A tear falls down his cheek.

Then another.

And another one, until he’s quietly sobbing.

He feels like screaming, but no sound comes out. His throat is tight because of all the different kinds of pain he’s experiencing at once. Jongin had never thought of himself as a bad person, but seeing a young girl being kept alive by machines because of his actions, made him doubt everything he thought he knew about himself. As if that wasn’t enough, in a cruel twist of fate, he had gone beyond this reality and found her again, only to cause her a new kind of pain. It doesn’t take long before he blames everything on himself. But instead of consoling him, it only makes him angrier.

Shin Segi could care less of the consequences his words will have on the boy. All the feelings he had bottled up ever since the accident, had violently resurfaced at the sight of Jongin. In Segi’s mind, he’s the culprit of the misfortunes that fell upon his family, when Haneul went into a state of seemingly no return. It had been six years of waiting for a sign, even a small one, but Haneul had only been unresponsive. The doctors lost hope five months after the accident and even suggested cutting off her life support, but Segi had insisted they kept Haneul alive at all costs. It was around that time he had completed his projects about Santa Quaranta and started investing in it. If Haneul wouldn’t wake up, then he would have to find a way to get to her. Segi didn’t expect the simulated reality to gain the fame it got, but he found solace in honoring his daughter’s vision of it. Santa Quaranta soon became a source of happiness for all those who couldn’t find it in the physical world and it now thrives as a piece of heaven on Earth. Haneul has thrived with the city, too. In Santa Quaranta, she’s made her dream of becoming a singer come true. Even though Segi disapproves of her singing in night clubs and dyeing her hair blue, he is happy to see his daughter alive and well, in a place where nothing can harm her and where she can live without worries.

“Does she know?” Jongin asks through tears. “Does she know I’m the reason why she’s there?”

“She knows why she’s there, but she doesn’t know it’s because of you,” Segi says. “Seeing how everything turned out, I regret not having told her about you. See, when you came to sign up for Santa Quaranta, I never thought you’d chance upon my daughter. Out of all the residents and tourists there, what were the odds that you’d meet? I didn’t think it would happen, so I didn’t interfere in the process of you becoming a tourist. I vowed I would never forget your face and name, ever since the day of the accident. When Haneul requested her first memory removal, I found out that the person she wanted to erase was you. I went through her memories after I extracted them. As I started to think rationally about it, I found that I could work that twist of fate to my advantage. So I entered Santa Quaranta as a young flyer boy one Friday night, prompting you to go see a performance of the famous Shen Tian. And you took the bait. She had you erased another time after that, but you still found a way to her. I didn’t even have to interfere to make it happen. Suddenly, you meeting my daughter didn’t sound so bad. Because it gave me the chance to witness this precise scene. While I can’t wake Haneul up, I can see you wallow in the same misery I’ve been living for the past six years. It’s sufficient to me.”

Jongin willingly takes all of the venomous words Segi says to him. He’s powerless of feeling anything other than guilty and deserving of everything he’s going through in this moment.

“And yet, I can’t ignore the fact that you keep gravitating towards her. It’s like you know no laws of time or space. Somehow you always end up finding her, that I wonder if this is all just a bad joke or if it means something,” Segi adds in a daze. “I assume your memories from before the accident are still intact. If so, you must remember the first trial we ran for Santa Quaranta back in 2015. You were just a student back then, needing money, so you came to offer yourself as a subject for tests. Haneul was the first one to enter Santa Quaranta. Back then it was nothing more than just a beach. A few other people showed up for the trial, but all of them reported entering into the void instead of the beach, when they put on the chip. All of them besides you. It was curious to me how no one else but Haneul and you could get to the beach. Something worked, but not quite.”

Jongin feels like he has uncovered something that had been hiding in the deepest corners of his mind. It is a faraway memory, but it all comes back to him as Segi speaks. It was the first test he did for them and he remembers ending up in a beach, seemingly alone. He didn’t give himself the chance to enjoy the peace, because a sense of being lost overwhelmed him and made him panic. For a moment, he thought he would forever be stuck there, alone. That is until he thought he saw movement on the farthest distance he could see and that gave him a glimmer of hope. So he started running as fast as he could. The more he approached, the clearer everything became. A girl whose face he couldn’t distinguish was standing close to the sea, unmoving. Her head was directed to him, but he could only see that she had blue hair. He was getting closer to her, but just when he thought he would reach her, the sun set and he suddenly disappeared and woke up in a white room in the real world. He had received his money after reporting what he had experienced and hadn’t come back to the headquarters until some time ago, when he had decided to become a tourist.

“Funny thing this world, isn’t it?” Segi asks, but it’s more of a rhetorical question.

Jongin doesn’t speak. His mind is still processing everything.

“She would hate me if she could hear this conversation,” Segi continues. “I don’t know what it is about you but it looks like my daughter likes you a lot. I don’t know what to do about that. For the very first time, I simply have no idea what I’ll do so that you can stop hurting her.”

Jongin feels the desperation of a father in Segi’s voice. He can’t make the man in front of him the villain, because he is just a parent in pain. It kills Jongin to think that he might never see Haneul again, but if that’s what it takes for her to be happy, at least in Santa Quaranta, then he’s ready to do it. He dries the last of his tears and offers Segi a solution.

“I’ll have my memories removed instead of her. I will give back my accessing chip and I will move on with my life in the physical world as long as this keeps Haneul happy. Her being hurt is the last thing I want. But please, before I do all of this, allow me one last visit in Santa Quaranta. It’s the only thing I dare ask of you, sir.”

Segi ponders about Jongin’s offer for a moment. “I will schedule a memory removal for you in two days. You have until then to enter Santa Quaranta. Bring your chip with you the day of the procedure.”

Jongin is as relieved as he could be in a situation like that. He sends a silent confirmation to the man, before he sets his sight on the real world Haneul. He’d give up everything to be with her, but if all he does is cause her pain, then he’d rather disappear from her life altogether. At that moment, Jongin understands that he’d do just about anything for her.