When he came to himself, he was looking down at his palms. Not long later, he realized that it was a dream. He was standing in the middle of the straight path in that darkness as he often was. He saw light in the distance, and right behind that was the darkness that was large enough to swallow even the light. The dream that came to him whenever he was about to forget about it was leading to the same conclusion again today. Maru sat down and looked at the light. He looked at the light until the darkness covered the entirety of his body. From his toes to his shin, then his thigh, waist, elbow, chest, and neck. One by one, the twinkling of his senses lost their light. Darkness pervaded his vision. He opened his eyes wide until the very end, trying to grasp the light with his eyes. Eventually, the world disappeared, and the thought process that governed his senses was also swept away by the darkness. A world of nihility; a time that could not be sensed. From his experience, this existing yet not existing period of senselessness didn’t last long. He would soon wake up from his dream and take his head off the drenched pillow with a big sigh. That was how the dream always ended after all.

Perhaps he wasn’t even aware of whether his time here was long or short because he wasn’t conscious of anything – he suddenly had this thought. The back of his neck suddenly became hot. He was still inside the dream. The dream that ended with him opening his eyes after struggling in that mysterious space, kept going on. He was even conscious. Something hot spread throughout his whole body through his neck. The first thing that returned was his vision, then his sense of touch. The light that he believed he could never reach was right in front of him. Whether the light came to him, or he managed to approach the light, he did not know. He reflexively reached out to the light that he desired so much. There was no resistance. The hand was softly sucked into the light. It was the warmth that he expected. He longed to throw himself into the light immediately. He wished to depart from this frustrating darkness and be enveloped in that warmth.

“Someone’s happy ending is a bad ending for another. The story will not end without someone’s sacrifice.”

A voice sounded out from behind him. A rabbit was standing on top of the path severed by darkness.

“You’ve done well until now. Get some good rest.”

Maru hesitated between the light and the rabbit before taking his hands away from the light. The light became distant, and the surroundings were filled with darkness again.

“You’re Han Gaeul, aren’t you?”

The rabbit, which was looking around with its ears perked up, took out a pocket watch. She looked like she was in a panic as she kept checking the watch.

“You’re Han Gaeul, aren’t you?” he asked again.

The rabbit put the pocket watch away.

“You and I shouldn’t be able to talk.”

“And yet, here we are, talking to each other.”

“How?”

“That’s what I want to ask. Rather than that, from how you aren’t denying it, it looks like you really are Han Gaeul. The woman in the white suit that I met after I died is also you, isn’t it?”

“You remember that? No way. There’s just no way.”

The rabbit’s nose trembled minutely. The whiskers also shook. Maru took a step towards her. There was a thick layer of darkness, but he did not care. Even if he sank; even if he drowned, he would be satisfied as long as he could reach her, even for a moment.

“Don’t! You can’t come here. This won’t happen again. This time, we can change for sure. This time, we can see the end.”

The rabbit stepped back. The distance between them widened, but Maru did not mind. It was him who ran away first. This time, he would be the one approaching her. His feet sank into the darkness. He felt like his foot sank into a thick swamp. He couldn’t take his foot out, so he just kneeled on the spot. He could become knee-length closer to her; however, he still wasn’t close enough to reach her. He put his elbow on the ground. The moment he did so, thick darkness dragged him down. Seeing his left arm sinking down, he reached out his right arm with all of his might. His hand fell in front of the rabbit’s paw.

“The light is over there. Go there. Your actions were the right ones. Do as you were doing until now. You don’t need to look back. You have no reason to sink into this place. Just go forward. Please, I beg you,” the rabbit pleaded desperately.

Maru turned around to look behind him. The light was blinking as though it was gesturing for him to come. The light that he so wanted; the light that always coquettishly abandoned him, was waving at him, but Maru shook his head.

“Too much warmth isn’t my style. I need a little more coldness like you. If I go there, I will definitely feel good. I don’t know what it is, but the conclusion I always desired must be waiting in there. Perhaps it might mean the end of this endless cycle of reincarnation.”

“If you know it, then go. Please, I beg you.”

The rabbit started hopping on the spot. At that moment, the pocket watch she was holding fell down. Maru looked at the pocket watch with the lid open. There were no hands that indicated time. Only an unpleasant hour hand was ticking and drawing a circle. The darkness reached his chin. The rabbit trembled in anxiety and kept telling him to go to the light.

“What happens to you if I go there?”

“Don’t think about things like that and go. If you go there, everything will be resolved.”

“Does that ‘everything’ include you?”

The rabbit’s mouth curved up softly. She calmly picked up the pocket watch she dropped and spoke,

“Of course.”

Maru chuckled after hearing her answer.

“You told me, didn’t you? That I can’t lie. But hey, who would’ve known? They say husband and wife become similar to each other. I can tell that you’re lying.”

The moment he said those words, darkness pervaded him. Maru slowly opened his eyes. The air conditioner that he had set up a timer for before sleeping was spitting out cold air.

“That’s how it is, huh.”

Right before he was buried in darkness, Maru looked into her eyes. She was looking at her husband with a scolding look for not listening to her words. It was her earnest feelings without a shred of pretense. She tried to stay behind alone in the darkness.

While he took a shower, he did not think about anything. He just washed away his sweat and had a light breakfast before sitting down on the sofa. He was about to turn on his laptop, but he ended up going to get a notepad and a pen instead. He opened the last page of the notepad that was filled with hypotheses and deductions. He put a dot with the pen and started thinking.

He confirmed the existence of the rabbit. It was a big harvest to meet her, the one that he had always imagined meeting due to the conversations he had with the masked man. She also seemed to know everything that was going on. The shriek-like pleading explained everything.

‘You can’t come here’, ‘Go there’. There was no need to even think about what she said. The fact that she said ‘someone’s happy ending means a bad ending for another. It will not end without someone’s sacrifice’ also clearly explained the current state of things. If the masked man was another Han Maru that had broken off from ‘Han Maru’, the rabbit should be another Han Gaeul that had broken off from ‘Han Gaeul’. She had acquired an ego just like the masked man and was probably fed up with the endless cycle of reincarnation.

“Just like how I want the reincarnation to end, she must also want an ending to this story.”

The important bit was that she was the cause. She seemed to be aware of the method of ending this cycle and that the method was none other than sacrificing herself. She seemed to think that if they couldn’t have a happy ending together, one of them would have to fall into the abyss.

Unlike the masked man, it was likely that she was aware of not just the reason for this matter and the solution, but everything else as well. At the same time, it was likely that she wasn’t able to speak of the solution. What blocked her mouth must be that mysterious god with unknown intentions. That damned god.

“But don’t give me divine retribution. I lived a pretty sad life until now.”

Maru quietly stared at the things he wrote down. The first thing he had to find out was whether the current Han Gaeul was aware of the existence of the ‘rabbit’ or not. If the two were communicating, this situation would enter a new phase.

He picked up his phone and quickly tapped in the number that was engraved into his head, but Maru sighed and put his hand down. This wasn’t something he should be talking about over the phone, and above all, this required a careful approach. The masked man holed himself up in the room of silence just because he found out a facet of the truth. The rabbit, who held the solution, would likely be silenced as well. In the dream, she was shocked by the fact that they could converse at all. Talking might be a taboo that god set.

The rabbit said that things could finally change this time. The fact that the wheel of reincarnation that had turned dozens, or even hundreds of times, had been moved off-axis was probably related to finding out the truth. The ‘Han Maru’s that died in vain before weren’t aware that their lives were being repeated after all.

“So the turning point was the breakup with Gaeul after all?”

The ending that the rabbit wanted was probably for Han Maru and Han Gaeul to end their relationship not as a married couple but as strangers. That was the same thing that he thought, and he even put it into practice. He was still keeping it up. However, the rabbit said something awry: ‘Sacrifice’ and ‘remain behind’.

“The most important condition in order for Han Maru’s life to repeat.”

Maru bitterly looked at his own writing. For ‘LIFE’ to come about, the precondition was ‘DEATH’. Someone’s happy ending means another’s bad ending. Someone’s life means someone’s death. The marital ties that kept connecting them despite the numerous repeated lives. There was only one conclusion he could derive from that.

“Screw that.”

Maru closed his notepad and stood up. It was time to go to the shoot.

* * *

The first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was Mijoo’s face. She reached her hand out to Mijoo, who was dozing off.

“Unni, Gaeul-unni!”

“Gosh, you’re startling me. Why are you so surprised?”

“How could I not be? You collapsed, you know?”

“Me?”

“Yes. I told you that you need to eat food on time. When I found you collapsed, I thought I was going to have a heart attack.”

“I see.”

She remembered going back home after the shoot and leaving the bathroom after washing her face. From how anything after that was pitch black, it seemed that she had collapsed in front of the bathroom. Gaeul grabbed Mijoo’s hand and smiled.

“Thanks for saving my life. You can even do emergency treatment and not just makeup, huh? I’m proud of you.”

“This isn’t something to laugh about! Sheesh, you made me worried, you know?”

“I’m okay, aren’t I? But why did you go to my house? You were going to come late because the shoot is in the afternoon, weren’t you?” Gaeul asked as she looked at the clock on her phone.

It was 11 a.m. Mijoo originally planned to come at 4 p.m. with the manager.

“Because I felt iffy.”

“Iffy?”

“I had a dream about some man that kept shouting at me. The man that kept shouting at me was pitch black from top to bottom, and suddenly I became worried about you, unni.”

“What the heck is that? Also, why would you worry about me when a man is shouting?”

“I don’t know. The man kept shouting something like he was crying, and I felt like he was calling out your name. I can’t remember properly because it was a dream. I can only remember that the man was really desperate.”

“That’s why you came to my house?”

“I tried calling you first. You’re a light sleeper, unni, so you usually pick up right away. But you didn’t pick up my call. I tried ten minutes later, but you still didn’t pick up. I found it strange, so I made a visit. I opened the door and found you collapsed on the floor while the TV was on. It still makes my heart thump if I think about it now.”

Gaeul thanked the tearful Mijoo again. It would have been pretty dangerous if she was abandoned in a collapsed state for long.

“But you don’t really believe in stuff like dreams, don’t you?”

“That’s what I find strange as well. Usually, I would have just treated it as a weird dream and gone back to sleep, but the man in the dream was pretty strange. He was pitch black and scary, but he didn’t feel like someone bad. If I think about it now, I think he was crying too.”

“What a strange dream.”

“It’s a strange dream, but it saved you, unni, so it’s better than a dud. Oh, we shouldn’t be like this. I’ll go call a doctor. From what I heard, I found you early, so there were no big problems, but you should still get checked up. Wait a minute.”

Mijoo shouted ‘doctor’ as she stood up.

O.o....Editor's Note:I've thought this for a while; Maru really is super smart. Man is capable of connecting all of the dots. Plus, him telling Mijoo to save Gaeul. Sheeesh. Story is picking up.