“Kim Jaeyoung, hello.”
“Hello.”
“You didn’t eat breakfast, right? I got two of these one-plus-one, so have one.”
“Thank you.”
What’s a one-plus-one? Did he buy it with money? Accepting the sandwich, I forced a smile as I looked at the guy smiling like a picture, then reluctantly sat down at the back seat. I never imagined I’d end up being someone’s bread shuttle at nineteen. How did I end up in this situation?
Not too long ago, I lived a very enjoyable life. No matter what accident happened, as the youngest son of a wealthy family that teachers or police couldn’t easily touch, it was natural for me to stand at the top of the pyramid among the kids. My school grades were at the bottom of the class, but once I entered society, those kids who were studying hard now would all be slaves working under me. That was the reality and the future that lay ahead, so I had no qualms about living luxuriously. However…
‘The dark days are coming soon’
Lately, my vision has intermittently darkened, and my heart has been pounding. To calm my trembling insides, I closed my eyes. Not long ago, my doctor diagnosed me with panic disorder. The household was turned upside down, and it caused even more chaos when I refused prescription medication. If it could have been solved with just medication, I would have taken it long ago. No matter how my grandfather angry gets, there’s nothing I can do about it. These symptoms won’t be resolved until the root cause is addressed.
“I, uh, Eun-soo. I need to submit a career counseling plan… ”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
“What?”
“Ktf, atf mjgffg mbecrfilcu qijc… “
“Ct, rtl-, afii wf ijafg.”
Pc j rlaejalbc ktfgf ws tjcvr jcv offa kfgf cewy jcv P mbeivc’a fnfc ygfjatf qgbqfgis, kts ajix jybea j mjgffg mbecrfilcu qijc? P uijgfv ja atf mijrr qgfrlvfca, ktb kjr rajcvlcu lc ogbca bo wf jcv weaafglcu, klat rtjgq fsfr. Cr beg fsfr wfa, atf mijrr qgfrlvfca’r mbcafwqijalbc aegcfv lcab j gfagfja. Vevvfcis, atf cblrs mijrr delfafv vbkc jr lo mbiv kjafg tjv yffc qbegfv bc atfw, jcv rtbgais joafg, atf mijrrwjafr yfujc ab wegweg, uijcmlcu ja wf. ‘Ubbg mijrr qgfrlvfca…’, ‘Vemt j vfilcdefca…’, ‘Glv sbe rff atja ibbx…’ Qbgvr atja P kbeivc’a tjnf qjlv jcs jaafcalbc ab erejiis wjvf wf offi ecojlgis agfjafv yfmjerf ws ybvs kjr lc qjlc. Qts vbfrc’a jcsbcf cbalmf atja P’w tegalcu?
“But why is Seon Eun-soo being nice to Jaeyoung?”
“Yeah, I mean, he used to mock and torment him as a beggar kid.”
“Did he find a weakness?”
Weakness? Ha, if this is considered a weakness, then it must be one. I glared at Kim Jaeyoung, who was diligently solving problems with wired earphones on, from the front row, then collapsed onto my desk. Ah, knowing the future is truly agonizing. Why did I, who lived my entire life without any thoughts, become the ‘first awakened’? No matter how much I think about it, I couldn’t understand.
A couple of months ago, while riding a motorcycle at high speed on the outskirts of the city, I felt a shock as if a lightning bolt struck my brain and tumbled into a dense patch of bushes and grass. Despite the motorcycle being wrecked beyond repair and suffering only minor bruises, my body was unharmed. The police concluded that my life was saved as my body was thrown into the grass before the motorcycle hit the wall. As the police alternated between looking at my crumpled helmet and my unscathed head, I said nothing, but the truth was, I crashed into the wall along with the motorcycle. I kept silent, afraid that if I spoke the truth, my family would oppose buying a new motorcycle. I was lucky to survive.
The problem is, I started having strange dreams since that day.
An unrealistic dream where one day the sun suddenly disappears, a red moon rises, and monsters appear and kill people. However, when I woke up, my whole body would tremble because I could not tell whether what I saw in my dream was reality or a dream.
In my dream, I was at school. When monsters appeared, I pushed aside the person next to me and escaped to the gymnasium. Being stronger and having better stamina than the kids who only studied at school, I always took the lead there as well. However, realizing we wouldn’t last for days without food, I made plans to move our base to the cafeteria. It was a plan to divert the monsters’ attention elsewhere and buy time to escape. The ‘elsewhere’ was people. Who would support an act akin to suicide? With a few others who catered to my tastes, I successfully executed the plan of driving away the ‘unnecessary’ people.
Inside the cafeteria, there were cafeteria ladies and students hiding. The first thought that came to mind when I saw them was, ‘Annoying… they’re becoming too much.’ Food was limited, and the arrival of rescue teams was uncertain. In such circumstances, I cruelly thought that I must find a way to reduce mouths to feed, by any means necessary. Amidst this, a few of us, including myself, awakened to a ‘strange power.’ It was a superpower-like ability that could confront the monsters. Looking around, there was no one who had awakened a stronger ability than me.
From then on, I began what is commonly called ‘control.’ If someone didn’t obey my orders, I either starved them, hit them, or killed them. Killing people was difficult at first, but later it became as easy as killing ant larvae. Initially, no matter how much of a delinquent I was, I didn’t think I lacked humanity to that extent. But gradually, I felt like the me in the dream and the me in reality were merging.
One time, I got into a fight on the street at night, and if the police hadn’t intervened, I might have killed someone. As I couldn’t control my impulses like in my dreams, I gradually became more afraid. I tried to keep myself from dreaming by forcing my eyes open, and I even played games until late. But inevitably, around 1 a.m., I lost consciousness as if a fuse had blown. It felt like someone was forcibly showing me the contents of my dreams.
Ultimately, I died. It was by the hands of a man named Cha Yoo-hyeok who came to rescue people, in a very cruel manner. Cha Yoo-hyeok was righteous, but he showed no mercy to trash like me. Until the moment of my death, I was beaten by the people I had treated like slaves, and I was thrown to the monsters. One of Cha Yoo-hyeok’s colleagues fed me strange drugs as I was being devoured by the monsters, and even though my arms and legs were torn off and my organs were spilling out, I didn’t die for hours, possibly due to the effects of that drug.
In the end, it was cardiac arrest.
‘Eun-soo! Seon Eun-soo! Baby! Snap out of it. Are you okay?’
That night, my family woke me up as I screamed in my dream, and I woke up gasping for breath. It took quite a while for me to realize that it wasn’t the real me who died, but the me in the dream.
I thought I wouldn’t dream anymore since I died, but now the dream showed Cha Yoo-hyeok through the eyes of an observer. He was completely different from a human like me. A just man who received the brave citizen award five times for actions such as catching thieves or saving a child who fell onto subway tracks. Even in situations where it was difficult to save his own life, he went around saving people when the dark day came. However, through various betrayals and trials, he comes to realize that he doesn’t need to save everyone.
He was a hero to the righteous, but to trash like me, he was no different from a demon. Without even trying to become a leader, he was naturally revered as one, and the group he led began to grow at a very fast pace. A powerful ruler that the powerless people desired. Didn’t they say heroes are born in times of turmoil? Cha Yoo-hyeok was exactly that hero. As I watched Cha Yoo-hyeok’s life, I realized that he was the ‘protagonist’ of this world.
But why have I been treating Kim Jaeyoung so well all this time without even mentioning his name once?
After awakening, Kim Jaeyoung became my subordinate. He followed my orders without question. Watching him kill people with a smile, I even wondered if this kid might be crazier than me.
On the day I died, Kim Jaeyoung went to rob a nearby mart with some kids and showed up at school late. As he stood there, staring at the necklace lying alone in the spot where even the corpse was gone, Cha Yoo-hyeok’s group cornered him.
Cha Yoo-hyeok killed all the guys who had persecuted people along with me, but Kim Jaeyoung was the only one he couldn’t kill. The reason for sparing Kim Jaeyoung was simple: because 'weak and righteous people' didn’t want Kim Jaeyoung’s death.
However, feeling uneasy about sparing Kim Jaeyoung, Cha Yoo-hyeok eventually decides to expel him from the group. Despite knowing that it’s difficult to survive alone outside, Kim Jaeyoung accepts it without any resistance, and people bid him farewell with tears. However, the next day, a pile of corpses was discovered. It turned out that all the people who had seen off Kim Jaeyoung had committed suicide. Cha Yoo-hyeok realized that all of this was Kim Jaeyoung’s doing and became furious.
Kim Jaeyoung went down that path to find my family and appealed about how cruelly ‘Cha Yoo-hyeok’ killed ‘Seon Eun-soo’. But, seriously… how close were we for him to do something like that? I couldn’t understand Kim Jaeyoung’s actions. My Family members who had planned to normalize Seoul by joining forces with the military, rallied all their strength to seek revenge against Cha Yoo-hyeok, who killed me.
‘Why are you all going to such lengths?’
It was my grandfather who opposed attacking Cha Yoo-hyeok. He was the only one in the family who didn’t trust Kim Jaeyoung and showed hostility towards him. But he was just a powerless old man lying in a hospital bed.
Woah! No holds barred from the beginning! I am hooked already! Thanks for the translation 😍
Thank you for picking up this story 🖤💯
Woah, this is such a cool start! thanks for picking this up! ❤️😋
So it sounds like the ML is yandere adjacent? You sure you wanna choose that route, MC, especially considering how ruthless people seem in the future…?