← I possessed the body of the villain's father.# Midnight
Park Junho's dream was black. A black where nothing could be seen. He was walking through a darkness where his outstretched hand touched nothing, where sound didn't echo back.
His foot stepped on something.
Tap tap.
A rustling sound like gravel tumbling down a ravine. The sound grew louder. Park Junho reached out his hand. Something cold and damp flowed through his fingers.
Sand? Dirt?
No. Something stranger than that.
"Dad."
He heard Si-u's voice. But the child wasn't beside him. From above? Below? The voice echoed from all directions.
"Dad, wake up."
Park Junho opened his eyes.
The world shook.
No, that wasn't quite right. The word "shaking" wasn't enough. The entire bedroom vibrated. A low rumble flowed through the furniture and through his bones. The bed frame knocked against the floor. The closet door rattled.
Park Junho quickly sat up.
Si-u screamed from the bed.
"Dad! Dad!"
An earthquake. No, it was something else. Park Junho knew it. His body remembered. That sensation he had experienced in the future. That rumble when the System descended.
The glow-in-the-dark star stickers on the ceiling began to fall.
Park Junho snatched Si-u from the bed. The child was light. Too light. As if what he was holding wasn't a real child, but the afterimage of one.
"It's okay. It's okay."
Park Junho muttered to himself. To calm himself down.
The rumble grew stronger.
It wasn't a low frequency. It was mixed with high-pitched vibrations. As if two frequencies were overlapping. Dissonance. A vibration that grated on the ears.
Si-u wrapped his arms around Park Junho's neck.
"What is it? What's happening?"
"I don't know. Just wait a moment."
Park Junho opened the bedroom door. The living room was shaking too. The TV screen flickered. It turned on briefly, then off. In that moment, something passed across it.
A code? A signal?
A flicker as if something was trying to speak.
The entire ceiling of the living room brightened.
Not white, but silver. A silver light that flowed like mercury. The light came down along the ceiling and the walls. As if water were flowing. But it didn't fall like water. It stopped in mid-air and began to rotate slowly.
Goosebumps rose on Park Junho's arms.
"Dad..."
Si-u whispered.
That was the moment.
The rumble reached its peak. Park Junho's ears rang. His vision flashed white. As if a flash had gone off. No, something deeper than that. A rumble that struck directly into his brain.
And then a voice.
"[━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━]"
It wasn't breathing. It wasn't speech. But it was clearly trying to convey something. Park Junho's brain struggled to interpret it. As if automatically, regardless of his will.
[START]
That word came to mind.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZE]
The silver light in the living room converged into a single point. Then it exploded.
Not light, but something more fundamental. Rules. Laws. The feeling of something that redefined the world unfolding.
Park Junho held Si-u tighter.
"Let's stay together."
His voice was trembling.
Si-u's hand scratched Park Junho's back. The force was weak, but something felt different about those fingertips. Rough. Bumpy.
Park Junho lifted Si-u's hand.
Even in the darkness, he could see it.
The child's fingers were turning black. A blackness starting from the fingertips was creeping up the back of his hand. As if ink were spreading.
"Si-u."
Park Junho's voice came out.
"Look at your hand."
The silver light in the living room came down like a lamp once more. In that light, Si-u's hand was clearly visible.
Black marks. Letters. No, symbols.
The moment Park Junho saw it, he knew.
Sunday wasn't tomorrow.
It was today. Midnight. Sunday had already begun.
"Dad..."
Si-u whimpered.
"My hand... it hurts."
Park Junho held Si-u tighter. Every time the child's fingers scratched his arm, Park Junho felt it. That roughness. That change.
What was Lee Eun-mi going to give on Sunday?
Park Junho thought he knew now.
That it wasn't something that would help, that it wouldn't stop what was already happening.
But perhaps accelerate it.
And if that thought was correct.
At this very moment, it might already be too late.
# When I Opened My Eyes
When I opened my eyes, the world was split in half.
One side was darkness. The black ceiling of the bed. The weight of night.
The other side was a silvery radiance. Transparent, cold, a light that seemed to carry the sound of melting ice. It floated before my eyes. Like a screen. No, precisely—it was a screen.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZE]
The letters were embedded in my brain. Not read by my eyes. A sensation of being carved directly into the center of my brain, piercing through my temples. A pain like my skull was rippling.
Park Jun-ho sat up. The bed groaned. His wife's body was already gone. He couldn't remember when Lee Eun-mi had disappeared from beside him. Yesterday? Last night? Or much longer ago?
Memory was slipping away.
"Si-woo."
His throat was parched. His voice scraped like an old door.
He went to the living room. The hallway was long. Had it always been this long? His knees creaked with each step down the stairs. A middle-aged body. A body that had experienced death—even if reborn, it remained a broken vessel.
The silvery light in the living room was more intense.
Si-woo was there.
A child separated from his bed always seemed small. Si-woo sitting on the sofa in the night's living room was smaller than ever. His shoulders were trembling. He was crying.
"Si-woo."
Jun-ho approached. He saw the child's hands.
They were black. Black from the fingertips.
"Show me your hands."
Jun-ho's voice became a command. Without realizing it. It became a father's voice. No—the voice of one who had returned from a dead future. Cold, direct, with no room for warmth.
Si-woo raised his hands.
The silvery light descended once more, illuminating the living room. In that light, the back of the child's hands became clear.
The blackness wasn't only at the fingertips. It had traveled up the fingers and spread across the backs of his hands. Like ink dispersing in water. No, more intricate than that. Not random.
It was a symbol.
Letters. But not any language he knew. A form that didn't exist in any writing system Park Jun-ho had ever seen. Straight lines and curves meeting at awkward angles, edges protruding like thorns. As if something were forcing its way through the skin from within.
"Dad..."
Si-woo's voice trembled.
"My hands... they hurt."
Jun-ho embraced the child. His movements were clumsy. The return after death hadn't only given back his body. It had returned his emotions too, but made him forget how to handle them. With awkward arms, he wrapped his son close.
Si-woo's fingers scratched Jun-ho's arm.
That roughness. That change. The fingertips were no longer a child's fingers. They had hardened. They were angular. As if they were transforming into something other than fingernails.
"It's okay. It's okay."
Jun-ho murmured. Words to comfort himself.
The screen appeared again.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZE]
[USER: Park Si-woo]
[STATUS: MUTATION IN PROGRESS]
[PHASE 1: 43% COMPLETE]
As Jun-ho's eyes read the screen, reality shifted around it. The silvery light in the living room grew stronger. Not like illumination, but like radiant heat. His skin prickled. Si-woo's body was warming too. It was radiating heat.
"Dad, I'm scared..."
Si-woo's voice had changed. Another vocal range was mixed within it. Beneath the clear voice, something deeper was resonating.
Jun-ho's chest sank.
That voice from the future. The voice that eighteen-year-old Si-woo had uttered—it was now ringing from the throat of a ten-year-old child.
"How long has this been happening?"
Jun-ho asked. He lifted Si-woo's face with his hands. The child's face was still a child's face. But the light in his eyes was beginning to change. His pupils were trembling slightly. Like a glitch in a screen.
"I don't know. I just woke up... and my hands..."
Si-woo cried again. His crying was layered. A child's crying mixed with something else's crying.
Jun-ho looked at Si-woo's hands. The black symbols were slowly climbing from the back of his hands toward his wrists. They didn't stop. They wouldn't stop.
What would Lee Eun-mi give on Sunday?
Jun-ho thought he understood now.
It wasn't help. It wasn't salvation. It wasn't a pause.
It was acceleration.
Making the change already underway faster. Deeper. Irreversible.
And if that was true.
At this very moment, it might already be too late.
Jun-ho held Si-woo tighter. The child's body trembled. No—it vibrated. As if an engine were starting up inside him.
The screen appeared once more.
[PHASE 1: 47% COMPLETE]
Time was passing. By the second.
"Dad..."
Si-woo called. Another vocal range had been added to his voice. Three. No, more than that.
"Yeah, I'm here. Dad's here."
Jun-ho said.
It was a lie.
Dad wasn't here. Only a dead man had returned. And there was nothing a dead man could do.