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[Your stigma has been transferred to you from your constellation.]
[Stigma, 'Regression Lv.1', is getting ready to activate.]
‘I will regress.’
‘Regression is the only way.’
‘One more time.’
‘One more regression.’
‘As long as I see what lies behind the wall, even if I see it alone.’
‘I will get it next turn.’
‘I’m tired.’
“Regressing won’t make the next round any better. It very well might be the case that this world you’re about to abandon… could be the only world where you can live to see the end as a human being.”
Suddenly, a faint glimmer of hope. Perhaps regression is not the only way.
“That guy… he is my companion.”
Companion . Why? Why is this round different? Why is it as if… I no longer need to regress?
‘I don’t want to regress.’
‘I want to live.’
‘I want to see the end with
him.’
“Let’s meet again, Yoo Joonghyuk.”
An unpredicted anomaly. Someone who had not appeared in any of my previous regressions. Someone who may be the key to arriving at the epilogue.
Someone whom I killed with my bare hands, someone whom I ruthlessly stabbed with my own sword.
“No! Kim Dokja! No!”
Perhaps… if that guy is gone… this turn may not work out after all.
Once again, regressing is the only way.
‘I must regress.’
‘I must regress.’
But what if he comes back?
.
.
Companion.
Saviour.
.
.
I will not give up on this turn.
.
.
“I want to buy a big house and live with everyone.”
His dreams, his aspirations, do they include me? Am I part of that ‘everyone’?
I hope so.
It doesn’t matter.
This guy, who always seems to have a plan. This guy, who stopped me from regressing. This guy… who saved me.
I don’t want to regress.
I want to see the epilogue with everyone too.
Am I worthy of seeing the epilogue with him?
.
.
Before I realised it, my ambitions merged with his, as if I was no longer sure whether what I yearned for was really my longings, and not something he desired.
The one thing which stayed clear in my mind, a sea of chaos, was that he was crucial for me to reach the ending.
.
.
As the epilogue drew closer and closer, I became unsure of whether keeping him close was really necessary or if I simply had grown attached.
I fear that the latter option is the truth.
.
.
I’ve been told that the closer you hold things to your heart, the stronger the agony and self-hatred when it is ripped away from you.
.
.
[Constellation, 'Demon King of Salvation' has reached his ■■.]
[You have become the oldest dream.]
Perhaps I wasn’t worthy.
Perhaps it was my destiny, to be saved, yet not to save him.
Perhaps he could never have been saved.
Perhaps… there was really no way to see the end with him.