variable to use to stop this test, how to compensate for Hae-ah’s painful six years, a plan to let the things that were still just tentative ideas in reality be known outside the damn program….
And that plan was a method that only I could come up with and execute. Because I was Cheon Tae-rim, the person who created this program and the test subject, because I knew everything about the company and myself, it was a crazy thing that only I could do.
Rubbing my eyes with my thumb, I turned my chair. The road was visible outside the large window of the CEO’s office. The figures of a few people coming and going looked as small as ants. Office workers in suits were walking in pairs, and someone was standing on the shoulder of the road, waving their hand to catch a taxi. Among the cars passing by in a row, a yellow taxi stopped and picked him up.
After watching the clock for a while, 10 minutes later, the same man ran out of the building and stood on the shoulder of the road. Waving his hand, he started to catch a taxi. The office workers in pairs appeared again from the same direction and walked down the road.
There was a lesson in everything. That’s exactly what Father said. There are things to learn even from records of failure and sad experiences.
There was only one positive factor in the unrealistic and very me-like twist that had befallen me. The fact that the program I created was very excellent.
The ‘rebellion of artificial intelligence’ that some philosophers and the riffraff college students of internet communities were worried about would not happen. Because they wouldn’t even be able to know that they themselves were artificial intelligence.
That was the case with me too. If it hadn’t been for the test restart error, if Hae-ah hadn’t even shown me his journal… if I hadn’t remembered the voices of the developers, I would have lived happily ever after, hugging Kang Hae-ah without knowing anything for the rest of my life, and then been terminated. Without even dreaming of the fact that I and this place were not reality but just data in a program, regardless of whether the real Cheon Tae-rim and the real Kang Hae-ah buttoned up their first buttons wrong, misunderstood each other, made each other cry, or died, it was none of my business.
‘I wish it had been like that….’
If I had to pick the worst of the countless big bad facts that had come upon me, it was that I was me. I knew what I had to do. I also knew that there was a life more important than the short life in the test that was about to end.
That’s why it was bad.
‘Something wrong in the process’…, that had to be created by me. That way, the damn real Cheon Tae-rim would pay a little more attention to the test results.
Before I knew Kang Hae-ah, I was that kind of man. A man surrounded by a confidence close to arrogance, unable to pay attention to anything of others unless it was my own problem.
Warm light flowed out from the window of the cozy two-story house. As soon as I got out of the car and stood in front of the garden, I burst into laughter. It was because of Hae-ah lying on the grass.
With a yellow checkered picnic mat spread out, Hae-ah was lying down in a denim jacket. It was already dark because the sun had set, but I wondered how long he had been like this since what time, even wearing sunglasses on the bridge of his nose.
Next to him, Do-jin, lying with his belly exposed, was visible. Narrowing my eyes, I examined Do-jin’s curled tail and sturdy hind legs.
‘As expected, my memory was correct.’
I thought with a chuckle. The abandoned dog in the desk calendar placed on the desks of the development team employees, yes, that was the dog… I was just laughing at the answer I had worried about and guessed correctly on my own, and then Hae-ah moved his hand.
Thanks to him patting the spot next to him, I knew he wasn’t asleep.
“Come here, Tae-rim-ssi.”
As he ordered, I slowly went to his side and lay down. I could feel my feet sticking out of the picnic mat and the soft sensation of the crushed grass under my back. How many minutes had I been lying like that, smelling the grass, when Hae-ah raised his upper body.
I reached out and pressed his chest back down. As I laid him down next to me again, a surprised scream and a bird-like cackling laugh burst out. Coughing and laughing, Hae-ah bumped his forehead against my shoulder. I pulled him into my arms.
“Tae-rim-ssi.”
The sensation of the hair touching my chin was soft. The temperature of his round forehead was also warm. Hae-ah smelled like sun-dried blankets.
“Just 10 minutes.”
I said like a sleepy child.
“Just 10 more minutes… stay still. It’s my wish.”
Then, Hae-ah silently leaned his head in my arms. Knowing that he was granting my wish, I closed my eyes. Now I believed, in a world that was all blurry and meaningless… my senses that thought only Kang Hae-ah was real.
“The next time we meet… I’ll be the only one who knows everything.”
The whispering voice flowed out hoarsely, like scraping metal.
“…I don’t care if you’re a Beta or an Omega, Hae-ah. You don’t have to know anything about me.”
His shoulder blades caught under my palm were bulging and firm. Grasping his thin shoulders in one hand, I pulled him closer, into my arms.
“You can forget everything.”
At the confession I gave with my eyes closed,
“What are you talking about.”
Hae-ah laughed.
My body shook because of the giggling and the heaving breaths. He seemed to have understood my words as a cheesy joke.
During the precious remaining nine minutes, I buried my face in Hae-ah’s shoulder.
Some said Kang Hae-ah was innocent, some said he was a spoiled rich kid, and some told me not to ignore him just because he was big, but to me, Hae-ah was just Hae-ah. When I held him in my arms, his soft cheek touched my chin, and his slender, elegant body fit perfectly in my arms like a little puppy, just Hae-ah. My Hae-ah.
Slowly, I released the hug. I must have held him so tightly, because there was a red mark on Hae-ah’s cheek where it had been pressed.
He grabbed my arm and pulled me this time as I tried to get up.
“Uh-uh? You have to stay still.”
“…What?”
“Now it’s Tae-rim-ssi’s turn, to stay still for 10 minutes.”
My body was plopped down onto the picnic mat. Hae-ah giggled, lying flat on my chest. I looked at his face, smiling like the sun, and he said,
“Don’t look at me like that.”
He even took off his sunglasses and put them on me. Thanks to that, I was able to hide my reddening eyes.
Kissing sounds landed repeatedly on my chin. Soft fingertips touched my eyebrows along the grain and brushed over my forehead as if combing it. I thought I could hear a humming tune. The weight of his body on mine was pleasantly heavy. The sweet and soft body scent was entirely my person’s.
I only regretted that I couldn’t see his eyes curving like the moon when he smiled happily because of the darkness of the sunglasses.
In the evening, I cooked with my poor skills. Hae-ah watched me chop onions with a recipe on the tablet PC, and my back tingled because he was laughing so much.
“Uh-uh, I have a knife.”
Hae-ah hugged my waist from behind with an apron on and wouldn’t let go. His voice whispering ‘This is so nice’ with his face buried in my back as I cooked was so sweet that I wondered if there was such a thing as an adult-sized baby carrier.
When I put out the salmon steak grilled the way he liked it, a salad with grated cheese, and the fried rice I had only made once, Hae-ah brought out the wine.
“I know I shouldn’t drink, but just let me off the hook today. Okay?”
At the tempting words while holding a bottle of white wine,
“Okay. Give it here.”
Then I opened the cork.
It was ridiculously easy to make Hae-ah happy. All I had to do was cook for him and pour wine into a glass full of crushed ice. Sitting across from each other, Hae-ah was beaming without any special events.
“Why are you like this today, Tae-rim-ssi?”
Hae-ah asked, placing his hand on mine across the table and stroking his wedding ring with his index finger.
“Why? Is it weird?”
I just asked back, turning my hand over so that our palms touched. Then Hae-ah smiled like a shy child. His face, shrugging his shoulders up to his ears, was overflowing with satisfaction.
“Yeah. Why are you looking at me so cheesily? It feels good…”
While holding hands and talking, eating, and chatting again, he and I spent a long evening like we had never had before. As the ice in the wine glass melted into water, Hae-ah got drunk. Unable to handle two glasses of low-alcohol wine, his cheeks flushed, and he stammered in his old, clumsy pronunciation.
“I… I’ve been wondering about something. That time we… did the AOM Test, the one we did with me and Tae-rim-ssi.”
“Yeah.”
“What were the results? Still, we… got an average score, so that’s why Tae-rim-ssi married me, right?”
I just smiled at the question that seemed to come after a long deliberation. Average score… our test results must have been more than that.
“And so the two lived happily ever after.”
Because I’ll make it so.
“…That’s what the results said.”
When I repeated once more in a slow voice that we would live happily ever after, Hae-ah’s beaming face melted away.
“That’s nice to hear. I really hope so.”
Following him as he staggered up from the dining table chair, I put down my napkin and stood facing him. As he approached, swaying back and forth, and I reached out my arm, Hae-ah clung to my shoulder.
“Will you hug me?”
He asked, and
“You too.”
I wrapped my arms around his waist.
“…Will you hug me too?”
Then Hae-ah burst out laughing as if he was out of breath. He laughed loudly from the alcohol and wiped his mouth as if embarrassed. Silently, he just jumped into my arms.
As I carried Hae-ah, who was clinging to me like a koala, I went up the stairs. As I stepped up the carpeted stairs one step at a time… I needed death.
As I laid Hae-ah down on the soft marital bed and looked at Hae-ah, who was hugging my upper body tightly and laughing softly, as I felt him as only my person and offered myself as only his, right before the test was completely imprinted on him and ended.
I thought about the death that suited me the least. I wondered how to look like a crooked error, like a jagged bug. I kept thinking about what I had to do to make that happen. How inappropriate I had to be when I died.
“Tae-rim-ssi…”
I didn’t want to leave Hae-ah’s side, who opened his mouth as if to tell me something and fell asleep right away. If I had to die, I wanted to postpone the date as much as possible. It was a night when my will to live was stronger than ever.
So, rather, that’s why I had to leave him. I had to make a sad decision at a happier moment than ever.
I rubbed my lips against Hae-ah’s soft cheek. He was the warmest, most affectionate, and most lovable man in the world.
“Hae-ah.”
When I called,
“Yeah.”
I heard a reply even in his sleep.
“I love you.”
Then Hae-ah smiles. Is he hearing the same words from me even in his dreams?
“I love you, Hae-ah…”
I swallowed the long sentence inside. You have to be in my tomorrow… I can’t even think about a tomorrow without you… I was afraid I would wake Hae-ah up if I said such things,
“Let’s meet again in a little while.”
I just said goodbye like that.
After pressing my forehead against his forehead and holding my breath for a long time, I barely raised my upper body. Then I quietly stepped out of bed. It was my turn to tiptoe down the carpeted stairs this time, as Hae-ah did every night.
As I entered the garage and sat in the driver’s seat, Do-jin followed me, yawning. I picked up the guy who was showing his tongue as if he thought we were going on a picnic and stroked his ears and head.
“Do-jin. Go to Hyung. Go and see if he’s sleeping well.”
Then, when I put him down, the smart guy headed back into the house. He knew that ‘Hyung’ meant Hae-ah. White and kind Do-jin looked back at me once blankly and then disappeared with a patter.
Thanks to him, I could catch my breath. My head, which had seemed soaked in sadness, cleared, and my consciousness gradually became clearer.
I drove as quietly as possible. I went out of the house with the headlights off, and then I drove aimlessly. As I climbed a deserted and quiet mountain road,
―You have deviated from the route.
The navigation system gave an alarm that I didn’t even ask for.
I drove up the mountain road, spinning around the dangerous curve that made me doubt whether I was even in Seoul, higher and higher.
―You have deviated from the route.
―You have deviated from the route.
―You have deviated from the route.
I turned off the navigation system, which was repeatedly warning me, as if hitting it, and then slowly turned the car around on the road leading to the top of the mountain. I could see the black night sky and the guardrail reflecting the silver light from the headlights.
I took a deep breath of the night air to fill my lungs.
‘Please notice…’
And I prayed. Not to the non-existent god, but to the real Cheon Tae-rim who easily copied my existence and threw it into the program. Please notice, please… that I am you, please notice… that I am making this choice because I am me, because I am Cheon Tae-rim. Don’t deny it or reject it. Don’t be proud, just know.
‘And meet Hae-ah.’
If you meet Kang Hae-ah, you will believe it as soon as you see him. That I am the same person as you.
―Route…
As soon as I put my foot on the accelerator and stepped on it hard, the whole world shook with a thud. The car hit the guardrail, floated towards the cliff, and then crashed straight down. It collided with something that I didn’t know whether it was a rock, dirt, or a tree with a thud, and after sliding down the slope with a rough noise, the third impact came hard.
The moment I looked at the car window that was bent sideways and turned upside down, my eyes flashed white.
‘No, please… just a little.’
I chuckled with my head buried in the airbag.
‘I should have unfastened my seatbelt. If I’m going to die…’
I laughed at the funny thought, but my breathing was strange. A bizarre sound of ‘hic’, ‘hic’ echoed in my ears as if air was leaking out. The moment of pain when breathing was painful lasted for a few seconds. My mouth opened involuntarily at the pain I had never experienced in my life.
The pain soon subsided. Every time I blinked and opened my eyes, I felt the light fading in all directions. I couldn’t feel anything.
Only regret welled up in my broken consciousness.
‘It’s okay…’
It’s okay for me to die, rather than driving the real Kang Hae-ah into a foreseen misfortune… My life is okay anyway, rather than laying him on cold vinyl…
But right now, I regretted not hugging Hae-ah one more time before coming out. Even if he is an AI, he is my Hae-ah, he is a real person to me…
‘Just one more time…’
The white in front of my eyes turned red, then black, then bluish. I knew this color. Hae-ah’s self-portrait was exactly this color…
‘I should have hugged him one more time before coming out…’
Now I see the same color as him. I think the same thoughts and walk the same crossroads. I understood very well why he had painted himself in that color.
I wanted to tell this story to Hae-ah. I understand that painting now… If I said that, would Hae-ah laugh or cry? I was curious about his reaction. Whether it was a childlike smile or a sad cry, I wanted to see him.
Ah. Just one more time… I want to put my fingers through his soft hair. I want to look into his gentle eyes that hold me one more time. I want to press my lips against his lips, from which only pleasant sounds come out. I want to hear the sound of him laughing with his shoulders shaking, and I want to see his face wrinkling his nose,
‘Tae-rim-ssi.’
I have to tell you… that I loved you from the moment I first heard that voice.
…I see Hae-ah’s profile smiling far away. Outside the shattered car window, there he is, enjoying the August exhibition. Under the softly lit lights, listening to the audio guide joking in French, Hae-ah smiles.
Even after discovering me, who had been captivated by his smile, he did not erase his expression. Rather, he smiles brightly and reaches out his hand to me.
Looking at the innocent him, I smiled too.