The Intertwined Threshold

Perhaps it was also because of Tae-eon, who had changed after the accident. Following that nightmarish day when the seven-vehicle pileup occurred, everything about Tae-eon transformed. His palate, personality, quirks, habits, and even his manner of speaking changed completely, as if he had become a different person. Unlike his brother, who was devastated by the absence of their mother and father, he could not even let out his sadness.

It was because he had no memory. Whether it was an aftereffect of the accident, Tae-eon possessed no memories of the accident itself or anything before it. His 13 years of memories spent living with his family were also pitch-black. As if they had been erased.

For that reason, Tae-eon could understand his brother’s sharp resentment. Even so, there was just one thing.

[Grandmother, there’s a ghost attached to hyung. You said shamans perform things like exorcisms, right? Please have Grandmother do that for him. They say there’s… something strange in my hyung’s body, sob…]

He could not bring himself to understand those particular words from the child.

At first, he felt deeply guilty watching his brother cry while clutching their deaf grandmother. However, as the years went by, he grew exhausted of everything.

Ten years had already passed since he lived like that. Having sought out this place at the age of 13 after losing everything, Tae-eon had now become a 23-year-old young man.

“Then.”

Tae-eon spoke while standing perfectly still. A cold gaze pierced him like a dagger.

“Should I stop earning money? What are you going to do about the debt?”

The brothers had lost everything in the accident ten years ago. For Tae-eon, whose memories were lost, the only things left to him now were the recollections of living in the shantytown and his sole flesh and blood. Because that had become his reason for living, he had fiercely protected and embraced him out of the single fact that they were family.

“That damn money, money. Every single time you open your mouth, it’s nothing but talk about money. If it was that precious to you, you should have hidden it properly. Ah, but… don’t worry. They said there’s only one time left.”

“What?”

“They said if we perform the exorcism just one more time, everything will return to its proper place.”

Lee Tae-hoon snickered as he tipped his drink. Tae-eon’s fingertips curled in silently. This was the very reason Tae-eon had no choice but to throw himself into the hunter industry.

“What… does that mean?”

At first, it was because he wanted Tae-hoon, who was younger than him, to live a better life. To study in a better environment, to eat and wear better things, and to rescue him from the things he himself had experienced. He wanted him to live more abundantly and proudly than anyone else.

So, he abandoned his studies, awkwardly picked up a gun at that young age, and threw himself into the battlefield. One year, two years passed like that, and it eventually became five years. However, the household finances, which he thought would soon grow affluent, tilted once again when Lee Tae-hoon started dabbling in ‘exorcisms.’

The collection notices that flew in countless times. Had he been left dumbfounded while looking at them? Looking at the numbers indicating massive sums with a heart that felt like it was collapsing, he had thought this:

Lee Tae-hoon simply did not know how to release his pent-up resentment, which had nowhere else to go. He was merely filling his unappeased deficiency in this manner. Unlike the stoic Tae-eon, Tae-hoon had possessed a sensitive side ever since he was a child.

Whenever an issue arose between the two, it had long since become the role of the older brother, Tae-eon, to apologize first and accommodate him, and Tae-eon had lived his life jamming himself into a small frame to match Tae-hoon’s lifestyle guidelines.

Such was the foundation underlying the relationship between the two. An older brother for whom giving in was natural, and a younger brother for whom receiving was natural.

Thinking, ‘It will get better someday,’ he had lived while suppressing his true feelings. However, for the first time, Tae-eon began to think that this attitude of his might be the primary culprit that ruined him.

“So give me some money.”

“Lee Tae-hoon.”

“Let’s just see this through to the absolute end.”

“Lee Tae-hoon!”

“You’re sick of it too!!”

Thud!

A tightly clenched fist struck the small dining table violently. The table, its corners caving in, flipped over onto the floor, making a sharp sound. Lee Tae-hoon glared at Tae-eon, his eyes wide as he panted heavily.

“Why can’t we just stop playing this pathetic game of brothers and go our separate ways? You’re sick of it too. Let’s just end it between us on this occasion. Who cares whether you’re a ghost or not anymore? Once my hyung comes back, it’s completely over.”

“What… do you even think of me as?”

Amidst the smell of alcohol filling the room, Lee Tae-hoon burst into a hollow laugh and spoke sarcastically.

“Right. What the hell are you anyway? Why did you crawl into my hyung’s body and keep hovering around making a person go crazy, acting like an older brother when you aren’t even one?”

As he slowly raised his body, he looked exceptionally massive. Kicking away a crushed alcohol bottle, he fumbled through Tae-eon’s jacket pocket lying nearby. A wad of bills received as his daily wage came out in his hand.

“Put that money down…”

“I’ll pay you back, so don’t act so petty. I spent all of my money yesterday.”

“Lee Tae-hoon!”

“Don’t yell, damn it!”

Crash—!

The moment the table flew right past Tae-eon, a broad back turned around and distanced itself before he could even utter a word to stop him. The violently opened door rattled in the wind. Beyond it, Tae-hoon, who had thrown open the iron gate where the night had settled, left the house without even putting on a jacket.

Tae-eon closed his eyes tightly and pressed his forehead. Should he have spoken more calmly? Was he not the older brother? He should have approached with a mindset of comforting him more, having a conversation, and trying to understand him.

No matter how much temper he threw or harsh words he spoke, Tae-hoon had never slept out. Tae-eon had believed that it was because Tae-hoon held affection for him underneath it all. Because even now, he had ultimately come home on this night.

Therefore.

He believed that if he, as the older brother, comforted and appeased him first this time as well, things would become harmonious; that someone had to let go in order to smooth out this relationship, and that person was him. That was what he thought.

Tae-eon immediately left the house without even a jacket. The faintly fluttering snow grew fierce enough to be glaringly visible in the meantime.

However, right when he extended his leg toward the frozen stairs—

“!”

The world Tae-eon stood in underwent a sudden transformation. It was because the world began to flip over from the edge of the stairs. In an instant, the world shattered into pieces, and his footing dropped out beneath him, bringing a sensation of falling.

Tae-eon reached his hand out into the empty air to grab something, but at some point, he plunged through a formless space and fell down with a thud. Even though he slammed his knees severely, he felt no pain. Only his own panting breaths echoed overwhelmingly in his ears.

Lifting his head to look around, the place he was in was an entirely white space. A window revealing a darkening sky rattled unsteadily. A spring breeze seemed to brush his cheek. Tae-eon lifted his heavy eyelids and looked ahead.

He thought a patient bed was sitting desolate beneath the window where the curtains fluttered, and someone was sitting on top of it, looking out the window.

It was an emaciated person. With all sorts of IV needles inserted into his arms, he quietly blinked his eyes, staring blankly through his tangled hair.

Tae-eon closely observed the man without a word. His gaunt appearance felt strangely pitiable and sorrowful. His lifeless eyes looked sad, yet his black pupils possessed a power that drew one’s gaze.

Suddenly, the man’s gaze turned toward Tae-eon, who was standing at the door.

At that moment, the environment of the place he stood in changed. The black eyes that had been staring at Tae-eon without a movement distorted unsightly, and tears spilled down the man’s gaunt cheeks. He opened his trembling mouth and said something.

[‘Now… give it… back.’]

However, the sound did not carry over properly. The man, who cried out while clutching the blanket with his IV-pierced hand, ultimately shook his thin shoulders and wailed as if weeping in anguish.

His unkempt hair, looking as if it hadn’t been trimmed for several years, was entangled like his scream. He clasped his two hands together like a person begging for salvation. Then, he implored with distorted eyes. Extremely quietly. Desiring it even while knowing it wouldn’t happen. Miserably, and desperately so.

[‘…don’t want to… like…’]

Tae-eon was captured and wavered inside those black pupils. He could not understand what was making the man so sad and despondent. Something hot like a fireball surged up within his throat, but among the emotions Tae-eon had experienced, there seemed to be nothing resembling it.

When he closed his distorted eyes, the view before him was filled with pitch-black once more. Everything drifted far away.

Both the shantytown where the snow fluttered, and this space where the gentle breeze blew.

As if running away after being chased by someone, Tae-eon opened his eyes abruptly. His breath rushed up, and a white ceiling flickered across his panting vision. A soft-textured blanket wrapped around his fingertips. It was the place he had seen right when he opened his eyes for the first time. A small room entangled with all sorts of machines.

“Gasp, ha…”

The smell of a chemical so potent it made his head split pierced the tip of his nose. Moreover, because his eyelids were strangely heavy, Tae-eon blinked his eyes a few times as if frowning. His memories surfaced in disconnected fragments.

The people in white gowns who had restrained him. The glass door where light flooded past his crossed arms. And even the thick, heavily built man who had been snicker-grinning in front of it.

Even though his mind was a mess from so many things happening all at once, he could not distinguish what was real and what was not. As he closed his eyes tightly and let out a sigh, an unfamiliar voice reached him from the side.

“A-Are you awake?”

At the presence he hadn’t even known was there, Tae-eon swiftly turned his head. Next to the bed, a man with a somewhat anxious expression sat on a small chair. It was a stranger. Even so, a sensation so sickeningly familiar surged within him.

A pale face, and black hair smoothly covering his forehead. The man was exuding an anxious and gloomy atmosphere with an innocent face. His eyes, peeking as if stealing glances, scanned Tae-eon up and down every now and then.

“You’ve been lying here for almost two years. Do you know… that it took a long time?”

Whether he was peeling fruit, the paring knife held in his hand made a rustle, rustle sound as it carved away the apple skin. However, his gaze alone remained uncannily fixed on Tae-eon, never pulling away.

“Do… do you remember who I am?”

The man asked, stammering his words with a faintly smiling face. Unfamiliarity and familiarity entangled in a dizzying mess. Tae-eon stared at the paring knife, then parted his lips with great effort as he raised his body.