Chapter 191 : A New Beginning
Chapter 191: A New Beginning
“Everyone, please prepare yourselves. Before we send off the deceased, this will be your final chance to see him in person.”
Her steps felt heavy.
Looking down at her feet, which refused to move no matter what, Seo Da-hee murmured.
“Lia…….”
There was no answer.
Ever since learning of Yoo Seongwoo’s death, Lia had refused to speak.
Even so, there were things Seo Da-hee could feel through their connected souls.
Sadness, pain, resentment, anger.
Caught within a whirlpool of countless emotions, Lia had cut herself off from Seo Da-hee.
Seo Da-hee understood Lia’s attitude, yet she still couldn’t bring herself to like it.
Lia wasn’t the only one grieving.
Everyone here had lost a precious friend and comrade.
And Seo Da-hee was no different.
Everyone gathered here talked about him, remembered him, and tried to ease the sorrow of saying goodbye.
Instructor Cheon Ga-eun continuously chain-smoked, while the Sword Emperor and Instructor Kang Jae-seok shared drinks.
Park Siwoo and the others looked after Wol-ah while listening to stories about Yoo Seongwoo they had never known.
Seo Da-hee also joined them from time to time, trying to lessen the pain of parting.
But Lia was different.
As though she intended to follow him in death,
she had arbitrarily severed every connection and was letting herself rot away.
Sadness was certainly a necessary emotion.
But if one held onto it for too long, emotions would inevitably stagnate and rot.
Leaving Lia like this would do neither of them any good.
‘Are you really not going to see Seongwoo?’
Seo Da-hee carefully tried to persuade Lia.
On the way to see Yoo Seongwoo one last time, the thing that had stopped her feet wasn’t Seo Da-hee’s own will.
Lia was afraid.
Afraid to see him dead.
She couldn’t bring herself to do it.
It was understandable.
Even Seo Da-hee herself couldn’t calm her heart.
But that didn’t mean she intended not to see Yoo Seongwoo.
They hadn’t even been able to say a proper goodbye.
There were countless regrets.
Perhaps those regrets would never truly disappear.
‘I know you’re afraid. But are you really okay with this? If you don’t see him now, you’ll never see him again.’
Yoo Seongwoo occupied a far greater place in Lia’s heart than anyone imagined.
To Lia, Yoo Seongwoo was her savior and her partner.
Yoo Seongwoo himself hadn’t thought of it that way, but his own intentions were not important to Lia’s decision.
She had been created to become someone’s partner, and she had chosen Yoo Seongwoo as hers.
Knowing all of that, Seo Da-hee continued persuading Lia.
It would be a hundred times better to accept his death and let out her grief than to avoid seeing him and remain buried in sorrow.
More than anything, Seo Da-hee felt certain that if Lia didn’t see him now, she would regret it in the near future.
Both Lia and Seo Da-hee herself would.
‘Lia, let’s not grieve alone. If you’re afraid to go see Seongwoo, I’ll stay beside you. You can cry as much as you want. So please, stop pushing yourself like this.’
At that moment, Park Siwoo approached Seo Da-hee.
Everyone was waiting for her.
“Senior, if it’s too difficult, you don’t have to come with us. You can stay here with Wol-ah.”
“No. Go on ahead. I’ll follow slowly.”
Seo Da-hee declined Park Siwoo’s consideration and began walking.
Her feet, which had felt rooted to the floor, finally moved.
It was Lia’s silent permission.
The walk to see him was quiet.
No one spoke easily as they moved forward in silence.
Eventually, they arrived at the morgue.
A space filled with cold air.
Yoo Seongwoo was there.
“We’ll leave you alone for a while. Once you’ve all finished saying goodbye to the deceased, please call us.”
He looked as though he were simply asleep.
As though if they shook him awake right now, he might open his eyes.
Sniff.
Someone swallowed their tears.
The emotions they had suppressed began boiling over.
Tears that hadn’t fallen even once during the funeral suddenly streamed down.
Once they started, they didn’t stop easily.
Park Siwoo cried like a broken faucet, and only now did Yoo Seongwoo’s death truly sink in.
Park Siwoo wasn’t the only one crying.
Helena sobbed uncontrollably in the arms of her father, Oliver.
Dan Chun-woo twisted his face, trying to hold back his tears.
But before long, tears began streaming down his face as well.
Memories of the time they had spent together resurfaced.
How he was always exchanging pointless jokes with them, and how sometimes he looked at them with worry, like children left alone near the water.
Despite that, he never cared about his own body.
He had been a friend and comrade, a master and leader.
“Ah…… Uwaaaaaaa!”
At that moment, Seo Da-hee collapsed onto the floor.
Yoo Yi-seo, who was about to support her, noticed something strange.
Seo Da-hee’s eyes had turned grayish-white.
The one controlling Seo Da-hee’s body right now was Lia.
Lia slowly approached Yoo Seongwoo.
The hand she carefully grasped was cold and stiff.
Tears once again fell from her eyes.
As though trying to transfer her warmth to him, Lia caressed his hand and face.
Her tears wet his face.
Before anyone realized it, the morgue had become a sea of tears.
Watching the scene, the Sword Emperor felt complicated emotions.
Having lived through countless battlefields and continued fighting, he had witnessed hundreds, even thousands of deaths.
For him, the current situation was familiar.
If anything, Yoo Seongwoo had been fortunate.
Among Heroes, it was common for there to be no body left behind at all.
‘Even so, this still doesn’t sit well with me.’
As the Sword Emperor watched everyone mourn, he suddenly sensed something strange.
Something about Yoo Seongwoo’s corpse lying in the morgue had changed.
He couldn’t say exactly what it was.
Nothing registered through his Aura Sense, and nothing visibly stood out.
But something was strange.
As time passed, the sensation grew stronger.
He raised his head and looked at the other Heroes.
But they didn’t seem to sense the same thing.
He could resolve the issue by circulating Mana and fully extending his Aura Sense, but he couldn’t do that.
Scanning a corpse with Mana would be disrespectful, and it would also be rude to his grandson and friends who were grieving for him.
The Sword Emperor had no choice but to keep watching the situation without taking his eyes off Yoo Seongwoo’s corpse.
The strange sensation certainly bothered him, but it didn’t feel dangerous.
If anything, it felt warm and gentle.
Then the Sword Emperor saw something that made him doubt his own eyes.
Yoo Seongwoo’s finger, wrapped in hemp clothing, twitched.
It was only for an instant, and the movement was incredibly faint, but the Sword Emperor didn’t miss it.
Countless thoughts raced through his mind.
Had old age finally ruined his eyesight?
Otherwise, there was no reason a corpse should move.
Yoo Seongwoo had even been dead for nearly ten days.
But what the Sword Emperor had seen wasn’t a mistake.
Changes began occurring in Yoo Seongwoo’s body.
His stopped heart began beating again, and warmth slowly returned to his cold body.
But those drowning in grief failed to notice.
At that moment, Yoo Seongwoo’s tightly closed eyes snapped open.
Tap, tap…….
Something lukewarm flowed down my face.
“Sniff…… Hic…….”
“Hnghh…….”
There wasn’t just one person sobbing softly beside my ears.
Warmth covered my face.
What felt like a human hand kept stroking my face, as though trying to transfer warmth into my cold body.
For some reason, the temperature around me was strangely low.
The sensation against my body was strange too.
A rough texture covered me from head to toe.
It almost felt as though I were wearing clothes made of paper.
When I slowly opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was Seo Da-hee’s hideously distorted face.
It was covered in tears and snot, making her look pretty ridiculous.
Then someone beside me spoke.
“It’s time to send off the deceased.”
Wait.
The deceased?
Judging by the situation, they seemed to be talking about me.
What the hell happened?
I moved my eyes and looked around.
An unnaturally cold space and old-fashioned clothes made from hemp.
Familiar faces surrounded me.
Don’t tell me this place was…….
A morgue?
It seemed that after I died, they had moved my corpse here.
How much time had passed since my death?
The time I spent meeting Metatron had only felt like a brief moment.
So naturally, I assumed not much time would pass before I revived either.
But judging from this, at least several days must have gone by.
If Metatron was going to revive me, she could’ve done it a little sooner.
Why the hell did she make me wake up at a time like this?
Maybe I should consider myself lucky.
If they had already cremated me, or nailed me into a coffin and buried me underground, things would’ve become complicated in all sorts of ways.
But why was it so quiet?
The sobbing I had heard moments ago had disappeared, replaced by a cold silence hanging in the chilly air.
When I stopped thinking, my eyes met a pair of huge grayish-white pupils.
“…….”
“…….”
Silence passed between us.
“Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!”
A scream loud enough to tear my eardrums apart filled the morgue.
Only then did it truly sink in that I had revived.
When I slowly sat up, everyone’s gaze focused on me.
There were quite a few people.
It looked as though everyone I had formed a connection with had gathered here.
They stared at me as though they had seen a ghost.
Well, was I technically a ghost?
From their perspective, I probably looked more like a zombie.
My eyes met Park Siwoo and the others.
Their eyes were red as though they had been bawling their hearts out, and they were each holding handfuls of tissues.
It was a shame I hadn’t gotten to see them wailing over me.
I briefly considered what I should say.
What kind of greeting was appropriate when you came back from the dead?
Suddenly, I remembered the first time I met them at the Academy.
The enormous auditorium and the Cadets who had filled it.
The entrance ceremony looked exactly like it had in the game, while they themselves shone even brighter than their game counterparts.
The thrill I had felt when characters from a game I could never touch were suddenly alive and moving right in front of me.
At the same time, I remembered those nights when excitement and anxiety about everything that awaited me had kept me from sleeping.
It felt as though I had returned to that moment.
This was the end of one story and the beginning of another.
I had escaped the life of my previous incarnation and begun the story of Yoo Seongwoo, the Final Boss of <Become a Hero>.
And once again, I had reached the end of that story.
But this would become the beginning of a new journey.
A beginning for a new me, no longer Yoo Seongwoo the Final Boss.
I still hadn’t decided what this new version of me would do.
There would probably be difficult things ahead as I lived.
But whatever happened, could anything really be worse than being the Final Boss?
Having finally chosen what to say, I gave them a broad grin.
“Good to see you again. I’ll be counting on you from now on too.”