The Maknae Has to Be an Idol

I turned my head and looked at Yeon-Hoon. I could just tell from his gaze now that they were fundamentally different people. Yeon-Hoon was the one who told me that he was the system. But did I hear him right–it’s probably going to get hard from the thirteenth one? How did he know all this? And how did he come to this space? Since I had many questions that were left unanswered, I felt alarmed and distanced myself from Yeon-Hoon.

Simultaneously, I didn’t stop pulling the other universes to mine. While warily eyeing Yeon-Hoon, I continued to pull countless universes to my side.

“I told you it won’t work, Tae-Yoon,” Yeon-Hoon warned me once more. As he said, only twelve worldlines remained stuck on my worldline and the thirteenth one didn’t budge.

“Dong-Jun’s worldline ends at that point and the rest of them are all mine,” Yeon-Hoon approached my side, unwittingly to me, and kindly explained. So, the twelve universes that I just pulled to my side were the worldlines that Dong-Jun lived during his regressions. With this, it was clear that Dong-Jun also regressed twelve times. Yet, this wasn’t the important part.

“Why are you telling me this?” What was Yeon-Hoon’s motive for telling me this information? Furthermore, was he even telling me the truth? Though this person was Yeon-Hoon, he was also the system. I didn’t know what kind of system he was but the fact he was one made me wary of him. Yeon-Hoon looked intently at me as if he had many things to say. Yet, in the end, he didn’t say them and averted his gaze.

“You would know once time passes. Take all of Dong-Jun’s worldlines here for now and get out of here. And endure as long as you can while clearing the missions.”

What was he going on about this time? If he was going to tell me something, he should finish it to the end. What was the point of him even talking if he was going to be so wishy-washy about everything?

“If I will eventually learn as time passes, can’t you tell me right now? Why do you have to keep hiding so much information?” I asked a bit aggressively.

Perhaps, I was a bit annoyed. I was giving my all right now to end this system’s infinite regressions. I couldn’t catch a break while going through all sorts of things most wouldn’t have to experience in their lifetime and went even as far as to make requests to people I didn’t want to.

“If you are going to order me to do something, make a clearer order, and if you are going to share information, tell me everything without hiding parts.”

Though I thought I acted autonomous and worked my hardest to finish missions, when I listened to what Yeon-Hoon told me, it felt as if I was nothing more than a pawn on a large chessboard. Of course, I didn’t care if I was just a pawn in a large scheme of things as long as my group members were safe and I could put an end to this infinite regressions. Yet, if he was going to use me as a pawn, I thought the minimum he could do was to clearly tell me what kind of role I needed to fulfill.

“What do I need to do? Just tell me if you are the system,” I asked Yeon-Hoon who became a system. After hearing me, Yeon-Hoon looked up at me quietly. After becoming the system, Yeon-Hoon’s eyes looked dead, but right now, I felt a glimmer of emotion in his eyes. Normally, one could guess what a person was feeling by seeing their eyes: they could feel happy, sad, lonely, or disappointed. Even if a person tried to hide their expressions, their eyes would betray them.

Yet, I couldn’t tell what emotions these eyes contained. Was he frustrated, lamenting, sorrowful, or joyful? Yeon-Hoon’s lips trembled slightly. As he looked up at me, the emotions whirling inside his gaze intensified. I clutched Yeon-Hoon’s shoulders. Though this was a space where the physical body didn’t exist and only the mind wandered, it almost felt as if I could feel his bodily temperature.

“There’s no need to hide it,” I said.

The wavering in Yeon-Hoon’s eyes decreased. His tightly sealed lips also began to slowly open.

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“First of all, I am the system right now.” Perhaps, he was willing to talk now and explain. “So you must naturally wonder what sort of system I am. Am I the system that gives you your missions or the system that gives the truck driver his missions?” Yeon-Hoon exactly pinpointed my main question.

“But before I get to that, there’s something I need to mention first.”

I focused on Yeon-Hoon’s words.

“I will also need to explain what the system is and what kind of mechanism it operates on. There will probably be parts you already know, but I should probably go over them again.” Then, Yeon-Hoon proceeded to drag me to another place. It was the place where the long worldline first began.

“This is the beginning of humanity. The start of this long line.”

I looked towards the area where Yeon-Hoon said was the beginning of humanity. I thought I could uncover the secrets of humanity if I stared at that point but soon averted my gaze. This wasn’t important right now.

“And if you keep looking across the line, you see a couple of dots, right?”

“Yes.”

“This is the universe’s turning point.”

“Turning points?”

“Yeah. Though they are called the universes’ turning points, they are nothing grand. There are many times when ordinary people trigger these turning points rather than historical figures.”

These are what I also saw when I first came to this space. Even at that time, historical and monumental moments overlapped with daily moments. Yet, Yeon-Hoon told me another point I wasn’t aware of.

“There’s no rule to how the turning points are decided. They are all just random, but there’s a commonality between all of them,” Yeon-Hoon said and picked out one turning point.

It was a turning point containing a normal, day-to-day scene. A family of foreigners were eating while sitting around the table. There was one daughter, a son, wife, and husband. They looked like a harmonious family. Though it was hard to deduce the time period, it looked to be around the 1980s to 1990s since the setting didn’t look too recent or old. It was then somebody suddenly rushed inside the house.

—Bang! Bang!

Two gunshots were fired. A robber came inside the house and shot two of the children in their heads, and the daughter and son immediately died.

“…The hell?” Afterwards, the robber also stabbed the husband and killed him. The knife that had been used to cut the meat on top of the table became a weapon for murder and pierced the husband’s neck. Yet, before the wife was attacked, neighbors rushed in and arrested the robber. Though the culprit was caught, the happy-looking family was gone without a trace. After showing me up to this point, Yeon-Hoon looked at me again.

“Do you understand what the commonality is?”

“…Yes.”

The commonality of all the turning points was…

“Death.”

“Yes, to be more specific, it’s a death that no one has predicted. What all the turning points have in common is that there’s an illogical death that seems to have surpassed all reasonable possibilities.”

We had also gone through a similar situation—the sudden trespassing of a truck driver into the middle lane. Because of the accident, only I remained alive while all my members immediately died.

“After that abrupt death happens, one person involved in the death regresses.” Yeon-Hoon brought back the turning point he showed me and began to disassemble it farther. I wondered who among the family regressed after the incident.

The first to regress was the son. There wasn’t much a twelve-year-old child could do but die repeatedly. He tried moving locations a couple of times but in the end, died from gunshots. Yet, after the tenth regression, he reached a point where he was able to avoid dying from a gun. He took the knife on the table and stuck the neck of the robber that rushed into the house. He showed movements and judgments unbelievable of a twelve-year-old. Yet, things didn’t end there.

A mission dropped to the boy. The content of the mission was similar to the ones I received until now. They were missions that put his family member’s life on the line. After failing the missions repeatedly, the child’s mind eventually crumbled, and he passed on the regressions to another family member. This was the same pattern that my team went through.

“Do you know how many regressions this family went through?”

“…”

“They did it more than a hundred times, exactly hundred and twenty times.”

“…What happens after that…? Is there an end to this all?”

“There is.”

Yeon-Hoon showed me the last regression. The last regressor was the wife. The wife watched her family members die till the very end. Because of all the countless regressions she went through, she no longer felt any emotion. She didn’t kill the robber or resist his killing spree. She simply waited for the neighbors to come arrest the robber and remained alone.

Eventually, time passed and the wife just lived, doing nothing. She didn’t work or made any effort to do anything. She simply stayed inside the house where her family died and sat in front of the dining table. Soon afterward, she heard the news that the robber who had killed her entire family died from internal prison violence. Like that, her life eventually came to an end.

“That is the end of a regression.”

“…What the hell?”

“This is the ending that the system wants.”

“For us to do nothing?”

“Yeah. In this woman’s universe, the answer was not to do anything. To gain this answer, they had to make over a hundred attempts. And the hundred regressions wore down her heart so that she could become numb to her family’s deaths. In the end, the system was able to achieve the result it wanted and this universe was chosen as the ultimate universe and became connected to this long worldline.”

If I was this woman, would I be able to accept the fact that was the final form of my life? I thought I would never be able to accept it. Yet, the human mind inevitably succumbed to time and for the system, it was probably no matter to break down a person’s mind and heart.

“There’s definitely an answer that the system wants. There’s already an exact picture that will continue this long universe. Our role is to get to these exact answers with our numerous regressions.”

I listened to Yeon-Hoon’s explanation quietly. Though I didn’t say anything, rage and despondency filled my heart at once. In the end, all my efforts and rage was simply a passing wind to the system. I felt that everything was meaningless and my heart felt empty as I felt extremely dispirited. I looked at Yeon-Hoon. Yeon-Hoon’s expression was bland and business-like. He appeared completely unsurprised by the system’s mercilessness.

“…Do you not have any thoughts about this, Yeon-Hoon?”

“What’s the point of my thoughts? This was the method that had been going for ten thousands of years. I don't even know how this system was formed, who made it, how far this universe’s line extends, and what this system’s end goal is.”

After saying all this, Yeon-Hoon’s side profile looked like someone who was submerged in deep and bottomless solitude.

“But there’s one thing I’m certain of.”

“What is it?”

“It’s the last moments of us that the system wants to see us in,” Yeon-Hoon said, beginning to show me one kind of future. It was a world from imagination that didn’t happen and which no one went to yet.

“This is our ultimate turning point that the system wants to lead us in. Look carefully.”