Chapter 21

The moment that name crossed Yi-tan’s lips, violent panic seized Myeong-joo. His heart hammered furiously against his ribs. Having once been pierced through by that creature’s fang, his chest seemed to remember the agony, constricting with remembered terror.

“I originally intended to explain this on our wedding day, but perhaps telling you earlier is for the best,” Yi-tan noted calmly.

Feeling his mouth go utterly dry, Myeong-joo managed a hollow murmur, asking what on earth he meant.

Yi-tan tapped his cigarette over the ashtray without hurry. Resting between his straight fingers, the slender cylinder trembled at the small motion, shedding a shower of loose ash.

“Instructor,” Yi-tan said gravely, “you must believe me, even if what I am about to tell you sounds preposterous and impossible.”

“…”

Yi-tan held his gaze. “Promise me.”

Myeong-joo’s heart thrashed as if drowning. The one who had truly experienced an impossible miracle was himself, having traversed time. Yet even without that truth, he could never bring himself to doubt Lee Yi-tan’s words. Managing a crooked smile, he gave a slow nod.

“A promise like that is easily given.”

He let only his sincerity show, though Yi-tan might well think he was merely exaggerating.

“What a relief,” Yi-tan said with an easy breath. “I expected you would say as much, Instructor, but I was still rather anxious.”

Yet he answered in a relaxed voice without looking nervous in the slightest. Myeong-joo lowered his head slightly, fearing his faint smile might sour.

After a moment, the officer broached the topic anew. “I first encountered the Temporal Demonic Fiend when I was eighteen.”

“…Pardon?” Myeong-joo blurted in surprise.

He had never imagined the tale would open with such a statement. As Myeong-joo lifted startled eyes, Yi-tan tapped the bottom of his pack to offer a fresh stick, as if silently warning that the story ahead would be hard to bear without tobacco. Taking the cigarette with dazed hands, Myeong-joo hurriedly waved off Yi-tan’s reaching hand as the officer moved toward the matchbox. Having Yi-tan light a cigarette for him would have made his already-fragile heart give out entirely.

While Myeong-joo struggled to recover his bearings, Yi-tan resumed speaking.

“My elder sister had a craving for candy, so I was running an errand for her,” Yi-tan recounted, looking into the distance. “I walked down the slope toward the corner market at the foot of our hill, but for some reason, the shop had closed early that evening.”

Narrowing his eyes, he seemed lost in reminiscence, summoning memories from an impossibly distant past. He gestured loosely with his cigarette.

“Turning the corner into the alleyway, there was a gap barely wide enough for one person between the shop and a brick wall, where the proprietor usually stacked coal briquettes. Yet on that particular night, nothing was there—only a void as pitch-black as the bottom of an abandoned well.”

Pausing there, Yi-tan drew another long breath from his cigarette. The paper wrapper glowed crimson as the dried leaves smoldered within. Looking over at Myeong-joo, he smiled with his eyes alone.

“The Temporal Demonic Fiend was crouching right there.”

Myeong-joo remained motionless, his throat tight.

“…”

He did not dare speak. The Temporal Demonic Fiend? Was it not that creature’s fang that enabled my own regression across time?

“Clinging to the wall like moss, the hideous creature babbled ridiculous nonsense,” Yi-tan continued calmly. “It demanded I return its husband, as though I were the one who had slain it. Having never experienced combat at the time, I knew nothing of demonic fiend hunting. I wondered if it had mistaken me for the Chief of Staff, though I couldn’t help finding it absurd that a demonic fiend would possess a husband.”

“…”

“What do you suppose happened next, Instructor?” Yi-tan asked.

Though his memories of Yi-tan in later years were complicated, Myeong-joo remembered the youth of eighteen with vivid clarity. Back then, Yi-tan had been as vibrantly green and sturdy as fresh May foliage. Surely nothing untoward could have happened after encountering a demonic fiend on his way home. For at eighteen, Yi-tan had been…

Yi-tan met his gaze with unblinking gravity. “After meeting that creature in the alley, I lived three separate lives.”

“…What on earth do you mean?”

He assumed his fingertips were trembling, but it was worse than that. A faint clicking sound reached his ears: his teeth were chattering uncontrollably, like someone dragged half-drowned from freezing water in midwinter. His vision swam so violently that he could barely make out the man before him. Desperate to mask his agitation, he lifted the unlit cigarette toward his mouth, only to freeze when he noticed the violent tremor in his hand.

Three lives? Even accounting for the fact that I am currently living my second life, the count makes no sense.

Snapping his head up, Myeong-joo stared at him through blurred vision. Could Yi-tan remember everything? Cha Myeong-joo’s disgrace, and that desperate moment when he chose death rather than endure another day of that misery?

“It is one of the Temporal Demonic Fiend’s abilities,” Yi-tan explained. “It turns back time for those struck by its power. Normally in battle, having time reversed reopens healed wounds or reduces a grown soldier to a helpless infant. But the phenomenon I suffered that day was somewhat different. Perhaps because of that distinction, I have no detailed memories of the other two lives.”

“…”

The explanation was difficult to follow, yet as if his heart had grasped its significance first, the pounding in his chest slowly steadied. Once the deafening roar of his pulse no longer rang in his ears, Myeong-joo blinked numbly.

“So… you are living your third life now,” Myeong-joo murmured, his voice trembling, “and you have no memory of those times… Then how can you possibly know that time reversed?”

His voice was pitifully hoarse, yet Yi-tan seemed not to notice. Sweeping back the hair that had fallen across his brow, the officer gazed beyond the stone wall before looking steadily into Myeong-joo’s eyes.

“In my first life, you and I were married. That memory alone is crystal clear.”

“What on earth… that makes no sense…” Myeong-joo stammered in shock.

Myeong-joo had also regressed after plunging the demonic fiend’s fang into his heart. Yet the one married to Lee Yi-tan in that life had been his sister Myeong-in, not himself. The shock rang through his whole body, sending a cold throb through the back of his skull.

“In my second life, for reasons unknown to me, I was married to Miss Myeong-in,” Yi-tan said quietly. “My memories beyond that are entirely severed, so I know nothing of what transpired…”

“…”

Cha Myeong-joo swallowed dryly. Those circumstances were something he understood far better than anyone alive. But a first life? It felt impossible to believe that they had been husband and husband in that distant past.

“In that second life, I must not have recalled the first life as I do now,” Yi-tan mused, his gaze drifting to the embers. “Had I remembered, I would never have married my own husband’s younger sister.”

Furrowing his brows slightly, he nodded with the slow contemplation of a man searching distant recollections.

“To tell the truth, I know very little about that second life—only that I married Miss Myeong-in, and with you, Instructor… No, even that memory remains hazy,” Yi-tan admitted with a faint frown.

Myeong-joo could not muster a single syllable.

“…”

Those words carried a strange, disorienting ring.

It sounded as though Myeong-joo were not taking Myeong-in’s rightful place, but rather that Myeong-in had been a misplaced stone on the Baduk board all along. It sounded as though Myeong-joo being Yi-tan’s brother-in-law was the aberration, and Myeong-in being his husband’s younger sister was the proper order of things.

Seeing him struck dumb, Yi-tan naturally assumed Myeong-joo simply found the tale impossible to believe. The officer could never guess the thoughts churning in Myeong-joo’s mind, pounding his senses to pulp like a heavy mortar.

“The peculiar thing is that I never remember the end of those lives,” Yi-tan continued in a reflective murmur. “I possessed few detailed memories to begin with, but their endings are shrouded in mist, like walking through drizzle.”

Only then did Myeong-joo’s trapped breath burst free. His chest, which had been unable to draw a proper breath until that moment, heaved violently.

Yi-tan did not remember the feelings Myeong-joo had harbored for him before the turn of time. If the endings of those lives were erased, then the moment Yi-tan discovered his unrequited longing was also buried in oblivion.

As the panic subsided and air returned to his lungs, clarity followed. Slowly closing and opening his eyes, Myeong-joo voiced what he believed was the true purpose behind this marriage.

“The Temporal Demonic Fiend threatens your safety, doesn’t it, Lieutenant?”

There was no other reason for Lee Yi-tan to confide such secrets. Yi-tan had been an admirable brother-in-law and student, but he was never one to speak carelessly of what lay inside him—especially to someone who possessed neither wealth nor standing to offer meaningful aid. His motive for speaking tonight seemed clear: Lee Yi-tan wanted Cha Myeong-joo in the same boat.

Yi-tan smiled as though at a student who had arrived at the correct answer. “Rather than mere safety, I had already driven those loathsome things to the ends of the earth in my first life.”

“…”

“It feels as though my second life began immediately afterward,” Yi-tan continued in a quiet murmur. “I cannot say how that second life unfolded, but possessing faint recollections of both lives now, in this third life I could understand far more clearly what duty I must fulfill.”

“…And what is that duty?” Myeong-joo asked, his throat dry.

The question sounded like a wail to Myeong-joo’s own ears, yet to Yi-tan it must have sounded ordinary, for the officer answered without missing a beat.

“To end this war.”

“…”

“And to accomplish this,” Yi-tan added with quiet intensity, “I require my instructor.”

The cigarette had burned down to its filter. As Myeong-joo stood blankly, Yi-tan reached out in alarm and plucked the glowing butt from between his index and middle fingers. Embers scattered across the flagstones, and though Myeong-joo realized his fingertips were scalded, he felt no pain.

Frowning slightly, Yi-tan reprimanded him like a careless child. “You must be more careful.”

“…”

Myeong-joo’s vacant gaze brushed against the officer’s face. Watching him intently, Yi-tan’s lips softened into a faint, reassuring smile.

“Do not worry so, Instructor,” Yi-tan said. “Though my memories are fragmented, we were a close couple. Even if our union was arranged by military compatibility testing, we got along well. Patchy as the recollection is… I recall that we smiled often when looking at each other.”

Myeong-joo could find no words.

“…”

“We were two men, so calling it love would have sounded ridiculous. Perhaps it was comradeship with something like affection mixed into it,” Yi-tan said with a faintly amused lilt.

An ache lodged in Myeong-joo’s solar plexus. From the hand Yi-tan held, ripples of harmonization spilled forth in waves. Rather than resisting, the Aberrant embraced the energy, his eyes narrowing in bliss.

“In that first life,” Yi-tan whispered, “you were extraordinary, Instructor. So revered that I dared not even step on your shadow.”

“…”

Pride colored Yi-tan’s voice as he gazed up at the stars.

“Your power as a Harmonizer was the finest on the peninsula. Every battle fought by your side was destined for victory because you forged it so. Whenever I received your harmonization, I was overwhelmed by gratitude. To think such an extraordinary soul was paired to an unworthy man like me… it filled me with immense pride.”

He spoke like a man lost in a dream, his shoulders shaking with a quiet chuckle, like an enraptured youth reminiscing about his beloved.

“Even after we bound our topknots together in marriage,” Yi-tan said softly, “you must have cherished me as your student. And I would have wanted to return that affection. How could we not have been devoted to each other? After all, we were partners who succeeded in expelling the demonic fiends from this soil.”

Myeong-joo’s lips parted, yet no sound came out. The Aberrant before him gently pressed on, as if soothing him.

“We will succeed this time as well,” Yi-tan stated with quiet certainty. “Were it not so…”

“…”

“…our compatibility test could never have yielded such a high score in this third life.”

Only then did Myeong-joo recall the rapturous expression Yi-tan had worn when reviewing the compatibility report. At last, he understood the true reason behind this entire development. And he recognized with clarity what Yi-tan sought to convey.

“Instructor, I will expel them from this land once more—and this time, completely,” Yi-tan vowed, his eyes gleaming with fierce resolve. “So that no abomination ever returns seeking vengeance over a slain mate, and so that we are never plunged into this absurd whirlpool of time again.”

Myeong-joo could only gaze at him in silence.

“…”

“We cannot allow countless lives to be lost over such petty grudges.”

“…”

Yi-tan smiled faintly. “However you calculate it, the bargain does not add up.”

Myeong-joo could not tell whether he had nodded or remained frozen in paralyzed silence. Only one truth stood out with crystalline clarity: Lee Yi-tan wanted Cha Myeong-joo. Specifically, he wanted the brilliant instructor and peerless Harmonizer that Cha Myeong-joo had supposedly once been.

Not a pathetic man who ended his own life over foul, forbidden longing, nor a vengeful fool fluttering like a moth toward the flame.

“The wind is cold, Instructor. We should go in soon.”

He wanted back the magnificent instructor Lee Yi-tan had known. Whether Cha Myeong-joo remembered or not, he wanted that man returned. That was what was being asked of him.

[END of VOLUME 1]