Chapter 4
“Huuk!”
The first thing Seol saw was light pressing down on his eyes . Once he focused his blurry gaze three, four times, he finally saw the lightbulb he left on before going to bed .
Seol gasped for air and curled his body from the cold that flooded in . He found that he was soaked with cold sweat .
“What… . ”
He wiped away the sweat on his forehead, but he couldn’t stop his body’s trembling . His mind wasn’t groggy, but clear . However, he couldn’t breathe from the intense emotions swirling inside him .
He forced his body up and barely managed to lean against the wall . Immediately, the sigh he had been suppressing escaped from his mouth .
“Ah… . ”
Seol closed his eyes .
A dream .
He’d had a dream, a dream that was a bit, no, a lot different than the dreams he usually had .
He felt as if he had personally experienced everything . He even felt all sorts of emotions from the dream .
Logically speaking, none of it made sense . The dream was detached from the everyday life he saw and experienced . The sceneries he intermittently witnessed were far removed from the background of the modern world, and he had even fought creatures that clearly were not human . Perhaps, everything was just a silly dream .
But, why…?
The final scene stuck to his head . The dying man… was full of regrets .
Regret, remorse, lamentation, and a deep sigh… Even until his life flickered out, these fervent emotions raged inside him . They lingered inside Seol, ringing his heart .
Seol opened his eyes after much struggle and slowly looked around his room .
The blanket tossed to the side, the clothes draped over a ramen box, bottles of soju rolling around on the dirty floor, and a pack of cigarettes sitting on the same spot .
For some reason, this sight felt surreal .
A head-splitting migraine suddenly swept through him . He got up almost reflexively and staggered to the bathroom . Once he drew a bucket of cold water and doused his head in it, his mind turned clear .
When he couldn’t hold his breath any longer, he raised his head out of the water . His own face reflecting off the bathroom mirror seemed too unfamiliar . His eyes were sunken, and his complexion was pale like a sickly man .
‘This is… me?’
He slowly touched his face as light returned to his eyes . His old face was nowhere to be found, replaced by the face of an impoverished gambling and alcohol addict . He felt like he was looking at a dead man .
He left the bathroom without even wiping off the water dripping from his chin . He put on his jacket almost angrily and pushed the front door open .
His stomach ached, but he felt like he wouldn’t last much longer if he didn’t shove something down there .
He stopped by the convenience store, but nothing grabbed his attention . Rather than leaving his house to grab food, he had stormed out because he felt he couldn’t stay inside .
In the end, he left after picking out a can of beer . He began to walk aimlessly until, eventually, he reached the spot below the Tancheon River Bridge . It was the place he frequented to lament his luck whenever he lost money at the casino .
Seol cracked open the can and gulped it down . His stomach seemed to scream, but he didn’t care .
As he sat in complete silence, the emotions he had been trying to ignore flooded back to him like a tidal wave .
‘How did I end up like this?’
Seol stared at Tancheon River’s dark waters . He was in elementary school when he realized he was different from everyone else . He called his ability ‘Green Eyes’ and considered himself a chosen child . He quivered with excitement, anticipating that something special would happen to him one day .
Looking back, the stories of his childhood only made him blush in embarrassment .
It wasn’t until he got older that he learned being different from everyone else wasn’t good and that it was better to hide this difference .
During the 26 years of his life, he had only determined four facts about his ability .
If he focused his senses on his eyes, living things and objects would glow green . Among them, there were some that would lose the color even if he maintained his focus . If he involved himself with things that were green, nothing would happen . But if he involved himself with things that lost their green color, something bad would happen with over 50 percent chance .
Seol focused on the ‘over 50 percent chance’ . From a different perspective, it meant something good might have ‘under 50 percent chance’ .
The casino was what he chose to confirm this hypothesis . At first, he simply considered the casino a place of experimentation . Although he lost 60 to 70 percent of his buy-in, he only brought one hundred thousand won every time .
If he lost it all, he left without turning back . Although he wasn’t happy, the amount was no different from a college kid’s allowance .
The problem was with the days he actually won money . One time, he had even turned his buy-in to 5 million won in two days . He ate everything he wanted, bought clothes he only imagined himself wearing, and replaced his computer to the latest model . Even then, he still had a lot left .
The taste of spending money . Once he experienced it, his life began to change .
The number of times he visited the casino skyrocketed and the amount of money he brought with him increased as well . He forgot all about his experiments and focused on earning money .
As he was spending his days obsessed with winning money, his ability suddenly disappeared . It wasn’t that it was out of the blue . His head hurt the more he used his ability, and he even developed insomnia as days where he couldn’t fall asleep increased .
As the symptoms worsened, the green color he used to see just by focusing a tiny bit became fainter . After he passed out one time from exhaustion, he lost his ability to see the green color even after concentrating for hours .
Although his greed cost him his ability, he couldn’t stop gambling .
He had experienced the positive side of the variance of gambling . He believed he could recoup his losses if he won big just once .
He didn’t listen no matter who tried to talk sense into him . He had already fallen into the joy of gambling . The ecstasy he felt when he won was more electrifying than any other pleasure . From that point on, Seol’s life headed straight down to the bottom of the abyss .
And then, and then… .
Seol clenched his teeth . Why did he suddenly feel like this?
Baseless pride and reckless defiance arose in his heart . But whenever this happened, the emotions he felt in his dreams flooded in and drowned them out .
Suddenly, he recalled making Yoo Seonhwa cry in the morning . Immediately, another powerful wave of emotions swept in, making him dizzy .
[…Son of a bitch . ]
“Ah . ”
Clunk . The beer can fell from his hand and spilled on the ground .
‘Why did I do that?’
The youth covered his face with his hands . He put strength into all his fingers and pressed down crazily .
‘Just why did I do that?’
I didn’t mean to . I shouldn’t have said something like that .
“Damn it… . ”
He felt like a part of his heart was torn out . The emotions he felt from his dream didn’t disappear as he became more aware of them . Instead, they became clearer .
The feeling of regret stabbed his heart, and the edges of his eyes turned hot .
Now, he felt like he understood the truth . That him without his ability was just a worthless bastard .
‘If only I never had this ability!’
The moment he finally accepted this truth… Seol felt the last bits of his ego being washed out of his mind .
“Kuhuhuu… . . ”
He suddenly broke out into laughter . He burst out as if his heart would explode . But gradually, his laughter turned into weeping .
“Heuk… I’m sorry… . ”
He regretted everything . He felt stuffy like something was strangling him .
“I’m sorry, Seonhwa… . ”
A grown youth cried like a kid .
‘I’d rather die than continue living like this . ’
He had lived like trash, troubling everyone around him . He couldn’t even imagine how much disappointment and pain he caused . Just like his little sister said, maybe it was better for everyone in the long run for him to just take his own life .
Seol slowly got up . The slowly flowing river water seemed more alluring than ever before .
He approached it in a trance and looked down at the river . The tears flowing down from his cheeks caused tiny ripples in the water .
Glaring at the river fixedly, he stepped forward with his shaking legs .
It was then .
“!”
Suddenly, the color of the water changed . From the point where Seol’s feet were or, more specifically, from the point he caused the ripples, green color bloomed outward .
Like dropping paint into clear water, the forgotten color, the lost light quickly spread out in all directions .
Not only did it dye the flowing river water, but it also traveled up the support pillars of the bridge, dyeing the entire structure . It covered the spot he was just sitting in and, eventually, the distant sky .
The whole world became dyed in green, just like when he was young .
Seol stared at the feast of green dancing all around him with eyes wet with tears . His face was clearly one of utter disbelief .
“This is… . ”
After standing there like he had been struck by lightning, Seol consciously scattered his concentration . Immediately, the world returned to its normal colors .
When he concentrated again, the green world returned .
His ability…
“…It came back?”
Just like how it suddenly disappeared one day…
“It really came back?”
It suddenly returned .
“But why?”
He had failed to restore his ability no matter how hard he tried . The sense of loss he felt that day could hardly be described with words .
But what had caused it to activate again?
Suddenly, he recalled the morning’s dream again . Now that he thought about it, the man from this dream seemed to use the same ability .
Seol frantically recalled the dream from the beginning .
“… . ”
But soon, he determined that it was unrelated . It didn’t make sense no matter how much he thought about it .
Perhaps, his subconscious desire to regain his ability had manifested itself as the strange dream . That was more realistic and easier to swallow than .
‘Wait . ’
But looking back, the dream was strangely realistic . Didn’t the dream also begin with the man drinking beer in Tancheon River and lamenting over his life?
Just like he was now .
It was then . Just as Seol fell into a new-found confusion, the click-clack of high-heels hitting the stone pavement rang out . The strange rhythmical steps caught Seol’s attention, and he promptly turned his head to the side .
And there, Seol could definitely see it .
In the world dyed in green, the viridescent light was gradually fading away in one spot .
It was in the direction of this sound .
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