Bom closed her eyes and blocked her ears.
However, the reeds were already broken and the ones smashing her body were no longer the likes of wobbling reeds. It was a heavy rain that was hitting her.
A shivering coldness was pervading in, and was freezing the tips of her fingers and toes. His waist was warm like normal human flesh but for Bom, it felt colder than anything she had ever touched in her life.
“…”
She thought time was the only thing she needed.
With enough time, it should have been possible to save him. But after hearing him talk about a farewell as if it was a matter of fact, she realised that something had been uncontrollably out of hand from the get go.
“What is wrong?”
Bom stared at his face. Like the first day they met, his face was hazy and expressionless yet had a faint shadow cast over it.
Until now, she had been thinking that there was a strand of solace for him to escape from the cold darkness. If that was ‘salvation’, she thought that salvation would be brought about by the hatchlings.
Her thoughts, however, were crushed along with the reeds.
Bom needed to find out what ‘salvation’ was for Yu Jitae; the shape and form of his redemption.
“…Can I ask a different question first?”
“Go for it.”
“You see, I am a dragon…”
“…”
“I’m still young, immature… thoughtless… and similar to a human… but, I am a dragon…”
“…”
“So if you just give me one chance…”
She paused and licked her lower lips before continuing her words.
“If you please, just give me one chance… I would like to ask for your forgiveness.”
“Forgiveness?”
“Yes… With something either I, or we can offer… As a representative of the dragons… Of course I don’t know if that is what you want… It’s okay even if you don’t forgive us… but…”
“No. It’s fine.”
“…”
“I have no plans of accepting an apology from the dragons.”
“…”
“If you wanted to improve the relationship between me and the dragons, then I’m sorry. I have no thoughts of forgiving dragons. Likewise, I won’t be apologising to you guys nor will I ask for your forgiveness.”
Bom felt blood seeping out of her head, making her wonder if this was how it would feel to be beheaded.
She asked with a foggy gaze.
“Didn’t you say, we were precious…?”
“You are.”
“And you said, you felt… guilty as well…”
“Yes. I do.”
Bom could not forgive Yu Jitae, because Yu Jitae had no sin in her opinion. She did not know how to forgive in the first place. If forgiving someone required a qualification, then she wouldn’t be one of the qualified ones.
However, if Yu Jitae was sincerely regretting his actions, then she wanted him to tell the baby dragons about it. This was not an apology for the baby dragons; it was for Yu Jitae himself.
It was for him to be freed from all his guilt…
“Do you feel, sorry for us…?”
“I do. And I am regretting what I did.”
“I’m sure it will work…”
“What will.”
“Yes, it might not happen in one day… But, there is still about 15 to 20 years left until the Amusement is forced to an end. So if we slowly, and slowly… talk about your past one by one… Ahjussi, you had your own circumstances, so if you ask the kids for forgiveness… then I will also try my best for you to be happy…”
The arm wrapped around her neck moved. Using his large hand, Yu Jitae blocked her lips.
“No. That’s not it, Bom.”
“…”
“You just have to keep your mouth closed, and no-one will find out about it, nor will anything become tedious. Every method apart from that will cause nothing but trouble for me.”
“…”
“Do you love me?”
“Yes…”
“Did you say it was okay for me to kill you?”
“Yes…”
“Then please just accept it. Be silent and bury it inside. Please just love me for the devil I am without trying to change anything about me, because nothing will change no matter how you try.”
“…”
“I have also considered apologising several times but this is the conclusion I have come to. You guys simply have to go back.”
“…”
“Just bring back the good memories and it will be all set.”
Bom felt as if she would die.
She thought she would be able to continue living with him after becoming his accomplice but that wasn’t the case. And now that he was wishing for a farewell, she had no choice but to ask him.
“You know…”
“Yeah.”
“There is something I really want to ask… Actually, I’ve asked this a few times before as well.”
“What is it.”
“You always told us, that there was a direction in life right?”
“…”
“So what do you live for…?”
***
This time, it was him who had to close his mouth.
Even though he said he would share everything without hiding them, this alone was something he had never spoken to anyone throughout his extensive life. He hadn’t even told the Vintage Clock about it, so he couldn’t readily speak about his dream.
He took a deep breath out.
Dream.
Yu Jitae had a dream – a dream that he had harboured for almost a thousand years.
“I’ll be honest.”
He brought his head closer towards her. Seeing that, Bom realised that his reply would involve a long description that cannot be expressed with a few simple words.
Bom slowly raised her head and laid her forehead above his.
Their foreheads touched as all of Yu Jitae’s memories started flooding into her head.
“In the 1st iteration, I lived as a poor orphan.”
Hazy times, harsh memories and a deprived life. Drinking wastewater on the streets, he covered his body with trash to save himself from the cold. Back then Yu Jitae had a dream – it was that he would escape this reality one day and become happy.
“In the 2nd iteration, I became a soldier and met a lover.”
In the long war, he promised a future. After this ends, let’s go out together, give birth to a child and become happy together.
The future of his dreams crumbled. Yu Jitae’s troops were annihilated and his lover was killed in his stead. She drew her last breath with her last words being that it was too cold.
A wintery night.
“In the 3rd iteration, I hunted monsters like a lunatic.”
He had a huge mental illness back then. For dozens of years, he lived across countless battlefields looking for a place to die, killing monsters over and over and over again. And one day, he settled at a village somewhere in the distant outer dimensions. Inside the village were people that were not from Earth, who treated him with kindness. Let’s become a family together; let’s become happy…
Back then he didn’t know the precise reason for the regression and he thus decided to settle there. He was around 80 years old in total and his psychotic fury was starting to disappear. That was why he settled at that place, thinking he had finally found a place to rest.
That was until humanity was attacked by large monsters; the timeline was flipped upside down as everyone forgot about him.
“In the following timelines, I discovered the reason behind the Apocalypse.”
It was the dragons. That was in his 3+ iterations.
“In the 4th iteration, I met the gold hatchling. That kid was the biggest problem.”
He tried to save it. For 20 years, he did everything he could to make it feel happy.
It failed. The gold hatchling died inside a blood-stained bathtub, and it only took 20 seconds for his 20 years of excruciating effort to crumble down to nothing.
“In the following timelines, I thought happiness might be unmerited for you hatchlings.”
In the 4+ iterations, he started learning about chimeras which he had never even looked at before. Creating a chimera was deemed a taboo worldwide and was a very dangerous process. He had to learn the techniques by losing dozens of lives. He was burned to death, ripped to death, melted to death, cursed to a painful death, suffocated to death, killed himself, killed himself, killed himself, killed himself, killed himself, killed himself, killed himself, killed himself, killed himself, killed himself, killed himself, killed himself, killed himself, killed himself, killed himself, killed himself and killed himself.
At the end of all that, he realised that the thing called [Will of the Ancient One] was impossible to breach.
So what did he do?
He killed himself.
“But even so, there was a strand of light in my eyes. After analysing thousands of locations and items, I discovered the best drug. So in the 5th iteration, I kidnapped you guys and gathered all of you inside the underground labyrinth.”
It was a failure. Despite being injected with happiness, there appeared to be an immunity system inside the dragons that he was not aware of. They all started turning insane before hitting the 20-year mark and at last, the red hatchling exploded all the power within its heart to go outside and fight before becoming a retard.
It cried out that it was painful, and asked him to kill it.
Why wasn’t it killing itself?
Despite thinking that, he followed its request and killed it.
It was a failure.
“In the following timelines, I thought it was because of my weakness. The problem was in my incompetence despite being that desperate. All the problems were with me.”
In the 5+ iterations, he was murdered 1,100 times to build up enough power to kill a catastrophe-ranked demon and stored all the absorbed killing intent inside him. Throughout that process, he also continued his experiments with the baby dragons from time to time, but they all ended in failure.
All his effort resulted in failures, and he was alone all over again.
“That was when that happened.”
At the end of one of the 5+ iterations.
It was when he ignored the warnings of the Vintage Clock and planned for the ‘Sovereign Hunt’ which was prohibited inside Providence. In one of the timelines of the estranged dimensions, he lost to the first sovereign he met.
The cost of the defeat was brutal.
When the memories of that time flowed into her head,
“…!”
Bom’s eyes stretched out wide open.
Yu Jitae’s legs, arms and his tongue were all cut off. His vocal cords were ripped, his skin was all melted down, and his muscles and guts were all on full display as he was neglected inside the prison. His eyeballs were plucked out and arrows were digging into his ears. He could not see; he could not hear; he could not speak and he could not move.
Imprisoned in that place, Yu Jitae could not do anything. His resilient body refused to die with ease and that was the problem. The only thing he could do was get up and go to sleep.
That was how he lived for 90 years.
“When going to sleep, I had to face my past.”
Longing memories tended to resurface in dreams, and everything precious that had been greyed out would reappear in his mind.
His precious friends that he could not meet again, benefactors, beloved lovers, generous people; the wage after a hard work, the things he bought with that money, warmth provided by a blanket, cold water when gasping for breath, warmth of touching skins, exciting music, a sweet fragrance, a warm burger and valuable feelings. All those moments of his daily life and all the happiness he had lost started decorating his mind for close to a century.
However…
“The burger touching my tongue was very delicious. But waking up from my dream, I had to be reminded of my missing tongue.
“Everything was an illusion. I was still in hell.
“It was all futile.”
So at the end of the 5+ iterations,
Yu Jitae never went back to sleep.
For 200 years.
“Bom.”
Bom felt goosebumps rising all across her body.
Because he had been living a daily life, even though she knew he was in pain, she had never truly understood the nature of all the pain he was carrying.
But after receiving his memories, Bom could finally understand Yu Jitae. She felt endlessly embarrassed by the fact that she tried to understand him with a clumsy bond and love, thinking that she could provide him with happiness.
There was no existence in the world that could fully understand him in the first place.
In a world with locked time and sealed dimensions, a human had to bear those emotions for a thousand years. Who in this world could dare say they could understand him…?
“You pretty child.”
He looked into her vacant eyes.
There was a time in the 7th iteration when he heard a similar question to the one she had just asked. Actually, he heard it a few times.
– If expectation is what drives people’s lives, then what is your expectation in life, Doctor?
Ha Saetbyul asked at the underground labyrinth.
– Then, in that case, why do you live, ahjussi?
Kaeul asked when it was just the two of them,
– What is fun about your life?
– How do you feel happy by helping us?
Yeorum asked several times during her training sessions,
– What do you live for, ahjussi?
And Bom was the same. She also asked him time after time.
For some unknown reason, they were all curious about why he was living as if there was some great meaning to it.
He did not reply. In fact he couldn’t, because his reply would cause all the relationships he had laboriously built up to come crumbling down.
But now, he could say it.
“What do I live for, was it?”
Bom was already frozen stiff.
Even without him saying it, she could still imagine his answer. His honest thoughts that weren’t included in her 3,400 assumptions due to her lack of understanding were finally unveiled.
What would his ‘salvation’ look like?
Bom finally noticed it.
“I have a dream.”
A dream he had never spoken of; a dream which he did not even share with the white bird.
[You will. Definitely. Become happy.]
He suddenly recalled the last words of the white bird. What did it see when saying that to him? Was that ‘happiness’ really on the same line as what he was thinking?
Arriving at the 7th iteration,
Meeting the baby dragons,
Making them happy,
Helping them achieve their dreams,
Caring about their future after the separation,
And hugging Bom – the reason behind all that.
At the end of the lengthy imprisonment.
At last after reaching this moment,
The sinner,
Harbours one dream—
“I want freedom.”
It was an exhausting life.
A lot of strenuous burden was on his shoulders.
Some people said he had a strong mentality but he could not agree with them.
He was a human; a normal human that was weak and frail; a normal person that had less talent than others…
Seeing people die made him exceedingly envious. All the pain, loneliness, misery, sorrow, regret, remorse, guilt, melancholy, despair and every distorted thing that agonised him – all of that would end on the spot as long as he died.
He wanted to die. He wanted to find peace through death. For a very long time, he had been praying for the end of this long life and freedom from this chain of regression.
If life was a voyage, he was a captain of the barren ocean, the crew, steersman, passenger and a soldier.
He was lonely.
And he wanted to be free from everything.
Even if it was through death.
“…”
Bom started to cry again.
Pain that was suffocating enough to kill her squeezed her heart and made her hyperventilate. Shivering all over her body, she continued sobbing.
The reeds were broken; her eyes were opened and her ears picked up sound.
Now, Bom could no longer persuade Yu Jitae.
Death.
If that was Yu Jitae’s dream,
If that was the port he had been wishing for for the thousand years of his voyage,
If she wished for his happiness as much as she loved him…
“……I will help you.”
Bom held onto his chin with both of her hands. As tears fell down her cheeks and her body trembled unendingly, she aligned her lips with his. Licking the lower lips and laying her upper lips above his, she felt his breath and received his warmth.
She decided to remember this moment.
Forever.