I sat in my chair, turning the small cube over in the palm of my hand.
It shifted and changed shape with every slight movement, its surface twisting into unfamiliar patterns before returning to its original form. I'd been playing with it for a while now, but my attention wasn't really on the object itself.
After escaping the Nightmare Dungeon, I'd taken Seo Elena home before returning to my own place.
And ever since, I hadn't been able to stop thinking about what I'd witnessed inside.
Those memories.
The strange scenes that had played out before me, the man who looked exactly like me, and the things he'd said about regression. None of it made sense, yet something about those memories felt strangely familiar.
I'd spent quite some time thinking about it, but I kept arriving at the same question.
How was I supposed to recover memories I didn't even know I'd lost?
I turned the cube once more, watching as its shape shifted between my fingers.
Perhaps this mysterious power was the answer.
Think, Han Jinhyuk.
If those really were my memories, where would I even begin looking for them? I couldn't exactly force myself to remember something that wasn't there in the first place.
Just as I was lost in thought, the System suddenly appeared before me.
Except, something was wrong.
The familiar blue window flickered violently, its letters distorting and breaking apart as though something were interfering with its connection. The usual congratulatory message appeared first.
『Congratulations, Hunter!』
But before I could finish reading it, the words glitched and disappeared.
A different message took their place.
『Do you wish to recover those memories?』
『I should warn you. They aren't exactly pleasant. 』
Normally, something like this would have raised a dozen questions. But after everything I'd experienced, the appearance of another inexplicable phenomenon barely surprised me anymore.
At this point, I was beginning to think the world had simply run out of ways to surprise me.
"So what?" I answered. "If Seo Elena was part of those memories, then they're worth remembering, aren't they?"
The System remained silent for a moment.
Then another message appeared.
『Hah. You really are me, aren't you?』
My fingers stopped moving. "What do you mean? Who are you?"
『A divine being. One who has reached far beyond the stars.』
I stared at the message for a moment before letting out a quiet sigh.
A divine being? Reached beyond the stars?
There were plenty of mysteries in this world, but I wasn't particularly interested in hearing another grand explanation about the nature of existence.
I had a much more pressing concern.
"Tell me how to recover my memories."
『The only way I can teach you the necessary codes is through an in-depth lesson. Unfortunately, understanding them would take millions of years.』
"Millions?"
『There is, however, another way.』
"And that is?"
The cube in my palm shifted again. This time, I didn't bother looking at it. My attention was entirely fixed on the message floating before me.
『We are both Han Jinhyuk, but we have lived different lives.』
『I am the Han Jinhyuk who failed to save Seo Elena in my world. However, I am also the only one who managed to ascend beyond the System.』
I frowned.
Another version of me?
So this wasn't simply some mysterious being claiming to be divine. It was me, from another world, or perhaps another timeline.
『If you accept my memories, they will become yours as well. You will inherit everything I've experienced, including the pain and suffering that came with it. It won't be pleasant.』
『But in exchange, I can help you understand the System. With that knowledge, recovering your own memories should be considerably easier.』
"What happened to the Seo Elena in your world?"
I felt the system hesitate as the answer didn't come immediately. Until, finally, the System displayed another message.
『She died.』
『She died saving everyone, just like yours did.』
『But I never lost my memories of her.』
『It's a miracle that she's still alive in your world.』
"What do you mean?"
『In every other reality I've observed, Seo Elena is dead.』
This mysterious being wasn't simply offering me a way to recover my memories.
It was offering me the memories of a man who had watched Seo Elena die, over and over again, in a world where he could never save her.
"What do you get out of this? Why are you trying to help me?"
『I simply want to see an ending where we can be with her.』
『For billions upon billions of years, I searched for a world where that ending was possible. I searched for so long that I was beginning to forget what her face looked like.』
『Then I found you.』
『A Han Jinhyuk who had lost his memories, wandering through a Nightmare Dungeon and questioning whether the things he had witnessed were even real.』
『If you accept my memories, I will become a part of you. I may not remain entirely myself, but that's fine. Even if only a part of me gets to experience it, I'm more than happy knowing that I might finally live peacefully with Seo Elena.』
"..."
I stared at the System window for a long time.
Billions of years.
I couldn't even begin to imagine what that kind of time would feel like. To spend so long searching for someone, knowing that in every world you encountered, they were already gone...
What kind of existence had I become in another universe?
And yet, despite everything, he still wanted to help me.
"...How do we do it?"
For a moment, the System window vanished. Then, without warning, a new window appeared.
Unlike the usual blue interface, its borders flickered and distorted, as though the System itself couldn't properly process the information it was displaying.
『SYNC REQUEST』
『Target: H̸a̷n̶ ̸J̷i̸n̵h̷y̸u̴k̵』
『Identity: ERROR』
『Classification: UNKNOWN EXISTENCE』
『Memory Origin: UNREGISTERED』
『Warning: Multiple causal inconsistencies detected.』
『Do you wish to synchronize with the unidentified existence?』
『 WARNING: IRREVERSIBLE PROCESS 』
『ACCEPT / DECLINE』
"Accept."
The moment I accepted the request, something inside me shattered.
It started with a sharp pain behind my eyes, followed by an unbearable pressure that spread through my skull. I instinctively clutched my head, but that did nothing to stop what came next.
Memories.
They poured into me all at once.
Not as scattered images or distant recollections, but as though I had lived every single one of them myself.
I saw a woman smiling at me.
Seo Elena.
I remembered the warmth of her hand, the sound of her laughter, and the way she would look at me whenever she was happy. I remembered falling in love with her, the promises we'd made, and the future I had once imagined we would share.
And then...
I watched her die again and again and again and again and again and again.
The first time, I thought it was an accident. The second time, I blamed myself for not being strong enough to protect her. By the third, I had begun to understand that there was something terribly wrong with the world itself.
No matter what I did, she always disappeared.
So I went back.
I learned to manipulate the System, to bend its codes and interfere with causality itself. I rewrote events, changed decisions, and destroyed the very beings responsible for targeting her. I killed gods, shattered civilizations, and challenged entities whose existence was beyond anything humanity could comprehend.
I thought that if I eliminated every threat, I could finally save her.
But fate always found another way.
Sometimes she died of an illness. Sometimes an accident took her life before I could reach her. Sometimes she vanished without a trace, leaving behind nothing but an empty space where she should have been.
Even when I managed to prevent every tragedy, something else would happen.
She was simply... fated to disappear.
As though her existence had been written with an ending that could never be changed.
And every time I lost her, I went back again.
I stopped counting how many times I had done it. Hundreds? Thousands? Millions?
What difference did the number make when every regression ended the same way?
I fought against the System that governed the world, then against the gods who claimed authority over it. When that wasn't enough, I reached beyond the boundaries of my own universe, searching for a way to break the laws that even divine beings were forced to obey.
I refused to accept that there was no way to save her.
If this world wouldn't give her back to me, then I would find another.
And so I left.
I crossed realities, traversed dimensions, and searched through countless worlds for another Seo Elena. Perhaps there was a universe where she had survived. Perhaps somewhere, another version of her was living the peaceful life I had always wanted for her.
But there wasn't.
Everywhere I went, I found the same ending.
She died.
In one world, she was killed before she ever met me. In another, she lived a long and ordinary life, only to disappear when I finally found her. Some versions never even awakened, while others were caught in tragedies that had nothing to do with me.
It didn't matter how different the worlds were.
The ending was always the same.
Seo Elena was gone.
And I was always left behind.
The pain was unbearable.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to tear apart every world that had taken her away from me. I wanted to find the being responsible for this cruel fate and force it to give her back.
But there was no one.
There was no enemy I could kill, no god I could defeat, and no law I could rewrite.
There was only an ending I couldn't change.
Billions of years passed.
Then billions more.
I spent so long searching that even the meaning of time began to lose its significance. Entire civilizations rose and fell before my eyes. Stars were born and died. Universes expanded, collapsed, and gave way to new ones.
And still, I searched.
Eventually, I began to forget things.
The sound of her voice. The exact way she smiled... Then I started forgetting myself.
Who was I before all this? What had I wanted to do? What kind of person had I been before the world became nothing but an endless search for her?
I couldn't remember.
The only thing I knew was that I had to find Seo Elena.
I had to save her, even when I could no longer remember why. Even when I could barely recall the face of the person I had spent eternity trying to bring back.
I continued searching. Because somewhere, buried beneath all those years of suffering, there was still a part of me that remembered loving her.
And I couldn't bring myself to let that go.
"Fuck...!"
I stumbled out of my chair, clutching my chest as though something had pierced straight through it.
My breathing was ragged. My vision blurred, and tears streamed down my face before I even realized I was crying.
It hurt.
God, it hurt so much.
I couldn't tell which memories belonged to me anymore. I couldn't separate my own feelings from the grief of the person whose memories I had just inherited.
But one thing had remained unchanged through it all. No matter how many times I had lost her, how many lifetimes had passed, or how much of myself I had forgotten, I had never stopped searching for Seo Elena.
I had loved her for so long that even eternity itself hadn't been enough to make me stop.