The Main Characters That Only I Know

Chapter 423:

Screech.

Jin Cheong-woon, who had been waiting inside the cabin for Yu-hyun to come out, lifted his head halfway upon hearing the door open.

From the darkness of the room where nothing was visible, Jin Cheong-woon spotted Kang Yu-hyun walking toward him, and a faint smile appeared on his lips.

“How was it? Did you have a good talk? You must know everything by now. So, what are your thoughts?”

"……."

Yu-hyun didn’t respond. Jin Cheong-woon shrugged as if he had expected this.

“Fine. There’s no point in trying to chat amiably now, anyway. Go ahead and kill me. I have no more regrets, after all.”

“No regrets?”

Perhaps it was that last remark, though everything else didn’t matter.

Yu-hyun let out a small scoff as he gazed outside the cabin. Jin Cheong-woon also turned his head in the same direction and widened his eyes.

A woman was standing in the open doorway of the cabin.

"Shana?”

Shana Lynch.

With fiery red hair as beautiful as a burning flame, she glared at Jin Cheong-woon with a look that could kill.

“How did you…?”

“Were you planning on dying?”

“You…”

The emotions in Shana Lynch’s eyes were a mixture of anger, betrayal, agony, and sorrow.

“So, you walked that difficult road just to die pathetically in this shabby little cabin?”

“…This has nothing to do with you.”

“Why, why!”

Finally, Shana couldn’t hold back, and tears spilled from her eyes.

As things escalated to this point, Yu-hyun quietly stepped back. From the moment he entered this cabin, he’d sensed eyes watching him from afar. He’d dismissed it lightly, familiar with the presence, but he hadn’t expected her to come in person.

‘Judging by the reaction, something must have happened between them.’

It was something he’d faintly sensed since he had first encountered them—the unusual relationship between Shana Lynch and Jin Cheong-woon.

But it wasn’t just a story between the two of them. The same likely held true for the other high-ranking members of Unleashed that Jin Cheong-woon led.

Pushing aside Shana’s pleas, Jin Cheong-woon pointed to his own heart and spoke to Yu-hyun.

“I’m not about to beg pitifully for my life now that it’s come to this. So, kill me already. Let your hand put an end to this cursed fate.”

“Jin Cheong-woon!”

Shana called his name, but Jin Cheong-woon’s expression remained unchanged.

He already knew he wouldn’t live much longer. He’d even taken on the power of a Fragment that didn’t suit him, and he’d challenged Logos, blinded by that power, only to fail. If he were to die, meeting his end by Yu-hyun’s hand would be a more fitting conclusion to his journey so far.

After all, he didn’t deserve the right to change this world.

“You…”

“And take this.”

Jin Cheong-woon took out a Fragment he carried and handed it to Yu-hyun.

It wasn’t just his own Fragment. It included the other Fragments he had gathered as a false prophet.

“For the past five years, I’ve kept collecting these. Of course, I didn’t do it all alone. I received a lot of help, even from someone on your side.”

“Young-min…”

“Yes, Yoo Young-min. When I told him part of my goal and the truth of this world and asked for his cooperation, he surprisingly agreed without hesitation. Of course, he did it for your sake, but thanks to him, I could gather the rest of the Fragments much faster.”

The piece formed from countless gathered Fragments slowly floated toward Yu-hyun.

Receiving it, Yu-hyun looked at Jin Cheong-woon.

At last, he could see the true book that had been hidden behind the veil of the Fragment’s light.

“So, this is who you really are.”

Without opening Jin Cheong-woon’s book, Yu-hyun could read its contents.

It wasn’t even reading. It was something beyond that—an insight that allowed him to understand the contents written within by merely looking at the book.

The moment Yu-hyun felt the essence of his book, he instantly comprehended Jin Cheong-woon’s life, from his past to his present.

‘A victim of the world, subjected to oppression and discrimination.’

Jin Cheong-woon was born a member of an ethnic minority in China.

From birth, he and his entire family had been oppressed and forced into subjugation by the country.

As a young boy, Jin Cheong-woon didn’t question the nature of his harsh reality. To question something requires a basis for comparison, but he was raised in an environment that didn’t even allow that.

Young Jin Cheong-woon had no parents. Not long after his birth, they’d died in an accident while forced into hard labor.

If there was any consolation, it was that he had an older sister who, though much older, had worked tirelessly to raise him as a bright child.

Jin Cheong-woon’s sister endured grueling work to provide for her only brother. In a cramped, single-room home, she worked hard to support him. Jin Cheong-woon, still a young child and unaware of much, would often whine to her about wanting to live in a more spacious place.

He had no idea how much of a burden his complaints placed on her.

Then one day, Jin Cheong-woon’s sister told him that she would marry a wealthy man.

‘Sister… you’re getting married?’

‘Yes, Cheong-woon. We won’t have to starve anymore. I’ll make sure you get to eat all the delicious food you want. It’s okay now.’

Jin Cheong-woon could still never forget that moment.

On a dark night, in the narrow room they shared alone, his sister had hugged him and gently stroked his back.

As a child, he hadn’t even realized that she was crying at the time; he’d merely been happy, thinking his sister would marry into a good family. He’d dreamed of living in a spacious house, where he could eat all the delicious food he wanted without ever going hungry again.

But it hadn’t taken even three weeks for his sister, who’d promised to come for him after her glamorous wedding, to return as a cold corpse.

“Your sister was beaten to death.”

That was what the old man next door had told him when he’d brought her body back. He’d said it as if that was all he could do.

Jin Cheong-woon hadn’t dared to look at her corpse, wrapped in a cloth. But from what he could see, her slender arms and legs were covered in severe bruises.

The truth was something he learned later: it hadn’t even been a marriage she had wanted.

It had been a forced contract marriage arranged by the government to suppress ethnic minorities, and his sister had agreed to it because they’d offered her money, which she had accepted, hoping to endure the hardship and face reality.

Her misfortune lay in the fact that the man she married had a history of violence and cruelty, a man universally regarded as severely flawed.

And the result was as it was.

Why? What had his sister done to deserve such a death? Why hadn’t the man faced any punishment?

Despite her brutal death, no justice or law punished him. The nation and the law all sided with that man.

For a homeless orphan from an ethnic minority, there was no one who cared.

"……."

Staring at his sister’s lifeless body, Jin Cheong-woon realized for the first time how horrifying this world was.

And simultaneously, he awakened his talent.

The sorrow and pain of losing his family had forcefully widened his perspective on the world.

What kind of emotions had the young boy, who had lost his last remaining family member, felt at that moment?

In the end, the boy from an oppressed minority in a poor autonomous region had become the leader of a group of terrorists that shook the world.

Even as the era of ideological unity passed and China splintered into dozens of factions, he didn’t stop.

He couldn’t stop.

‘That is Unleashed.’

To the public, Unleashed was seen as a group of terrorists obsessed with collector supremacy, but that was only half-true.

When Unleashed was first founded, its original members were all people who had endured oppression and discrimination and suffered through difficult childhoods.

People whose homes were impoverished, who bore a tainted lineage, or whose villages had been destroyed by immense powers.

People who had to endure suffering that never even caught the world’s attention and vanished like dust into the annals of history.

But in the very end, by a stroke of fortune, they were chosen to awaken as collectors.

They were the ones who had gathered to form Unleashed.

They sought only one thing.

Rebellion against a world that had made them like this and continued to create people in the same plight as themselves.

A truly absurd story.

‘There’s no story in the world without its share of sorrow.’

But should the pain and loss they endured have been left unaddressed?

In order to grow, recruiting new talent was essential, and so, in taking in all kinds of people, Unleashed’s organizational purpose gradually morphed into one of collector supremacy.

But the purpose of Jin Cheong-woon, their leader, had remained the same from beginning to end.

‘Now I finally understand why he deliberately used the reckless ones as expendables.’

Since he found them undesirable, Jin Cheong-woon had chosen to at least use them in that way.

While he shared the same hatred for the world, he refused to crumble into the same

despicable form as them.

Even so, merely curbing the worst aspects didn’t justify his actions.

And Jin Cheong-woon himself was well aware of this.

‘But in the end, the choice of Jin Cheong-woon in this era changed.’

In his quest to voice his wrath at the world, Jin Cheong-woon had gained a Fragment and came into contact with Praytion.

And then, he witnessed the truth of an even greater world.

It turned out that Earth was fated to face inevitable destruction, and Jin Cheong-woon had to make a choice to prevent it.

Yet even making that choice wouldn’t mean he would be the one to change anything.

There was someone else who deserved the right to change the world.

His role was merely that of a supporting character, someone who would thoroughly assist the protagonist. Nothing more, nothing less.

He should have been angry.

He should have raged at Praytion for burdening him with this truth and letting his hatred deepen.

But.

In the end, this man made the right choice.

As the leader of a global terrorist group and a villain known for killing, he chose to alter the future, a destiny of preordained destruction.

The grueling journey ended here, at this very moment.

“Go on, kill me.”

‘Please kill me.’

“End everything with your own hands.”

‘End this painful life for me.’

While Jin Cheong-woon spoke those words aloud, Yu-hyun heard another plea in his heart.

He had lived as a villain, for the sake of a greater cause.

He knew he was in the wrong and never tried to justify his misdeeds by selling his sob story.

But, in the end, the pain was unavoidable.

Jin Cheong-woon was exhausted. He had tried to burn himself out in one last confrontation with Logos, but he couldn’t even reach him.

And now, here he was, in this state.

In the end, he was fated to live out his days in this miserable condition.

“You…”

Having taken all of the Fragments Jin Cheong-woon offered, Yu-hyun hesitated for a moment before turning his back.

Jin Cheong-woon’s hopeful gaze dimmed with despair.

“You… won’t kill me?”

“The current you isn’t even worth it. If you want to die so badly, do it yourself.”

The current Jin Cheong-woon wasn’t even worth lifting a finger for.

Granting him the death he longed for was practically akin to granting him peace.

It was more fitting to let him live in this shameful state as a rightful punishment.

“You are… cruel to the very end.”

“It’s just how I had to live.”

“Yes. I suppose… you and I both went through tough things.”

Yu-hyun deliberately ignored those words, leaving Shana and Jin Cheong-woon behind.

Just as he was about to open the door and step outside, Jin Cheong-woon’s final words drifted toward him.

“I’m sorry.”

"……."

Yu-hyun didn’t reply and left the cabin.

* * *

Before departing with Praytion.

Yu-hyun told him that he still had a library. Not just any library—this was one that Yu-hyun himself held.

Unlike other Tellers, Yu-hyun’s library wasn’t affiliated with the company. He had resigned from Celestial Corporation with Lotfiout’s permission and turned freelance, keeping the library entirely for himself.

That library still remained, even now, though Celestial Corporation had shut down.

He hadn’t intended it this way, but the circumstances were so oddly timed that he couldn’t help but feel it had been planned.

Yu-hyun moved to a deserted place. On black and white land, he checked his library.

‘The library’s functions are working fine. But to open the Chronicle, I have to connect to the Genesis Network.’

Perhaps this situation was unanticipated, as the Genesis Network itself was still intact.

However, if Yu-hyun opened his library and activated the Chronicle, the Shrine would inevitably make a move.

In the worst case, he couldn’t rule out the risk of penalties from the Genesis Network’s system.

‘But I still have to do it.’

Though Praytion had asked him to wait a little longer, Yu-hyun knew better than anyone that there was no time.

The empty space before him split open, and soon a pure white room filled with books appeared.

It was his personal library, filled with memories and stories from his life as a Teller.

As he looked into the library with a complicated gaze, a strong wind began blowing from somewhere.

While brushing aside his wind-tousled hair, the gust stopped.

Yu-hyun turned his head in the direction of the wind.

“It’s been a while.”

Seeing the figure clad in black tails and with a face shrouded in darkness, Yu-hyun greeted him without any surprise.

He had somewhat expected they would meet this way.

Considering whose territory lay at the border of this boundary, it was natural.

“Satan.”