Summer vacation ended, and the second semester began.
It seemed that the second- and third-year students came to school to study even during vacation, but Nakseong High School was lenient With us first-years, so we never went to school even once during that time, and I didn't call those guys either.
The members thought I would be more active because it was vacation, but they
were rather puzzled by my inactive lattitude.
Even if they got together on their own, there was nothing they could do, and if they acted independently and ended up dying without me knowing, that would be the end of it, so all they could do was wait for my instructions.
And finally, Monday, August 19th, the first day of the new term. At school.
I deliberately avoided even making eye Contact with the club members who came running Over to greet me.
"Hoon...?"
"Prez...?"
"After the opening ceremony, everyone come up to the clubroom. There are important announcements to make."
"Uh, okay...."
The members only nodded with flustered expressions.
When I coldly returned to my seat, they asked each other, "Why is he acting like that?' but they just shrugged their shoulders.
Finally around lunchtime, after the opening ceremony ended, I deliberately lagged behind and went up to the 5th floor late.
Naturally, the club members were floundering in front of the locked clubroom door.
Dring~
[Please hold the handle again.]
[Please hold the handle again.]
"W-why isn't this working...."
"Well, you guys aren't members of my club anymore."
"W-what...?"
I coldly pushed through between them and grabbed the handle.
Dring~
[Lee Joon has been authorized.]
It works fine now.
I went inside first and declared to the members still frozen at the entrance.
"You've been expelled a long time ago. You idiots."
"...?!!"
"But since it's a new semester and a fresh start, I'm willing to overlook it. In return, you must follow these rules. First, you're not my equals or my friends, you are only subordinates to me, and you can never give me any advice or suggestions."
".....!"
"Second, from now on, I won't be the one serving you, you be serving me. You must always speak to me politely, appreciate my choices, and show proper respect to me, the hero who saves the world."
".....!?"
"Third, well, there will be many, many, many more rules added but anyway, only those who will follow all of these and all the newly created rules, crawl on all fours from the entrance all the way here."
I plopped down into my chair, crossed my legs arrogantly, and looked at the members.
"Actually, this is how it should be, right? An important savior like me should be treated accordingly. Why should I be the one worrying about you? Did I owe you something? Huh?"
"....."
"Just because I've been good to you guys you took me for granted. You're looking for the image of a virtuous person in me, as though it's only natural. What, just because I happened to be chosen as a hero to save the world, do I have to be all leader-like and like the heroes in movies? It's not even something I wanted to do in the first place. I'm counting to ten. If you don't come crawling back by then, my heart's going to harden quite a bit. Alright. Ten. Nine. Eight..."
Thud.
In an instant, Sunah quickly dropped to her knees and crawled hurriedly from the entrance all the way to me.
"J-Joon.....Don't abandon me.... I'm sorry...."
"Our Sunah is such a good girl."
I gently stroked Sunah's head as she clung to my leg, frightened like a puppy.
At the same time, Hayoon at the entrance suddenly turned her head and simply walked away.
Thud, thud.
Only the sound of Hayoon's footsteps
descending the stairs echoed quietly
through the frozen silence between us.
Looking at the others, who still hadn't crossed the threshold, I jerked my head in a gesture for them to come in.
"And the rest? You aren't coming?"
The club members looked at me, frozen stiff.
Gyeongwon pushed his glasses, beads of cold sweat forming on his forehead.
"..You. You're not the Club Prez."
"I am though."
"No. The Club Prez I know is a much cooler person. He used to think like you at one point, but now he's achieved far greater mental growth."
He pushed his glasses once and shook his head.
"You're the doppelgänger. I don't know how you came back, but you haven't grown at all from that level a few months ago."
"What's there to grow from? I only said what was right."
I stroked Sunah's head and struck an arrogant pose.
"What's wrong with someone as important as me being respected and treated properly? So you're not coming, then? Fine. It's over."
"...."
"Go away. All of you."
I waved my hand dismissively as if I were annoved.
" I'll recruit newW members. More obedient ones."
Dukhun and Jinhee stood frozen in place.
Gyeongwon was the first to turn around, and as everyone followed him out, everything came to an end.
***
A few weeks later.
Unfortunately, Sunah also stopped coming to the club once she realized that I was fake.
Hayoon, at some point, became part of the Library Club and returned to her quiet routine of just reading books.
She didn't exchange a single word with the rest of us, including me, as if we had never been close at all.
Gyeongwon, Dukhun, Jinhee, and Sunah all transferred together to teacher Han Ari's club, where there were extra spots because it wasn't very popular. There, they made plans to find the real me and seemed to stick together as a group, but it was all in vain.
'Because the real Lee Joon is trapped in a place only I know.'
And I was able to recruit a new member who suited my liking.
Click-
"Hello, Yeseul."
"Mister Lee Joon..."
With an ecstatic expression, Joo Yeseul opened the clubroom door and ran toward me.
She ended up falling straight into my arms, so I held her tightly as well.
Yeseul was the church-girl who was best friends with our Vice Class President, Chaerin. She was usually quiet, but her faith was very strong, so much so that she would openly murmur prayers before eating lunch,
and things like that.
During the previous Apocalypse incident, when I replaced the whole day with a dream, she had been with us and remembered everything. Since then, she had come to believe I was a messenger of God and had secretly been watching me.
Ultimately, during the incident with science teacher Choi Jungim, after I learned how she thought about me, I approached her and showed her a few abilities, and it wasn't difficult to redirect Yeseul's fanatical tendencies toward me.
"Ah, Mister Lee Joon... Mister Lee Joon."
She burrowed into my arms.
I stroked Yeseul's slender neckline as if savoring it.
Now Joo Yeseul served and followed me, Lee Joon, instead of Jesus.
Instead of the members who had carelessly tried to act as my equals, she was exactly the kind of member I had wanted, someone who serves me and bows her head.
****
I soon reached Yeseul's understanding to 100, completed the quest, and gained the ability to interfere with the school's education policies.
And based on that ability, I adjusted the schedule however I wanted and freely handed out early-dismissal passes for Yeseul and myself, so we ended up going out to have fun almost every day.
I completely put the ghost stories on the back burner, and because I was experiencing a romantic relationship for the first time in my life, especially dating Yeseul, one of the prettiest girls in the school, I was so swept up in it that I could barely think straight and became increasingly self-indulgent.
Far from trying to stop me, Yeseul became almost like a fanatic herself, accepting everything about me and embracing me unconditionally.
And so my first and second years passed by rather meaninglessly, and then at the beginning of my third year, out of the blue, In Taesang ran for office and was elected president.
Finally, the club members who had been ignoring me all this time came hurrying into the clubroom.
"P-Prez..."
Gyeongwon pushed his glasses with a
timid expression.
"We won't ask you to take us back... It
doesn't matter whether you are real or fake...Just.. if you're going to stay in that position, shouldn't it be time for you to start fulfilling your own mission..?"
"Mission?"
"Uh, yeah..."
Gyeongwon forced a servile smile and pushed up his glasses.
"Y-You're the Hero... You must defeat the Demon King.."
"P-Please... do it... Save the world..."
"As if."
I waved my hands and crossed my legs.
Yeseul was slowly massaging my neck
from behind.
"Why now?"
"....."
"I mean, if you'd just taken care of me earlier, none of this would've happened. Look what you've done. I'm doing my own thing, and you guys let the world be destroyed. What's the point now?"
" ....."
"If from the very beginning you had politely asked for my help, saying 'Please, Hero, and cheered me on, I might have given it a try with a good heart. But instead, you're acting like you've entrusted me with something,
saying things like 'do it this way,' and
just grumbling away. Did I choose this
mission because I wanted to? Did I ever say I'd do it?"
"We, we are sorry.. Hero.."
Gyeongwon bowed his head deeply and slowly knelt down.
"S-Sorry... P-Please save the world..."
I quickly glanced at the other members as well.
Sunah, Dukhun, and Jinhee also bowed their heads, one after another.
Eventually, all of them knelt down together and bowed to me.
"S-Sorry, Joon... You're the real one... you're the real one, so please save the world"
"P-Please save everyone... we were Wrong...."
Sunah and Dukhun bowed their heads with submissive expressions.
Jinhee, who had been trembling until the very end, finally slumped down and pressed her forehead to the ground.
"i'm sorry... just do it for us.."
"Hmm"
I looked down at those members with a satisfied smile.
Yeseul, standing behind me, quietly smiled as she watched them too.
'But what should I do? I don't actually plan on defeating the Demon King.'
I admired the guys bowing their heads and reached out my hand to wrap around Yeseul's slender waist.
She naturally leaned into my embrace, pausing from massaging my neck.
I muttered to myself while looking at the members trembling all over.
'You idiots, if the Demon King is defeated, the ghost stories, including me, will disappear too. Why would I do that for you?'
Knowing that if the Demon King dies, I'll die too, I gave a faint smile and gestured to them.
"Alright, you can go now. I'l think about it. "
"Uh, okay.."
The members awkwardly got to their feet, supporting one another as they left the clubroom.
I leaned back comfortably in my chair and took Yeseul's hand.
"Keep massaging my neck here. My chest still feels tight."
"Yes, Mister Lee Joon..."
"Don't stop. Like that... mmhm..."
Time passed, and before long, third year came to an end, winter break passed as well, and a new year dawned.
And finally, February 25th, 2022 arrived.
[It's the day of graduation.]
[The Demon King has been resurrected.]
On the morning of graduation day, I visited the psychiatric hospital where the original Lee Joon had been for the first time in a long while.
Then I entered the isolation room and spoke to the guy who was drooling uncontrollably.
"Today is graduation day. It's 2 a.m. right now. In 30 minutes, the Demon King will break through the surface of the earth."
"....."
"Did you know this would happen?"
I draggeda chair over with a scraping sound and sat down to meet him at eye level.
Lee Joon, blindfolded, was silent.
I quietly looked at him for a moment, then asked again.
"Did you tell me to accept it and disappear because you knew I would end up like this? Without even trying to coexist with me?"
"....."
"Either way, we were just struggling to survive, and since I'm a ghost story, it was obvious that someday I would end up on the Demon King's side. What do you say?"
No matter whose side we were on, we would have done anything to save ourselves. And the result of that is the person I am now.
He knew I would never accept it.
"What a two-faced b*stard... right?."
We were both desperately scheming just to survive, but once our positions changed, I ended up being labeled a villain from the hero's side.
I reached out and removed the blindfold from his eyes.
Eyes I hadn't seen in a long time.
They stared blankly into space with no focus at all.
A gaze that couldn't see me, even though I was right in front of him.
'So his mind is already broken.'
I quietly watched him for a moment, then continued what I had to say.
"It wasn't that I'm doing these things because I'm a ghost story. The Demon
King knew that Lee Joon would act this way based on his own personality. We're strong at adapting, after all.. Someone who does whatever it takes to survive."
"Soon the Demon King will be resurrected, but there is one last method. I have to die."
I slowly took hold of the hand of my other self.
"If the Demon King is resurrected and I die, ah, yeah, everything will be reset. We'll go back to the entrance ceremony from three years ago."
"....."
"But I didn't exist three years ago Unlike how we've shared regression whenever one of us died up until now, when the three-year reset happens, you'll probably be the only one who goes back."
"....."
"Shall I do it for you?"
I grabbed his hand and tilted my head.
"Shall I die for you?"
He didn't answer.
Not that I had any intention of doing it anyway.
I let go of his hand.
"I don't want to die. I want to live...I want to live. I don't want to sacrifice myself for the world or anything like that. Do I sound like a bad guy? No. If you were in my place, you would have done the same. Because I am you."
I stood up from my seat.
And I looked down at the lifeless mind that was staring blankly into the void, and quietly murmured to myself.
"I'm not going to kill myself, nor am I going to defeat the Demon King. I'm just going to hide you in a safer place and leave things like this."
"...."
"I will survive. Until the very end...."
Inside the quiet solitary room of the
psychiatric hospital.
Time passed silently, leaving only that guy and me behind.
As I quietly looked down at him like that, I suddenly thought of something and slightly bent my knees again to meet his eyes.
Come to think of it, when I faced him in the clubroom before, I had felt that he somehow seemed more mature and smarter than me.
I wonder why.
Both Gyeongwon and the other members had also said that he was mentally above me.
As I stared into his eyes again, carefully
thinkingit over, I realized where that
difference had come from.
Both he and I were equally given the unwanted duty of being heroes, and we were thrusted into the role of saviors without meaning to.
By humbling himself before the club members and serving them, he had transformed into someone who truly was worthy of that role.
In contrast, I never managed to break through that shell, and I had been running only to survive for myself, just as I had been from the very beginning.
Perhaps, at that point, Lee Joon here had just begun to acquire the true nobility of a real hero and savior.
And I broke that spirit, kidnapped him, and dragged him on the verge of death.
If it were him in my position, even if it meant his own death, he still would have kept searching for a way to defeat the Demon King.
Beep-
Just as I was lost in thought, it seemed the time had finally come, my phone let out a beep, the sound of an emergency alert message.
[Safety Guidance Message: Currently
at 2:30 o'clock, a precautionary alert
has been issued for Seoul, Incheon, and Gyeonggi Region. Residents are advised to prepare emergency supplies and evacuate when evacuation advisory is issued.]
A calm message on the flickering
phone screen.
I picked up my phone and opened the
real-time trending search page in an
internet app.
1. Mysterious creature in Seoul
2. Monster appearance in Seoul
3. Unidentified lifeform in Seoul
Late at night. Inside a dark and silent
hospital.
Unlike the heavy, quiet atmosphere,
urgent news was being uploaded like
rapid fire on the internet.
I put my phone in my pocket and left
the solitary cell.
"Goodbye, then."
Creak- Bang.
When I came out of the room and nodded to the nurse waiting further down the hallway to lock the door, the nurse approached me as if she had something to tell me.
"Mr. Lee Joon. Have you finished talking? There's something you need to see."
"What is it?"
"It's a video of the patient. Here..."
The nurse took out a tablet and turned
on the screen.
At the same time, a message appeared before my eyes.
[BAD ENDING - Ghost Story Lee Joon]
Conditions
1. Become the Demon King's ally and allow his resurrection to proceed as a ghost story.
I brushed away the floating message as if it was annoying and took the tablet.
Then, on the screen, I saw Lee Joon in a hospital gown muttering toward me.
"....What is this? I told you to always
restrain his jaw so he wouldn't
accidentally bite his tongue and kill
himself."
"There are times when he really needs to chew actual food instead of taking nutritional supplements, and when that happens, we have him wear a mouthpiece instead of a gag. That time, the patient grabbed me and begged me to record this and show it to you... That was six months ago."
"Hmm."
"Sometimes there are elderly patients who reveal their safe passwords and things like that, so I just recorded it for now."
I nodded once and focused on Lee Joon's figure in the video six months ago.
His body and mind were already falling apart, to the point where he could barely make any sound with his voice.
[E.. uhs... Eeeuh...]
As I watched him, haggard like an old man with dementia, only opening and closing his mouth, at some point, I suddenly realized.
'Is he telling me to read his lips?"
I stared at his lips and, for the first time
in a long while, commanded inwardly.
'Activate Lip Reading.
"But in your case no matter how much
I think about it I don't think you'd admit it you know from the beginning you weren't doing this for some noble purpose you were just gritting your teeth and doing it just to survive even if it meant you're the only one standing"]
"...?"
As I frowned at the string of seemingly
meaningless words and leaned my face closer to the screen.
Suddenly, Lee Joon in the video opened his eyes wide as if I were actually there, looked straight at me, and spoke clearly.
[Hey.]
"...!?"
[Last chance. Admit it and disappear.]
Thud-!
Startled, the tablet slipped from my hand, and it fell straight to the floor, shattering the screen completely.
Nevertheless, the voice continued to be heard from beyond the broken LCD Screen.
[Have you found it strangely difficult to
breathe when doing something lately? Do you feel tightness in your chest?]
[How did three years go by? What did In Taesang do after being elected president, and what happened to In Hayoon? Did Dasom, the youngest member of Fourincess, who said she would contact us during vacation, ever get in touch?]
[Why didn't the Detective come looking
for you all that time? You enjoyed secret trysts with Joo Yeseul during every CA period, but where was the last remaining member, Teacher Jang Hwaeun, at that time? How did Mom and Dad react to you skipping school like that?]
Throb-
I grabbed my forehead as a sudden
throbbing pain shot through my head.
Even so, Lee Joon's voice kept coming
from the screen without stopping.
Zzt- zzt-
[You don't know what really happened. You've just been imagining the future using only the things you've experienced so far in your head, there was nothing new. It's an illusion.]
I clutched my throbbing head, squeezed the air out of my lungs, and shouted loudly.
"Don't. Talk. Nonsense. Haa..... huu.....
hyaaaaaaiya..."
But only the hollow sound of air escaping came out of my mouth.
Then I heard Lee Joon's voice again.
[If I tied you up and sent you off to space so you couldn't escape, then that's what I did. I don't make mistakes something like that.]
"Heeek- heeek...."
[If you could escape that space, you would've teleported the moment I caught you in the first place. Does that make sense? You think you could get out of there?]
"Hüiiik... hiiiik..."
[The human brain is truly remarkable.
Even everything I'm saying right now
is all by my... what? Where is this?
What is this? Where am I? Haa, haa.
This is crazy.]
I slowly raised my head.
The voice of Lee Joon that had been
echoing in my mind naturally shifted
into my own thoughts.
[What is this? Where is this place?]
It wasn't that I actually heard that
sound; rather, my brain created the
perception that I was hearing it, and I
had become aware of that myself.
"Where is this? What is this? Mmph,
mmph-"
As I thrashed wildly in the pitch-black
darkness, at some point, I came to a
terrifying realization.
This is a world with nothing in it, only
darkness and silence.
A man trapped inside a coffin, drifting
through space.