Chapter 37 - Kim Jae-ho is Free
Kim Jae-ho closed his eyes. The chirping of birds in the distance, the warm sunlight tickling his eyelids, and the cozy stuffed animal he hugged to his chest – everything felt so wonderful.
This new owner was strange. He neither yelled nor struck Kim Jae-ho.
He didn’t torment Kim Jae-ho by demanding he use his abilities.
But Kim Jae-ho wouldn’t be deceived.
He wouldn’t make the mistake of trusting humans again, like that foolish self from before.
He wouldn’t become that fool again.
‘Hey.’
Calling out to him more affectionately than anyone else.
‘I hope you’re not in pain.’
Concerning himself over Kim Jae-ho unprompted.
‘I’m fine, don’t make that face.’
Foolishly sacrificing his life for Kim Jae-ho’s sake, just like that idiot.
Kim Jae-ho would not become like that fool. So he would pay no mind to this strange new owner, no matter how peculiar he acted.
An appetizing aroma tickled his nose. Kim Jae-ho reached out and grabbed the bowl. The salty, warm broth slid down his throat.
“Don’t just drink the soup, eat the rice and meat together too. Have some meat in between bites.”
Following the instructions from beside him, it tasted quite delicious.
After returning the empty bowl, Kim Jae-ho turned away before the owner could speak to him again.
As the retreating footsteps grew distant, someone whispered softly to Kim Jae-ho.
‘Doesn’t this person seem trustworthy?’
Kim Jae-ho pretended not to hear that whispering voice.
It was just an auditory hallucination.
There was no way he could be hearing the voice of that person, who had died long ago.
‘In my view, he doesn’t seem like a bad person.’
Desperately ignoring that voice echoing in his ears, Kim Jae-ho closed his eyes once more.
* * *
Kim Jae-ho blinked his eyes. Where was this? The hand he raised was tiny.
Ah, it was when he was young.
The dream had pulled Kim Jae-ho back into the past.
Before he could assess the situation, adults in white coats herded Kim Jae-ho and the other children together. After counting the children, the adults nodded and began leading them into a small room.
Donning a doctor’s gown, one adult deftly drew blood from the children and handed them pills.
“You must take these.”
At those words, Kim Jae-ho swallowed the pills. The child behind him did too. And the one after that. They all gulped down the pills.
Good children.
That’s what the adults said, and Kim Jae-ho nodded obediently. Yes, I’ve been good.
But as soon as the adult left, the boy next to Kim Jae-ho stuck his fingers down his throat.
“What are you doing?”
Despite Kim Jae-ho’s question, the boy didn’t stop, jabbing at his own throat. Kim Jae-ho grabbed his wrist, but the boy shook him off as if he were a nuisance.
Finally, after retching, the boy succeeded in expelling the slimy pills from within.
Upon seeing those pills, Kim Jae-ho’s face paled.
“Don’t.”
Without realizing it, he had blurted that out. We were supposed to take the pills. At Kim Jae-ho’s words, the boy creased his brow as if looking at an imbecile, then asked:
“Do you know what these are?”
“No.”
“If we take them, we’ll become dull and stupid. Do you know what those people intend to do with us?”
“No.”
“Sheesh.”
With that sigh, the boy spoke.
“We can’t take these. If you accidentally do, spit them out like this.”
“But we were told to obey…”
“If you want to live, listen to me.”
Cowed by the boy’s forceful tone, Kim Jae-ho found himself nodding without realizing it.
“Ah, right. My name is ■■.”
He had clearly known the boy’s name, but in the dream, it sounded like distorted noise.
“What’s your name?”
Kim Jae-ho couldn’t recall how he had responded then. That memory had also faded.
From that day onward, Kim Jae-ho stuck by that boy’s side. He would vomit out the pills as the boy instructed, eventually learning to hide them under his tongue before spitting them out later.
That boy was intelligent.
More intelligent than anyone else in that facility, it seemed.
It was around the time they turned ten years old.
From then on, the two of them received large injections about the size of a finger joint. While they could avoid the pills, the injections were unavoidable.
Not only were the injections painful when administered, but the aftermath was even worse.
Every night, their bodies would throb feverishly. Some nights brought a searing agony, as if glowing hot skewers were piercing their bodies. The bedsheets would be soaked through with their sweat every day.
“Damn them, what kind of drug did they give us?”
Every night, the boy would curse and tremble uncontrollably. Kim Jae-ho too would grit his teeth and endure the torment welling up from within.
The effects were undeniable. Two years after the injections began, these barely twelve-year-olds had gained physiques akin to adults.
Regrettably, there were also side effects. Unable to withstand the sudden growth, their skin would tear, and their overall durability weakened.
In severe cases, their bones would fracture from simply walking, their fingers would break just lifting a spoon. Those children were quarantined separately. The adults claimed they would provide special treatment, but…
To counteract the injection’s side effects, the children were given additional pills. Those pills carried even more severe side effects – children began losing their hair and teeth.
Whenever one issue arose, they would administer a different drug to address it, only for that new drug to create another problem.
The number of children rapidly dwindled each time.
Even amidst that, Kim Jae-ho and the boy somehow persevered.
Kim Jae-ho liked having that boy by his side, sharing in all this suffering together. So every night, he would pray. Pray that the boy wouldn’t leave like the other children. That he would absolutely survive and remain at Kim Jae-ho’s side.
One sleepless night amidst their torment, the boy spoke to Kim Jae-ho.
“I want to be free.”
“What’s free?”
“Um, being able to do as I wish.”
Kim Jae-ho found the boy’s words difficult to comprehend. Seeing his expression, the boy furrowed his brow in frustration, but soon gave up and continued:
“Not doing what you don’t want to, only doing what you do want. Going where you want to go, not going where you don’t want.”
Finally understanding, Kim Jae-ho said:
“I don’t want to be here.”
“Yes, but we’re trapped here, aren’t we? So we’re not free.”
At those words, Kim Jae-ho made a wish.
That both he and the boy could become free.
But how?
No way out was visible.
Time continued passing like that. Kim Jae-ho stuck out his tongue and looked at the boy.
“T-today she even pat, patted my head!”
“So what if she patted your head? I can pat you too.”
As Kim Jae-ho said that and ruffled the boy’s hair, he firmly stated:
“It’s different with you. She’s different.”
While claiming all the ‘adults’ here were evil, the boy insisted that woman alone was different.
The woman who had administered the body-crippling injections, yet still apologetically patted their heads. The woman who had always tried to secretly provide them with something extra, avoiding the eyes of others.
To be honest, even Kim Jae-ho had placed a bit of trust in that woman.
Because she was affectionate, the first to truly take care of him and the boy. Because she had apologized.
At first, Kim Jae-ho had resented that woman intruding between the two of them. But as time passed, he had gradually begun trusting her as well.
But that woman had betrayed the boy. Had betrayed them.
It was when they were fourteen.
The day the boy had finally conceived and executed a perfect plan to escape this facility.
“I’m so disappointed. I thought ■■ had started to like me.”
A sharp blade pierced the boy’s side.
“Haak, haah.”
Impaled by the blade, the boy coughed up blood.
Even amidst all this, the boy was still alive. Still breathing. His body, enhanced so many times already, would never die from just that. Yet despite knowing this, Kim Jae-ho had frozen up like an idiot at the sight.
“Run, run away!”
Seeing Kim Jae-ho’s foolish petrification, the boy shouted. But Kim Jae-ho couldn’t do anything, like an imbecile.
As the boy’s pupils began glowing purple, the woman spoke.
“Ah ah ah, we can’t have that.”
Another syringe was jabbed into the boy’s nape. His body went limp. To the slumped boy, the woman whispered:
“If you’d just behaved, I would have kept treating you well. Why did you try to leave this place? Hm? You said it had become good for you, thanks to me.”
The woman’s voice remained as affectionate as honey. Hearing that voice, Kim Jae-ho trembled violently.
It had all been an act, a deception. A deception to keep them confined here.
The man standing beside the woman spoke.
“Don’t we need to restrain him too?”
‘Him’ – the man’s finger was pointing directly at Kim Jae-ho.
“Nah. He’s just a failed specimen who couldn’t awaken any abilities.”
“Then why wasn’t he disposed of sooner?”
“Because our ■■ had become attached to him. We kept him around as a sort of companion toy. But in the end, they were planning to escape together.”
The woman spoke in an exaggerated tone.
“After all the effort I put in, it’s such a shame their guilt was too great to avoid disposal. So unfair.”
“Is he to be disposed of too?”
At those words, the woman creased her brow.
“Hmm. I suppose so. By the rules, that would be appropriate. He’s guilty of nothing but following along with that one’s antics. Ah, since we’re disposing of him anyway, we might as well experiment a bit.”
“Experiment?”
“Yes!”
Whispering to the man with a chilling expression, the woman said:
“Ah, about how transplanting an awakener’s body parts can turn someone into an awakener too? Didn’t all those experiments fail?”
“There’s still one body part we haven’t transplanted yet.”
The heart.
Kim Jae-ho struggled, but couldn’t overpower the adults. A syringe pierced his nape, and his body collapsed to the floor. Thanks to that, his eyes met the boy’s, now pinned to the ground like an insect specimen by the blade.
The boy smiled wistfully and said:
“I’ll be fine.”
“I’m sorry. If only I had some ability…”
“No, it’s not your fault…”
“Don’t speak.”
Kim Jae-ho quickly cut him off. The more the boy spoke, the more blood spilled from his mouth. The boy was dying.
Kim Jae-ho didn’t know what to do. Tears streamed from his eyes without him realizing.
Kim Jae-ho called out the boy’s name.
“Kim Jae-ho.”
Ah, only then did Kim Jae-ho – no, the test subject – realize. ‘Kim Jae-ho’ wasn’t his own name, but the boy’s name.
Born directly into this laboratory, he himself had never been given a name. Only the boy brought in from outside knew his own name.
‘Kim Jae-ho’ had told him:
“Live.”
With those final words from ‘Kim Jae-ho,’ the test subject’s consciousness promptly scattered.
When he opened his eyes again, the test subject was alive. But ‘Kim Jae-ho’ was nowhere to be seen. The test subject wept as he clawed at his own heart, for he couldn’t ignore the surgical scar left there.
The woman had declared the experiment a success.
The test subject had perfectly inherited the boy’s abilities. No, they had even been enhanced. The test subject’s heart now beat only three times per minute, and he could control his entire body at will.
Seeing the woman’s smile, the test subject silently vowed revenge.
But that was the last time he would see that woman.
A syringe pierced his nape, and the test subject lost consciousness once more.
The test subject desperately repeated the name ‘Kim Jae-ho’ in his mind. Even after being injected with drugs that would make him an imbecile, he refused to forget that boy’s name.
And that name he had incessantly repeated eventually became his own. He would live on in this world, in place of the vanished Kim Jae-ho.
The boy had told him to live freely.
So ‘Kim Jae-ho’ would become free.
Without fail, he would become free.
Not once had anyone ever granted him freedom, yet he yearned for it.
When the iron cage opened, Kim Jae-ho knew he would likely be captured again soon.
The collar would paralyze his entire body, and a syringe would pierce his nape.
But he still wanted to run, just once.
He wanted to sprint aimlessly.
He wanted to taste the scent of freedom.
So he ran.
He dashed towards the visible horizon, climbing ever higher. The wide-open sky entered his vision.
Panting heavily, Kim Jae-ho collapsed right there.
But no one, not a single person, came to capture him.
One day passed, then two.
If ‘Kim Jae-ho’ were present, Kim Jae-ho would have asked him:
“Is this the freedom you spoke of?”
Hungry.
Cold.
Lying there, Kim Jae-ho blinked his eyes.
The boy had said: Freedom was doing as you wished and going where you wanted. So Kim Jae-ho descended the same path he had run up from.
“Give me food.”
At Kim Jae-ho’s words, the owner initially made a dumbfounded expression before soon nodding with a smile.
While he still didn’t fully understand this ‘freedom,’ the owner’s food was indeed delicious as always.