Lee Hwayoung's disappearance had made one thing painfully clear.
"What kind of future could I possibly have living like this?"
Kim Giryeo had already been left in a precarious state after his mother vanished with twenty-seven million won. Then, before he had even recovered from that shock, he suffered a severe injury to his leg.
Had he been an ordinary, healthy man in his twenties, perhaps he could have gradually overcome hardships like these.
But the loneliness he had carried throughout his entire life eventually became poison.
Recently, Giryeo had begun experiencing several troubling symptoms.
Losing the motivation to eat was one thing, but even when he forced himself to swallow something, his stomach remained heavy and bloated, as though it refused to digest the food properly.
His forgetfulness had also grown noticeably worse.
It felt as though a thick fog had settled over his mind, constantly obscuring his thoughts. Whenever he opened a book, he could no longer concentrate long enough to finish even a single page.
By this point, there was no denying that something was wrong with him.
Yet Giryeo made no attempt to treat it.
Frankly, going to a hospital wouldn't fundamentally change his situation.
And even if he somehow managed to resolve these emotional problems, deep down, he already knew it wouldn't matter in the end.
"Ahem."
Giryeo pressed the cigarette he'd been smoking into an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts.
He understood perfectly well what condition he was in.
And at that moment, he made a decision.
Come to think of it, ever since high school, Giryeo had spent his life working part-time jobs and earning money, yet he had never really spent any of it on himself.
So he decided that now was the time to do everything he'd once wanted to do.
For that purpose, he set aside the equivalent of two months' wages from his day labor.
When he wrote down everything he wanted to try, the list came to roughly twenty items.
Yet fulfilling those wishes didn't take very long.
Bucket List
① Take a cable car
② Donate to a shelter
③ Buy and drink coffee at a cafe
Most of the things he wanted were painfully simple.
④ Try dyeing my hair
Some time later, Giryeo visited a hair salon to complete the final item remaining on his bucket list.
"Welcome~"
Since he had never paid much attention to his appearance, he felt awkward from the moment he stepped inside.
"Please have a seat. How would you like your hair done?"
"That..."
Still, Giryeo had already decided on the style he wanted.
After sitting in the chair, he pointed to one section of the hair-color chart.
"Dye it like this."
"Blonde? To get this exact color, we'd have to bleach it twice~"
"Yes. That's fine."
And the reason Giryeo had chosen blonde...
In fact, there had been a student among Giryeo's classmates who always dyed his hair blond.
Back when they graduated from high school, that very student council president had delivered the farewell address.
He came from a wealthy family, was good at studying, and even had a pleasant personality.
Perhaps because of that, he would often strike up conversations with Giryeo, who had very few social connections.
"He really was kind."
The moment Giryeo began thinking about changing his hairstyle, the image of that student council president had surfaced in his mind.
The fact that he'd suddenly wanted to imitate him probably meant Giryeo had admired that classmate all along.
Or perhaps he'd simply envied him.
"All right, we're done~ Wow, the color came out really nicely."
But as expected, something as trivial as dyeing his hair did not change a person in any meaningful way.
It felt strangely empty.
"It's not that great."
Still, he'd tried everything he wanted to try.
So perhaps that was enough.
Giryeo paid for the dye job and returned home.
And he never went back there again.
[All personal data and downloaded apps will be deleted, and the deleted data cannot be recovered.]
[Delete all / Cancel]
The first thing Giryeo did after returning home was reset his phone.
For some reason, he felt like putting things in order.
Next came cleaning his room.
Originally, he'd planned to throw away all the books in the house afterward, but then he suddenly remembered that he'd already done so.
"Right. I threw out the textbooks last week."
There it was again.
His memory.
In truth, Giryeo had hoped that fulfilling the items on his old bucket list might rekindle some desire to live.
But as things stood, that attempt had failed.
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't recover the motivation that had already collapsed inside him.
"I'm tired..."
At first, it had only been things like working and eating that felt bothersome.
But now even moving his body was exhausting.
Even thinking had become a chore.
So what kind of ending awaited a weak person who had been driven this far?
After that, Kim Giryeo shut himself inside his home and truly did nothing.
He could no longer imagine any hope in his future.
While isolating himself, Giryeo frequently skipped meals.
There were even days when he went without drinking water from morning until night.
Strangely, there had once been a time when skipping meals made him painfully hungry.
But as the days passed, even that sensation gradually disappeared.
He spent his time in a haze of lethargy, sleeping endlessly without even knowing what month it was or what time of day he had awakened.
Then, one day, Giryeo opened his eyes and climbed out of bed for the first time in a long while.
"Ugh..."
Something felt especially strange that day.
Aside from the throbbing headache pressing against his skull, his entire body felt unbearably cold.
When he checked his phone, he saw that it was July.
The temperature outside was 29°C.
And yet he was shivering?
Giryeo forced himself out of bed.
He wasn't sure whether it would help, but he thought a warm shower might make him feel better, so he took one.
For the first time in a long while, he even shaved.
"It's cold."
After showering, he looked toward the clothes rack to find something to wear.
That was when a piece of black fabric caught his eye.
It was a twenty-thousand-won suit he'd bought in advance for the civil-service interview he had once expected to attend someday.
It was practically brand-new.
Other than trying it on once to check the fit, he'd never worn it.
"What a waste."
On impulse, Giryeo decided to put on the suit.
"How do you tie this again?"
But even that became too bothersome halfway through.
He tossed the tie aside and collapsed back onto the bed...
And that was when Giryeo finally realized just how serious his condition had become.
It was the middle of a scorching summer, yet his body wouldn't stop trembling.
More than anything else, though, he was overcome by an unnatural drowsiness so severe that he could barely force a single word from his mouth.
"Ah."
Right.
So it was today.
Only then did Giryeo sense death approaching.
And quietly, he thought to himself.
Come to think of it, his eyesight was good.
He was still young.
If he died like this, there were probably quite a few organs in his body that could still be used.
'I think I heard that to donate organs... you have to register or sign some kind of pledge beforehand...'
Had he known things would end like this, perhaps he should have completed the donor registration in advance.
Even in his final moments, Giryeo felt no resentment toward the world.
What troubled him instead was the thought that his usable organs might go to waste while somewhere, patients waited desperately for transplants.
"That'd be kind of a waste."
He stared at the ceiling for a long time.
Then, slowly, he closed his eyes.
'If someone needs them... it'd be better if they could use them.'
Tears slipped from beneath his closed eyelids.
The man lying on the bed let out a long breath.
***
When I opened my eyes again, the first thing I saw was a familiar sight.
The ceiling of the old, yellowed one-room apartment.
"..."
Driven more by instinct than thought, I shook off the startled Ahn Yoonseung and somehow managed to make it back home.
And the moment I heard Lee Hwayoung's name, memories began flooding into my mind.
They kept me collapsed there for seven full hours as I struggled to sort through them.
Still, it was finally over.
After the memory I'd just witnessed, no more fragments of Kim Giryeo's past surfaced.
The original owner of this body had died at that exact point in time.
"So that's what happened."
Now I understood.
Kim Giryeo hadn't simply starved to death.
The owner of this body had lived a life steeped in loneliness.
He had tried to escape that loneliness, only to be abandoned by his mother once again.
His cause of death had been loneliness.
It had been starvation.
And it had been suicide.
Having reached this point, the mysteries surrounding my reincarnation also began to unravel.
'So that's why Kim Giryeo's brain was almost completely empty of memories.'
The [Reincarnation] magic I used required restoring the vessel to as healthy a state as possible before the soul entered it.
But that process had limits.
For example, it would be difficult to restore the body of an eighty-year-old to the condition it had been in at forty.
The basic structure of my magic was designed to restore a body to roughly the state it had been in several weeks before death.
But as you already know, Kim Giryeo had already been...
"He'd been suffering from severe memory loss."
Brain damage caused by severe depression.
Something like that had never been considered as a possible variable in the reincarnation spell.
8:00 AM.
Lee Hwayoung sat in front of her vanity early that morning.
Today was the day she was going to meet her son.
And not just any ordinary son, but...
[[Breaking News] Korea, the 4th S-class appears]
A son who was now an S-class Hunter.
She rarely watched the news.
Even so, news concerning her own child was impossible to avoid.
They said he had risked his life to recover the body of a D-rank Awakener.
They said he had killed every last Siren.
Whatever the details, that S-rank had displayed astonishing feats within only a few months of revealing his identity.
"Oh my goodness! G, Giryeo... became an Awakened?"
The moment Lee Hwayoung recognized her son's face on the news, she decided to contact him.
It had been quite a long time since they'd last spoken, so finding his phone number was difficult.
Fortunately, she had recently managed to locate the necessary record on her phone.
[Blocked Caller List]
1533-09...
02-2108...
010-1287...
"Ah, 1287. That's it, that's it."
Truthfully, it would be a lie to say she hadn't hesitated.
She remembered perfectly well how things had ended between them.
"Giryeo-ya, could you please help your mom just this once?"
The time she had taken twenty-seven million won from her son and left the house.
Of course she felt sorry about it.
But what other choice had she had?
What else was she supposed to do?
"Phew."
Back when she was younger, she had taken out loans without properly understanding the consequences.
Afterward, she had spent years struggling beneath the weight of that debt.
Then, one day, while cleaning the house, Lee Hwayoung had happened to see Kim Giryeo's bank balance.
[₩27,007,839]
When someone was being hounded by debt collectors every single day, how could they not be tempted after seeing that much money?
"What woman wouldn't have done the same in that situation?"
Hwayoung believed her decision wasn't something anyone could so easily condemn.
And as for why she had left the house afterward...
That was simply because she'd felt sorry for Giryeo.
She knew there was no realistic way she could repay that debt with what she earned working at a restaurant.
So, overcome by guilt at the thought of facing him, she chose to avoid him instead.
Come to think of it, all of this had started because her son had pressured her to repay the money.
If he hadn't done that, she would never have gone so far as to run away.
Twenty-seven million won.
Wasn't that the sort of money a child should give his parent anyway, if only out of gratitude for being brought into the world?
"Anyway, that boy..."
But now those petty concerns no longer mattered.
In the meantime, Giryeo had awakened as an S-rank.
Her good son, having finally escaped poverty, would surely forgive her for one small mistake from the past.
Hadn't he spoken to her so warmly over the phone just yesterday?
Almost as if he'd completely forgotten everything that had happened!
"Oh, I've been so worried lately because of my back... Finally. My luck is finally turning around in my old age."
Lee Hwayoung hummed softly as she touched up her makeup.
Then it was time to go meet her son.
Before long, she arrived at Mapo Station.
From there, she followed the main road for several minutes before finally turning into a narrow alley.
"I've never been here before, so I have no idea where anything is."
Let's see.
My son said he lived somewhere around here...
"Ah!"
Just as she reached for her phone to call him, she noticed someone approaching from farther down the alley.
A young man dressed in a dark suit that seemed more appropriate for a funeral was walking toward her.
"Giryeo-ya!"
Lee Hwayoung recognized her son and waved enthusiastically.
The son she hadn't seen in so long had matured quite a bit.
It had been years since she'd last seen him, and seeing him in person now, she couldn't help wondering just how much money he must be making to afford such fine clothes.
"Have you been... well?"
Hwayoung set down her bag and wrapped her arms tightly around her son.
"I'm so glad you look healthy. Mom's been having such a hard time, but I prayed every single day that my son would stay safe and healthy."
Originally, she had intended to explain everything she'd been through.
"Giryeo, I'm only telling you this now, but actually, there was a reason for what happened back then..."
"Mom."
"Y, yeah?"
But her son abruptly interrupted her and changed the subject.
He shifted his gaze and looked down at Hwayoung.
As always, his features strongly resembled the bloodline of his father.
"Come to think of it, I don't remember much about Dad."
"Huh?"
"What's Dad doing now? Do you happen to have his contact information?"
She had never expected him to ask something like that.
Taken aback, Hwayoung answered.
"What are you talking about? That man died of lung cancer ages ago. It's been years."
"Aha."
Hadn't I already told Giryeo about that?
Hwayoung tilted her head as she loosened her embrace.
But the man in front of her continued muttering things she couldn't understand.
"So there is family."
Then the blond Hunter asked Hwayoung another question.
"Mom, don't you think I've changed?"
"Changed...?"
"Don't you notice anything different when you look at me?"
Was this some childish joke a son might make with his family?
"Well, let's see how my son has changed..."
Hwayoung paused for a moment as though seriously considering the question.
But in truth, there was hardly anything to think about.
This Hunter looked noticeably different from the way he had in the past.
"Right. You dyed your hair! It looks nice! Hoho. Son, did you get yourself a girlfriend or something? You're finally dressing up for once."
She said it with a smile.