Chapter 153: The Memories I Buried

My name is Yoo Jinhoo.

I’m a hard worker who enjoys reading webtoons whenever I have the chance.

Somehow, I suddenly found myself in this world—a world that was supposed to have already fallen apart into complete chaos.

But with me here, perhaps I could change it.

That was what I thought when I first arrived in this world.

I’d forgotten the important moments that had shaped me into a hard worker. I’d forgotten why I became so furious whenever someone I cared about died right before my eyes.

I’d forgotten...

I’d truly forgotten all of it...

But after witnessing the deaths of two people I cared about, I was beginning to remember.

Remembering why I was so angry.

It was my deepest trauma.

I was beginning to understand why I felt so frustrated and furious.

When I was little, I lived with my younger brother and my mother.

Our lives should have been safe and peaceful, even without a father figure.

Everything changed when my mother remarried.

She married someone who would completely destroy our once-harmonious family.

A demon disguised as a human.

At first, my younger brother and I had no problems with him because he treated us very kindly.

But behind that sweet smile of his, he was playing a dirty game.

He took advantage of our mother, who often worked as a cashier.

He stole the money she had saved for our living expenses and used it to gamble.

Whenever our mother tried to stop him or stand up to him, she couldn’t do much against a man with such a large build.

He beat her, slapped her, and kept hitting her until she lost consciousness.

I witnessed it all with my own two eyes.

Back then, I was only eight years old. There was nothing I could do except wait for him to leave before helping my mother alongside my younger brother.

After we helped her, she didn’t cry or show how much pain she was in from being beaten.

Instead, she gave us a sweet smile.

A smile so sweet that, whenever I remembered it, it felt like the most beautiful moment of my life.

One evening, while we were having dinner together, that demon came home and started causing trouble all over again.

The dinner that should have been peaceful and comfortable was ruined by him once more.

He arrived with a woman.

He tried to pull me away by the hand, telling me that he was going to sell me.

I tried to resist, but his grip was far too strong for me.

My mother tried to stop him, but he struck her in the face, sending her crashing to the floor.

My only younger brother tried to help me.

He ran toward that demon with a fork and stabbed him in the hand.

The man released his grip on me, but he became furious. He struck my younger brother in the face and dragged him away with that woman.

All I could do was watch as my younger brother was dragged away.

I couldn’t do anything.

I was too scared.

I was too cowardly.

I was too weak.

After that incident, neither the demon nor my younger brother was ever seen again.

By the time I was ten, my mother had started falling ill more frequently.

She forced herself to keep working, but I stopped her.

I told her to stay home and rest.

To help my mother, I began going around selling things. I sold the secondhand clothes that belonged to me and my younger brother.

I kept doing it even though I earned very little, but it was enough to help sustain our little household.

However, as the days passed, my mother’s health continued to deteriorate.

The money I had wasn’t enough to buy her medicine.

When I was eleven, I started working at a small repair shop.

At first, the owner refused to hire me because I was underage and knew nothing about mechanics.

But I begged him to teach me and let me work for him.

Although the pay was low, I figured that if I saved the money little by little, I’d eventually have enough to buy medicine for my mother.

Day after day, month after month, and year after year...

I continued working there until I was thirteen.

The owner of the repair shop had gotten to know me very well by then. He took care of me as if I were his own child.

He also had a son, and I had grown quite familiar with him as well.

They were all very kind to me.

They had become like my second family.

But one day, when I returned home, I found that the demon had come back.

He was taking the money I’d spent so long saving for our living expenses.

I also saw my mother clutching his leg, allowing herself to be dragged along as she tried to stop him.

My mother was crying, desperately begging him not to take my money.

I couldn’t stand watching it anymore.

I immediately ran toward the demon and punched him in the face.

My punch landed, but it wasn’t strong enough.

He retaliated by striking me on the head.

I immediately fell to the floor.

My head was spinning.

I could feel blood streaming down my head.

I also saw my mother grabbing a knife from the table and trying to stab the demon.

She managed to stab him, but the wound wasn’t in a vital area.

The demon immediately retaliated by beating my mother until she lost consciousness.

And then, things became even worse.

He pulled the knife out of his own body and plunged it into my mother’s heart.

I was utterly shocked by what I saw.

My mouth wouldn’t move.

My mind was filled with countless desires.

One of them was revenge.

My vision blurred.

I don’t remember much of what happened afterward.

All I could hear were faint sounds.

The demon’s voice.

He was desperately begging me for mercy.

When I finally came to my senses, I found myself on top of the demon’s body.

I was covered in blood.

The demon wasn’t moving.

Both of my hands hurt.

I looked at his face.

His mouth was hanging wide open, and his right eye was missing.

Blood was flowing out from inside his mouth.

’Was this my doing?’

’Or had something possessed me?’

’What exactly happened?’

Without paying any attention to those questions, I immediately rushed toward my mother’s body.

Her body had already grown cold.

There was no warmth left.

Her eyes were still open, staring blankly into nothingness.

My mother...

She was dead.

Still unable to accept her sudden departure, I embraced her body.

Even though it felt cold and empty, I tried to remember how warm she used to be.

I tried to deceive myself.

I cried while holding her in my arms.

But strangely, the tears flowing from my eyes weren’t ordinary tears.

They were blood.

My tears had turned into blood.

My throat felt so constricted that I could no longer scream.

Days passed, yet I continued holding my mother’s body without moving an inch.

The demon’s corpse had begun to rot.

So had my mother’s.

Then the owner of the repair shop, the man I’d come to call Uncle, arrived at my house.

He had probably come because he was worried that I hadn’t shown up at the repair shop for several days.

He was shocked by what had happened.

Utterly shocked.

So shocked that not a single word came out of his mouth.