By Zephyria 
When Kim Si-baek failed to answer immediately, Lee Han-gyeol scratched his head awkwardly, as if guessing the reason.
“It’s just that, strangely, I feel like I used to hang out with you, Hyung-nim. Before, it was just a vague feeling that surfaced occasionally, like a dream, but since coming here, it’s become clearer. But since my older brothers and sister say they have no memory of seeing you when we were kids, it’s been bothering me.”
“…….”
“Somehow, it feels less like volunteering and more like I lived with you, Hyung-nim……”
A shock different from the one he felt when he discovered Sister Hyo-ju Agnes remembered him tied his tongue. Kim Si-baek pressed his hand to his forehead for a moment, then asked cautiously.
“Since when did you start having these feelings?”
“I didn’t write down an exact date, so……”
After agonizing over it for a moment, Lee Han-gyeol suddenly let out an exclamation.
“Ah! It was from the day I became a believer of the Crow Religion!”
After brushing it off by saying they must have just looked alike and sending Lee Han-gyeol away, Kim Si-baek slumped into a chair. The fact that his existence had been erased was a problem that tormented him without a solution, so he had intentionally avoided dwelling on it. Even the system, which seemed to be the only entity that knew the reason, had not provided an answer to this specific question, leaving him with no way to uncover the truth.
However, the fact that the person gradually recovering these forgotten memories happened to be a believer serving the divinity of mak slecht was…
Gloiuken, who had been listening to the conversation in silence, spoke up tentatively. It was the same suspicion that had crossed Kim Si-baek’s mind.
“The fact that some of his erased memories returned upon becoming a believer suggests that the entity responsible for erasing the memories is chaos, does it not?”
“……Probably.”
Kim Si-baek rubbed his face roughly with his palm. Now that he knew the agent of the act, it finally made sense. It wasn’t some natural phenomenon caused by dimensional travel.
Yet, a question remained. While the remnants of ancient mysteries that constitute chaos had pooled at the bottom of Earth, they had not been manifested as the divinity of chaos before the Great Cataclysm.
“Chaos was a divinity that did not exist on Earth in the past. Even if it did, it would have had extremely localized influence. Could such a meager chaos have been capable of the meticulous control required to selectively erase the memories of people who knew a single human being?”
“It would be difficult. However, did you not say there are those who still retain memories of Your Excellency?”
“Un, my mother, and my younger sibling.”
Excluding Tae-un, the remaining people were his blood relatives. He had speculated that Tae-un might remember because he was the last to see him, and that his mother and siblings might not have forgotten because of their blood tie, but if the agent was chaos, the story changed.
The classification of blood relation is a human standard; it was not a quality that chaos, the antithesis of the god who fashioned humans, would adhere to.
“I suspect there was a human used as the reference point to erase the existence in one fell swoop……”
“That would be the cute younger brother who remembers Your Excellency.”
“…….”
Kim Si-baek bit his lip in silence. If his mother and sibling had been the reference points, then even if he were erased from official records, many people would have remembered him. The two of them didn’t know the extent of the human relationships Kim Si-baek had built.
However, since he had often told Tae-un a lot about himself, the child was well-aware of his social circle. The family-like bonds at the orphanage, the connections from his athlete days that naturally faded after he quit fencing, and the new ties he formed upon becoming a police officer. On top of that, there were the interviews and articles from his playing days where his name had been mentioned.
Tae-un knew everything. And from everyone Tae-un knew, Kim Si-baek was erased.
Furthermore, since Kim Si-baek did not know of his mother and sibling’s survival, Tae-un did not either. Since they were not within the perception of the human used as the reference point, how could their existence be erased?
Then why did chaos choose Tae-un as the reference point?
The darkness of the rift that had opened 21 years ago—not to take him, but to take Tae-un to mak slecht—invaded his mind. Simultaneously, the sense of incongruity that had grown beside Tae-un all this time, which he had ignored, began to surface bit by bit.
✽ ✽ ✽
Immediately after the Great Cataclysm.
Clinging only to the covenant of chaos, which promised to return Kim Si-baek after 7,777 days, Tae-un jumped down from the rooftop. It was said that since magical beasts had appeared from the energy of chaos, special abilities would manifest in humans to oppose them. He felt a strange energy dwelling within himself, but that wasn’t what was important right now.
〈Everyone! Hurry, hurry! Get inside!〉
He ran toward Sister Benedicta, who was evacuating the frozen, terrified children into the orphanage. He desperately agonized over how to explain the reason for Kim Si-baek’s sudden disappearance for 21 years.
But that worry was futile.
〈Sister, Si-baek Hyung just now……〉
Before Tae-un could even finish his sentence, Benedicta asked back, puzzled.
〈Who is Si-baek Hyung, Un-ah?〉
〈…….〉
〈More importantly, come here quickly!〉
The expression of the child being led inside by her hand was one of utter devastation. It didn’t take long for the suspicion—could it be—to become reality.
Not only Sister Benedicta, but no one in the orphanage knew Kim Si-baek; his life had been completely erased from the world. The photos taken together at the orphanage, the match videos and trophies remaining there—all of it, everything.
People around him looked upon him with pity as he wailed and screamed for a person who did not exist and whom no one knew. There were many who had gone mad due to the shock of the world turning upside down overnight, the appearance of magical beasts, and the brutal murder of family and friends. Tae-un was treated as one of them.
It was agonizing to be among people who did not know Kim Si-baek. Eventually, Tae-un ran away from the orphanage. Perhaps people outside the orphanage would know Kim Si-baek. Thus, he wandered the police station where Kim Si-baek had worked, the school he had graduated from, and the fencing gym where he had trained.
Searching through a Seoul ruined by magical beasts, he searched and searched and searched for Kim Si-baek’s acquaintances. No one knew him. No one.
Even the presence of chaos, which was the only answer, vanished. Despair weighed down the child’s small shoulders. At times it was terrifying. At times he wailed with the fear that he might have gone insane.
They said they would return Kim Si-baek after 7,777 days, but Tae-un couldn’t even make it through the winter of that year.
〈Kim Si-baek…… was there a junior like that……〉
Detective Park, whom he had barely managed to find, died leaving only those words. Tae-un’s body was a wreck from trying to save him. The blood flowing from his torn legs created a pool that submerged the child’s small frame.
What occupied his mind as he lay dying was not pain or the fear of death. It was around that time that chaos reappeared.
Tae-un asked, gritting his teeth.
〈Why did the memories of Si-baek Hyung disappear?〉
Chaos let out a sound of surprise, then soon broke into a laugh.
「It is surprising that your first words to us are such. Will you not beg us to let you live until the 7,777 days are up?」
〈Who cares about that! Si-baek Hyung’s place is gone!〉
Dark red blood mixed with fragments of internal organs surged from the small lips that shouted in rage. Perhaps due to the excitement, the blood loss accelerated, and his flickering vision began to blur rapidly.
His own death didn’t matter. It was painful not to die with Kim Si-baek, but that was nothing compared to the agony Kim Si-baek would feel upon returning to find that his very existence had vanished. If even he disappeared, there would truly be not a single person left in this world who remembered him.
「Did we not originally intend to take you to mak slecht? Since we are in eternal antagonism with the divinity of mak slecht, we needed a human from a world untouched by that divinity to introduce a variable. Thus, we intended to make you our apostle……」
Before the words of chaos echoing in his head could finish, Tae-un’s consciousness vanished completely into the coldness of death. And when he opened his eyes, he had returned to the rooftop of that day. To the rooftop immediately after Kim Si-baek had disappeared into the rift.
The shrieks of magical beasts and the screams of people began to be heard again. As he looked around in surprise, chaos continued to speak across death and time.
「……We prepared. To harvest and take away all of your existence scattered across Earth. However, that man intervened and took your place, so what could be done? We had no choice but to harvest his existence instead.」
Tae-un’s face filled with pain.
Again. Again. Following that semi-basement room, he had ruined the man’s life once more. If only it hadn’t been for him, he would have enjoyed glory as a fencer, and his existence would never have been erased from everyone.
As expected, he should have died in that semi-basement room.
〈……Then will I eventually forget Hyung too?〉