Chapter 152
‘Save me’?
It was a strange thing to say in this situation. There was no threat to his life.
“Explain.”
“…It’s getting harder and harder to bear. If I’d known how painful it would be to know the truth, I would have listened to you. If only I’d lived on in ignorance…”
Yohan didn’t press him further and waited for him to continue. A heavy atmosphere weighed down the office.
He’d already known it was getting harder for him to endure. There had been times when he wondered what could be troubling him so much.
It must have been overwhelming. Unable to bear the weight alone, he must have deliberately made it obvious, as if wanting someone to notice.
He felt guilty about bringing up the truth himself, but if he couldn’t tell someone, he was at the end of his rope.
Foolish, and foolish again.
Jae-ho reached under the table and pulled out an old booklet. It looked like a magazine, or maybe an old thesis—just a crude document.
“The truth is, that day, I found this paper. And inside were materials that explain the current situation.”
“What kind of materials?”
“It’s faster if you look at it yourself.”
Jae-ho slowly handed him the booklet. Yohan took it, staring at it.
The texture was unfamiliar. It felt like very old newsprint, or thick sketch paper.
He must have pulled it out often; there wasn’t a speck of dust on it, and it was covered in fingerprints.
There was a name tag from the National Library on the spine. The cover was nothing but a single-color typographic design, with no recognizable title.
Yohan turned to the first page. Yellowed paper. Old texture. As he turned more pages, large illustrations like in a picture book began to appear.
The more he turned, the wider his eyes grew, and his hands moved faster.
Just as Jae-ho had done the first day he’d found the book.
As he flipped through, Jae-ho’s voice came like an excuse.
“My worry, as you said, was the impact if this truth ever got out. I was afraid of the chaos it would cause.”
Yohan’s hand paused for a moment, then continued. His ears, his hands, and his quickly whirling mind were all mixed together.
How could this book exist? Who made it? How? Why?
“Please look at the last page.”
At Jae-ho’s words, Yohan’s gaze reached the final page. There, monsters were depicted gambling with Earth as a chessboard.
“……”
The monsters in this book were clearly mutants. Every mutant he’d ever seen in this life or his past life was recorded in it. Even though they were just crude illustrations, it was a story that could only exist if someone had truly experienced it.
To think the picture on the last page was just exaggeration made no sense. If the pages before it were true, then the last page had to be as well.
This world was nothing more than a game.
All the desperate struggles to survive were nothing but entertainment for someone else.
Bang!
Yohan slammed the desk.
After that, a heavy silence.
“Tell me your interpretation.”
Yohan demanded the thoughts Jae-ho had anguished over for six months. Jae-ho stammered, surprised to see him so shaken for the first time in so long.
“Uh, once you said, Boss, that this world’s apocalypse was artificial, that it didn’t make sense. And Rina said it seemed like some beings wanted humanity’s extinction, while others wanted humanity to survive. And you objected, saying it was more convincing if those beings were just gambling over humanity’s fate. Boss, have you been suspicious since then?”
“That’s just something I said because it was all so absurd.”
“But it fits exactly.”
“So, this world is a game board. Someone is playing a game with our lives—is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes. Before, now, and in the future.”
Doubt turned into certainty. His mind buzzed as if struck by a hammer, then tingled with numbness.
Countless emotions piled up—understanding, denial, and anger.
He was angry. Angry enough to want to throw away his own life and overturn this worthless game.
“At first, I denied it. I was a theist, so I never doubted the existence of a supreme being… I thought, ‘My God would never do this. This is the Devil’s work.’ So I told no one. But as time passed, and I kept thinking, I started to believe it could be true. This was someone’s apocalypse—a revelation.”
His breath was trembling.
“So I couldn’t tell anyone.”
His judgment was correct.
This would have stripped away the last thread of hope from the survivors.
To people struggling to survive, telling them, ‘You’re nothing but pawns on a board, being used for someone’s game,’—how many would still live normally after hearing that?
Despair and madness would spread like disease. Many would choose suicide, out of frustration or rage.
“At first, I just thought about killing myself.”
“……”
“I felt my dignity as a human being hit rock bottom. The pride I had as an intellectual was worthless, and I felt like a fool. Even the rules that allowed us to survive could be wiped away in a second, just by the whim of those watching us…”
Just then, the sound of rain began outside, turning into a torrential downpour.
It was hard to say whether it was just a passing shower, or the start of the monsoon season.
The sound of rain striking the sea was vivid.
Leaving the now-speechless Jae-ho alone, Yohan turned his gaze to the booklet.
Who made this, how, and why?
Maybe someone like Rina, who had received a revelation, recorded it.
No, that couldn’t be.
If that were the case, it would have been obvious when the apocalypse first began.
Whether it was a professor, a graduate student, a publisher, a writer, or just an ordinary civil servant—if they were in a position to leave a document in the National Museum, it wouldn’t have ended with just leaving a single book behind.
They would have acted, prepared for the apocalypse when it broke out.
The fact that he hadn’t noticed anything at all, not in his previous life nor in this one, was a bit strange.
It made more sense to believe that the real culprits behind this disaster, those damn gamers, had created it like a quest item.
‘How much… do they have to toy with us before they’re satisfied…’
Everything was scripted.
Even the fact that he returned with memories.
Mutants gathering wherever people gathered.
The birth of mutant Piccolo, and how it spawned other mutants.
The government and military regions being hit especially hard and collapsing early.
The zombie processions, the immunity that didn’t exist in his previous life.
Animals not being infected, mutants not attacking animals, mutants running rampant in areas with low population density.
Even the fact that people like himself, Sweeper, Hajin, and others displayed something beyond human, even Rina’s dreams.
All of it.
It was all part of a perfectly written script.
Just to watch people die, or just to watch people survive.
“Tell them to f*** off.”
Bang!
Yohan slammed the desk again. It had been a long time since he’d lost control of his emotions like this. No, he couldn’t control them at all. The rage inside him boiled up like lava, as if it would burst through the earth itself.
Yohan put the booklet down loudly and stared out the window at the dark sky. As if glaring at some point in the heavens.
Were they watching, even now?
Of course they were.
If they were watching this game, there’s no way they wouldn’t enjoy watching someone struggle so desperately to survive. It must have turned into quite a popular show.
Bastards not even worth chewing up.
If you’re watching, answer me.
He sent his gaze up as if trying to make eye contact, as if trying to punch a hole through the sky.
And as if there really were a hole, the sky poured down rain, and the howling of the sea swallowing that rain echoed unbroken.
In that moment, he felt a strange sensation.
Maybe it was just his imagination.
It felt like hundreds of eyes were staring at him. Goosebumps rose, his whole body tingling.
A bolt of lightning struck the sea, dazzlingly bright. Thunder ripped through the sky.
And then it was over.
The sensation of being watched disappeared.
As if it had all been a dream. As if nothing had happened.
His rage slowly subsided.
And in its place came contemplation.
The pain and anguish Jae-ho had suffered for months.
Blindly lashing out wasn’t the answer. Their enemy was something transcendent.
He understood now that what those beings wanted, first and foremost, was humanity’s struggle.
But in the end, did they want extinction or survival? What kind of game was this?
Yohan leaned toward the latter. They threw the world into an apocalypse and laughed as humans raced toward survival.
Like gamblers at a racetrack.
The reasoning was clear.
First, the number of mutants and the intensity of the apocalypse were steadily decreasing.
Second, the existence of immune survivors was clearly a condition more favorable to survival than to extinction.
Lastly, the existence of this book.
He couldn’t know whether the end of the game would be extinction or the end of the apocalypse, but at the very least, the participants in this game wanted humanity to survive until it was over.
There were still questions.
What was his pre-regression experience? Was it a game reset? And what did those bastards hate most?
The final question was how to ruin this game. He needed to find that path.
Yohan turned around. In that brief instant, his face showed a steely resolve, as if he’d made up his mind. His anger had calmed, replaced by certainty and determination.
He was the same Yohan as always.
“Jae-ho.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
“…Understood.”
“And, you’ve done well. Truly. I appreciate your effort and suffering.”
It was hard to watch a grown man look like he was about to cry.
“Prepare for a radio broadcast.”
“A radio broadcast?”
“With HAM radio. Prepare to broadcast worldwide.”
