The Boy Who Cried at the Grave

‘But why is he calling me Doya for once?’

Hearing my name in his heated tone, I wanted to understand what it meant that he had dropped the usual formality and called me that, but this was not the kind of atmosphere where I could calmly analyze it.

Breathing hard, Ju Noeul turned his back and lay down abruptly.

The wound I had given him had not even healed yet, and still he moved that roughly.

Come to think of it, that was another problem.

‘The wounds we got in the crack didn’t disappear.’

This was the second time I had been injured inside a crack and come back out.

The first had been when we saved the child.

The second was this time.

Yet in Hyeon Jaeyul’s and Jeong Iheon’s cases, their clothes and bodies had returned exactly to the state they were in before entering the crack.

That made this deeply strange.

‘What was different?’

There were too few samples to find a correlation.

I set aside the unsolvable question and stared at Ju Noeul’s back.

Just before we exited the crack, the trust he had shown me was still baffling.

‘Why did he trust me?’

With just one sentence—trust me—he had believed me.

Even when I drove the mirror shard into his waist, he did not try to stop me.

He had only looked down at me quietly.

My memories still had not returned.

Instead, questions about my own past actions were only piling up.

I could not continue like this, knowing nothing.

‘Should I look for a way to recover my memories?’

Forgetting them had been a situation created by my own ability.

Naturally, I should also possess the method to retrieve them.

Was there some kind of trigger?

Just as the others had regained their memories upon awakening from the simulation, perhaps a specific experience would lead me back to mine.

But there was something that worried me.

‘What if I deliberately made it impossible for myself to recover them?’

I had erased my memories once before.

I had deleted something I could not bear.

If this was similar, then perhaps remaining ignorant would be better for me.

‘Still… I don’t want to keep living without knowing anything.’

As I furrowed my brows in thought, a translucent system window slid into view.

‘Right. The system.’

The system only I could see.

I had ignored it until now, but perhaps it held answers to this suffocating situation.

It was guiding me step by step like a game.

If I followed it—

‘At least it wouldn’t be more frustrating than this.’

After reaching that conclusion, I glanced at Ju Noeul, who was lying on his side with his back to me.

I wanted to test the system, but with him here, I needed restraint.

Even while I thought that, Won-gyeong remained silent, focused on treating my hand.

In the heavy atmosphere, my consciousness suddenly slipped.

The thread of awareness I had been barely holding snapped.

When I opened my eyes, it was deep into the night.

A dim amber light illuminated the room faintly.

‘A hospital room?’

It appeared to be a private ward.

An IV was connected to my arm.

The fever had not fully broken, but in this condition, I would likely recover soon.

I exhaled, realizing how fortunate it was to be ill somewhere with proper medical facilities.

“Doya.”

At my long sigh, a small voice called my name from beside me.

Hyeon Jaeyul.

Turning my head, I saw him frowning slightly.

He placed a hand on my forehead to check my temperature and spoke with concern.

“You struggle a lot when you get sick. You have to take care of yourself.”

I had been injured and overexerted.

Being bedridden for at least a week seemed inevitable.

Clearing my hoarse throat, I replied,

“I’ll be more careful. What time is it?”

“Two. Sleep more. Wake up in the morning.”

“What about you? You should sleep too.”

“I’ll sleep after you do.”

“…You won’t.”

He told me the time and gently patted my chest in a steady rhythm.

There was no ulterior motive in the touch.

Just the intent to lull me back to sleep.

When I shot him a sidelong look, he smiled faintly.

It was obvious he would stay by my side even after I fell asleep.

Without answering, he dimmed the lights further.

Honestly, since he would not listen even if I told him to rest, it would be better for both of us if I recovered quickly and left this room.

Not long after closing my eyes, I sank into sleep again.

A boy with pale cream-colored hair stood silently, tears streaming down his face.

He made no sound.

His fists were clenched tightly.

Before him lay a deep pit.

Adults were shoveling dirt into it.

Someone had been laid to rest.

The boy wore an ill-fitting black suit.

It did not belong on a child.

He never looked away.

‘Is this a dream too?’

I had dreamt something similar before.

That time, it had been Jeong Iheon.

This felt too vivid.

Perhaps it was a fragment of my own past.

I kept staring at the boy—Ju Noeul’s profile.

I could not look away.

It felt as though my past self had been staring at him just like this.

Only after the dirt was leveled did Ju Noeul scrub at his tears harshly.

Then he glared at me with sharp eyes.

<Who are you? Why do you keep staring?>

His voice carried anger.

It was as if he needed someone to resent, and I happened to be nearby.

I said nothing.

I simply watched as tears continued trailing down his cheeks.

Even crying, he looked unpleasantly sharp.

The boy snapped at me again.

<What are you?>

<I’m Doya. Go Doya.>

<…Who asked your name?>

I responded briefly and searched my pocket.

The small, patterned handkerchief I had seen in Hyeon Jaeyul’s dream was there.

I used it to wipe the boy’s wet cheeks.

<…Don’t.>

He muttered that, but he did not push my hand away.

Instead, he cried harder.

Perhaps my gesture had felt like comfort.

‘So I met Ju Noeul when we were children.’

If this truly was my memory.

I kept wiping his tears until I lowered my hand.

There was no point.

They would not stop.

When I stopped, he rubbed his face roughly with his sleeve.

<What would make you stop crying?>

My voice was flat.

Emotionless.

It was not the tone one would use toward a crying child.

Ju Noeul lowered his arm and glared.

<What would make me stop crying? What does it have to do with you?>

<I don’t like it when people cry. So I’d rather you didn’t. That’s why I asked.>

Even under his fierce glare, my tone remained monotonous.

His expression faltered.

Perhaps he realized anger meant nothing to me.

<If no one dies because of cracks, I wouldn’t cry.>

Again, my reply held no inflection.

He looked at me as if asking why I had bothered to ask.

Yet his tears had already stopped.

Seeing his dry face, I felt the corners of my mouth lift slightly.

I wiped his cheeks one last time.

They were clean now.

I murmured softly.

At my certainty, Ju Noeul looked at me with a blunt expression, lips parting as if to say something.

And then—

“Wake up, Go Doya.”

A voice pulled at me.

I opened my eyes abruptly, dragged back into reality.

For a moment, I blinked blankly.

All four of them were standing over me.

Even one pair of eyes was overwhelming.

Now there were four.

“…Why are you all here?”

I asked stiffly, looking at the men surrounding my bed.

What is this pressure?

“Hyeon Jaeyul said you were using your ability again. So he called everyone.”

Ah.

Then what I had just seen truly was my past.

When I used my ability, I seemed to recall real events.

My gaze dropped to Ju Noeul’s large hand holding mine.

That unexplained fondness of his finally made sense.

Even if we had no contact as adults, meeting as children could have shaped it.

When I continued staring at our joined hands, Ju Noeul loosened his grip and let go.

‘I’ll ask him later, when we’re alone.’

The warmth lingering in my palm cooled gradually.

More troublesome was the fact that this strange ability activated on its own.

“Sorry for causing trouble again.”

I apologized, forcing myself upright despite the lingering fever.

“It’s not like you can control it.”

Jeong Iheon brushed back my messy hair as he spoke.

“That’s exactly the problem.”

I could not stop the sigh that followed.

It felt related to memory manipulation.

Yet sometimes it was as if my consciousness detached from my body.

And in that state, I could even intervene in reality.

Was that really just memory manipulation?