[SEO YUSEONG’S POV]
When death looms right before your eyes, it’s only natural to be overcome by fear.
But perhaps, as my father once said, because there is some defect in me, even when Kang Hyukwoo and his underlings pushed me toward the pitch-black sea, I felt almost nothing.
“…Seriously, you’re a creepy bastard. Most people, when they’re about to die, usually cry and scream, clinging on and begging to be saved. But you, how come your expression doesn’t change at all?”
Kang Hyukwoo looked at me with disgust, but even then I showed no reaction. After all, begging for my life wouldn’t change the outcome, so I thought there was no point in responding.
Up until the very moment my breath was severed, there was only a single thing I feared.
‘What’s going to happen to Hyung if I’m gone?’
Wasn’t he the kind of person who would throw away his own life without hesitation if it meant making me happy?
“Byul-ah, your hyung will always protect you.”
As I sank into the cold water, I couldn’t stop worrying about it.
‘He has to live well, even without me.’ With that thought, I took my last breath.
[Transferring 90% of the status window to SEO YUSEONG]
After that, with Han Seungbeom’s help, my eyes, which I thought would never open again, opened once more, and I was given a second life.
[An arbitrary objective will be assigned to secure the cost]
[SEO YUTAE’s Final Objective: To Take Revenge on KANG HYUKWOO]
As soon as I came to my senses, I started running to find my brother.
[“The body, presumed to be Seo Yuseong-ssi, younger brother of Seo Yutae-ssi, the leader and a member of the famous idol group Prism, was found today in the nearby sea…….”]
It wasn’t out of joy at having come back to life that I acted that way. At that time, I was gripped only by the fear that if I didn’t let my brother know right away that I was alive, something irreversible would happen.
The very first time I realized the malice of the status window was at that moment.
When I arrived near my brother, a status window appeared before my eyes, and it had this message written on it.
[Penalty has been imposed due to unauthorized transfer of status window ownership!]
[If you fail to conceal the fact that you’re alive before one week has passed after Seo Yutae completes his final objective, you will die.]
It was from that point on that everything started to go wrong.
From then on, since I couldn’t approach my brother, I had no choice but to rely on the ability to watch over his every move.
As I had expected, my brother wasn’t able to live well.
“You have to live. You must live. Please, Yutae-ya…….”
It got to the point where I thought that if Choi Jeokhyeon hadn’t persistently cared for him, he might have simply withered away and died. Still, I told myself it was fortunate enough that he was still alive. If he could slowly, gradually recover like everyone else and eventually take his revenge on Kang Hyukwoo, then one day, we would be able to meet again.
But the day my brother truly got better never came.
No, it’s more like he only seemed to be getting better.
“Do you need cigarettes? Should I buy some for you while I’m out?”
“…No, I’m good now.”
Even I was deceived into thinking my brother had gotten better. How could I not, when someone who had stayed shut in his room without speaking a word or eating finally stepped outside that dark space? But it was only after the accident had already happened that we realized it was, in fact, the most dangerous period.
“KYAAAAH!”
“Someone fell! Call an ambulance!”
I watched my brother go up to the top of that building, yet I couldn’t do a thing.
In that moment, I was no different from the passersby below.
That was the very first time I witnessed my brother’s death.
As for what I felt then … well, could I even dare to sum it up in just a few shallow words?
It felt like my whole body was being ripped apart and thrown to the winds.
It was tens of thousands of times more painful than my own death.
As I felt that pain completely and held my breath without even letting out a scream, I found myself asking why on earth he had to die, and that resentment welled up inside me. But once I remembered that my brother had gone through the exact same pain, I couldn’t even bring myself to resent him.
In the end, I used the status window’s ability to bring my brother back to life. Restoring someone else’s body, other than Han Seungbeom’s, would have required far too much cost, and at that time, I didn’t have enough. So I had no choice but to revive him in Han Seungbeom’s body.
I considered it fortunate enough just to have him back alive.
But my brother, who had been brought back to life, was in no condition that could be called normal.
The first brother just crouched in the same spot where he first opened his eyes, not moving at all. He couldn’t even look at the news streaming on the large screen, and without realizing that the body he now inhabited wasn’t his own, he simply stared with empty eyes at the people passing by.
“Student, are you okay? Are you feeling unwell?”
Even when concerned pedestrians tried to speak to him, he didn’t answer. Then, someone who felt they had to intervene tried to forcibly take him away, his face turned deathly pale, and he ran off without thinking.
The place he ran to, without even resting, was the same sea where I had died.
Once again, my brother stared blankly at the seashore, where the stars were perfectly reflected, before slowly disappearing into the depths of the sea.
I decided from then on to erase my brother’s memories of my death.
[Would you like to restart SEO YUTAE (2)‘s life from the beginning?
(YES/NO)]
.
.
.
[(YES)]
And so, the endless regression began.
It didn’t progress as easily as in fiction, where protagonists conveniently use information from their previous lives for their own gain. After all, I couldn’t get close to my brother, and he had no idea about the regression.
Even the smallest differences can lead a person to make different choices, and those choices weave countless causes and effects, steering life in directions no one could have foreseen. I intervened in my brother’s life just enough to influence those small differences.
Throughout this process, in some lives my brother never debuted with Pantheion, and in others, he didn’t even cross paths with the Prism members.
However, even across all the different lives I experienced through multiple regressions, some things remained absolutely constant.
Choi Jeokhyeon always found my brother, and my brother always missed the Prism members, cherished the Pantheion members in one way or another, and eventually remembered me.
When he first learned that Kang Hyukwoo was the one who killed me, my brother, all alone with neither Choi Jeokhyeon nor the Pantheion and Prism members who would arrive later, couldn’t hold back his rage. Tears streamed down his face as he strangled him.
“What are you doing … urgh!”
“…Die, die!”
In that life, my brother discovered Kang Hyukwoo’s son late, and that seemed to consume him with guilt and agony. Tormented by hallucinations and auditory delusions, my brother eventually harmed himself. It was an incident that clearly demonstrated that trying to achieve the objective recklessly, such as killing Kang Hyukwoo in a provocative way, could cause the situation to spiral in completely unexpected directions.
Every choice had to be made with the utmost caution.
‘It was really troublesome that, of all things, that memory kept coming back to him in his dreams.’
Each time I went through a regression and witnessed Kang Hyukwoo’s death again and again, I found myself feeling less and less.
‘I even killed my own father, so what could Kang Hyukwoo possibly make me feel?’
If the condition for regression was my brother’s death, I should have gone back to the point when he came back to life. Strangely, though, this system always sent me back to the moment I was resurrected and showed me the scene of my brother dying every single time.
The system probably did it to make me suffer even more, but I actually saw it as a stroke of great luck. After all, I finally had the chance to kill my father, who had always been a hindrance.
My brother obviously didn’t remember, but in truth, I didn’t kill my father in my second or third lives. Even after my brother died, our father continued selling extremely personal and sensational stories about us to the media for money and fame.
I didn’t want to watch my brother, in Han Seungbeom’s body, suffer so much while seeing our father act that way, so I killed our father. Over and over again, countless times.
“Yuseong-ah, it’s Dad, your Dad! Please … save me!”
“…Don’t touch me. It feels gross.”
When I killed my father, I felt nothing.
I felt no guilt or regret, and my hands didn’t tremble. I didn’t even have nightmares. All that remained was a completely dry, emotionless recognition that I had done what had to be done.
Perhaps I have become too numb to someone’s death.
Or maybe, just as my father said, I was a monster from the very start.
So, I would be fine.
If it was to save my brother, I could do anything.
Even if that anything meant killing him.
‘I was hoping it would work this time, but I never imagined Han Seungbeom would get caught. Next time, I’ll have to limit the information about him.’
When I tampered with the status window to infiltrate the world where Han Seungbeom was, countless warning windows popped up before my eyes.
[Warning! Forced access to HAN SEUNGBEOM’s memory detected.
System unstable. Control over the system persona is weakening.]
[Warning! Guardian CHOI JEOKHYEON wishes for SEO YUTAE’s return.
System unstable. Control over the system persona is weakening.]
[Warning! Guardian CHOI JEOKHYEON’s emotions are flowing into the system.
System unstable. Control over the system persona is weakening.]
[Warning! Attacking the System’s Designated Beneficiary may cause system collapse.]
“…It’s not a problem I can fix, so stop being so noisy.”
I quickly cleared the status windows that were blocking my sight, and immediately approached my brother.
“Goodbye, 100th brother.”
I thought I’d be fine, but apparently I wasn’t. My hands trembled.
The moment Han Seungbeom saw my brother get stabbed, his legs gave out and he collapsed to the floor.
“…Dad.”
Then, as if an earthquake had struck, the platform began to shake precariously. However, Han Seungbeom was undeterred. Lying flat on the floor, he dragged his immobile legs forward, tears streaming down his face.
He looked unsightly, but Han Seungbeom clearly didn’t have the presence of mind to care about his dignity at the moment.
“Ahhhh!”
The moment Han Seungbeom screamed, a cracking sound was heard as a crack spread across the building. Soon, the ground began to rise violently, making it almost impossible to stand. With Han Seungbeom, the master of this world, mentally unstable, everything began to collapse.
While I was barely hanging onto the steeply cracked ground, which was almost like a sheer cliff, fragments of the building fell, slicing between Han Seungbeom, my brother, and me. I quickly dodged them, but when I looked up again, Han Seungbeom and my brother were nowhere in sight.
I immediately opened the status window.
A message asking if I wanted to restart should have appeared, just like last time, but right now, nothing showed up before my eyes. This meant I hadn’t managed to kill him properly yet.
“…He’s alive.”
The first emotion that hit me the moment I realized it was, paradoxically, relief. It was only after I unconsciously exhaled the breath I hadn’t been able to release since I stabbed my brother that I grasped just how wrong the situation was.
‘I have to kill Hyung to be able to start over, don’t I?’
No, this isn’t right. The regression only happens if I completely cut off his breath, but like a fool, I hesitated at the very end.
No. The moment I heard my brother’s voice, my hands froze as if paralyzed. The instant I stabbed him, a wave of intense regret and pain hit me, making me feel as though I had made the wrong choice.
‘I should have stabbed him in the neck, not the abdomen.’
As I stared blankly at my hands, unable to shake off the feeling from that moment, the words I had said to Choi Jeokhyeon flashed through my mind.
“You always turned into such a fool whenever you were in front of my brother…….”
I made a mistake.
Normally, with that amount of blood loss, he wouldn’t have survived, but this world was a little different from reality. I also couldn’t rest easy since Han Seungbeom, who was closely connected to the system, was by my brother’s side.
What if my brother saves Han Seungbeom while I’m not there?
Just thinking about it made my anxiety spike and my heart pound.
“…No.”
I traced the spot where my brother had been with my fingertips. But all I could feel was the cold floor and the thick, pooled blood on it. Clenching my teeth, I lowered my head.
As long as I could save my brother, I could go through as many regressions as needed.
I didn’t care if my mind broke from repeating the regressions over and over for so long.
But if my brother’s soul were damaged to the point that I could no longer regress, everything would be over.
Through the rapid breaths caused by that anxiety, a precariously trembling voice escaped me.
“I have to save him. If I don’t, Hyung will die.”
I could feel my vocal cords tearing, but I kept talking, gnashing out each word.
I stopped my hand, which had been aimlessly hovering over the liquid I couldn’t grasp. Then I grabbed the knife that had been tossed on the floor and forced myself to stand. The muscles in my legs were stiff from the shock of stabbing my brother, so I stumbled a little, but I was still able to move.
“So, give him back to me…….”
My brother must still be somewhere in this world.
This whole collapse started with Han Seungbeom.
So, my brother must be in the place with the largest cracks.
“…Wait for me, hyung. I’ll definitely save you.”
[END OF SEO YUSEONG’S POV]
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Translator’s Corner:
I solemnly swear I never mistranslated anything to make it sound like another genre plot … Choi Jeokhyeon really did take “I’ll find you in every lifetime” very seriously…..
You ever think about how Yutae didn’t get forced to do anything by system window or anything … because the whole time the one who’s living a isekai protagonist life doing quests is Seo Yuseong …. and he also watched Yutae died in 100 lifetimes. One more times and we could have Produce 101 with only Yutae.
Oh spoiler for everyone who read Manager Kim novel, (skip if you don’t want to get spoiled) (for people who missed my rant before, no I personally don’t really like this series (unless you love torturing angst with very unrealistic idol plot (seriously, if they’re real life idols, they would flop hard). The only reason I still read it is because I already read to far to stop…….)
You have to read almost 600 chapters to see MC finally getting reunited with his sister. I think it’s going to end soon with a happy ending ? Unless the author went crazy and pulled the same stunt as Count Family author (can you believe Cale novel still ongoing…..)
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