24. The Reason
“ I ’m sorry I let you die!” Wooju sobs, recalling Yunho’s last moments in every timeline and how he tried so hard, but not enough, to change his friend’s tragic fate.
Wooju finds it challenging to tell Yunho everything, but he has to try. He doesn’t want to lose Yunho forever.
“You died because of me,” Wooju blurts out, the buried memories resurfacing in a cacophony of reds. “The day you won your first best actor award, when I took you out to celebrate, that’s when it started,” he sniffles, his chest constricting beneath his sweat-soaked clothes. “I had just gotten home when I got into a huge fight with Jaehee. I knocked him out, but... I was careless. I called you over so you could take me away. I didn’t expect the house to catch on fire. I especially didn’t expect you to go inside anyway.”
As Wooju uncovers the truth, the old memory sears through every ounce of his being.
The fire. The knife.
Yunho’s blood on his hands.
Yunho’s dying smile.
He eventually managed to prevent that memory when he framed his best friend for physical abuse and arson and had the cops arrest Yunho before he could do something stupid.
“In every timeline, you tried to get me out of there, but every time you did, Jaehee would always wake up and try to stab me with a knife,” Wooju stammers through his tears, his sobs cutting through the silence as he recounts the harrowing moment. “It was supposed to be me, but you . . . you got in the way to protect me.”
Yunho’s eyes water as Wooju’s words settle heavily in the space between them.
“You died while trying to save me, Yunho,” Wooju adds, his shoulders heaving as tears fall freely from his eyes, “and I had to go through that hell so many times before I finally realized that the only way for you to live is if I find a way for you to stay away from me, for you to hate me.”
“That’s impossible,” Yunho mutters in denial.
“I heard you. When you told everyone you wanted me to rot in jail and die, I heard you,” Wooju says with a hitched breath, the pain apparent in his trembling voice. “Yunho, you had every chance to make an appeal. Why didn’t you just do it? You could’ve killed me twice back then. You could’ve saved yourself from me.”