Theatrical Regression Life

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Around 7 a.m.

Some of the group members woke up with frowns, rising from where they lay.

They woke up at a time similar to their usual waking hours, having grown somewhat accustomed to the unpleasant influence of this alternate world.

Of course, not everyone woke up. Among those still asleep were Yoon Garam, who ran her own flower shop, a pair of siblings who were still students, and the exhausted Director Lee Jaehun.

The first to notice something strange was Dr. Ha Sungyoon.

“Yes?”

“Director Lee isn’t waking up.”

“……”

Jung Inho was about to say, ‘He’s probably just sleeping deeply because he’s tired,’ but then closed his mouth. Knowing Dr. Ha Sungyoon’s personality, he wouldn’t say something unnecessary, and Jung Inho himself wasn’t more knowledgeable about medical matters than Ha. It was unlikely that the experienced doctor, who had been observing Director Lee Jaehun’s condition, was mistaken.

Jung Inho clenched and unclenched his fist once, then looked around as naturally as possible.

“I think it would be good to fetch some water today.”

“Shall we go to the small lake? There might be other fruits around there too….”

“I’ll see if we have any containers for carrying water.”

The group remained calm.

“……”

For a moment, Jung Inho felt a chill.

Director Lee Jaehun had always taken on all the injuries and pain himself, but he left the solvable tasks to them. Jung Inho, who knew a bit about Lee Jaehun’s past, guessed that he wanted them to grow.

Sure enough, when Director Lee Jaehun disappeared the other night, Team Leader Kang Mina picked up a hammer. No one in the group was clueless about how to start a fire, and even Dr. Ha Sungyoon, who had been somewhat detached, was trying his best to manage the group with a sense of duty.

Although they couldn’t solve every problem, they could fetch drinking water, feed themselves, and manage their emotions with proper breathing techniques. They knew what they needed. They had established a basic system that wasn’t there initially.

To Director Lee Jaehun, who likely wanted such a result, this must have been an ideal scenario….

“…I’ll take a look too.”

A cold wind crawled up his spine.

Not just now, but sometimes, Jung Inho felt like Lee Jaehun was preparing for a situation where he wouldn’t be around.

It wasn’t an entirely wrong thought. From the beginning, Lee Jaehun’s goal was his own physical and mental well-being and prosperity. More precisely, he wanted to create a situation where he could live comfortably without needing to intervene.

However, the problem was with Director Lee Jaehun’s behavior up until now.

According to Dr. Ha Sungyoon, he had inflicted long, deep cuts on his own arm with precise strokes, and, as revealed, he was accustomed to pain. The way he faced death before Jung Inho came back from the past made him seem like someone who wanted to die.

With a flood of information that was ambiguous as either truth or falsehood, Jung Inho’s thoughts had solidified. He believed that given the right justification, Director Lee Jaehun would be the type to end his own life.

Eventually, when the time came, he would dump everything on Jung Inho….

“……”

He watched Director Lee Jaehun, who lay so quietly that even his breathing couldn’t be heard.

“…Ha…”

Before, he would have thought it was surprising to see him sleep so quietly.

The Lee Jaehun he knew was never a quiet person. He would get worked up over the smallest things and attach excessive meaning to trivial matters. Inho had never associated calmness with the sight of Lee Jaehun swaggering and disparaging others.

But unfortunately, now he could only think that this silence suited him very well.

“…Director.”

“……”

“Director?”

He gently shook the man lying there, but there was no response.

“…….”

For a moment, Jung Inho thought he had stopped breathing.

He suddenly remembered the first time Lee Jaehun woke up after passing out. The shrill groans, the scratching at his neck, and the momentary silence that followed—he remembered it all.

He recalled the empty space filled only with blood, no bodies in sight….

“Director.”

His grip tightened.

If something had happened to him, the group needed to know. It wasn’t like when he and the doctor kept quiet about Lee Jaehun’s past. So, he raised his voice, making sure the others could hear.

Still, though.

“Director, you should wake up now.”

“Inho-ssi?”

“Get up.”

Jung Inho admitted he felt a twinge of fear.

“I said, get up, Director.”

Clang.

A piercing echo rang in his ears.

It was the sound of blood flowing.

* * *

Lee Jaehun did not wake up.

“…….”

Of course,

That didn’t mean he was dead.

He was just in a very deep, quiet sleep that made one wonder if he was truly alive. Yet, Lee Jaehun was still breathing, albeit shallowly, barely audible, but his eyes remained shut.

But his sleep wasn’t always so quiet.

“Cough, gulp. Huff, argh.”

“Sir, breathe.”

“Huuh, cough….”

“You can do it, you can breathe.”

Dr. Ha Sungyoon’s face was visibly angry.

“No one is stopping you from breathing.”

Whether that emotion was directed at the patient or someone else entirely was something even Jung Inho couldn’t tell.

But Lee Jaehun struggled like someone who couldn’t breathe, gasping and choking. Unlike his usual dead-sleep state, he couldn’t properly inhale or exhale. He was clearly not breathing normally.

At times, and especially after such moments, Lee Jaehun would claw at his throat.

He would tear at it, or grip it as if hoping to die. Unlike when he would immediately let go after being grabbed when he first woke up, his thrashing grew more intense over time.

And when they had almost forgotten,

“Cough.”

“…….”

“Gurgle, gasp….”

He coughed up blood.

“…Damn it.”

The doctor finally started to curse.

In truth, Dr. Ha Sungyoon found the situation incredibly frustrating. He couldn’t conduct a proper examination, nor could he provide adequate treatment. All he could do was take minimal action.

When someone pulled him aside to ask, the doctor expressed his frustration.

“At first, I thought it was an internal issue, like an internal injury.”

“And then?”

“Think about it. Director was dragged by that creature covered in algae. He was taken for quite a while. Anything could have entered his body during that time.”

“…….”

“The external injuries were so severe that I didn’t consider it at first, but when he started coughing up blood, I thought there might be internal injuries.”

“And now?”

“I don’t know, I have no idea.”

The calm and gentle expression he usually had was now shattered, replaced with irritation and self-reproach.

“This is not a place for a doctor.”

In every sense of the word.

There were no tools, no medicine, not even a bed to lay the patient on. For a doctor who prioritized hygiene, it was an unbearably poor environment.

Sure, there were many officetels outside the park where they could find a room with a bed, but it wasn’t feasible to move an unconscious patient. Besides, who knew what kind of monsters might be in those buildings? The reason they hadn’t even visited a nearby pharmacy, despite knowing its location, was precisely because of this.

“…Would it be too much to try the pharmacy now? The cause might be physical exhaustion, at least in this world.”

“When will director wake up?”

“True, and someone else might die in the meantime. And when he wakes up, he’ll probably reprimand me.”

“…….”

“I can’t do something that stupid….”

Lee Jaehun had no consciousness left.

“This is truly horrible.”

Whether it was psychological or physiological, he couldn’t breathe, he scratched at his throat as if tormented by some stress or trauma, and he occasionally coughed up blood for reasons unknown. The amount of blood varied each time, making it impossible to clearly define his condition.

Ultimately, the otherworld was no place for a doctor.

A place where a doctor, who shouldn’t have any personal feelings towards a patient and should treat them with precise and objective medical knowledge, couldn’t function properly.

A suffocating frustration filled his lungs.

“I don’t know what this wretched world has done to the patient.”

“…….”

“I understand the existence of the underworld, but I don’t understand its origin or processes. Do you know? All I can do is make notes on a chart, prescribe medication, and use a scalpel.”

“I’m sorry.”

“All of that is useless here.”

He couldn’t do any of those things in this world.

It was absurd. He had devoted 90% of his life to becoming a reputable, powerful, and skilled doctor, but in the underworld, he was just an idiot who couldn’t even diagnose the patient’s condition or determine immediate necessary actions.

His very existence was being denied.

“I’m going insane.”

The worth of the pain that had driven his life amounted to this.

But he couldn’t make a proper diagnosis. If Director Lee Jaehun had been a patient who openly discussed his condition, things might have been different, but he was never the type to endear himself to a doctor.

“He seems like the kind of tough guy who would die quietly alone.”

Faced with an unprecedentedly tenacious resignation, Dr. Ha Sungyoon finally laughed.

“How can such a patient even exist in this world?”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“It’s just so fascinating. So unbelievable….”

He was amused.

“I can’t fix him.”

There was a patient he couldn’t touch.

Did he have internal injuries? What effect did the otherrworld have on him? What did the varying amounts and frequencies of the blood he coughed up mean? For a doctor who had to be sensitive to every small change in a patient’s condition, this was the most brutal situation.

The knowledge he had was useless. No, it could even be dangerous. Treatments he once believed were absolutely correct could kill someone here.

It was astonishing and bewildering.

If it were just one extreme or the other, it would be easier. But the fact that his choices could be completely right or completely wrong drove a doctor like Ha Sungyoon crazy.

The only silver lining was that Ha Sungyoon had already been a bit mad.

“…….”

“…Yeah.”

He understood and accepted it. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have made it to the underworld. The previous sane version of him….

“It’s inevitable for me.”

After venting his confusion, Dr. Ha Sungyoon quickly returned to his usual demeanor.

His calm and gentle manner induced a shallow disorientation among the group, which then seeped in as a sense of incongruity and subtle fractures among them. They started to notice the traces of madness that had been hidden under the guise of being an adult.

Yet, Jung Inho didn’t feel overly anxious.

‘…We’ve just been pretending not to notice.’

Everyone had maintained a reasonable distance, pretending not to see because of their unfamiliarity with each other.

Sure, it’s polite to hide personal flaws or breakdowns to some extent as an adult. But ever since Director Lee Jaehun had inadvertently revealed his extraordinary nature, it became impossible to maintain such formalities. They had sensed that such a day would come.

Surprisingly, it was Kang Mina who remained the calmest amidst the chaos.

“The Director….”

“Yes.”

“When he was comforting Yeonhee-ssi, he mentioned there might be fish in a small lake.”

“…….”

“He also said he would build a house.”

Despite hesitating as usual, she conveyed everything she wanted to say and, just like when Director Lee Jaehun had disappeared, left the choice to Jung Inho.

He felt the familiar gaze on him from somewhere.

“Tell me what needs to be done….”

“…If I tell you?”

“I’ll take responsibility.”

“Responsibility.”

“I can do it.”

For what?

“…I see.”

Jung Inho asked himself, but didn’t say it out loud due to sheer exhaustion.

Whatever the case, he could see a dark, burnt-out look on Kang Mina’s face. The kind of cold, yet soft look you might find on a freshly dead body….

Blood soaked into the ground.

“…….”

Blood.

Corpse.

Darkness and,

Bright red flames.

“…Then, should we start building a wall?”

Hallucinations scraped at his eyes.

Glass shards seemed to flutter inside his ears like butterflies.

Jung Inho instinctively felt that something had changed in the person before him, but he couldn’t muster much of a reaction. The most shocking moment he’d had involving Team Leader Kang Mina was seeing her alive, especially after experiencing death and returning to the past.

That was enough.

As long as she was alive.

As long as she didn’t die, even if her limbs were twisted like a doll’s. As long as her eyes didn’t stare blankly into space, crying blood, with an emotionless gaze fixed on him, that was more than enough.

“A wall?”

If it came to that, Jung Inho wouldn’t be as afraid of her dying or killing something. Just as much as before, anyway.

“I don’t know how to make a roof…. We could pile up wood or stones, and if that’s not enough, we could weave vines together.”

“…Sounds good.”

He hoped that particular kind of fear would only happen once.

“I’ll do it.”

“Let’s do it together.”

“With whom?”

“With whoever you want.”

Moreover,

She had the right to do as she wished.

“Please, do whatever you want.”

Because she was alive.

As long as she was alive, it was fine.

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