The Hero Wants to Die

Nineteen-year-old Kim Geonho was physically enhanced and time-warped into the 23rd century. For fifty painful years, he devoted himself to stop the apocalypse in the future before returning to the present as his nineteen-year-old self. The dangerous future was prevented, and no one knew of the suffering he endured. No one knew about the hero he had become. Now, the hero just wanted to rest.

The hero wanted to die.

It would take a hundred days for his enhanced cells to fully die. Kim Geonho, given this hundred-day grace period before his death, decided to spend it in boredom and peace. But then, the boy he had a crush on before he left for the future appeared before him: Yeo Haejung. His first love from when he was nineteen.

***

“When you keep thinking about someone, curious about them and feel awful because that person seems so unreachable… that’s a sign you like them.”

“…”

“If this assumption is correct, then that means I like you.”

My heart. It feels like it’s about to stop.

“It’s a bit confusing, though. This is the first time I’ve felt this way about a guy. What about you? Do you not like guys?”

“…”

“No, wait. Let me ask again. Do you not like me?”

There’s no way I could dislike him. But I wanted to run away. The idea that Yeo Haejung liked me—this was something I had never anticipated. The one thing I had been most worried about in our relationship was the possibility of him finding out about my feelings. This was an unexpected development.

Kim Geonho likes Yeo Haejung. That’s a fact. But the other way around? It wasn’t supposed to work like that. It shouldn’t work like that. I wanted to run away from the feeling and from the weight of his intangible gaze pinning me down. I am someone who will disappear, and Yeo Haejung is someone who will remain. If I could just quietly let go of my feelings and fade away, this relationship would have ended with no complications. But why…

“Geonho…”

Why do you… like me?

“Do you not like me?”

Why are you trying to pull me into your world?