A Broken Mirror

The trembling pupils gradually welled up with tears, which soon began to spill over. It took no time at all for the dripping beads to turn into a steady stream.

“Wh-who are you…….”

“…….”

“Ugh, hic……. I didn’t, sniff, do anything wrong…….”

His deathly pale face and violently vibrating tone made it obvious to anyone that he was frightened out of his wits. The sight of him unable to even struggle, merely ducking his head and shivering, made it impossible to view him as the exact same person who had been smiling like he was missing a screw just moments before.

“……Haa.”

Seohan let out a low sigh. It was because the information he had obtained from the system not too long ago flashed through his mind.

A ‘defect.’ The system had definitely mentioned that.

“You’re exactly the same as me, you son of a b*tch.”

Although the guy hadn’t given a precise answer to the question of whether he had cut in line, his current behavior served as an alternate response. The corners of Seohan’s lips twisted upward on their own.

“Pl-please spare…… spare me, please spare me……!”

At the single sigh followed by a vivid curse, the already terrified face grew noticeably worse. Seohan had no choice but to take a step back and click his tongue. If the guy kept going like this, it felt like his breath would choke up and stop entirely at any second.

The information stating that ‘he’ was fragile suddenly surfaced in his mind. It seemed to be entirely accurate. There was simply no other word to describe the man standing before his eyes.

‘They definitely said he was a celebrity though, right……?’

Recalling the keyword ‘fragile’ brought back the accompanying piece of information that he was a ‘celebrity.’ It was a detail that absolutely refused to connect with the pathetic figure currently curling his body as tightly as possible while shivering.

Seohan remained standing in place, doing his best not to utter a single word. As someone who had personally experienced this exact phenomenon countless times, he was intimately aware of the fact that if he simply waited in silence, the body would eventually return to its normal state.

Five minutes? Or was it ten?

While watching every single movement of Ji Eunhyuk with his arms crossed, the body that had been visibly trembling gradually began to regain its stability.

“……Ah. It’s happening again.”

The words that finally broke the silence carried a completely different tone from when he was drenched in fear. Seohan’s eyes narrowed at the annoyed, or rather, completely resigned manner of speech. However, the grimace on Ji Eunhyuk’s face lasted for only a fleeting moment. The absolute instant he noticed Seohan standing across from him, a gentle eye-smile spread across his features.

“I’m sorry. I showed you an unseemly sight.”

An unseemly sight was pushing it. In any case, it was a phenomenon Seohan had also endured multiple times by now. Disparaging it as an unseemly sight would be nothing more than venting frustrations regarding his own involuntary behavior.

Yet, contrary to his expectations, the guy still hadn’t delivered an answer. Seohan shifted his body closer from the distance he had maintained and leaned down to match his eye level.

“That wasn’t what I asked you.”

“……Ah.”

“I asked why you cut in line.”

The rage he had barely managed to suppress asserted its presence once more. Thinking that the root cause of all the immense suffering he had endured so far was sitting right in front of him made it utterly impossible to stay calm.

Just why? For what earthly reason would someone willingly accept a ‘defect’ just to snatch a body and drag things to this catastrophic state? If the guy had been living a life of absolute luxury and power, Seohan wouldn’t even feel this deeply wronged.

But this bastard was living completely severed from the world, curling his body alone inside a pitch-black room where not a single ray of light could enter. All while suffering from the exact same phenomenon due to a low synchronization rate.

Therefore, he desperately wanted to know the reason behind it. If the explanation turned out to be completely absurd, Seohan was fully prepared to land a few solid punches right then and there.

Perhaps sensing the radiating waves of fury, the smile on the guy’s face gradually faded. Although he didn’t outwardly show that a subtle chill had anchored into his expression, the tension in the room swelled aggressively.

“Seohan-ssi…… you had a scandal with Jin Yeon-oh not too long ago, right.”

“…….”

The mouth that looked ready to spit out anger an instant ago snapped completely shut.

‘Did this bastard spray his crap over there too?’

Whether it was through the entertainment news on TV or an article on the internet, this guy had undoubtedly witnessed that godforsaken scandal. A sudden throb racked the back of Seohan’s neck. It was even worse because the image of Jin Yeon-oh’s irritating face—which carried nothing but indifference and coldness in his eyes yet constantly maintained a smile to mask it—flickered before his eyes.

“That’s how I knew. That Seohan-ssi is the exact same kind of person as me.”

“What?”

Seohan asked back blankly. A strange sense of déjà vu began to anchor itself into the words.

“We possessed these bodies together. I know too, the ‘Baek Seohan’ from . But there’s no way the real ‘Baek Seohan’ would meet with Jin Yeon-oh privately like that, so…….”

He had never imagined the day would come when he would hear that specific title drop from another person’s mouth. His eyes, completely failing to hide his complex state of mind, stared intently down at Ji Eunhyuk.

“I’m so incredibly happy…… to finally meet a person.”

“……A person?”

Only after hearing a remark strikingly similar to the one from earlier did the shape of the déjà vu Seohan was experiencing finally solidify.

The phrase ‘finally met a person’ sounded exactly as though he were implying that everyone else in this world was fundamentally not human. Pressing his fingers firmly against the space between his brows which refused to unknit, Seohan desperately tried to comprehend his words.

“What do you mean, a person? Everyone else besides me is…….”

“Those things aren’t human. How can entities that exist solely through descriptions written inside a book possibly be human? They are nothing more than NPCs inside a game, aren’t they?”

“Therefore, in this entire world, there is only you and me, Seohan-ssi. Just the two of us.”

At the subsequent voice whispering into the space, Seohan was momentarily stripped of speech. What kind of absolute nonsense was this? Although it was true that he had possessed a character inside a novel, based on everything Seohan had personally experienced, the people here were no different from the countless individuals he had encountered in his past life.

They were human beings too. Seohan had never doubted this premise even a single time. Because of that, he had absolutely no idea how to respond to a reaction that bordered on a severe psychological fixation.

The most critical issue was that the gaze of Ji Eunhyuk, who was murmuring in a low tone, was remarkably unsettling. His pupils were wide open, and he was muttering with a completely hollow, entranced expression, causing a powerful instinct to scream inside Seohan that he had messed with the wrong person.

Ji Eunhyuk, who had been acting as though a screw were loose to a spine-chilling degree, abruptly shifted his attitude the exact moment he belatedly realized Seohan’s face was deeply distorted. Like magic, his expression completely crumbled.

“Do you…… hate me?”

How could he not hate him? His entire purpose for tracking him down to this location was anchored in the goal of ensuring the bastard who cut in line wouldn’t get off scot-free—Seohan fully intended to voice that exact reality. That was, if tears hadn’t gradually begun to pool within that shattered face.

“Even though you hang around with Jin Yeon-oh like that…… sniff.”

Ultimately, the tears burst. It was a completely different vibe from when ‘Ji Eunhyuk’ had been weeping streams earlier. The fact that the guy stubbornly managed to drag Jin Yeon-oh into the conversation even now left Seohan’s mouth hanging open in sheer disbelief.

“No, that’s…….”

“It’s because you hate me…….”

The attempt to correct his thoughts failed miserably. It was entirely due to Ji Eunhyuk, who cut right through Seohan’s words to interject. Seohan’s anger would boil rapidly, only to turn ice-cold whenever he faced that face which was sorrowfully dropping tears as though he had encountered the most tragic predicament in the entire universe.

“Ugh…… I didn’t do it on purpose, hic, really. Can’t you show me some affection too……?”

Upon hearing those words, Seohan experienced exactly two distinct realisations.

‘When on earth did I ever show that bastard affection!’

The intense wave of unfairness originating from the fact that he had never once treated Jin Yeon-oh with affection was the first.

“……You didn’t do it on purpose?”

And the sudden surge of profound doubt that struck him while listening to Ji Eunhyuk’s words was the second.

Although the gasping breaths from before were absent, the silently falling tears played a massive role in making Ji Eunhyuk appear utterly pitiful. It was to the extent that Seohan had to instinctively suppress his own voice, which threatened to rise on its own. He exerted every ounce of effort to ask as calmly as possible, yet the sheer panic of listening to such an unexpected story could not be hidden.

The belated nod of the guy’s head looked remarkably aggrieved.

“I said I didn’t want to engage in something like possession, that I just wanted to die…… I definitely said that. Sniff, but when I opened my eyes, I was here.”

“…….”

“Whenever I try to die, my body stops on its own. And the entity calling itself a system…… every time I look at another person, it tells me exactly what they are thinking, what emotions they feel, and what actions they will take next…… it told me everything, Seohan-ssi.”

Was he referring to System R? But R had never uttered a single word regarding such matters. Even when Seohan demanded information on Ji Eunhyuk, it had merely brought up the excuse of ‘protection.’ If that meant a system truly existed here…….

It meant Ji Eunhyuk was accompanied by an entirely different system.

Before Seohan could fully organize his chaotic thoughts, Ji Eunhyuk sharply snapped his slightly lowered head upward. Although his eyes were still thoroughly drenched, the tears that had been tracing down his cheeks had already dried up without a single trace.

The eyes that had been radiating a profoundly sorrowful vibe just a literal second ago flashed dangerously. What was running rampant within those pupils was unmistakable madness.

“In a world like this, how could I possibly not lose my mind?”

He seemed to be exerting an effort to display a gentle smile, but only a single corner of his mouth twisted upward into a grimace. His subtly hollow pupils and awkward laugh made him look exactly like a doll that was broken somewhere inside.